Shooting the Shit About Agent Financial Details, Imprint Mergers and Risks of a Top Heavy Industry

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Shit No One Tells You About Writing

Episode: "Shooting the Shit About Agent Financial Details, Imprint Mergers, and Risks of a Top-Heavy Industry"

Hosts: Carly Watters & CeCe Lyra | Release Date: June 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

This week, agents Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra dive deep into the publishing industry’s inner workings, discussing recent imprint mergers at Simon & Schuster, the ongoing risks of market consolidation, agent financial realities, data on “top-heavy” book sales (especially in romance/rom-coms), and the enduring trust challenges brought about by new AI tools in editing. They also answer listener questions about query forms, agent-author relationships, and copyright matters, and share memorable moments from recent industry events. The tone is candid, friendly, and often full of humor and hard truths for emerging writers.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Industry Events and Personal Updates

• Halifax Editors Canada Conference ([07:40])

  • CeCe attended and found discussions on the “contentification of culture” eye-opening, especially as books require deep immersion but are now marketed in meme-like, snackable ways.
    • CeCe: “Books are like a deep dive—high cognitive labor... versus memes that are a short form dopamine hit.” ([08:34])
  • Editorial ethics in the age of AI: Many freelance editors are concerned about trust issues—e.g., clients using AI to process or repurpose feedback.
    • There’s still confusion and debate about “safe” use-cases for AI in editing.
    • CeCe: “None of these tools are useful to me... There were some really good conversations around the ethics piece and how we create open dialogue around this.” ([10:39])

• Conference Food and Halifax Praise ([12:13])

  • Carly raves about Bicycle Thief restaurant; CeCe shouts out L’Picu Pizza.

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2. Imprint Merger - Atria & Gallery (Simon & Schuster)

• Breaking News: Simon & Schuster is merging the Atria and Gallery imprints, along with Summit, Simon Element, and Adams Media, to create the Atria Gallery Publishing Group. ([15:28])
  • The move follows layoffs and represents the ongoing consolidation trend.
  • Carly: “Writers should be paying close attention to this. Not to freak out, not to overthink anything, but awareness... If you’re a writer, don’t let it derail your process.” ([16:11])
  • Imprint mergers reduce the number of submission destinations for authors, and often lead to less competition and fewer chances for auctions.
  • CeCe: “We’re not trying to fear monger. We’re saying eyes wide open.” ([17:11])
  • Carly: “When a writer wins, an agent wins... Less competition, typically, is bad news for agents and writers because our interests are aligned.” ([20:54])

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3. The “Top Heavy” Industry: Rom-Coms, Midlist, and Diversification

• Substack Shout-Out: Fallon Ballard’s Essay ([21:16])
  • Data from Barnes & Noble’s top 100 rom-coms: Only 39 different authors; over half of the books are by just 8 authors. Only 4 books are by authors of color.
    • Fallon (quoted by CeCe): “When the cycle changes and the bubble bursts, mid-listers lose out on contracts and only those at the top get signed to new deals. The list at the top is smaller than you might think.” ([21:45])
  • Romance authors are called “shapeshifters”—often pivoting genres to stay in business.
    • CeCe (quoting Neely Alexander): “This is why romance authors are shape shifters.”
  • Carly: “One of the beauties of publishing is the plurality of perspectives. And when you don’t have that... that’s a loss for everyone.” ([24:26])
• Market Implications:
  • Fewer publishing opportunities, especially for diverse and new voices.
  • Pressure on midlist authors and need to diversify income streams.

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4. Agent Finances: How Literary Agents Get Paid

• AALA Agent Survey Insights ([39:22])
  • Income from agenting vs. side hustles is often necessary due to industry instability.
  • Early-career agents face significant financial precarity; most agents make between $50k–100k/year, but this can take years to achieve.
  • Carly: “It’s so interesting to see how much of what agents go through early in their careers mirror what writers go through... A writer has to have other streams of income because their book income is insufficient.” ([41:38])
  • CeCe: “This is a high input job; vast amounts of time and energy go into it... As people progress, the perception of reward increases.” ([44:00])
  • Big financial “win” years have to be seen in light of previous lean years (“amortized over the entire history of doing the work”—CeCe, [47:47]).
  • The presence of a personal safety net (family resources, partner income) makes a major difference in who succeeds and persists.
  • The profession is “high risk, high reward,” often without year-to-year stability.

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5. Query & Industry Questions Answered

• Disclosure of Previous Sales in Query Forms ([30:27])
  • Authors should keep royalty statements organized and can reach out to previous agents/editors, but not knowing is not a dealbreaker if context is communicated.
• What if an Agent Doesn’t Love Your Next Book? ([33:18])
  • Open communication is critical; agents won’t submit books they can’t champion, but this is common and not a “tragedy.”
    • Carly: “I would not submit something I wasn’t in love with... This is life sad, not tragedy sad.” ([34:45])
• Copyright Registration & the Anthropic Settlement ([36:01])
  • There’s a difference between automatic copyright (when you write it) and registered copyright (extra protections). Some publishers have failed to register, affecting Anthropic AI licensing payouts.
  • Agents often do management work to chase down missing registrations.
• Agent Scams (Impersonation Alerts): ([50:57])
  • Watch for fake “agents” requesting Amazon account logins or using personal (not agency) emails. Authors should confirm legitimacy with the agency directly.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• CeCe, on opening pages: “It’s your job to make your opening pages irresistible... It kills me when writers say their story gets better in chapter two—nobody’s going to stick around to see if a submission gets better.” ([00:16, 54:02])
• Carly, on publisher statements: “Share resources... translation: Do more with less. Can we just be real about what’s happening here?” ([19:05])
• CeCe, on industry risk: “There is a lot of financial precarity and instability... It’s a high input job, and for new agents, it’s especially hard.” ([41:38])
• Carly, on agent compensation vs. risk: “It’s a high risk, high reward profession. If you risk it and make it, you make it big... Just remember, that big money year needs to be averaged for all those years you made nothing.” ([47:47])
• CeCe, on market consolidation: “As agents, having fewer places to submit makes our job much harder.” ([20:05])
• Fallon Ballard (quoted): “Of the top 100, only four were by authors of color. Only seven featured queer protagonists. Over half were by just eight authors.” ([23:00])
• Carly, on impostor scams: “Agencies will be happy to tell you whether it’s them or not. I promise you, we would rather you check.” ([51:53])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Industry News & Imprint Mergers: [15:28–21:13]
• Rom-Com Sales, Top-Heavy Market Data: [21:16–26:35]
• Agent Finances & Survey Breakdown: [39:22–50:57]
• Query & Legal Questions: [30:27–36:29]
• Agent Scams (Warnings): [50:57–53:03]
• Conference Talk, AI & Editorial Trust: [07:40–11:56]
• Signature Quotes about Submissions: [00:16, 54:02]

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

• Writers should embrace the industry’s hard realities: Opening pages must be stellar; industry consolidation means fewer opportunities; and career longevity increasingly depends on adaptability and diversified income.
• Agents are in the same risky, unpredictable boat as writers: Financial precarity is real, and the job’s upside comes after years of high effort with little pay.
• Stay vigilant about scams and copyright registration: Use agency emails, safeguard your information, and follow up with publishers and agents about important legal steps.
• Be aware, but don’t despair: The more writers understand the game, the better their chances.
  • Carly: “The best writers to work with are aware... It’s your competitive advantage.”

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For More

• Check out the hosts’ Substack for deeper dives, unfiltered Q&As, and industry breakdowns referenced in the episode.
• Upcoming webinars: CeCe’s “Starting It Right” for irresistible opening chapters and Carly’s “Agenting 101” Lunch & Learn for industry professionals.

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This episode is highly recommended for writers who want an honest, up-to-date education in today’s publishing ecosystem—a landscape that's more competitive, more consolidated, and more complex than ever, but still full of opportunity for those with awareness and resilience.

Transcript

[Carly Waters]

What's up, everyone?

[Cece Lira]

This is Cece. So I recently grabbed lunch with an acquiring editor from HarperCollins who told me that the number of submissions she's been getting has nearly doubled.

[Carly Waters]

And I wasn't surprised at all, because

[Cece Lira]

every agent and editor I know has been talking about how the volume of submission keeps increasing. So, personally, that is a wonderful thing because it's more reading for me, but it also means I have more chances of matching with authors. I consider it a privilege to review queries on books with hooks and of course, in my submissions inbox. But at the same time, I talk to writers who tell me that they wish agents would read more than a few pages because, and I quote, my story gets better in chapter two. I have to be honest, this kills me. It's like me wanting chocolate chip cookies to have the nutritional value of kale. It's just not realistic. Like it or not, no agent, no acquiring editor, is going to stick around to see if a submission gets better. It's not because we're mean. It's because we get dozens and dozens every day. I know it's harsh, but ambitious writers embrace harsh realities. So here it goes. It's your job to make your opening pages irresistible, to make agents crave it, to make agents want to read more. That's why I'm so excited about my upcoming course. Starting it right. How to begin your story in the best place and in the best way. I created this course after studying hundreds of books. I've mapped out elements that are present in the beginning of all successful novels and memoirs. And I've designed checklists, actual checklists that you can use to ensure that your story's beginning is seducing your reader. We'll cover how to write a great first line, different types of beginnings, and how you can choose the best one, the best place to start and the best way to start. Yes, these are totally different things. When it makes sense to add a prologue and when it doesn't. How to frame your inciting incident in an appealing way. How to balance exposition and mystery. How to include context but not weigh it down with too much backstory. And what to do if your story has more than one POV or timeline.

[Carly Waters]

Most of all, I'm going to show

[Cece Lira]

you how to make readers readers. Want to turn to Chapter two? Join me for this multi day course designed to help you break through the noise. You'll leave with a clear, actionable breakdown of exactly what goes into a terrific beginning. If you've already signed up, come prepared to take lots of Notes. We're talking hundreds of slides with real world examples and specific techniques.

[Carly Waters]

Plus a super fun surprise that I

[Cece Lira]

can't wait to share. I hope to see you there.

Welcome to another episode of Shooting the Shit with Literary Agents Carly Waters and Cece Lira, where we dissect publishing gossip, discuss book industry trends and the overall state of the book business. If you've ever wanted to grab a coffee with two literary agents, grab your mug and pull up a chair. Hello, my friend. How are you?

[Carly Waters]

Hey, I am good. This is my third cup of coffee, but it is decaf, so I do one calf, two decaf at the most. How about you? How many cups of coffee have you had? I feel like that's a better question than how are you.

[Cece Lira]

We should, we should start with that. So I've had one cup of coffee, one cup of tea, and now I'm working. I'm like halfway through, you get off the can you hear that? My clinking of my ice in my iced coffee. So it's like ASMR for everybody.

[Carly Waters]

I like that.

[Cece Lira]

Listening. Or if you're watching on YouTube, I'm clinking my glass of iced coffee. So, you know, we're, we're well caffeinated. I'm not, you know, that says enough.

[Carly Waters]

I don't do iced coffee. I find the concept of iced coffee to be very strange. Whenever it gets hot and I'm ordering coffee at like a coffee shop, people go, do you want that ice? And I'm like, yeah, no, I'm not a monster. And I know everyone listening loves iced coffee because it's just a thing here.

[Cece Lira]

But I was gonna say it's a very North American thing. I. I'm trying to do, like, maybe I'm trying to get ready for my European vacation, but I'm trying to do like, just like an espresso in the afternoon sometimes. Because, you know, if you don't want to do like a full hot coffee, you know, sometimes it's just like, I just need the caffeine. Hit me with the espresso, get on with our day.

[Carly Waters]

Espresso and brigadero. The problem is this is, this is my life's big problem. Such first world problems. I can't have caffeine even if it's fully decaf after a certain hour. And I really want brigadeiros in the evening. So maybe one day, maybe one day I will, like when I'm on my deathbed or something, I'll have like a brigade beer and a coffee in the evening. I've never been able to do that. Always wanted to be risky.

[Cece Lira]

Risky business. We have a lot of fun things to chat about today. So much every week, you know, and I'm so glad we started doing this show every week. When we kind of brainstormed what was the show going to be about or how would there be news. There was just so many ways this could have went, but I'm glad we're doing it every week. And so anybody who is a substack subscriber, a paid substack subscriber to our Shitabout writing account, knows that we did a live last week because, you know, as you guys know, if you're listening to us on YouTube or if you're listening to us through the RSS feeds on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, you know that the last Monday of every month is our bonus episode. And so in replacement of that, CC and I did a kind of live version of shooting the shit last week. And it was really fun. It was. You know, we could see everybody commenting, like, live while we were chatting. And it really brought me back to, you know, we both taught so many webinars over the years. So, like, it was kind of like podcast meets webinar format. It was really fun.

[Carly Waters]

It was so fun. And kind of nice, too, to see, like, our core community.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah.

[Carly Waters]

There's so many names and handles that I know and that you know, too. And it's just so fun. It's just so lovely. It felt cozy. It felt like a Fireside chat.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah.

[Carly Waters]

We will do it again because it was so much fun and. And the fact that it's live, like, there's so many moments where we're like, wait, no, I want to edit that out, because I just said that word wrong or whatever. We could not do that. And so pressure was on, stakes were on. But again, it felt. It felt safe and cozy at the same time, which is just the highest compliment we can pay to our. Our substack supporters. So thank you for supporting us.

[Cece Lira]

Definitely. Yeah. And I feel like, obviously, we try to be vulnerable, especially on the Monday show, the show that you guys are listening to about different things that are going on in our agent lives. But when we're, like, behind the paywall, I'm going to be honest, we were saying things that we would not have said, I don't think if we. Free Internet versions. So if you really want Kylie and CeCe unfiltered, that is where there was.

[Carly Waters]

There was one specific discussion that I'm like, the Vegas rule applies, guys. Like, what. What happens here stays Here, no one is allowed to talk about that. You guys know what I'm talking about. If you do, you do. If you don't, that's necessary. But yeah. And.

[Cece Lira]

And also, if you guys become a paid subscriber after you're hearing this and you're like, wow, I want that you can actually go back and watch the recording. I saved it. So you just got to go back into our substack. Okay.

[Carly Waters]

I hate that. I hate that. I hate that. Because now they know that there's a big thing and they're gonna do it just so they can hear the big things. I hate that.

[Cece Lira]

Listen, listen. I believe in our community. I believe in our community. You guys are great.

[Carly Waters]

Yeah.

[Cece Lira]

But we'll do it quarterly because it was just fun. We really enjoyed it.

[Carly Waters]

No Fear unlocked. Okay. It's fine.

[Cece Lira]

It's fine.

[Carly Waters]

I'm fine. I'm moving on. Okay, tell me about Halifax. You went to Halifax for a fun conference?

[Cece Lira]

Yes. So it was the Editors Canada conference. All essentially just about kind of like editing and content and AI and how thinking about it as a community. And honestly, it was great. I made lots and lots and lots of notes. I'm probably going to need to pull it together in more of like a written format in my substack just because through the act of writing, I can kind of pull all of my thoughts together. So I'll probably be weaving this through, you know, a number of things that we talk about and honestly, just like a lot of future things that I. That I think about. But there was some great keynotes. Robert W. Gehl from York University did the first opening keynote about the, like, contentification of culture and just really kind of blew my mind. So I have lots of thoughts about, like, how books have become contentified and memified and how in order to sell books, we have to do all these, like, little reels and shorts and, you know, all of this way to kind of like package our content in consumable formats. So it really got me through that,

[Carly Waters]

which is so interesting because books are like a deep dive. High cognitive labor requires lengthy periods of sustained introspection type of format versus memes that are short form dopamine hit. And I get that one is selling the other. We're not trying to change what books are, but it's just really interesting. That's a high, Interesting contrast.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah. Yeah. So I have a lot of thoughts about that. So that's something I think I'm going to try and work into my weekend rant substack. So I'm going to try and work on that. There was a great chat about editorial ethics in the age of AI. So the people at the conference. So it was editors Canada. So it was a lot of like freelance editors, some in house editors. It was people that edited academic journals, it was people that edited books. You know, it was in the results of journalists. So it's like the concept of editing as a whole. Obviously, I know I come from the book publishing space, but there's just a lot to think about because I know a lot of you guys listening, who are writers? Well, you know, there's a lot of different type of people that listen and how this can relate to them. But a lot of you guys are writers and some of you guys hire freelance editors before you submit your works to agents, right? And so there was a lot of interesting discussion about the ways that freelance editors are kind of thinking about this. And I have a lot of thoughts about how we're kind of in the, in the age of just really working through a lot of trust issues. I have a lot of thoughts about this. I probably have a substack coming through about this, about the concept of, you know, this entire industry is run on a lot of trust. As an agent, I have to trust that, you know, my clients are writing what they say they're writing. And editors, especially for freelance editors, have to trust that writers, again, are not taking their edit letters and pumping those into LLM. So there's just like a lot of this trust issues that we really need to work through. As a book community and as a book publishing community, I have a lot of thoughts about that, you know, and there were some conversations about how to use AI in ways that feel like they're safe, you know, from, from guidelines and things like that. But yeah, I don't know, it was.

[Carly Waters]

Not to put you on the spot, but did you were there ways that you were like, oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense. I know you're still processing all of this, but your first react where you're like, huh, that could, that could, that could be a tool. Good tool.

[Cece Lira]

Honestly? Honestly, no. Like, I come away from all of these things. I'm like, none of these tools are useful to me. I had a, a client telling me about some software and I don't know if it's like fully AI, but they have a software where as an academic, they use this like, thing in their browser where every time they're doing research, you know, reading academic journals on their browser, they like hit a button. I'm using my fingers. If I'M like hitting it. But, you know, on your browser you hit a button and it like will save it to a separate document to help you with bibliography. So I could just see in a lot of other incidences within the community of writing and editing at large, there are use cases for different softwares. But I did not come away from it being like, any of this will help me do my job as a literary agent. But there were some really good conversations around the ethics piece and how we. And also like how we create open dialogue around this. Right. There's so much just shame or finger pointing and you know, all of this like blame game stuff. And there's, there's just so much at the, at the heart of those issues where, like, how can we have open conversations about these things where we're not getting defensive. Another thing that made made me think about is, you know, when we're talking about AI, are we even talking about the same thing? Because what, you know, AI is like a huge concept is are we talking about ll?

[Carly Waters]

It's like a big umbrella concept?

[Cece Lira]

AGI. Yeah. Yes, exactly. So it's like also, how do we find language where we can be taught, make sure that we're actually talking about the same thing Anyway, so just lots of like little, little tools like that that I'm probably going to use in my dialogue in the way that I think. But anyway, still working through all my thoughts, but those are some of them.

[Carly Waters]

I like that you spent your weekend in Halifax. I do not like that you did not go to the Bicycle Thief and have the lobster thermidor. It is the best. I have only been to Halifax once with my good friend Kayleigh, and she and I, in the space of a weekend, went to the Bicycle Thief. I think it was three times. Like, it was embarrassing. We were like adding a whole meal to the day. Just lunch and dinner and breakfast. Makes no sense. Like, you have to have a fourth meal as well. Of course, if you're up for a while. So good. Like it was just so good.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah.

[Carly Waters]

Yeah.

[Cece Lira]

I had really good food. Yeah. So I actually, I mean, shout out to Halifax if anybody's listening. Great city. If anybody is looking for an incredible vacation spot, it's Halifax. So there was a list of the top 100 pizza places in the world and there were only two listed in Canada. One in Vancouver and one in Halifax. And I went to the one in Halifax, L? Picu. And it was incredible. It was the best pizza I've ever had outside of Italy.

[Carly Waters]

Really?

[Cece Lira]

Yes. It was fantastic. Shout out to them so anyway, Halifax was a win all around. Still working on my notes. If you would like all of my thoughts, check out my weekend rant substack where I kind of like, I'm gonna work through them all and that was that.

[Carly Waters]

Okay. I also want to know about this upcoming lunch and learn. You have, like, tell us about that.

[Cece Lira]

Yes. So every few years, I, I just, I like to get back to the agenting side of the community. Obviously, you know, a lot of you writers listen to the show, but we also know a lot of publishing professionals listen to the show or aspiring agents and things like that. And I always try to, you know, make sure that I tailor some content to just helping literary agents out. And so I'm doing just like a $5 lunch and learn. I just priced it at 5 bucks because I'm like, I just. A little bit of accountability here. You know, let's just make sure people show up and we have a great conversation. So $5 it is on June 8th at noon Eastern time. And we're just going to talk about like my 10 rules of agenting, a little bit of like agenting 101. I'm probably going to do about a 40 minute presentation, leave about 20 minutes for Q& A as just a real, just like starter pack of how to be a lit agent. And I've done this a couple times over the years. I've done this as a zoom webinar. I've also taught this version of this class to the British version of the Agents association over there. And yeah, so I just kind of, as I said, like, giving back and explaining how the book business works, because I know there's so much that it's hard to actually find the information or hear it from an agent that's been able to do it successfully. So that's what I'm doing.

[Carly Waters]

And if anyone is listening and wondering, maybe you've taken one of my courses and you're thinking, oh, no, Carly is lying. It won't be 40 minutes plus 20 minutes. It will. Carly's actually very good at time management people, she and I. She does not have my time blindness. She is actually quite good. I have, I have. We've taught things together. It was so much fun. And I'm always really impressed because you're like, it's going to be 90 minutes and it's 90 minutes and it's always amazing that you do it.

[Cece Lira]

I know, I know. I really do try, especially because it's a lunch hour thing. I'm like, okay, let's just get in and out. Because if I do an evening course or a weekend course, I'm like, yeah, I would have time blindness. So I'm like, we're gonna get in and out at lunch hour. Good for you. And. And that's the plan. Okay. Have we talked about all the things we need to talk about? We have a lot of things on the list. We have breaking news this morning, which is a merger. I, like, just put this in the docket, literally before we started recording a merger between Atria and Gallery. Cece, do you want to give us the breakdown on this?

[Carly Waters]

Yeah, I mean, I don't know if merger is the word I would use, but essentially, like, sns, Simon and Schuster decided to fold, like, bring together Atria and Gallery. They're two different publishing groups. And so they're also bringing Summit, Simon Element, and Adams media imprints, and they're creating this new group, the Atria Gallery Publishing Group. I actually think this is really interesting because, I mean, the sad part about this, the main sad part about this, is that the move is following layoffs of employees that happened just last week. Obviously not something any of us want. But the thing that I. That I always come to when I'm looking at news like this, other than who left, who are the editors who are no longer there, because that always changes our strategy as agents. But it's also like, so, okay, so when Penguin Random House was considering us buying Simon and Schuster, that made news. So even people who. Like, people in my life who do not care about publishing at all, they were like, oh, I heard about this, you know, thing that might happen. Like, it became big news, and with good reason. You know, it's two of the big five, and if one of them bought the other, then that would mean more consolidation, less competition. You know, it would create all these issues, especially for agents and authors. When these things happen within the same publishing house, though, like when groups get folded into each other and joined, combined, aligned, whatever you want to call them, that doesn't make headlines, which I understand. But actually, in the subculture that we inhabit in our little microcosm, like, I think writers should be paying close attention to this. Not to freak out, not to, you know, overthink anything but awareness. Like I always say, like, if you're a writer, don't let it derail your process. That's what I mean by don't freak out. Like, you know, keep yourself and.

[Cece Lira]

We're not trying to fear Monger. We're not trying to fear Monger. We're saying eyes wide open. This Is something to pay attention to. Yeah.

[Carly Waters]

And like, the, the best writers to work with are writers who are aware of what's happening in the industry. They are protective of their creative space and they are aware. I know that's a really hard balance to strike, but the greats do it. And so knowing what's happening in the industry, knowing that this big thing is happening at Simon and Schuster, it's your competitive advantage. What it means, I mean, every agent out there has the same question right now, which is, oh my God, what's going to happen to the submission rules? Like, who am I going to be able to submit to? You know, different imprints depending on. On the situation. They're allowed to compete against each other. Sometimes they're not. And yeah, we're gonna have to see what's gonna happen. But it's not, it's not good news. We don't want to fear Monger, but it's not good news.

[Cece Lira]

No. My instinct was like, you know, because it's just like two commercial to upmarket publishers obviously within the same organization. I think at some point they probably were starting to share resources. And then it just looked like, you know, how can we combine these things? And their nonfiction programs were actually quite unique and distinct. It was the fiction program that probably started to overlap a little bit. I mean, I don't want to make excuses for them because again, I'm going to be really frustrated when we hear that we can't submit to them separately, which will be news that will eventually come down the pipeline. The quote from Jonathan Karp, former CEO, is the one that broke the news. Said, together this Atria Gallery publishing group will be able to share resources more easily, delineate their fiction and nonfiction publishing programs more clearly, and find new strategies together other for achieving growth in categories with the greatest potential. The leadership of each imprint will remain the same. And I also want to say the people who have led these groups have led them for a long time. Like, they are very distinct and they're great leadership.

[Carly Waters]

Yes.

[Cece Lira]

And they are great people. Yes. So I want to be very clear about that. They were. Yeah, 100%.

[Carly Waters]

The people are great. I just, I just read a statement like, share resources and I go translation. Do more with less.

[Cece Lira]

Yes, exactly.

[Carly Waters]

Can we just be real, you know, can we just be real about what's happening here? Like, I understand the corporate.

[Cece Lira]

It's not good.

[Carly Waters]

Like, we all, we all have to do it. They're. They are beholder to, to a larger structure. It's not about the individual. It never. It Never is. It's just, you know, whatever. Like, I don't. No more mergers and foldings and none of that, please. More new imprints. We want new imprints so you have more places to submit and authors can have more chances of finding a wonderful home. That's what we want, people.

[Cece Lira]

Because to me, it's not about publishing more books necessarily. I do want more competition, you know, so, like, that, to me, is the difference. And. Yeah, I'm just so full of feelings.

[Carly Waters]

They're the same thing, you know, like, if there's more competition, there's more supply. You know, like, theory.

[Cece Lira]

But, like, for example, it depends on

[Carly Waters]

where you are on the pipeline.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah, yeah. Like, John Karp left. Well, didn't leave, but left his position to then run his Simon 6, which is an imprint where he is going to publish fewer books anyway. So it's. Yeah, it's just hard as agents to be like, let's build the submission list. And now I have to, like, triple check every publishing house for all of this overlap to know who is the head of each of these divisions. Can I submit them separately? And it is part of our job. I'm not complaining about me doing my job. It's just, you know, having. Having fewer places to submit is. Makes our jobs much harder.

[Carly Waters]

Yeah, well, we want more competition because.

[Cece Lira]

More competition because these guys won't be able to have auctions against each other, probably, and all of that stuff. Right.

[Carly Waters]

And maybe they'll create some rule, like, above a certain amount.

[Cece Lira]

I don't even know.

[Carly Waters]

But, like, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter specifically. It matters, but that's not the point. The point is, like, zooming out. This means less competition. Less competition, yeah. Typically is bad news for agents and writers because our interests are aligned. You know, like, when a writer wins, an agent wins. And so, anyway, in other news, what else do we have to talk about?

[Cece Lira]

All right, so our substrate of the week is this.

[Carly Waters]

Oh, yeah. I really wanted to. I don't know, I wanna. I wanna just shout out, because I. So this was shared. A client, Neely Tubati Alexander, shared this article with me, and it was written by her friend and fellow romance writer, Fallon Ballard. So I'm excited and thank you. I love it when, like, people share articles with us, especially clients, as a thank you. That was so lovely. It's essentially called the rom com genre is in Trouble, y'. All. What did you think of it, Harley?

[Cece Lira]

It was really interesting. You know, I think I came across it on Substack, you know, when you. I Knew people that spend a lot of time on substack like me, when people can kind of like pull a quote from the post, right? And then that's kind of like the way that people share it. Because I think talking about the MID list is such an interesting conversation. And it was framed the way that I came across it was its framing of a conversation about the MID list. And for those of you that don't know what the MID list is, there's not like a super formal definition of it, but it's essentially authors who aren't lead titles, aren't New York Times bestselling authors, but have a continuing career in publishing, garnering enough sales support, reviews, you know, sub rights, licenses, to kind of like just keep a sustainable career going and what we call the MID list. So somebody making essentially like a living, a living wage doing this year on year. That's what I think of the mid list. And you've heard lots of conversations about mid, the shrinking, etc. Etc. But the things that I kind of pulled from this was. So the quote was, now I have always been a mid lister and I'm very well aware of my position, but what happens when the cycle changes in the bubble bursts is that mid listers lose out on contracts and only those at the top get signed to new deals. And the list of authors at the top is smaller than you might think. And so I've also pulled some numbers from the article because she said, I went to Barnes and Noble and Amazon, looked at their top 100 books in the ROM com category and I collected some data and noticed some patterns. We'll start with Barnes and Noble. This is just kind of the part that I pulled for you guys. Of course, if you want to check out the full article, go to the ROM com subgenres in trouble. Fallon Ballard F A L O N B A L L A R D okay, so some of the numbers she pulled were the top 100 books were written by 39 different authors. 18 of those authors only had one title on the list. 10 authors on the list had at least five books in the top 100. So now we're starting to say, but like the top heavy piece of like, you know, everything midlist kind of comes underneath 52 books. Over half the list comes from a total of eight authors. Nine authors on the list were indie at some point before going trad, from what I could tell or know, there were no books on the list that were indie pub. Only one author has nine books in the top 100. She wrote honestly. So impressive. Of the top 100 books, only four were by authors of color. Only seven books in the top 100 featured queer main characters, to my knowledge. But I'm pretty familiar with the majority of the books on the list. She said. So those are the things that stood. To me, it's like just, it's just one of the things that, like, proof, you know, proof of how the business works. I don't really think there's a lot of surprises for me or potentially ucc, but I think it's an interesting way to kind of have data confirm what we know about how the business works.

[Carly Waters]

And it's interesting because it affects everyone, not just people who are in the biz, like publishing professionals, whether it's agents or authors, but also readers.

[Cece Lira]

So.

[Carly Waters]

So fall does an amazing job of highlighting what it means for readers because when there's less availability of titles, what it means is that, you know, the 10 to 15 authors at the top will end up being what everyone essentially is reading. And so Neely mentioned this and she used a really interesting term. She said, this is why romance authors are shape shifters. And Fallon mentions this in her, in her article too. She says, quote, a lot of your favorite mid listers are going to have to pivot and either write in a different subgenre or move to indie publishing. You've probably already seen rom com authors like me moving towards more paranormal or romantasy, and I wouldn't be surprised if that continued. End quote. And I think that, you know, as a reader, you, you're getting fewer books now in a world where only, where people only read like one or two books a year, that might not seem like a big deal. Sad world, sad world. But I think that one of the beauties of the publishing industry is the plurality of perspectives. And when you don't have that, when that shrinks, that's a loss for everyone. You know, like it's. As Fallon put it, it's the biggest bummer because we're going to lose out on what could have been amazing books. I thought it was really interesting. I highly, highly recommend checking out her substack. It was really good. And yes, romance authors are the shapeshifters. I will say this. No matter what genre you write in, if you have a strong love story at its core, that book instantly becomes more sellable. You notice this when you talk to scouts, when you talk to foreign rights agents, when you talk to foreign editors, when you talk to publicists. Everyone always says, and they're talking about a book and they're pitching the book. And they go, oh, and there's a love story at its heart. And that just means like, ooh, we're going to be feel bigger feels. And romance authors are the ones who know how to create that. So thank you romance authors for creating those beautiful love stories. And I honestly applaud you for being shapeshifters. I wish you did not have to be. But this is the world. So, yeah. Okay, happy news. Now can we talk? Is there any good news in this agenda we have today? We have questions. I guess that could be good news. Let's see.

[Cece Lira]

All right. Well, first we will hear from our sponsors and then we will get to the good news. I'm not gonna lie. This was a brutal winter, guys, and after a brief spring, we have landed in summer. Thank goodness. I'm ready to pack up the sweaters and get out the linen. I want those light fabrics that make us feel good the moment they're on our bodies. And that is why I love my Quince products. Did you know that Quince has elegant everyday pieces like 100 European linen pants, dresses and tops with styles starting at $32. Remember that quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands because you're paying for quality, not brand markup. If you haven't checked them out in a while, they're now a destination for home kitchen, bedding and beyond. So make sure you get their pieces that bring a premium feeling to everyday life. I am newly in love with my 100% European linen shorts, something I can wear to the park or dress up. They're thick enough to have some structure, but light enough to feel wearable all summer long. I'll be in mine every week. I have them in black, but there are 11 colors to choose from. There are 4261 reviews, all averaging 5 stars. Made with European flax and machine washable. I'm going to need another pair. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.comtsnatya for free shipping on your order and 365 date returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.comtsnatyaw for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.comteessnotyao As a literary agent, you know there's only one thing I like talking about more than books, and that's money. More importantly, cash that stays in your pocket. I'm on the lookout for our listeners at all times. I'm combing deal memos and book publishing contracts for hidden ways that writers are on the hook. And that's why we are thrilled to partner with Chime. Who's changing the way people bank? They offer the most rewarding fee free banking built just for you. That's right, built for you. Not the 1%. Chime members can benefit from up to $1,150 in annual rewards. Fe free direct deposit unlocks the most rewarding way to bank at Chime. Chime is rated five stars by USA Today for customer service. That's real humans. 24 7. You're not just switching banks. You're upgrading to America's number one choice for banking with a Chime checking account. They're not like traditional old banks that charge you overdraft and monthly fees. And if you're like me and travel a bunch and love premium travel perks like airport lounge access, you've got it. And the 24.7Travel Concierge included with your Chime card. My younger self would have loved a fast tracked airport lounge accessible access. You get 5% cash back on Chimecard in a category of your choice like gas or groceries for your next writer's retreat. You get savings that grow faster with 3.75 APY. That's nine times higher than the national average. You can even get up to $500 of your pay. When you say with my pay. They also have Spot me which lets you overdraft up to $200 fee free. Chime is not just smarter banking. It's the most rewarding way to bank. Join the millions who are already banking fee free today. Head to chime.comtsnotya that's chime.comt snotya it only takes a few minutes to sign up. All right everybody, we are back from our ad break and we want to tell you about our sub stack because we have so many good things. We've already talked about the live event that we did last week, but we as you guys know, we have our paid subscriber issue that comes out every Tuesday. You have this coming out tomorrow. So we have our author video with Edward Schmidt, author of the Open Era, who discusses unconventional writing rules for all the rule breakers you have found your people. We also have an essay from Diane de Bruvner talks about how getting a book published is surprisingly similar to feeding a picky eater. I believe this is the middle grade book that she's promoting. And then we have our Meet the Agent feature with Jennifer Herrera from the David Black Literary Agency. And so that and so much more you guys can get in your Tuesday substack. Enjoy.

[Carly Waters]

Hope you guys enjoy. Exciting. Okay, so we have questions.

[Cece Lira]

We got questions from.

[Carly Waters]

From our community. I'm going to read the first. I have multiple traditionally published books, but that was years ago. I'm now querying to find a new agent in a new genre and noticed many query manager forms. Ask, quote, if you've previously published a book, about how many copies were sold in the first year? End quote. Should I assume this refers to my debut novel? If I genuinely don't know, should I reach out to my old editor or my old agent and. Or just leave it blank? Will someone still have this information about first year sales if the debut was published 10 years ago? Thank you. Okay, I. I just want to start off by saying you should have this information. Like, you should be receiving royalty statements even if you haven't earned out. You know, like, you should have this paper. And I don't mean this like you should have it. Like, shame on you, you don't have it. I mean, like, someone should be giving this to you. You know, like, it doesn't matter if you parted ways with your agent, you should still have it.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah, I think they're thinking, like, how do I figure out what the first year of sales were? And that just requires you going back to the earliest statements that you got and just looking along with the community with the like, period sales numbers versus a cumulative sales number. So it just requires a little bit of parsing.

[Carly Waters]

Would they have gotten that statement is what I'm saying?

[Cece Lira]

Yes, yes. Yes, totally. Yes. But I'm just saying, like, not everybody's that organized. And this is maybe. This is a great plug for. I think this is a great plug for everybody to really be organized and keep your statements in a place, label them all, you know, appropriately. And to be honest, 10 years ago, this was probably coming in the mail. This probably wasn't coming via email. So this would require you going back to your documentation. This is also a great reminder for any of you guys who've been around a while to scan all of this stuff, digitize it all, and then log it somewhere so you have it. Because this actually might require a bit of sleuthing if it was kind of paper copies and this person didn't keep good track of it.

[Carly Waters]

So, yeah, I think you should ask like your, your old agent if.

[Cece Lira]

And they should have.

[Carly Waters]

It's a fair. Yeah, it's a fair question. It's 100% a fair question. Yeah, I will say, you know, you were published 10 years ago. the heart of this question is also like, does it even matter? Because it was 10 years ago. I still think you should have this information. If you want to keep it blank and then have a conversation later with someone saying, hey, it was 10 years ago. I didn't have that information at the time. Like, also don't think you have. It has to stop you from querying. I personally would not be upset if someone did that at all. Like, I don't want to make people's lives harder, you know?

[Cece Lira]

No, no. And I would. And if, if it was like, I need. Somebody said they need that information now, I would just say, here's the information I do have. You know, just be forthcoming about something, just to keep that dialogue open. All right, next question. Hypothetical question. During the call, agent said they'd like to see new projects at the first draft stage. Do you end up signing with this agent then? Let's say novel one ultimately doesn't sell. You share a draft of novel two with your agent, and although novel two is within a genre your agent represents, your agent doesn't love it. How can an author and agent proceed in this situation?

[Carly Waters]

I mean, it's a conversation, right? Like, why don't I love it? You know, like, why, like, why do you love it? Like, let me explain why I don't love it. I definitely think it's a conversation. I don't think there's like a script because this is a human relationship business. And so I would just chat. If I, if this were me, I would be like, okay, this is why I'm not loving this novel.

[Cece Lira]

I.

[Carly Waters]

These are my concerns. Maybe there's editing that we can do together. Maybe there's a vision that we could incorporate. Or maybe you're like, I love it. I absolutely love it. I do not want to change it. And I'm like, okay, I don't. And then, yeah, potentially one of the things that could happen is you could part ways. I personally would not submit something that I wasn't in love with. That's just my style. It's important to me that when I submit something, like, I truly believe in it. And it's not for woo woo reasons. I always use this analogy. When you sell a house, the reason why that house is, is going to get priced at that amount is because of hard data. Number of bedrooms, neighborhood, when the most recent renovation was, et cetera. The reason why a book sells, if there's no track record, especially from the author, the data, the number of bedrooms, the recent renovation, that's the emotions you Feel when you read it, that is the data. So for me, I need to love it. And, yeah, potentially one of the resolutions could essentially be, you know, I wish you well. You. You. You keep going on your journey, and it's all very amicable and sad for me, because it's always sad.

[Cece Lira]

But.

[Carly Waters]

But. But, you know, this is life sad, not tragedy sad. Yeah, it's a conversation. It's. It's happened. It happens to every agent, honestly, where you develop at least once. You know, like, it's. It's. It's quite common.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah. I think this is a classic example of writers wanting to be the, quote, good student or, you know, want to be the good client and, you know, make sure they're just, like, delivering everything that an agent wants all the time. And there's just times that it's way more complicated than that. It is not that simple. And even if you go in trying to just, like, you know, button it all up and cross all the T's, dot all the eyes, there's just so much complexity that goes into this. And honestly, sometimes it's. It's that you might have had a loose conversation about it, and the agent goes, yeah, that sounds interesting. And then by the time they see the draft, it's like, well, the market has changed. Or that didn't come through the way that they thought or agent expectations were different than the way that it was executed. Like, there's just a million different nuances. And that's why this relationship is just. Just so important for it to be full of communication and trust so that you guys can get on the same

[Carly Waters]

page a hundred percent.

[Cece Lira]

100%. All right, Cece, I'm going to read you the next one. Oh, did you have another thought?

[Carly Waters]

No, I was going to read it, but you read. That's okay.

[Cece Lira]

Well, since you're the former lawyer, I gotta. I'm gonna feed this one to you. I keep seeing that what I am

[Carly Waters]

offering is not legal advice. I want to make sure everybody knows this.

[Cece Lira]

O. This podcast is never legal or accounting advice, ever. I keep seeing that through the anthropic settlement, some publishers turned out to be not registering copyrights. I'm confused on what this means. Are those books not automatically protected? How can a publishing contract not include copyright protections? Anyway, I might have missed it being talked about on the podcast. Love to hear your explanation. Sounds scary. Thanks for the info. I enjoy listening to the shooting the shit segments.

[Carly Waters]

Yeah, I think that. I think this person might have this question because we hear a lot, like, it's something that you just hear colloquially, as soon as you write something, it's been copyrighted. You know, the fact that it exists, like it's. If it's written, it's copyrighted automatically. You hear that a lot. And yes, there are copyright protections that you get automatically because you've written the thing, but there are also extra protections that you get when you register copyright in the United States. And that's why every publishing contract I've seen anyway, between the author and the publisher has an obligation from the publisher to register copyright within a specific time frame. It does have to happen within a specific time frame or else those extra protections won't be valid and won't essentially exist. You will not be protected. So that's the distinction. You know, there are automatic protections that happen and then there are some extra protections that do require registration. What I think you're referring to. And because we all heard it was. Some publishers did have that obligation in their contracts, but they still did not register, at least not within that specific time frame. Some, Some of them did not register at all. Part of what an agent does, part of our project management is reaching out to publishers and being like, hey, want to make sure this was copyrighted? This. Want to make sure this was registered? We should not have to do this because they should, like, they are the big gigantic corporations. They, a thousand percent should have processes in place and support their staff, their lovely, lovely staff to do this. But, you know, part. Part of the project management that often falls onto us because who else is going to do it, is following up on that. But, yeah, it happened. And it does mean that it potentially could mean anyway that for many of these authors, they will not have the claims that other authors will in the anthropic settlement. I remember, I don't remember who it was. There was some publisher who said, if we failed you, if we did not register copyright, we will make you whole. Yeah, it might have been macmillan. Yeah. Okay. I don't. I honestly don't remember and I don't want to misspeak, but, like, they did say, we will make you whole. Like, we will. We will compensate you for our error. Which again, whoever did this, and assuming they of course do it, is doing the right thing, in my opinion. Yeah, it does sound scary, but, you know, this actually speaks to a larger project management thing, right? Which is there's so much that publishers are supposed to do and then they don't. And I have a friend who's a former lawyer and she works at a gigantic agency. I'm not going to say the name. She probably wouldn't want me to. Gigantic. And she worked in their contracts department, Carly. You know who I'm talking about, probably. And she was like. When she first started, every time she was reviewing a contract, she was like, wait, but if this gets litigated, then. And her boss would interrupt her and go, no one's going to bring this to court. That doesn't happen. That just doesn't happen. And I'm not saying it literally never happens, but it is an industry where it rarely happens compared to others. And so that's another piece here.

[Cece Lira]

All right, thank you for digging into that for us. Once again, not legal advice, but you asked the question, and CC gave you an answer. Okay. The next thing on our list is talking about the AALA agent survey results. So every two years, the American association of Literary Agents does a big survey where they ask lots of biographical questions, but also lots of kind of income and salary questions also, like, you know, what's on your mind as an agent? What are some of the greater issues and concerns as organization and as small businesses? Because, you know, all agencies are small businesses, essentially. So the things that stood out to me were obviously just the like, how do agents make money? Question. Because one of the things the survey was trying to parse was in previous years, they would ask the question, you know, how much money do you make? Essentially, But. And there wasn't the caveat of, like, from your agenting business versus any other side hustles or second careers or second jobs or anything like that. And so this year, they kind of divided it out a little bit so you can see, you know, how much money agents are making from their agent business versus other elements of their careers, essentially. So I thought that was. That was really interesting. It just really speaks to, I think, what a lot of. I hope a lot of people listening to this show know. You know, I assume you guys listen to us every week, you know, maybe for years, but there is a lot of financial instability in being a literary agent, you know, especially as a newer agent, when you're kind of starting out building a list. We've talked about how contracts are really slow. We never know when we're getting paid. Like, obviously, we're working as hard and as fast as we can to do, you know, good, safe work protections for our clients. It depends on how many clients you have. It depends on how many copies their books sell. Translations, like, all of these elements kind of come into this, like, diversified portfolio that an agent ends up building. But there's just a lot of financial precarity, scarcity, mindset and financial instability which leads to agents creating alternative of revenue streams to kind of make up for that sometimes. It's obviously within the partnership of their household. You know, as long as a certain amount of money is bringing in as a household, it can, it can work for people. But there's also a lot of people who are breadwinners as well. So anyway, lots of interesting information. Yeah, I don't know.

[Carly Waters]

It's so interesting to see how so much of what agents go through, especially early in their careers, mirror what writers go through. Like every line you just said could apply to a writer. A writer has to have other streams of income because their book income is insufficient and they have to do other things and maybe their partner helps. And it's so interesting how the mirroring and it's unsurprising. Hey, we get paid commission. Commission of what the writers make. And yeah, we might have many clients, but we also make a portion of that 15%. Remember that the agency keeps. Keeps 15%. The agent, unless they are an agency owner, is not keeping the full 15.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah.

[Carly Waters]

So yeah, it's definitely really interesting. I enjoyed reading it. I thank the ALA for doing it. You know, a question I had and again, I don't even think it would be necessarily possible to make this into a summary, but a question I've always had because it's something that I am very mindful of. I would love to see a breakdown of how many people have a safety net. And again, how do you even measure that? Which is so hard but.

[Cece Lira]

Or define it.

[Carly Waters]

Yeah. In this industry, like oftentimes you'll hear people say that they're struggling to make ends meet and you know, it's unstable. And then casually they will mention a house in the Hamptons they're going to on the weekend. That's their parents and they are still in a financially unstable situation. Personally, I'm not discounting that. I'm not minimizing that. And honestly, if your parents have a house in the Hamptons, that sounds awesome. Good for you. I wish that were my like amazing, amazing. Good for you. All the applause. No, no shade. But it does change like the risks you can take. And this is a very risky business when you have that sort of like parental safety net or other safety nets is really, really like. It's just a game changer. Right. So I again, not something a survey can. Can measure most likely. But maybe it's because I just read in Heritocracy and I thought that was really good. It's a wonderful nonfiction title.

[Cece Lira]

I like that a lot.

[Carly Waters]

Yeah, it's been on my mind. Yeah.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah. No, I. I also love that book. Some other things that I wanted to kind of pull out from the data. One of the things I thought was really interesting is the largest percentage of. So like, in terms of the salary, we'll call it a salary, even though we know it's commission mostly. But the, the salary band.

[Carly Waters]

The income.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah, the income band that received the most amount of money from the agency position. Meaning like the agent doing the job. Or it could be obviously a salary job as somebody in contracts in a larger agency. But it was the band of fifty thousand to a hundred thousand dollars a year, and they made the most amount of money out of any other group, which was 25.8% as income from the agency position. I thought that was really interesting. And then when you get above that band. So there's the 100250 band, the 150 to 200 band, the 200 to 250 band, the 250 plus band, the numbers are lower, which I thought was also interesting because they probably become partners or owners, and then it's not from the position that they're receiving the money. It's also maybe some equity in the business. I also thought, like, I thought that kind of shift was really interesting. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of really interesting data. Another piece of data I thought that was really interesting was 32% of respondents. So agents earning less than $25,000 a year work with 6 to 10 clients versus 38% of respondents earning more than $250,000 a year to work with 21 to 30 clients. Just suggesting, again, over time, you build the client base. You know, I think there's also a definition here of what an active client is as well. I think that was really interesting. Another piece that I thought was fascinating of the survey was basically everybody agreed in the survey that, that our job is a high input job, meaning like vast amounts of time and energy resources have to go into this job. So basically, yeah, it was very clear. Everybody felt that this was a. Yeah, a high input job. And then there was a second part of the question was if it's high input, is it low reward or is it high reward? So we know it's high input. What is the reward? Do you feel like it's low reward or do you feel like it's high reward reward? And as people progressed in their financial journeys as agents, it becomes higher and higher reward.

[Carly Waters]

Right.

[Cece Lira]

Because it's like you're putting all of this energy in, starting to see results. And so like for example, once the kind of. It seems like this like six figure threshold is really interesting because once you hit the six figure threshold, the 100 to 150k earners, all of a sudden high reward goes from 42% in the previous bucket. So the 50 to 100k all the way up to 76%. So it's like as soon as, like there's something about that like six figure. Obviously part of it's a mentality, part of it is just what you're able to do, your spending power, your buying power with the money that you're bringing in from doing this work. I just thought that was really. It's a huge jump, 42% to 76%. All of a sudden it becomes high input, higher reward as opposed to high input, low reward. Anyway, that stood out to me.

[Carly Waters]

It does. I mean the piece that's missing, there is the risk, right? Like there's the input. Yes, there's the reward, but there's also the risk because agenting is a very high risk, high reward. Like if, if you risk it and you make it, you make it big and it's amazing. And sometimes you risk it and you don't make it big. It's, it's, you lose big. And it is a lot of time that you don't get. Back when we start making really good money, it can be easy to go, okay, this year, random numbers. This year I made 200,000 as opposed to the first year where I made 10. Just remember that, that 200,000. Like logically you have to count that towards the years you weren't making anything either. The year you made zero, the year you made 10. Like, because that was time that you put in. And so that, that's how the math, that's how I look at the math anyway. Like, like it's not that all of a sudden I got a new job and my new job pays me this, you know, like it's, you have to look back and you have to think.

[Cece Lira]

Yes, because you amortized over the entire history of doing the work.

[Carly Waters]

Yeah. I was talking to an agent who used to be a lawyer and she was saying she's been doing this for seven years and she just hit what her starting salary was when she became a lawyer back in the day. Like the starting salary for now.

[Cece Lira]

Say that again. What was the, how many years. Say that again.

[Carly Waters]

Seven years. She's been doing this for seven years and she just hit what her starting salary was as a lawyer back when she started in the legal profession. And that was many, many, many years ago. Now this person is incredibly successful. Like, the. The amount that she just hit is a great amount. Great amount. You know what? I can see what the amount is. I'm not saying her name. It's 160. 160 used to be the starting salary for a lawyer at a big firm. We are talking US dollars in 2000. And when did she start? I think she started in 2011 or something. I don't remember 2010. So now she just hit 160. She's incredibly successful. Okay. Incredibly successful. And. And she was talking about that, and she was like, okay, so now it's like year one of being a lawyer. And I'm like, yes and no, because of the amortizing thing we talked about. But also because, you know, as a lawyer, again, if you're in a big firm, this is like, kind of a generalization. Like, you. You know what you're gonna make year two, year three, year four. Some. Some firms have bonuses, depending if you bring clients or not, but whatever. Like. But as an agent, you don't know. And I mean that in the best possible way as well, not just in a bad way. Like, it's not a situation where year two, you'll make 180. Year two, you might make 250. You know, you might make an amazing amount of money. So, yeah, it's how agents make money is so fascinating. Carly. I'm sure you'll talk about it in your lunch and learn. I'm sure you'll break down financial components. And so I'm sure everyone listening is now super excited to join that. Because that sounds like so much I know.

[Cece Lira]

And there's also, like, the mental component of it, right? Because there's, like, the climb and the fight and the grind, and then you hit a number and you're like, oh, well, that was supposed to make me feel a certain way. And then maybe the next year is like a slip down. And then you're like, yeah, is this now the start of a down trajectory? And then it's like it's back up. And you're like, that's great. How many more years can we climb? And there is no stabilization. And in my experience, it's like. I don't know. It's. It's. It's really hard to explain because as I kind of explained at the jump, like. Like, there's just so many different things that go into the diversification of this quote. Unquote, for lip folio. And I hate to kind of, like, make it sound numb with, like, financial terms, but, you know, we work on a variety of projects. That's intellectual property, and they are sold in a variety of ways. And. And that's great. You know, it provides a lot of just opportunity. And the best agents, you know, are able to kind of just make the most of. Of, you know, every opportunity that comes their way, you know, obviously help their clients diversify, which helps the agency diversify. And again, it's like a. Just a boring way to think about it, but it's a way to kind of mitigate as much risk as possible in an incredibly risky job. So there's just. There is a lot to think about. And of course, yeah, I'll talk about all of that in my lunch and learn, because there's a lot of feelings that go along with all of these numbers.

[Carly Waters]

100%. 100%.

[Cece Lira]

Yeah. I want to draw to everybody's attention to another scam. I'm like, it is freaking endless. This one showed up on Threads Sometimes. It's like, you know, really, we're falling for these. But I'm. I feel terrible for you guys, because I get. Literally, I've been getting DMs almost on a daily basis of this person, whoever it is, impersonating me. It's brutal out there. This person said, is this normal? I recently got accepted by a literary agent. She requested access to my Amazon account. I'm assuming this person was self publishing, like, password and all that. Sounds sketchy, so I didn't do it, but she keeps telling me it's the standard for literary agency agents. And then the person writes underneath that. This person is, like, pretending to be a real literary agent, but there's a Gmail email address. And I've talked to you guys about this, right? No Hotmail email address, no Gmail email, Yahoo. And again, contact the agency. You know, just so they're aware. But we can't do anything about it.

[Carly Waters]

Yeah. And agencies will be happy to tell you whether it's them or not. Like, we wish we did not live in this world. But I. I promise you, we. We would rather you check. Like, God, that's horrible. I'm sorry this happened to this person and to whomever else it's happening to.

[Cece Lira]

Like, brutal, right? Because these are pretending to be legitimate agents. And sometimes they'll pull. Well, this is what happens with me. They pull a picture of me from somewhere in the Internet, put it in the email signature so it looks like me yeah. Misspell my name added at.

[Carly Waters]

You know what? Now I'm thinking, if I had. If I were being contacted by a fake Harley and there was no obvious way to know whether it was you or not, what question would I ask you to make sure it was you? Oh, my God, there's so many fun questions I could ask. I know exactly what I would ask. There's only you would know the answer to some of these, and that's exciting. I like that it doesn't count for the poor writers because they don't know

[Cece Lira]

you like I know you, but no, I know.

[Carly Waters]

Yes. Now, this is in my mind.

[Cece Lira]

We've had many a conversation on many, many a journey in trip and work events.

[Carly Waters]

Yeah. But I also wouldn't be able to ask anything that I didn't want in writing. Do you know what I'm saying? So then. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fun.

[Cece Lira]

All right, well, that's all we have time for. We've been chatting for almost an hour. We hope you guys enjoy this. This conversation. We've gone in a lot of different directions, as always. Leave us a comment on YouTube if there's anything that we need to elaborate on. We really enjoy spending this time with you guys, and we will see you again next week.

[Carly Waters]

Okie dokie. Bye, everyone. Cece Lira is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates. If you'd like to query CC, please refer to the submission [e-mail]. carly Waters is a literary agent at P.S. literary Agency, but her work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency. And the views expressed by Carly on this podcast are solely that of her as a podcast co host and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of PS Literary Agency. What's up, everyone?

[Cece Lira]

This is Cece. So I recently grabbed lunch with an acquiring editor from HarperCollins who told me that the number of submissions she's been getting has nearly doubled. And I wasn't surprised at all, because every agent and editor I know has been talking about how the volume of submission keeps increasing. So, personally, that is a wonderful thing because it's more reading for me, but it also means I have more chances of matching with authors. I consider it a privilege to review queries on books with hooks and, of course, in my submissions inbox. But at the same time, I talk to writers who tell me that they wish agents would read more than a few pages because, and I quote, my story gets better in chapter two. I have to be honest, this kills me. It's like me wanting chocolate chip cookies to have the nutritional value of kale. It's just not realistic. Like it or not, no agent, no acquiring editor, is going to stick around to see if a submission gets better. Better. It's not because we're mean. It's because we get dozens and dozens every day. I know it's harsh, but ambitious writers embrace harsh realities. So here it goes. It's your job to make your opening pages irresistible. To make agents crave it. To make agents want to read more. That's why I'm so excited about my upcoming course, Starting It Right. How to begin your story in the best place and in the best way. I created this course after studying hundreds of books. I've mapped out elements that are present in the beginning of all successful novels and memoirs. And I've designed checklists, actual checklists that you can use to ensure that your story's beginning is seducing your reader. We'll cover how to write a great first line time, different types of beginnings, and how you can choose the best one, the best place to start, and the best way to start. Yes, these are totally different things. When it makes sense to add a prologue and when it doesn't. How to frame your inciting incident in an appealing way, how to balance exposition and mystery, how to include context but not weigh it down with too much backstory and what to do if your story has more than one POV or timeline.

[Carly Waters]

Most of all, I'm going to show

[Cece Lira]

you how to make readers want to turn to Chapter two. Join me for this multi day course designed to help you break through the noise. You'll leave with a clear, actionable breakdown of exactly what goes into a terrific beginning. If you've already signed up, come prepared to take lots of notes. We're talking hundreds of slides with real world examples and specific techniques, plus a super fun surprise that I can't wait to share. I hope to see you there.