← The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Shooting the Shit...Live from Hawaii! About turning down offers and how best to work with your literary agent.
00:24:59
Shooting The Shit
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- [00:00]
Podcast Host
Woohoo. It's deep dive time again, where we host a two day virtual retreat attended by writers from across the world. And if you haven't been monitoring our socials or subscribing to our substack, you won't know yet that we've announced that this will be our very last Deep dive ever. So you definitely don't want to miss it. We'll be focusing on giving you access to a whole host of agents and editors who have worked on some of the last decade's best selling books, building a bridge between you and the so called gatekeepers of publishing. Subscribe to our substack or follow us on Instagram so you can be the first to be in the know as we begin to reveal our incredible lineup. Each week, mark these dates in your calendars. The Deep Dive will happen on 31 January and 1 February, with pre and post Deep Dive sessions happening the weekends before and after. And make sure you have 12pm Eastern Time on the 21st of November marked in your calendar for the early bird registrations.
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Carly Waters
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.
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State of the book business. If you've ever wanted to grab a.
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Coffee with two literary agents, grab your mug and pull up a chair here.
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Hi everybody. Last week was live from la. This week is live from Hawaii. As you can see, that Cece is in full Hawaii mode and I am in full sweater mode because it. There's actually a ton of snow out here right now and I have lots of updates still. I. I talked to you guys last week when I was halfway through my meeting, so we still have like more LA to cover and obviously all of Cici's travel. So Cece, you got out of the snow and you made it to Hawaii. You tell us how it.
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Podcast Host
I did.
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Cece Lira
I escaped the snow. It's beautiful here. I'm in Kauai. It is gorgeous and I'm really happy to be chatting with you. And I totally thought it was Tuesday, but it's not. It's Wednesday. We record on Wednesday, but that's how island time I am. I'm like, it's Tuesday and Carly was texting me like, I think we have to record. And I'm like, carly doesn't know what day of the week it is. Carly knew. I didn't know.
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Carly Waters
You know what, we gotta keep a tight schedule here on the East coast, island time, whatever. But yeah, so we have some fun things to chat about. You know, Cece and I love to recount you with our travel stories. I will tell you guys about my travel story coming back from la because I booked myself a seat where I wanted to recline. I obviously wanted to sleep. I was taking a red eye home on Friday night. I got out easily, like, through lax, because I know there's a bunch of government shutdowns and all of that stuff, but I got out easily. And then I'm in my seat, I'm like, hitting the recline button, ready to, like, you know, sit sleep through my red eye flight. Here I am trying to maximize all of my working hours and all my mom hours, and I'm like, I'm gonna take the red eye home on Friday night so I can, you know, be in work mode, sleep and then be in mom mode. Anyway, my seat didn't recline. The lovely flight attendants, they were trying to help as best they could. They got out the manual to try and figure out if they could, like, manually recline my seat. And there was nowhere else on the plane, so I was just up sitting anyway. But I read Broken country, which I hadn't read yet. It was my book club's choice. And I thought, okay, if I'm going to be up all night, I'm going to be up all night, whatever. I'll lean into it. So I read Broken Country. It was so good. It's amazing having my eyes, like, crying on the plane. Good thing everybody else was sleeping because I was crying. And that is how I got home from LA. CeCe, do you have any travel stories to regale us with or it was smooth for you?
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Cece Lira
Well, my luggage got lost also. Okay. So I brought two suitcases, plus my carry on because I'm not a minimalist, and one of my suitcases. So I got a connecting flight in Denver. So then I did Denver, Kauai. Right? And one of my suitcases made it and the other one went to la. And I don't understand how that's possible because, like, both of them not making it make sense. And one of them. But one of them making it doesn't. But I got it back. It was fine. It wasn't a big deal. It was the suitcase that had most of my shoes and my makeup remover. But I may do because I am an adaptable person. I feel like this is such first world problems. Wait, but I want to know, were you happy? Spoilers. Were you happy with who she ended up in? Broken Country, There's a love triangle for you guys who haven't read it, we're not going to say who it was because no spoilers. Yeah. But were you happy? Because I loved that book. It was so good.
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Carly Waters
It was. It was fantastic. I mean. Yeah. 10 out of 10, no notes. That's a hard one to answer. You know what it reminded me of was actually his atonement. Like, I think that's his best cultural calm. Atonement, the McEwen novel. Yeah. There's just something so, like, longing and timeless and sweeping about it. Was so good. So was I happy? I don't know. I think it was the most realistic ending. I don't know if I was happy with the ending. I think it was the most realistic ending. Maybe.
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Cece Lira
I'll say that. Interesting. I was. I liked him better.
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Carly Waters
Oh, did you? Okay.
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Cece Lira
Yes.
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Carly Waters
Okay, Yes.
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Cece Lira
I don't. I don't like the excuse the other one had. You know, like, I don't like that. Communicate. It's on you to communicate.
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Carly Waters
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Cece Lira
It's not that I hated him, but I. Yeah, I was like, please be with this other guy. I don't like that man's excuse. And he felt like a mama's.
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Carly Waters
But why?
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Cece Lira
Didn't like that.
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Carly Waters
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, well, you guys let us know if you're watching on YouTube. You can obviously put it in the comments. Did you agree with the ending of Broken Country? We would love to hear. There's a couple things I wanted to chat about today. Well, maybe one big one. And then we have some DMs, and obviously there's so many great sub stacks. We always got to cover some sub stacks. So one thing I thought we could get into today, and I will obviously talk super vaguely about this, but it happens over the years. Today is actually my official 15 year agenting anniversary at P.S.
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Literary.
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So that is a milestone for me today. So, over 15 years, this is an interesting thing that happens when a client gets an offer but turns down the publishing offer. I'm talking about the publishing offer at this point because it is something that is a really hard decision for an author to make. Often this is, you know, sometimes it's in an auction where, you know, there's multiple offers and you can't take every offer that the author is given. And so you have to make some decisions. But there's also the, you know, when you are in a kind of publishing contract and there's an option clause and you have to show the material to the publisher and then, you know, they get that first right of refusal. Sometimes the client turns down that offer. So there's a lot of factors that go into this, and, you know, there's. There's a lot of kind of, I don't know, complicating things in terms of what the client wants, what their goals are. But I think it's also interesting from an agent's perspective to kind of talk about how you counsel somebody through that process, because we don't have crystal balls. We don't. We can't say, you know, if we turn down this offer, then we can definitely get you another one. But there's a lot that has to kind of go into, you know, just that relationship with your client about saying, you know, what is it that you actually want from this? And if the publisher that you're with right now kind of isn't maybe delivering on some things that you're looking for, or the editor relationship has changed, what also happens a lot is that we sell a book to a certain editor, and that editor leaves. They go on to a different job, and then you get another editor in house, and maybe that relationship with that editor isn't as strong. And then by the time the book comes out and the option comes out, you know that that client is ready to move on. So, you know, it comes down to a lot of things. It's that career vision. A book can also be doing really well with a publisher, and so the publisher is willing to kind of continue on with them. But you also don't know the true market value for that title. Right. Because when we go out wide with a. With a project, you know, you essentially get the market value, meaning you might get one offer, you might get more than one offer. And you're able to kind of leverage all of this and put this together to figure out, like, what is the true market value of a book as, you know, a manuscript on a computer, when it's just being typed, the market value is $0 because it's not in the marketplace. But then when something becomes a product into the marketplace, it's assigned, you know, essentially a dollar value. And so when we are working with options, an option, first rate of refusal. It's interesting to figure out, like, how the publisher views that, the fair market value for a project versus if it was on the open market. And so, anyway, that's my little rant about that. But, CeCe, do you have any thoughts about how you advise clients when you get to this stage?
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Cece Lira
Yeah, I think. I think that we. Like you said, there are many situations where that might happen, and it makes sense. I think to focus on the one where there's no other offer on the table, whether that's an option situation or just regular going out with a project situation. Because when there's another offer and you're just turning one down for another, then it's just a totally different psychological path to navigate. I think that it's definitely tricky, but I think that if an author is even considering turning something down that says so much, getting an offer in publishing is amazing. It's a great feeling for every author out there. It doesn't get old for anyone, not even agents. And when an author doesn't have anything else, right, and is still thinking, huh, should I take this? That question alone says so much. And I think we need to listen to that question, like, what are the reasons? And it all comes down to what are your expectations? What are your goals? Sometimes expectations are not realistic. They might have value, and they might be something that's important to the author, but they're not realistic. You know, like, I don't know. I want. I want an offer that's seven figures, not six. It might not be realistic, or it might be depending on the project. Or I want an offer that's going to come with a dollar assigned to my marketing budget that is very, very, very rare, almost unheard of. And so it depends on is going to say, like, what the author is saying. But I think that every case is so unique. That's the thing about our jobs, right? Like, every case is so unique. I do. I had a client once tell me, because I was advising her, and she was like, okay, I'm oscillating between fortune favors the bold. You know, let's turn it down. Let's go out with this. Let's see who else is out there. And between, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Now, I feel very strongly that that don't look a gift horse in the mouth is a terrible way to look at an offer. An offer is not a gift. It's not charity. It's not a favor. Yes, publishing is competitive, but you have to value yourself, and it can't come from a place of fear. That's something I feel very, very, very strongly about. That being said, I understand people who are, like, fearful of turning down an offer and not being able to find a better one out there. And it really does come down to, like, what's your appetite for risk? My appetite for risk is very high. Like, I am never pressuring my clients or trying to nudge them into accepting something because I'm like, I will turn down anything as long as my client is happy with it. It doesn't bother me at all. I have nerves of steel when it comes to this one specific thing. Again, I gambled big when I became an agent. I turned down a very lucrative career to do this. And I just don't see why leading from a place of fear would make sense. But it's important for the client to know that there are no guarantees. And clients always ask, so how much do you think we can get for this in the open market? And I'm like, honey, I will tell you that I'm confident about this or else we wouldn't be having this conversation. But we don't know. We don't know. It's what you said. The value gets assigned when the offers come in.
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Carly Waters
Yeah. And one thing I'm thinking about a more recent example where we kind of know what we're kind of walking into in terms of expecting an offer on an option. And I really tried to make, you know, so many conversations really clear before we get the offer. Because a lot of times clients think, oh, I'll see when I get the offer, and then I'll make the decision. And that's fine too. There's no right or wrong way to make a decision. But. And oftentimes it's best to be really strong in your conviction before the offer comes in. Whether it's like journaling or making notes, you know, just writing to yourself about why you are in the headspace that you are in now. Because it's totally different tune sometimes when that offer comes in, and then some. Again, offers can be negotiated and all these other things, but there's a reason why you were starting to ask those questions, like Cece said. So being strong in your conviction before the offer comes in is usually the best way to kind of get yourself in the right headspace for what's to come.
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Cece Lira
I think. Again, bringing it back to the stock market. When I'm buying stock, I always have a little. I have a spreadsheet where I write down, if the stock reaches this amount, I will sell. And that way, when I'm in the heat of the moment, I don't have to make that decision because I already made it, you know, before, when my mind was clear and level headed. So that helps. And it's not the same thing because it's an objective number with the stock market and with offers it seldom is. But I think that's a really good point that you're making, and I think it helps to point to that to go, hey, I know it's a heated moment now, but remember when we weren't in a heated moment? Remember what you said? Let's come back to that.
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Carly Waters
Yeah, yeah, exactly. All right, well, that's the most vague way we can possibly talk about that topic. So thanks for indulging this conversation, everybody. Okay, so somebody had a question that was kind of a follow up to My LA Travels and they said they were talking about TV film. I thought this was an interesting question just because it talks a little bit kind of relationally about how things work. And they said, as an author, is it okay to reach out to producers on your own if you have a pitch deck and a pitch, or should you only allow your agent to do so? What if your agent's agency doesn't have a TV film option department or a strong track record of optioning books for TV film? I've taken screenwriting classes, written scripts and worked as a PA on film set. So I have a basic understanding of what pitching for a TV film demands. But I'm simply not sure what the etiquette is when a book is involved. Of course, I prefer to have someone more experience doing so, but I worry my agency wouldn't be a strong champion in this regard if my book now on Sub gets purchased. I'd love your insight. So number one, while I was checking out this question, I was like, it's hard to tell if this person like has an agent and they're not sure about that agent's competency or it sounds like their book is.
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Cece Lira
That's how I read it. I read it that it's on sub. Yeah, agented sub. That's how I read it. But you're right, it's not clear.
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Carly Waters
Yeah, okay, so let's go with that theory. Let's go. We need. We need one or the other. So let's go with they're not sure about that agency's, you know, track record in that space. Number one, you need to go to your representation agreement because it is very clear about subrites in terms of what to do about subrights. So it generally, you know, every subright involved with that book is part of the IP of that book and therefore should flow through the agency. So this requires a lot of communication with your literary. Your primary agent, your literary agent about who is doing what. And so if there is the case where you have really strong contacts, it could be that once you have a conversation with your agent, they say, yes, it is okay to do that, but you can't do this without talking to your agent. And it sounds like you might just again, not be confident that they're able to do it. So there just has to be some really frank conversations about, like, what would your sub list to co agents look like? And just really just try to suss it out and not an accusatory way, but in a way of like, you know, is it okay? You know, do I have your written formal permission that I'm able to do these things? No matter what, the commission and the money would still have to kind of flow through your primary literary agent, because that's kind of the flow of things. Again, all legalese aside, like, is this the right thing to do? One of the reasons that, like, all of these things are in place for the way that they are is that it best serves you, the author. And so again, once your book has been sold to a publisher, then there'll be like, you know, this deal announcement and all this buzz. And that's something that again, your agent can build on, co agents can build on to kind of sell this for other potential sub rights. So I. I would just make sure you're not like, circumventing them without carefully reading your contract and speaking to them about what your goals are and again, how you can kind of assist in these goals and just making sure it's all really clear, all of the legalese part of things. Cece, did you have any extra thoughts there?
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Cece Lira
Yeah, and I think you have to be careful to not shoot yourself.
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Carly Waters
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Cece Lira
The foot because so much of success with film TV adaptations is controlling the narrative and reaching out to the right people in the right moment in the right way. And of course, if you have these great contacts and you know, the right, right people, the right way, the right moment, it could work out really well. But you might have great context and not know that second part. And so you might end up mentioning information that is too premature or, or in, in a way that's not framed intelligently. There's just, there's just so many factors to consider. I think that having that really frank conversation and I wouldn't be worried about offending your agent, I just wouldn't like, obviously you'll be polite about it, but it's fair for you to say, hey, I'm worried because I have these goals, XYZ and I have these contacts and I'd like to like be really smart about this and honor our partnership. So yeah, like, I get that some people would be uncomfortable to have that talk, but best to have it and not, and not feel frustrated later, I think.
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Carly Waters
Yeah.
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And the other thing is, and again, not to downplay any of your contacts because you could have incredible contacts, but there's a lot of like independent producers out there who are looking, looking for shopping agreements at a zero fee rate. And so you don't just want to like get yourself into a shopping agreement or a low fee option just for the sake of saying my book's been optioned. Right. Because then it takes it on off the table for years to come. So like Cece said, controlling that narrative, doing it in partnership with people who, you know, just have your. Your best interests at heart and really want to do right by your book is super important. So good luck to your book on sub. Hoping all the best for you. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We had another question come in that I thought was kind of interesting. There's so much that we could, you know, get into on various different conversations about AI, but this person had said, you clearly have opinions on the current AI mess. And I'm wondering, have agents noticed an influx of queries clearly, or maybe not so clearly, written by Chat GPT or other AI chatbots? And as a correlate, if it's not too bold, if AI gets better, quote, unquote, better over the next years, would you and CC ever consider feeding a client's novel into an AI program with a prompt to write an effective pitch letter aimed at XYZ editor? So curious. And I bet many other listeners would be, too. I love this because I think you're asking the question that tons of people want to ask. And, yeah, I mean, it's. It's so complicated, but right now, yeah, it's garbage. So, you know, this is a hypothetical, but, CeCe, what. What is your hypothetical answer to this question?
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Cece Lira
No. My hypothetical answer is, no, I would not consider. And it's obviously possible because this is possible for every single answer I will ever give, that I'll change my mind down the road because I'll have new information and new perspective. But I am also someone who knows myself fairly well. I just can't imagine doing that. I don't like outsourcing my brain. I feel very strongly that I don't want a machine thinking for me. I want machines to do grunt work for me. Like, I. I love technology. I use technology every day. Thanks to technology, we have this podcast. I'm currently in Hawaii, you know, doing this, this. This podcast. But I do not like that. I don't want a machine writing a pitch for me. I just don't want that. It won't do a good job like I will. It won't feel the book like I will feel. I just don't believe it. Maybe I'm being naive, maybe I'm being dumb. It's possible, but I don't think I am. I do not like outsourcing my brain. I feel very strongly that my critical thinking is one of my greatest assets, and my way of looking at things with my unique perspective sets me apart as an agent, and I don't trust machines to do that for me. I Just don't.
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Carly Waters
Yeah, I mean, I'm going to frame this in a slightly different way, which is like, we're essentially saying, could this AI program be an assistant? And I have an assistant, and there are tons of things that I don't outsource to my assistant. I don't have my assistant write my pitch letters. I don't have them. You know, put all this together, write pitches for me, because I am the one that knows how to pitch something, how to frame something. What is it that attracted me to this project in the first place? And what are those, like, pieces that I think are saleable and culturally relevant? You also, like, once you get removed culturally and connectively to the connective tissue of what you're working on, like, what is the fucking point? Like, the whole point of us doing these jobs is that we care so deeply about these materials. We want to see them make their way into the world. And if I was to, like, not have that connective tissue with the work that I was working on, like, that's the point where, like, I have to retire. Because that is just not the way that agents should be doing their jobs. That's not why we got into this job in the first place. Like, what is this going to solve me? This is going to make it so I can pitch more books in a year? Like, my goal isn't to pitch more books in a year. My goal is to properly and accurately pitch the books. Work on now. Yeah, the best books to the best ability. So I think you have to think about, like, yeah, is this. How do we frame this usage? What does better mean? And what is the desired outcome? Because to me, the desired outcome isn't to become more removed from the work. That is my joy. That's just not what the point is.
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Cece Lira
I agree. I fully agree. Yeah, that's. That's a really good point about the joy.
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Carly Waters
Yeah, this is.
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This is why we do this job.
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Okay, so we have time for one sub stack. We have another one, too, but we'll save that for next week. We have one substack that we want to chat about with you guys. So it comes from maybe I overshared.substack.com and it is titled why Authors Should Care About HarperCollins's quote, bad quarter, unquote, written by Alex subhead, what HarperCollins Rough Quarter Reveals about the fragile ecosystem every author depends on. And so, you know, the header explains, you know, News Corp had some reportings that weren't overly ideal. Cece, what did you make of this one?
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Cece Lira
Yeah, I want to say, like, I know Alex really well. I want to disclose that Alex is a publisher at Rising Action. She's great. I've been to conferences with Alex. I think that's important context because, you know, she's talking about a really big publisher and she runs a small publishing house. And so that perspective has. Is informing her thoughts. Not in a bad way, just. Just the opposite. But I think it's important context. I want to. I want to add that, yeah, I really enjoyed the way she wrote. She writes really well. And I just really enjoyed the way she framed how this giant machine that is a big five publisher. This is specific to HarperCollins, but honestly, it applies to so many publishers. Decisions and factors that are going in there could affect the little guy, meaning the author. I wasn't surprised by, by anything. I do think that so much of publishing is figuring out what you can and you can't control and the things that we can't control. That list becomes larger and larger and just longer and longer. And it's a challenge. It's for sure a challenge.
- [26:37]
Carly Waters
Yeah. One of the things that stood out to me was the. So audiobook sales fell off 11% and ebooks 9%. And generally overall, the assumption is people are just reading less. Coming out of the kind of COVID years. People are just finding other things to do, which is, you know, which, you know, it's our job to be publishing books that can stand up against all of the other forms of entertainment. You guys have heard me rant so many times about how our biggest competitor is Netflix and our phones and all these other things in the attention economy that are trying to take our time and attention. You know, I have heard two kind of marketing experts recently talk about how they think 2026 is going to be the year we go analog, which is great for the book business because we want everybody to go analog. There's so many young people that are just like hating being attached to their phones. They're growing up with parents who have phone addict. And so, yeah, so social currency. I forget the name of the creator, but her account is social currency. And she has, oh, Sammy Cohen is her name social currency. She has great social media, a great newsletter, and Gary Vee, who's a marketing expert that most of you probably know, both of them have cited analog as the main trend for 2026, and they have nothing to do with book publishing. So, you know, they're very much in the kind of the digital world. So I think this is all very good. All very good. News. So I'm really hoping that, you know, again with so many people deciding that they want to be able to kind of you be in their hobbies, you know, work on things that they can touch and feel that are tangible, that they can own, unlike our digital content, that we're going to see a huge improvement in these numbers. So I'm actually really hopeful that this, you know, that we're going to see an uptick in this. So while obviously a quarter Publishers quarter being so down is obviously a negative thing, I'm really hoping that this move to analog as a trend at least we'll see if it lasts. You know, we'll prove to be fruitful next year.
- [28:23]
Cece Lira
I love your optimism.
- [28:25]
Carly Waters
I always.
- [28:25]
Cece Lira
Where would we be without Carly's optimism? We need this in the. Thank you. Thank you for the optimism. I love it. I. I love it.
- [28:34]
Carly Waters
Yeah, I usually do a, every year I do a trend analysis where I talk about what I think are going to be the hottest predictions for the following year. I haven't written my, my predictions yet. Previous years I've done Instagram Lives, I've done Carousels, I've done Zoom. So I'm figuring out what format I want to do this year, but I will be working on my 2026 publishing predictions. So keep an eye out on my socials for how I'm going to launch that. That. So yes, always full of optimism, realism, but optimism definitely important to me. All right, well Cece, have a great rest of your time in Hawaii. We will catch you next week. I think you'll still be in Hawaii when we're recording next week.
- [29:08]
Cece Lira
I will, yes. And I will not get the day wrong this time, I think.
- [29:13]
Carly Waters
Okay. All right everybody, thank you for tuning in and we will see you next week.
- [29:19]
Podcast Host
Cece Lira is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Association. If you'd like to query CC, please refer to the submission guidelines@www.wsherman.com. 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 P.S. literary Agency. Woohoo. It's deep dive time again where we host a two day virtual retreat attended by writers from across the world. And if you haven't been monitoring our socials or subscribing to our substack, you won't know yet that we've announced that this will be our very last Deep Dive ever, so you definitely don't want to miss it. We'll be focusing on giving you access to a whole host of agents and editors who have worked on some of the last decade's bestselling books, building a bridge between you and the so called gatekeepers of publishing. Subscribe to our substack or follow us on Instagram so you can be the first to be in the know as we begin to reveal our incredible lineup. Each week, mark these dates in your calendars. The Deep Dive will happen on 31 January and 1 February, with pre and post Deep Dive sessions happening the weekends before and after. And make sure you have 12pm Eastern Time on the 21st of November marked in your calendar for the early bird registrations.