Track Changes: Publishing in the Time of COVID
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Publishing experts discuss how the global pandemic, and widespread shelter-in-place laws have changed their jobs, how publishers have responded to the uncertain retail market, what books are more or less likely to sell in this climate, and what all writers should be focused on during this time.
Catch up on the series so far:
Episode 2: Agents: Who Are They, What Do They Do, And How Do You Get One?
Sarah Enni: Hey friends, welcome to Track Changes. I’m your host, Sarah Enni, author of TELL ME EVERYTHING and creator and host of the First Draft with Sarah Enni podcast. My intent in starting Track Changes --- the spinoff podcast limited series about everything you don’t know you don’t know about publishing --- was to create something evergreen.
And then.
Holly Root: I don't know anybody who is a literary agent in a pandemic before. So there's not a roadmap. We're just kind of inventing it as we go.
Sarah Enni: Now, we’re still going to get into the nitty gritty of publishing in this series, but I wanted to take a step back and check in with some industry experts about how the global pandemic was impacting the business of book publishing. Think of this as a Track Changes Bonus Episode.
You’re gonna hear from a lot of different voices in this episode: literary agents Holly Root, literary agent and founder of Root Literary who represents clients such as Victoria Schwab (hear her First Draft interview here), Jasmine Guillory (listen to her First Draft interview here), and Christina Lauren.
Seth Fishman, he’s an author and literary agent with The Gernert Company and manager of their West Coast office. He reps clients such as John Joseph Adams, Ali Almossawi, and Kate Beaton.
Faye Bender, partner and founder of The Book Group, who represents authors such as Courtney Summers (listen to her First Draft podcast here and here), Maurene Goo (listen to her First Draft podcasts here, here, and hear her interview Sarah Enni here), and Jennifer de Leon (listen to her FIrst Draft podcast here, and follow her publishing journey in Track Changes, starting with Episode 1).
Sarah Burnes, with The Gernert Company, who represents Margaret Stohl (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here), Heather Havrilesky, Zan Romanoff (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here), and me (hear Sarah and I discuss the lead-up to the release of my debut novel, Tell Me Everything, here).
And Kristin Nelson, founder of Nelson Literary Agency, who represents authors like Marie Lu (listen to her First Draft interviews here, here, and here), Ally Carter, and Simone Elkeles.
Don’t worry though, I will remind you who everyone is along the way.
Let’s start with Holly Root, founder of Root Literary, who we heard from in the second episode of Track Changes, just a hop skip and a jump back in the feed where you’re listening now. Holly says there are definitely communication challenges now that most people are sheltering in place.
Holly Root: A lot of things are dependent on our ability to get information from other partners, and when every point of the chain is experiencing workflow disruption, things are just going to take longer. And so where we're experiencing delay is, you know, you have a basic question that before you would have called the editor and said, “Oh hey, whatever happened with such and such thing from the marketing plan?”
And the editor would have been like, “Oh right, yeah. Let me get you an update.” And literally stuck her head out the door and been like, “Hey, did we do the thing? Yeah, we did the thing. Okay, cool.” And then popped right back in and taken you off mute and then like, “Yeah, it happened on Tuesday and we'll send over details later. Great. Thank you. Bye.” Click.
Now, I mean some people can't even access their voicemail. When you have people who haven't been accustomed to doing things that way, the learning curve piece of it is also really steep.
Sarah Enni: Editors are not at their desks. And that’s actually causing quite a few hiccups.
Kristin Nelson: A lot of New York editors don't actually know how to utilize their phone systems. So, accessing their voicemail is sometimes tricky. A lot of times they rely on their assistants to pop in and get the messages sent to them, et cetera.
Sarah Enni: That’s Kristin Nelson, founder of Nelson Literary Agency. Like Holly, Kristin is based outside of New York City and has had remote working set up for years. So she says her day-to-day doesn’t look too different.
But communication hasn’t been the only thing that needs adjustment under the circumstances. Here’s Holly again.
Holly Root: Some editors I can tell are having a hard time reading. I had a hard time reading at the beginning, and I kind of found my way back in cause otherwise my client reading pile would have buried me alive. And then other editors seem to be really finding escape in submissions and turning things around quickly. And you know, freed somewhat from the shackles of office interruptions, seem to be like really in a groove.
Sarah Enni: Faye Bender, partner and founder of The Book Group, has also been trying to figure out how to get into the deep, concentrated reading that’s so pivotal for her job.
Faye Bender: What has been most different for me is that as I kind of sink deep into focus on something, I inevitably get pulled out of it. So the result is things are taking a lot longer. I don't think the quality of my work has dipped. I think more it just takes longer.
Sarah Enni: But Faye says there’s something humanizing about everyone being in the same boat.
Faye Bender: There's something really nice about it that, you know, there really isn't any reason to pretend at this moment that we can do things really quickly, that we can over promise and overstretch. And yes, I can take immaculate care of every single author at every single moment. Now I can say, “You know what? I have to make sure that my daughter gets on her one o'clock Google meet art class and I'm so sorry I have to pause this call and I have to do that.” Or whatever it is. Those things that happen now can happen out in the open instead of pretending they're not happening. But doing them anyway.
Sarah Enni: All the agents I spoke to said their primary focus is how to help their authors with books either coming out right now, or whose publishers decided to move their publication date to summer or fall 2020.
Faye Bender: I think a lot of the work has been a sort of triage for authors whose books are coming out right now and then also for authors whose books are coming up soon and thinking about are we moving these? Why are we moving these? Where are we moving these? What's the competition gonna be like when, you know, whichever month we are moving them to?
So there's a lot of thinking about virtual events, and are people actually going to the virtual events? And if they go to their virtual events, how many are buying copies of books? And can you do ticketed virtual events? What if somebody has bad internet and it all goes belly up while they're in the middle of it?
Sarah Enni: And Holly agrees.
Holly Root: I would say we spent the first four weeks just undoing a year of work. Your entire marketing plan is built around stores, like retail, and these things that seem so bedrock.
Sarah Enni: But she does see an interesting upside to the surge in virtual events.
Holly Root: Some of my authors have had events that have gone really well and we're waiting to see what we can correlate in terms of sales numbers, to see how effective things are. Because everything is being done virtually, I think we actually will be able to draw a few more conclusions because we have a little bit more control, and a little bit more access to data.
Holly Root: So I think that instead of just doing stuff and hoping it went well, we might actually come out of this able to look at certain virtual event locations or times or strategies. Or, does it work better to partner with one store? Sort of those kinds of questions and actually have some really good data to inform our choices going forward.
Sarah Enni: And though authors with books coming out right now are definitely facing massive headwinds, Holly points out that moving a publication dates carries risk.
Holly Root: In some cases it seems like moving the pub date into a less certain time, like as time with even more unknowns. Like, do you dance with the devil you know?
Sarah Enni: With the retail market hit significantly, and by that I mean, in many states bookstores are still physically closed to customers, publishing companies are looking to cut expenses. Seth Fishman, an agent with The Gernert Company who you heard from in the second episode of Track Changes, says one way to do that, unfortunately, is through cuts to personnel.
Seth Fishman: Unfortunately a number of really talented people have been let go in various capacities: great editors at Tor, some agents at Paradigm. You can still be successful during those times, but I think that there are a lot of agents, and there will be fewer agents after this, and just like there will be fewer bookstores and fewer editors, and that is the kind of thing that is not good.
Sarah Enni: And another way to cut expenses may be rethinking what, and how many, books a publisher decides to bid on. Sarah Burnes, an agent with The Gernert Company, has a few thoughts on that.
Sarah Burnes: I mean I've heard that some companies have a kind of moratorium on buying, cause they don't have the cash for advances. My theory, and let's check back in six months and we can see whether I'm correct, is that there's gonna be a pulling back on acquisitions. And then when we get through this and we can kind of see the future, that the publishers are gonna… their inventory is going to be low.
Sarah Enni: Though cash-saving measures are making for turbulent times, ultimately publishers need to publish. Here’s Faye again.
Faye Bender: Editors across the board are saying that they are open for business. They want to acquire. They are here. They are looking down the pike to where 2022 dawns and there are no books to be published. I mean, they have to have books that they're gonna publish. So I do think that people are acquiring, I think it's harder.
Sarah Enni: There are some caveats to being open for business. Like, Sarah says certain editors may be more incentivized to buy than others.
Sarah Burnes: I think there's also a difference depending on where you are in the food chain, where you have editors who really want to buy books because they want to keep their jobs, and that is their job. Like their job is to buy books, whereas the higher you get up in a company, the more worried you are about the bottom line. And that, of course, has always been the case and it's always been the tension that's particularly true now.
Sarah Enni: To her point about the bottom line, Some Big Five publishing houses have announced, that in order to preserve cash in the short term, they’re altering the structures of how authors get paid. Remember, an advance is the amount of money an author gets paid for a book, and it’s an advance against royalties.
We’re gonna get into that in an upcoming episode of Track Changes. Typically, advances are paid out in three or four-part chunks. But, confronted with the uncertain consumer market, Penguin Random House officially notified agents that they would be paying authors a smaller percent of their advances on signing. Seth explains.
Seth Fishman: First of all, this is only for Penguin Random House. I'm sure other places will follow soon enough. They usually paid in quarters. So if you get a hundred thousand dollar advance, then you're going to get a $25,000 advance on signing the contract. You're gonna get a $25,000 advance on delivering and having the publisher accept that. You're gonna get a $25,000 advance on publication, and then you're gonna get $25,000 advance 12 months after that. So basically if you sell a book in January and it comes out in November, you could get $75,000 in the first year. In a calendar year.
So right now what Penguin Random House is doing is they are taking that first quarter and they are paying you instead of 25% they're paying you 10% on signing the contract. And then you're paying you the remaining 15% of that five months later. So you could theoretically, if the book is done and finished, have 10% and then you could get another 25% for delivery and acceptance and then three months later you get another 15%, which is that signing advance. But that's how they are trying to reduce upfront cost so they can maintain cash flow.
Sarah Enni: Macmillan has also informed agents that, instead of paying out in three or four-part chunks, it will move to pay authors their advances in five parts. Faye breaks that down in terms of timing.
Faye Bender: So, not only will one of the payments come a year after initial pub, but then a fifth payment will come a year after that. So we're talking about a book, like if it's a book that I sold May of 2020 and best case scenario it comes out spring of 2022. So the last payment would come in 2024. So we're in 2020 when we make the deal, and the last payment will come in 2024. So it's really, I mean it can really hamstring an author. It's gonna be tough.
Sarah Enni: Several agents harkened back to the Great Recession, a little more than a decade ago, saying these moves are an echo of what happened then. And, Holly warns, we should keep in mind lessons learned from that time.
Holly Root: I started out agenting during the recession and while a pandemic and a recession are not the same thing, there are some commonalities. In terms of like, I can remember being fed the line of like, “Oh, it's just for now.” And I know it's not, because then we kept things like pub payments and after pub payments. So there's a little bit of that too where I'm kind of eye-roll-y about the like maybe not the first person jumping up for like, “Yes, let's band together.” I'm like, “I've heard that line before, friends.”
To me it is hard to read that as anything other than multinational corporations passing off hardship to sole proprietor creators, in order to return better investments for their shareholders. And that is a real rage starter if you just want to get right down to it.
Sarah Enni: Kristin agreed.
Kristin Nelson: My guess is, and I don't think any agent is going to speculate differently, is that publishers are just going to be a lot more conservative about the advances they want to offer, the bets they would like to place. So the titles that they are gonna go after. And just being a little bit more judicious with all of that. You can probably look back to how publishing sort of retracted a little bit, became more considering of stuff back in 2008 when there was the big recession. And I imagined that we may end up seeing something kind of a similar pattern emerge of, you could probably extrapolate from what emerged there to what might happen now.
Sarah Enni: Given the current climate, what kinds of books are editors looking to buy? It’s important to remember that editors are just people, avid readers, who are committing to books that they’re gonna have to read, and read again, and read again, and read again, for the next year to eighteen months. What are they gonna be in the mood to engage with?
Sarah Burnes: The books that will work are the ones that feel necessary either for escape or understanding the world one way or the other. The things that are sort of more esoteric or navel-gazing or I don't know, not relevant, are just gonna be harder.
Sarah Enni: And all the agents I spoke to agreed -- don’t try to write that COVID novel right now. Here’s Kristin:
Kristin Nelson: I think it would be really hard to sell a pandemic novel at this point in time. People like we're living it, we're not sure we want to read about it. People I've talked to are like, “You know, Netflix is burning it up with the pandemic films.” And my only response to that is that a lot of times what people will watch in movies is not the same as what they will read. And so they don't always overlap.
Sarah Enni: And since publishers are, more than ever, eyeing the bottom line, Seth says, regardless of content, publishers are likely looking for one thing:
Seth Fishman: Slam dunks.
Sarah Enni: Which said another way…
Sarah Burnes: David Gernert, his fundamental theory of American publishing is the rich get richer. And I think this is probably the case that if you're a name brand, or you bring something valuable to the table, that publishers even more want that. And that if you're somebody who's starting out it’s harder.
Sarah Enni: That was Sarah, referencing David Gernert, the founder of her literary agency, The Gernert Company. And Holly agrees.
Holly Root: There's always the things that are just right down the middle very obvious, easy for a publisher to get behind. They know what it is, they know how to do it. Great. But anytime you're trying to reinvent, or move, or to start something new, or launch a debut, all of those things, you just want to be a little bit more strategic about.
Sarah Enni: So what kinds of deals are agents able to get for authors right now?
Kristin Nelson: We are definitely hearing that if it's the right project then they will come to the table and they're happy to come to the table in a big way. But I think it’s probably not the same big way it would have been a year ago.
Sarah Enni: As to whether these agents are still open to the slush pile? That is query letters from aspiring writers seeking representation. The answer is as varied as it usually is. Some are open, some are closed. As Holly says, ultimately everyone’s looking for a good story.
Holly Root: My colleagues are very actively reading and looking for new things and looking to fall in love and looking to escape. But I think it’s highly personal.
Sarah Enni: But Sarah says agents have to be mindful of the workload they can carry, especially in quarantine-adjusted times.
Sarah Burnes: I'm not the kind of agent who's ever closed to queries because I don't think you should ever be closed to possibility. But I will say I'm probably more careful. I'm always careful about what I'm taking on, but I'm probably even more so now because I want to make sure that I'm taking care of the things that I already am responsible for.
Sarah Enni: All the agents I spoke to agreed on one thing: now is the time for writers to hone their craft. Here’s Faye one last time:
Faye Bender: I do think this is a time for authors who don't have to do the fancy footwork of how am I gonna publicize my book that's coming out next month? To really hone their work. Whether it's a proposal or a manuscript or an idea that's in a nascent stage. I think this is an opportunity to really workshop something, whether that's with a group of writer friends, or a writing group, or one's agent, or whomever it is. I think this is the time to kind of dig deep in that way.
Sarah Enni: Thank you for listening to this bonus episode of Track Changes. If you have your own stories about how publishing has been impacted, you can send those to me info@firstdraftpod.com
More Information:
“The Coronavirus Takes Its Toll on Publishing” in Publishers Weekly
“The Deals Are Alright” in PublishersMarketplace (Sub. reqrd.)
“Virtual Author Events Are the Next Big Thing” in Publishers Weekly
“Print Unit Sales Flat in April” in Publisher's Weekly
“Confronting COVID-19: 'Publishers Weekly' President Discusses Book Industry Impact, Shares Hope” in BookBusiness
“They Were Meant to Be the Season’s Big Books. Then the Virus Struck.” in the New York Times
Furloughs, firings, and layoffs covered in a few places: “Macmillan Lays Off Some Staff, Temporarily Cuts Some Salaries” in Publishers Weekly; “Skyhorse Lays Off Nearly Third of Staff” in Publishers Weekly;
“Paradigm Layoffs Hit Senior Agents in Music, Movie and TV Literature,” in Variety; “UTA Instituting Temporary Furloughs To Start In A Few Weeks, Mostly Assistants,” in Deadline; “Endeavor Plans Layoffs, Furloughs and Pay Cuts for One-Third of Employees” in The Hollywood Reporter; “Strand, Books & Books Lay Off, Furlough Booksellers,” in Publisher’s Weekly; “Barnes & Noble warns of potential cuts if stores close due to coronavirus” in The Bookseller
The agents I spoke to for this episode include Sarah Burnes and Seth Fishman, both with The Gernert Company, Faye Bender at The Book Group, Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary Agency, and Holly Root at Root Literary. You can find links for all of them in the show notes of this episode at FirstDraftPod.com
Follow me @SarahEnni on Twitter, Instagram, and everywhere. Follow @FirstDraftPod on Twitter and Instagram, and head to FirstDraftPod.com/TrackChanges for more information and updates on this mini-series.
As with all episodes of Track Changes, I gathered way more information than I could fit into just this episode, and I’ll be sharing the rest in the Track Changes newsletter, a subscription service that for $5 a month will get you in-depth information about publishing every Thursday. Try the newsletter for free for 30 days by signing up at FIrstDraftPod.com/trackchanges.
And check out the First Draft Facebook group at facebook.com/firstdraftpod to join the conversation.
Subscribe to the First Draft wherever you’re listening to this podcast right now (on Apple Podcasts, Spotfiy, Stitcher, or elsewhere) and please leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts. It only takes a couple minutes, but it helps the show a ton.
You can also support the show by going to FirstDraftPod.com and shopping through the links on the site. We’re an affiliate of bookshop.org, so that means when you buy a book through the site you’re not only benefiting First Draft, but you’re also benefiting independent bookstores, and that’s at no extra cost to you.
If you’d like to donate to First Draft, either on a one-time or monthly basis, you can go to PayPal.Me/FirstDraftPod.
Track Changes is produced by me, Sarah Enni, and Hayley Hershman. Zan Romanoff is our story editor. The theme music is by Dan Bailey, and the logo was designed by Collin Keith.