Track Changes: Contracts

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Track Changes: Contracts

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Contracts! We get into the basic structure of your contract, and all the rights, clauses, provisions, and negotiated terms you need to know to make sure your contracts is right right for this book and beyond.

We catch up with Jennifer de Leon as she prepares for the release of her debut young adult novel, Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From, on August 18. (Hear her First Draft interview here.)

Then Sarah Burnes, literary agent with The Gernert Company, and Jo Volpe, literary agent and President of New Leaf Literary & Media, break down what authors should know to look for in their contracts. And Kate Sullivan, senior content development manager at New Leaf Literary & Media and former senior editor at many Big 5 publishing houses, breaks it down from an editor’s point of view.

Sarah Enni:  Jennifer de Leon had the book sale experience that so many aspiring writers dream of. Her debut young adult novel, Don’t Ask Me Where I’m From sold in a double auction. And just days after going on submission, Jenn and her agent, Faye Bender, were in the position of deciding between several different offers.

Jennifer de Leon:  These offers were in emails most of the time. It would say ‘the advance per book, and then for the next book.’ And I remember getting the very first one and thinking like, “Holy shit, this is life changing!” And I even sent Faye a GIF that was like, “We goin’ Sizzler!” I don't know if you've ever seen that movie, White Men Can't Jump? I'm like, “We goin’ Sizzler!” She's like, “You're crazy. And I love you.”

Sarah Enni:  But then Jenn started looking more closely at all that contract language and legalese.

Jennifer de Leon: I'll be honest, when I got the actual contract, I looked at it, it felt like it was in another language. It's like you don't know what you don't know and you're focusing on the writing. And then very swiftly you're into this position of being a business woman where you're like, “Okay, I need to compare these deals, or these contracts, or these proposals.” And it's not my forte. It's not my usual way of thinking even.

Sarah Enni:  I’m Sarah Enni, author of Tell Me Everything and creator and host of First Draft. And this is Track Changes...a special First Draft series covering everything you don’t know you don’t know about book publishing.

This week: Contracts. Last time, we talked about book advances, the guaranteed, up-front payment that publishers give authors for the right to print and distribute their books. And we’re gonna come back to that conversation. But for this episode we’re providing context. Ooh, context, my favorite thing.

Because an advance doesn’t stand alone. There’s a lot of ways publishers can set up an author for success, and counter-intuitively, it does not always mean throwing them humongous checks. Though, for the record, authors love humongous checks.

When Jenn was evaluating competing offers, her agent helped her weigh all the different contractual elements that would factor into her decision.

Jennifer de Leon: It's a totally different hat you're wearing, and that's why you usually have an agent to do that. When the contract came up for, Don't Ask Me Where I'm From, Faye made like a table where it was like, “Okay, these are our…” I think when we had like the top four editors, we had them in a grid and then the details of each deal.

Because it's not just the advance, it's so many other things. And the details in there included things like royalties. Then you have if it's North American rights or world rights. Then you have the pub days, the delivery days, the payout. How much you're gonna get on signing, how much you're gonna get for each book. Or if it's one book, at what stages? Like upon acceptance of the rough draft, of the final draft, copy edits? There's all these pieces. And then the royalties you get on the hardcover versus the paperback. Also, whether they get an option for your next book. I mean, it's a lot.

Sarah Enni:  It is a lot. And, like Jenn, I wanted some experts to help me break it down.

Sarah Burnes: Our job at deal time is to get the most amount of money out of the best publisher who's going to sell the most number of copies of the book, so that everybody can do it all over again.

Sarah Enni:  That was Sarah Burnes, literary agent with The Gernert Company.

Jo Volpe: I mean, you go into this hoping it works out, that it’s a happy marriage. But you negotiate the contract for the divorce, the potential divorce. Right? And so that’s what it’s there for.

Sarah Enni:  And that’s Jo Volpe, literary agent and founder of New Leaf Literary & Media. Sarah and Jo sat down with me to talk contracts. First, let’s back like all the way up and establish: what is in a book contract?

Jo Volpe: A book contract includes the grant of rights and the scope of those grant of rights. So that means are you giving them just book rights? Are you giving them book and translation and audio rights? Are you giving them merchandising rights? You should not be giving them merchandising rights, but are you?

And then also the territory in which that publisher can exploit those rights. So that can be U.S. only and its dependencies. It could be North America, which includes Canada. It could be World English, or it could be world all languages. So that's kind of the general scope of a contract.

Sarah Burnes: Right. And I think maybe it would be also useful to make a distinction between the points that get negotiated at deal time, and the points that get negotiated in the contracts themselves.

Sarah Enni:  Deal time is when your agent is negotiating with the acquiring editor. That negotiation covers top-line contract stuff like:

Sarah Burnes: The amount of the advance, the number of books, the royalties, which are variable on the children's side, not on the adult side, but are on the children's side. The grant of rights as Jo said, and territory. And deal time is when you can get in anything that is difficult to get at the contract stage.

So if you have, for instance, a writer who the way a book looks is very important to them, you're not gonna get cover approval at any other stage in the process unless you get it at deal time. I'm trying to think of the other things you can ask for at deal time.

Jo Volpe: You can discuss bonuses at the deal stage. You discuss format, physical print, things like that. If it's a competitive scenario, you can actually ask for a lot more things, such as a guaranteed audio book edition, perhaps. Or a lot more approvals.

Sarah Enni:  So it’s important to know, as an author, that the deal memo is not the finished contract.

And okay, here’s why I wanted to get into contracts before we talked more about advances. When I asked Jo and Sarah to talk about factors they keep in mind when they’re negotiating advances, they basically told me, “Hold up.”

Here’s Jo:

Jo Volpe: The advance is not it. It's also the editor. It's the team behind the editor. It's the publisher. It's how they've been doing. It's what they've done well recently. You know, it's thinking about all of those things, because everybody's moving around so much these days. Houses, I don't think I have a single author who's had the same editor for their whole time in-house.

Sarah Enni:  Losing your editor, while not uncommon, really, really sucks. Because you’re losing your #1 in-house advocate, the person who cares most deeply about your book, and who fights to get it attention from acquisition all the way to pub day.

Jo Volpe:  Sometimes when there's a lot of uncertainty, I think, “Well, you better pay us enough to make up for the uncertainty of your team, because my author is willing to take some of that money and ensure some success by hiring either an outside publicist, or doing some kind of campaign on their own.” So I think there's a lot of factors that go into it.

Sarah Enni:  Okay, so the environment of a publishing house, it’s record of success and its in-house stability, are things to keep in mind. Let’s examine some other factors in the contract to consider along with the advance.

One of the biggest things is whether your contract covers one book, or multiple books. Jenn faced this quandary when evaluating her options.

Jennifer de Leon:  I had asked a lot of author friends, like, “Should I go with a two book deal? It's literally double the money. And I have that guarantee that I'll have a second book in the world and I can sort of, as long as I do it, I can relax and know that I will have income for the next X years.”

But then other writer friends were like, “Oh my God, no! I could never. I feel like I would owe them that money, and I don't even have an idea for a next book! And dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.” So everybody thinks differently. And I was thinking like, “Well I know I want to send my kids to college. I feel like I should go with a two book deal because it's more secure.”

Sarah Enni:  But Jenn’s agent was able to step in and help her evaluate the situation.

Jennifer de Leon: Faye was like, “Well, you know, this one book deal has better royalties and if you have a great experience, I'm sure you will.” She's like, “Then we'll talk the next book when that comes up. And it's not like you'd get that money before you deliver the book anyway.”

Sarah Enni:  One book, two books, three books in a series? This question is so specific to every author on their own publishing journey. You have to talk to your agent about every possible option, and try to be aware of what kind of writer you are. Some people need deadlines to focus their mind. Other people feel stifled by the pressure of writing under contract. There is no normal, there’s only what feels right to you.

Okay, so as you look at your contract, it kicks off with rights and royalties.

Rights refers to the publisher’s rights to publish and market your work in the territories agreed to in the contract.  

Jennifer de Leon: World rights versus North American rights, that kind of thing.

Sarah Enni:  In a book deal, territorial rights are split into at least three categories. First: North American English rights, which includes the U.S., Canada, and usually the Philippines. Yep, the Philippines. I searched high and low for the history on that, why the Philippine’s goes right along with U.S. and Canada? And I couldn’t find it by deadline. Please, if you know [chuckles], send me a note.

The second category is for English language rights in the remainder of the world, also known as British Commonwealth rights. That includes the U.K., Commonwealth countries, or former Commonwealth Countries, so Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, sometimes India, etc.

The third category is: Translation rights. All languages other than English.

Jennifer de Leon:  I remember that, as an agency, the Book Group they don’t do world rights. They sell North American rights and that’s where they stand. So I think that was really helpful out the gate. All the editors knew that and so they weren’t pushing for world rights.

Sarah Enni: In their ideal world, publishers would like to keep world rights. But your agent, or the agency they work with, might have their own way of selling foreign rights. If you’ve ever heard agents talking about going to Bologna or Frankfurt, those are book fairs in Italy and Germany respectively, where they go to meet with foreign publishers, and gin-up interest in your book and sell foreign rights.

And quick side note, agents typically earn a 20% commission on any foreign deals. So, don’t freak out when you see that number on your advance from France.  If you were to limit the territories by say keeping the contract to North American rights, like Jenn’s agent does, a publisher is likely gonna drop the amount that they’re willing to pay for an advance because you’ve kept that bit of earning potential.

Then there’s the other rights your agent has to negotiate to keep to exploit themselves or give to the publisher. Among those are first serial rights, that’s the right to publish part of your work in periodicals like magazines before the book comes out to drum up interest and press coverage. Film and TV rights if someone wanted to option your book and try to make a movie or a TV show out of it. And a really hot right at the moment, audio rights.

Over the last couple years, audiobooks has been one of the fastest-growing categories across all of publishing, so more and more publishers are pushing to keep those rights. An editor at HarperCollins told me, point blank, Harper’s company policy is not to agree to a contract without retaining audio rights.

Okay, next up: Royalties. We talked about them last time, as it related to earning out your advance and getting cash money above and beyond that up-front payment. Royalties normally range  between 7-10% for children’s books. And here’s a weird thing - royalties are variable on the children’s side of publishing, but not so much on the adult side.

So for kid-lit writers, you really want to pay attention. If you've got offers that are very different in money up front, but one publishing house is giving you a different royalty rate or structure, it might significantly change your calculus for which offer you want to accept.

That was something Jenn looked at closely in her analysis.

Jennifer de Leon: After you sell a certain amount of copies, then your royalties go up. And for some publishers it was a lot lower than it was for others.

Sarah Enni:  According to the Poets & Writers Complete Guide to Being a Writer, in a standard book contract, the author earns 10% of the book's cover price on the first 5,000 hardcover copies sold, 12.5% on the next 5,000 copies, and 15% on any copies sold after the first ten thousand. When the book goes into paperback, typically a year after the hardcover comes out, the writer earns 7.5% of the cover price for each trade paperback copy sold and 8 to 10% on copies of mass market paperbacks. With e-books, writers typically earn 25% of any revenue publishers receive.

Keep in mind, Poets & Writers is targeted toward writers of adult fiction and non-fiction, so again, those numbers are not hard and fast for kid-lit.

Okay…while we’re getting wonky, stay with me. There’s another thing you should know.

If you’re negotiating a contract for more than one book, particularly a series, take note of whether the books are separately or jointly accounted. To explain that, let’s hear from Kate Sullivan, former senior editor at multiple Big 5 publishing houses and current Senior Content Development Manager for New Leaf Literary & Media.

Kate Sullivan: If I do a multi book contract, separate accounting means every book is accounted for on its own. And joint accounting means every book is accounted together. So if you sell three books for $50,000 each to me, and they are joint accounted, you don't get any royalties until you've hit $150,000.

Sarah Enni: Kate’s example said another way is: If you sold a trilogy for $150,000 and it was separately accounted, you would only have to make $50,000 to earn out the advance for the first book and start earning royalties.

Practically speaking, you’re more likely to see royalties, and see them sooner, if your books are separately accounted. If that first book takes off it’s easier to earn out $50,000 than $150,000 across three books. As to whether or not you can negotiate for separate accounting? Well...

Kate Sullivan: If you sell a trilogy, then a publisher sometimes will say, “Well, this needs to be joint accounting because I'm buying the whole intellectual property. And you know, some of that money needs to go into marketing. Like there's gonna be extra marketing on book one, but you have to make sure there's momentum for book two and three, so therefore we need all this money to be tied up together.” And it can be a deal breaker for some agents and authors.

Sarah Enni:  Royalties may also be renegotiated, after say, your book has a zeitgeisty moment and sells millions of copies. Or, you win a prestigious award. You know, totally normal and common situations.

Speaking of major awards though...

Jennifer de Leon:  Some put in the contract that you would get a bonus if it were a Printz award winner or a National Book Award finalist or a National Book Award winner. You know, there were all these things that varied from publisher to publisher. But the thing that I didn't expect were awards bonuses. And then like New York Times slots, like some of them have specific bonuses that they give you if you hit the number one spot, if you hit between number two and number ten, like that's crazy specific.

Sarah Enni:  Okay, dope! Your publisher is ready to reward your excellence.

Um. Let’s see. What else.

Sarah Burnes: One thing that we haven't talked about is delivery date.

Sarah Enni:  Ah! Delivery of manuscript.

Sarah Burnes:  This is also in the deal memo, is when a book is due. And what are the grace periods around that?

Sarah Enni:  As in, if you have a wild case of writer’s block or gee, I don’t know, there’s a global pandemic and all of a sudden you have to home school your kids. How much leeway do you have to turn in your manuscript?

Sarah Burnes: The delivery and option, those are the things that really concern authors. And so those are the things, I think, that are good to look at.

Sarah Enni:  Ooh did you catch that? Sarah mentioned the option. That’s the option clause, and this brings us to clauses! Fun!!

Okay, so Jo says there are three clauses in particular that she focuses on with her clients.

Jo Volpe:  It’s the ‘triangle of freedom’ I call it, which is the option clause, the next works clause and the competitive works clause. And to me, if you can really hone in on what is important to the author in those three clauses, then the author, no matter what the advance level is, no matter what the publisher’s plans are or whatever it be, will have the freedom to continue their career.

Sarah Enni: Alright, we’re actually gonna take those in reverse order. So let’s start with the competitive works clause. (Terms of Copyright in the U.S.)

Jo Volpe:  A competitive works clause, or non-competition clause, is some version of them saying that the author won't publish something substantially similar. Well, they won't even put substantially, sometimes. Actually in a baseline boilerplate, without an agent, they'll say sometimes, “Won't publish another similar book for the term of the contract.” Which in the U.S. is term of copyright; which is the life of the author plus 70 years. So that, in the age of authors building brands, is a problem for me because ‘similar’ would probably be anything that they do.

Sarah Enni:  Right, as an author you have a unique voice and perspective, and ideally that’s something that comes across in all the work you publish. 

Jo Volpe:  There's an author named Amy Lukavics (author of Nightingale, The Ravenous, The Women in the Walls, and Daughters Unto Devils) who's my favorite example for this. I'm like, “She writes pretty badass feminist horror. So yes, anything she writes is probably gonna be pretty badass feminist horror. So wouldn't those be argued to be similar?” And so that's usually kind of where I start with publishers.

My goal is to get it struck entirely, and we sometimes do. We especially do if someone is also a screenwriter. They usually have first opportunity to write any novelization of a screenplay that they wrote. So you can't say that, and then it might be competitive and you can't hold that back.  But if you can't get it struck entirely, it just depends on what the plans are for that author, for that book, for that universe.

Sarah Enni:  This is particularly worrisome in non-fiction. If you’ve positioned yourself as an expert in one field, or on one topic, then a boilerplate non-compete clause could seriously hamper your ability to keep doing your job.

Jo Volpe:  In the non-fiction space, if the author is an expert on a particular topic, who is the publisher to say that they can't publish in that area again, especially if they're not paying a substantial sum, you know? So that is one that I usually will focus on very much.

Sarah Enni:  Remember we’re thinking beyond this one contract. You want to write books for a long time.

Okay, that brings us to: the Next Works Clause.

Jo Volpe:  The next works clause is separate. Sometimes you'll see it in the competitive works paragraph. Sometimes it'll be in the reps and warranties. Sometimes it'll have its own paragraph. But that is a paragraph that says, “This will be the author's next published work”. And it very well might be. But that's what you have to think about.

Does your author have multiple publishers? Cause if that's the case, that's probably not gonna be the next published work. Is it a text only for a picture book, in which the publication timeline is dependent entirely on the illustrator? And in that case, that's not fair for it to be the next published work.

Publishers do this as a way to make sure that your work, that they’re paying for, will be competitive and it won’t get overshadowed by any other work you might be publishing elsewhere. But what if you’re, for example, writing young adult rom-coms at Simon & Schuster and middle-grade mysteries at Penguin Random House?

First of all, good for you, diversification is the name of the game! Second of all, you don’t want this clause to trip up the contracts and publishing schedule that you have elsewhere, and stall the progress of your career.

Okay, and finally, we’re back at the option clause. You’ve probably heard of this one before. Essentially, the options clause defines how, exactly, your publisher gets the chance to acquire your next book or books.

Jo Volpe:  It's kind of the first look at their next piece of work, and what are we giving them the first look at. Is it the next book in this series? Is it the next book for this particular market? If it's middle-grade or if it's self-help, or whatever it may be.

Sarah Enni:  And one of the benefits of negotiating an option clause is getting the opportunity to possibly sell a book on proposal. Which means, without having to write the entire thing on spec first.

Sarah Burnes:  What's also important in the option, from our point of view, is to have that based on the smallest amount of material possible. So if you're selling a first novel, the writer shouldn't have to write the whole of the next book. So the option would be based on say three chapters and an outline.

Sarah Enni: And it’s important to note that an option should be just that: an option.

Sarah Burnes:  I would say 90% of my authors have asked me, “But that doesn't mean I have to sell it to them, do I?” And the answer is, “No. You don't have to sell your book to someone you don't want to.”

Sarah Enni:  In talking about option clauses, there were two words that were like Tabasco sauce in the eyes to both Jo and Sarah: matching rights.

Jo Volpe:  And certainly, you know, always try never to get any matching rights in there if you decide not to move forward with a publisher…

Sarah Burnes:  No, no, no, never agree to that.

Jo Volpe:  So yeah. I always put just “no matching period” at the end of every statement about the option.

Sarah Enni:  What does that mean?

Sarah Burnes:  So in an option clause, I really actually haven't seen this in a long time cause I think we finally beat them back. But it would say that if the publisher, so you'd submit the option work to the publisher, they make an offer on it. We don't accept that offer. We take it out to market.

Somebody else makes an offer on it that the option publisher can match that other offer, and that we would have to take it. And as an agent, we can never put our authors in situations where they are being published by someone they don't want to be published by. And that's what happens with matching.

Jo Volpe:  Matching language is in every contract I've ever seen where someone wasn't agented.

Sarah Enni:  So, listen: I am very much enjoying this Elle Woods moment of getting into legal language. And if you’re listening to this, you are educating yourself about your career, and that is amazing. But I hope the one thing you’re taking away from this is just exactly how useful having an agent can be.

Agents deal with this stuff day in, day out, and their expertise can change your life. Take it from Kate, a former editor, who has hashed out dozens of contracts with agents over the years.

Kate Sullivan: I don't make a lot of money as an editor, you don't make a lot of money as an author. So a competitive works clause was always hard for me to negotiate. Because as a publishing house, we wanted to make sure that they weren't, as authors, over-publishing, devaluing our product, putting out other books that were competing with our product that we were paying for and putting out.

On the other hand, if you’re an author and you don’t make a lot of money and you’re able to be really productive, it’s really hard to hear that a publisher doesn’t want you to publish anything a year before, or a year after, your first book with them.

Or it can be very difficult to hear that you sold a picture book to a publisher and then it turns out that your option language covers every genre of age range and you can’t sell any other book before offering it to your first publisher. I get that as a human being who needs to put food on the table.

Sarah Enni:  So, even though she was negotiating on behalf of the publishing house, Kate says she always felt better working with agents who were good advocates for their authors.

Kate Sullivan: And I always loved the agents who negotiated stuff like that. Because it showed to me that they were thinking about the career of an author, right? They're in it for every single book. They're thinking about these things in a really broad scope way. Not in a way where they’re gonna sell you that one book and then disappear off the face of the planet.

They also know the contract so thoroughly that they’re gonna be able to find a way for you to be able to have a continuous, productive, successful career.

Sarah Enni:  So, a lot of what we’ve covered so far is negotiated with an editor. And editors are many, many things. But something they’re not, usually, is a lawyer. Jo says sometimes this pose a challenge.

Jo Volpe:  Editors… I really wish they understood contracts better. Because there's so many editors I've actually, once I get on the phone and I say, “Practically, this is why this doesn't work for my author.”  They’re like, “You know, I didn't even know that's what that clause meant”. And they also are like, “I wouldn't want that for your author either. Okay, let me see. Let me talk to my team. Thank you for putting it into perspective for me.” Because it's not their job to memorize a contract, but I wish they did really understand the effects that each clause has on an author.

Sarah Enni: Okay so what are some of the more nitty-gritty things that are getting hashed out in the contract beyond the deal memo basics?

Well, there’s a newer clause that has been showing up in the last couple of years: Morals Clauses. These contract provisions allow publishers to terminate a book contract, and could even require an author to repay portions of the advance already received, if the author is accused of immoral, illegal, or publicly condemned behavior.

Publishers want to protect themselves from having to do business with an author who becomes so toxic that no one wants to buy their books. But, according to The Authors Guild, most of these clauses are too broad and allow a publisher to terminate based on individual accusations or the vague notion of ‘public condemnation’—which can occur all too easily in these days of viral social media.

Sarah says she saw language like this recently.

Sarah Burnes:  We just had a morals clause that we looked at that said that the publisher could cancel the contract if there was an accusation. Which, of course, is not tenable because anybody can accuse anybody of anything. Especially the publicly owned companies are including these clauses because they've gotten into trouble. And we just have to protect our clients to make sure that there isn't something spurious that happens that enables the company to cancel the contract without reason.

Jo Volpe:  Yeah. They've only really started to crop up the past year or two, in contracts. We do understand why they want to put it in there, but it puts our clients at risk for just frivolous cancellations, frankly.

Sarah Burnes:  Absolutely. No question.

Jo Volpe:  Every publisher that's put it in their contract has been so different. So we've actually taken a different approach with each one to get to the same place, ultimately, which is to not make it easy for them to cancel a book deal.

Sarah Enni:  Then there’s the out-of-print clause. This one speaks to another of publishing’s hard truths: going out of print. Odds are, your book will come out and people will buy it. And over time, fewer people will buy it. And fewer still, until your publisher decides it’s not in its financial interest to print new copies of the book, in any format. The book will then be considered out of print.

That’s not inevitable. I wish everyone listening to this, a Penguin Classic of their magnum opus. But realistically, books go out of print, and though that is sad, authors can actually look at that as an opportunity.

In your contract there’s language about a “reversion of rights,” those are the conditions under which you get the rights to your book back after it goes out of print. And then do something else with it. Sell it again, if you go on to have increasing success. Or write it as a script, or a video game, or an app! Could your book be a TikTok dance? I don’t know. The mind reels.

But what it means for a book to go out of print was more cut and dry in the time before eBooks, or audiobooks.

Sarah Burnes: A book is considered out of print, well it was, if there were less than say 250 copies sold in a royalty period, or over a year. Or whatever the period was.

Sarah Enni:  But how can something be out of print if the eBook is just sitting there on Amazon until the end of time? Taunting you with your inability to make that manuscript into a TikTok dance?

Sarah Burnes:  The eBooks brought up the issue that a book was never actually out of print. So then we had to figure out, what is the threshold below which a book will go out of print? And that's important because if a book is out of print, the author can ask for the rights back and then they can do something else with it.

Sarah Enni:  So you want to make sure your contract addresses all formats in its out-of-print clause, including digital.

Alright [sighs], so there’s a ton that your agent and the publisher are negotiating in the final contract. That’s normal, and it does take time.

Jo Volpe: We have gotten contracts anywhere from a few weeks after closing the deal to sometimes six months. But we try to avoid the six months scenario by, when we close, saying we expect a contract on our desk in thirty days. At least the draft.

Sarah Enni:  So what does that bring us back to? Advances.

Sarah Burnes:  What I would want authors to know is, it's not fruitful to compare yourself to other authors. Because every deal is, you know, there's a whole different set of circumstances in terms of the advance. This is why the advance question is such an open-ended one.

Sarah Enni:  Now that we know all the legalese, or at least a lot of the legalese, at play with advances and contracts, it’s time to turn back to the right-half-brain of this equation. How do authors deal with the emotional reality of money crashing into art?

Jennifer de Leon:  I wish hard work translated to monetary compensation, but it's just, we all know that it's not that way. So then I think it makes it all the more difficult to have these conversations because you can be talking to an author friend and you're like, “Oh my God, we're having such different experiences!” And it's like, “Whoa, but why?”

That’s next time, on Track Changes

Sarah Enni: You can follow Jennifer de Leon at jenniferdeleonauthor.com; Sarah Burnes @thegernertco.com; and Jo Volpe and Kate Sullivan @newleafliterary.com.

You can 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 Track Changes.

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