The Author Wheel Podcast
The Author Wheel Podcast
Understanding Traditional Publishing with Amy Brewer
What's the best way to approach literary agents? How do you make your manuscript stand out? Do you need to be on social media?
Today's guest has the answers. We discuss understanding submission guidelines, showing respect for the agents you meet or query, and leveraging social media to promote your work (because yes, even traditionally published authors need to market their books.) Whether you're an introverted writer or love to be in the limelight, there's something for everyone as Amy shares her strategies on balancing privacy while engaging with readers.
Amy Brewer is a senior literary agent at Metamorphosis. Her intuitive human understanding can help writers bridge the communication gap and jump into the publishing world. Her experience in the mental health field and yoga training help her guide and assist clients with stress and anxiety in this highly competitive industry. All of this is pulled together with a multi-tasking and hyper-organized brain, so that at the end of every day she feels accomplished and grateful. She is seeking captivating stories of human connection and books that touch her heart.
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Greta Boris:
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Megan Haskell:
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Hi everyone, welcome to the Author Wheel podcast. I'm Greta Boris, USA Today Bestselling Mystery.
Speaker 2:Thriller Author and I'm Megan Haskell, Award-winning Fantasy Adventure Author. Together, we are the Author Wheel.
Speaker 1:So today we have Amy Brewer with us on the show. She's a literary agent with metamorphosis and it was super interesting because we spent a lot of time talking to people in the indie author space, as it was really nice to check in with traditional publishing, didn't you think, Megan?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really was, and this is one of the things that we've talked about in the past, but I really try to make sure we reiterate is that we're very agnostic as to which publishing method is quote unquote best.
Speaker 1:I don't think there is a best.
Speaker 2:There's just what's right for you and your goals and what you're striving for, why you write. So it was really, really interesting to check in with an agent who's in the trenches, working with authors and helping them get traditional publishing contracts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it does seem to me that things are changing in that, and there were some things about that which I will let you share that we have talked about and maybe gotten people a little upset with us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got a little yelled at once.
Speaker 1:Yes, we did. But now, why'd you tell about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean. So one of the big things that I found fascinating about this conversation was her take on marketing and the fact that she readily admits that, no matter your publishing choice, all authors these days need to be spending time and energy on marketing efforts, and that really does seem to be a change from a few years ago. I mean, like we said we got into a little trouble a few years ago I mean not really, but like we had a couple authors get mad at us for saying that we ruffled feathers.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is a much better term. We ruffled feathers when we made this suggestion that even traditional authors needed to spend time marketing, but that was Amy's advice, so it's a really fascinating conversation and I think you're really going to find it interesting. But before we get into that, greta what's been going on?
Speaker 1:Well, I broke a writing record for me. Now there's probably people out there that are like oh you, wimp you. But I wrote at least maybe a few more 10,000 words in two days and I got to say it's amazing what procrastination can push you to, because that was why I had to do it. So all I have left on book six is the Dignumau chapters, which I often don't write until after I revise anyway. So I'm feeling pretty good about that. Now I'm moving on to getting ready for a family camping trip. And then 20 books Vegas baby.
Speaker 2:Yes, I am so excited for that conference, but we'll be talking more about that later, so for me I actually don't have a whole lot to report. I am just kind of keeping on keeping on at the moment. I've been back at the writing desk so I've talked in the past about the new morning writing ritual and that is still going strong. I have not missed a single weekday. So that's my goal. Monday through Friday, I wake up early and I do my writing and I have kept the streak alive.
Speaker 2:Granted one of those days was 45 words, but it counts. 45 words is better than zero words. Exactly, and that was on a day when I had gotten like six hours of sleep. So it was. It was problematic, but in any case I have kept the streak alive. So I'm very proud of that and I'm working on the third book in the Aether series, which is also interesting because the other thing that I am or just finished up by the time this airs, is a free promotion for Aether Bound, book one leading into the launch of Aether Crossed, which is book two next week. So that's exciting and also nerve-wracking. I always want those launches to go so well and I plan so hard and sometimes they hit and sometimes they don't.
Speaker 2:So we'll see how it goes. But that actually makes me secretly kind of glad we're going to be in Vegas because I won't be able to spend my whole day hitting refresh on the book retailer platforms dashboard sites to see how many sales I get. That day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, always good to stay away. It'll force me to just kind of ignore it.
Speaker 1:All righty, so let's get on with the interview. Today, we are very excited to have with us Amy Brewer. Amy is a senior literary agent at Metamorphosis. Her intuitive human understanding can help writers bridge the communication gap and jump into the publishing world. Her experience in the mental health field and yoga training help her to guide and assist clients with stress and anxiety in this highly competitive industry. All of this is pulled together with a multitasking and hyper-organized brain. I could really use one of those so that at the end of every day she feels accomplished and grateful. She is seeking captivating stories of human connection and books that touch her heart. And Amy is also handling subsidiary rights for my publisher, so I'm very excited to talk with her. Welcome to the podcast, amy.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate being a part of this and I'm excited to be doing sub rights for Fox Press, because they're just wonderful people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are truly the nicest people ever. So let's dive in. Tell us a little bit more about yourself and how you got to be Amy Brewer. Literary agents at Metamorphosis.
Speaker 3:So I have to say, the story starts when I was about 15. I was in English class and I grew up just outside St Louis and the girl that sat in front of me, her name's Patti Carruthers, and we had to sit alphabetically back then. So it was Carruthers' chance and, just by happens dance we started chatting and we became good friends. And then life happens, college happens, we went separate ways and it was a situation of after we reconnected, when we had kids and we're grown, and we started talking about writing. She's always been a writer and I've always been a reader, and we were exchanging books, as you do, and going back and forth and doing all those wonderful things. And eventually she started saying, hey, could you read this? And I would read it and we would talk about it, or we would talk about edits or how it could be better. And this went on for 10 years, easily 10 years and finally, back in 2016, she said, hey, our kids are pretty grown, are you ready to get serious about this? And during that time, I was a yoga teacher and, like I said, I've gone about my business and she was working her jobs and I said, yeah, let's do that.
Speaker 3:So we kind of started looking at what we could do to succeed in the publishing industry and we decided it would work out well if I did the business side and she did the author side. And both of us studied. So I studied social media, I studied publicity, I studied sort of what you need to do, how to get an agent, all that stuff, and she studied all of Stephen King's how to write a book, all the Save the Cats, and she's learned how to really write for the market. And then we kind of brought that together and by 2017, I think, we landed an agent and had our story ready to go and we had thought, ok, we're going to start with this little story and we started it on Wattpad and we ran it for a while and it got really good reviews really quickly but of course it was appealing to the audience.
Speaker 3:It was a YA romance called Texting Prince Charming, and that is the audience of Wattpad or it was this time and we got enough looks and likes on it that we could take that and ended up landing an agent at a conference. And after a while I kind of realized that what I had studied and learned lent me towards being an agent. I had the information of all of that stuff, and so it really was helpful to me that I was sort of like oh okay, I get the business side of author, all I need is the connection. So I started interning at MetaMarcuses that fall and I interned for about six months and was made a full-time agent. I want to say it was December 2017, or maybe it could have been December 2018. So pre-COVID years get scrambled a little bit.
Speaker 3:But I've been at it for almost six years yeah, I've been at it for almost six years and then our book was released in the spring of 2018. So I guess it was I started Agentee and that was December 2017. And the book was released and we just kind of went about it and marketed our work and I just fell in love with the agenting side of all of it. I just decided this is what I like to do, because Patty didn't really want to do all of the honestly, the podcasts and the sittings and the signings and all of that stuff and I thought, well, this is such a fit. And then, as I got to create relationships with editors, I just kind of grew and grew out of that. So here I am almost six years later with I think I have 43 clients right now.
Speaker 3:So I'm not including the sub rights I sell for two publishers, so two, almost three publishers actually. So it's been a wonderful sort of journey for all of that stuff. But yeah, that's a little bit more about me On a personal side. I've been married for 25 years. I can't even believe it. My sweet husband and I have two beautiful boys. One of them turns 21. Oh, that hurts me because it's next week he turns 21. And I'm just not ready for it. And then my baby is 19. And I don't care how old or how giant he is, because he's six foot. He's still my baby. So that's a little bit more about me personally.
Speaker 1:That is so interesting.
Speaker 2:So I have a quick question here to interrupt before we move on to more of our standard questions. I'm going off track as we do, but so I'm very curious. So you say, did you co-write that first book or were you like, how did that relationship work? Because if you were doing the business side of things like that's a unique relationship. I haven't quite heard of that type of collaboration.
Speaker 3:So part of my. I didn't physically write a bunch of it. I wrote a few little bits and pieces, but I have to credit Patty with most of the writing of it. But because I could study the marketing, I could say, oh, you need more angst here. They can't kiss yet they have to. I found that it was easy for me to fall into an editor role of saying, oh, we need to hit these marks for it to sell to an agent.
Speaker 2:Gotcha, so kind of like a developmental editor sort of a role.
Speaker 3:Yes, and she would send me every chapter and I'd go over it and we looked at it cohesively and as you do as an author, you shuffle chapters around and make things work. But I realized in that, saying, oh, you've got to hit these marks to sell. I was like, oh, and that's no different than what I do for my authors now is saying, oh, I don't want to mess with what you've got and give my input, but you do have to hit these three points for me to be able to sell it. Or you do need to hit this word count or take out this many thousands of words for me to be able to sell it in the market today. So that's kind of my contribution and I'm sure there were some nuances that I contributed because Patty and I have known each other since we were little.
Speaker 3:There's little scenes we put in that, as any author does, that are sort of personal. There's a scene between the main character and her best friend where they're eating milkshakes and dipping their french fries into their milkshakes, which is something that Patty and I grew up doing. So there's little things like that. But the majority of the writing was hers but because she really wasn't interested in the other end. It was a great partnership and we still are best friends. I just chatted with her this morning. We have not, because it is the norm in publishing. It is now off the shelves and we haven't written anything new because life happens and gets in the way. But, like I said, I found this found agent team to be really what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2:That's great, that's right. It's nice to hear that relationship. I feel like historically that was always the kind of ideal when a new author finally got an agent. It was a little bit more of a collaboration potentially, or the agent really supporting that work. And I feel like too often these days we hear stories of, well, I've just got too many clients, I can only take the books that are already 100% ready to go, and so I've heard advice now that you should edit before you pay for an editor and pay to have the developmental edit and the copy edit done before you start querying agents and things like that. So what's your opinion on that? Is that something that is that? Am I correct in my poor assumptions, or is that?
Speaker 3:No, you are absolutely right. And because it is a situation of at this point you definitely have to know not necessarily know all the points, Because usually within the first three chapters I'm reading something I can say, oh, I can sell this. And then I always finish reading and then I can come in and say, OK, you need to hit this mark or that mark or the pasting, or you could take this scene out because it's lags or whatever.
Speaker 3:But most of the time I am looking for a work that is at least 90% ready to go. If it's 100% ready to go, awesome. But editors are now looking for works that are when I am out there shopping. They want to do very little. They're stretched even more thin than agents are, so I try very hard to make sure it is the least amount of work is possible as I send it out to editors. But I guess the ask is, yes, before you send it out to agents, do you have to have it professionally copy edited? No, should you have sent it through Grammarly at least twice? Yes, or whatever other software that will help you get out your filter words. It helps take out shallow POV, it points out repetitive words and generally the grammar is important.
Speaker 3:I had a submission from someone very, very smart person who I believe was a doctor, and they had submitted to me I want to say an APA style and I was like I'm sorry, we only accept CSM style in fiction. And they wrote back to me with well, apa is better. And I was like I got to make up this rule, it's not like. I was like, oh, this is my favorite one, so it has to be in that. No, no, I don't make the rules, I just try to follow them and tell people OK, this is what it needs to be. But I will say grammar is definitely. If I get through the first three chapters and I've only noticed one or two little errors not grammar necessarily, but just little things then it won't. I can read past it. But sometimes I can see on page one that someone is not familiar with the rules of CSM or they're just generally like.
Speaker 3:I can tell a new author a lot of times because of some of the things that stand out.
Speaker 3:And that's why I think before you submit to anybody, it should go through rounds and rounds and rounds with all of your beta readers, lots of friends that people that you are not related to, people that will be mean and say, hey, this doesn't work.
Speaker 3:And then I would say, work with and they don't have to be a professional professional, you don't have to pay thousands of dollars. But if you have a reading group and you can establish with a friend of yours sort of a trade situation, they edit for you and you edit for them and you trust them. Or even working with an author, the brilliant author and I always say it's Jody Thomas, not Jody Thompson, because the two of them I get switched into my brain all the time. But Jody Thomas, she actually sort of coaches young authors and up-and-coming authors on oh, this is how it's supposed to sound, and she's not a professional editor, she's just a New York Times bestseller and it is just one of those things that the more input you have from other people and then the more, like I said, the tighter it is as far as copy edits, the better chance you have success.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to bring up that you had in your bio. You mentioned mental health and it's so true. I mean, this business is a roller coaster, right? Emotional roller coaster. So I was just wondering how do you specifically help your authors work through that? I mean, do you give them yoga poses or breaths?
Speaker 3:You know what do you do. Sometimes it's a breath work. You know there's everything from it's different for every author. Some authors don't even want to hear the negative feedback. They don't want to know unless there is a detail that will help them edit. Others are a little bit like have a thicker skin and like, yeah, bring it, I don't care, you can share whatever with me. But generally it is because it is sort of like screaming into the void by my book. It's helping them understand that they need to write because they have a passion for writing and a love for it more than a sense of I have to succeed.
Speaker 3:I have to sell a million books to be a success. Instead, it's the letting go of the ego and saying I've written this work, it is published, it is in my hand and I can take pride in that, you know, and maybe a hundred people will buy it and maybe 20,000 people will buy it. But that does not dictate whether or not your book is good or whether or not you are a success as an author, because in this day and age it's too hard to say oh. To be a success, I have to make oh. You know, I have to do this or do that or do that. Instead, it's about sitting with yourself and going I have created something out of nothing and now I'm holding it in my hands and it is tangible and it might only impact one or two people, it might only reach the spirits of one or two people or make somebody laugh one person left, but that has to be enough. So it's sort of that acceptance of self and acceptance of where you are. Also in the you know, authors get caught up in this expectation they see on TV or whatever oh, I'm going to be the next. You know, I'm going to write the next Twilight or the next Harry Potter. And she made a billion dollars and that's the math. And it's more me kind of bringing them down to the reality of. You know, those are the outliers, those are the lottery winners, really, and even though the book they have written is probably superior to some of the ones that have made gazillions of dollars, it is the more normal path to write seven to ten books and publish independently and publish with small companies before the larger presses start to take notice and sort of just sort of bringing authors back down to the reality but also not squelching their dreams.
Speaker 3:I have a phenomenal author and I just love him to pieces, and just this week, in fact, his contract is coming through. He had this dream that he could turn his book, his book, his five book series, actually into a board game or card game, and it's just been his thing. He's always wanted this, and so we had a Zoom with the publisher and the publisher said, yeah, I know, one of our illustrators works with a gaming company and so, instead of be saying okay, that's a pipe dream and squashing it, I connected him to someone who can actually help him and work with him to achieve that goal, and so I think that's part of it. It's just like it's a connecting author, so they don't feel like they're out there alone. Another thing that I do is we have our team because I'm very Gen X, it's called Team Awesome and it's like all 42 of my authors and we support each other. So when one of the books comes out, I send out a book blast so everybody knows and if they want a copy, I try to get them a copy so they can leave reviews for each other and they can share on social media, and most of them do support their fellow authors.
Speaker 3:My romance authors have kind of a little subgroup where they edit and write reviews for each other in kind of rotation, and so that works out really well.
Speaker 3:So it's just taking that feeling of, oh my gosh, here I am alone with a computer, and making it feel less lonely and making you feel like, okay, I'm part of a team, I'm part of a support group, and also letting them know they can reach out to me if they need to with text or meme or whatever.
Speaker 3:Sometimes somebody will say, hey, I'm really blocked. I had a phenomenal author who writes YA and she got a divorce and stopped writing YA and wrote a horror thriller, because that's what came out of that time in her life and it made sense to me and instead of saying, oh well, this is it for you, you're only going to write YA, I was like sure I'll give it a shot, it's a well written book, so let's look at the options here. So it's supporting the whole of the author and understanding, okay, this person is going through some stuff that doesn't you know. I can wait until they're ready to write again, because I want to invest in a whole person and in a lifetime and not just in a. Oh, this book will stop.
Speaker 1:I love that, because I think that that is critical, because you hear so many stories about authors. You know the two book curse. They got right. They sign a contract and if the you know the two, first two books in a series or whatever don't just fly off the shelves and they're just dropped like a. And how many times does that happen? I mean, honestly, it can take four and five books in a series before a series catches on and then then books one and two will fly off the shelves. But so it's a. It's very. I love that you're saying that you're investing in the author, in a career, versus just in this one product that they, that they created. So, getting back to our normal questions, what do you think the greatest roadblock to success that the authors you work with encounter? And as an adjunct to that you could just say and how do you help them overcome it? And if you sort of already said it with the emotional things, I can move on to another question that's a similar one.
Speaker 3:No, I think the biggest roadblock that authors encounter is is the business side. I work with some incredible authors that just adamantly refuse to do the business side and when I say business side, I annual I'm sure I'll talk about this quite a bit on the podcast is I expect my authors to have active social media, because that is the first thing that editors look at. They'll look at your social media. They look at your interaction levels. They don't think you don't need to have a million followers, but the more followers you have, the better, obviously. But I have some, you know, some sort of say old school authors who are still in that mindset that, oh, I can write and if I write, well, that's all that I need to do. And that's not how it is anymore. That's not how it works.
Speaker 3:Now we are in a place where John Green, who has severe anxiety but is obviously a super famous author and probably has to write anything again and still be considered one of the best authors of the last 20 years, for sure, he has a daily TikTok that he is out there, putting himself out there, doing his publicity, doing what he needs to do, and because even he was, you know, when he got on TikTok and he did that. He had a he went from there had been a lull in turtles all the way down and he mentioned it a few times and then it spiked right back up to the New York Times bestseller list and turtles was like three or four books ago for him, so that's why it wasn't his newest work, but it's that, to me, is what I see is the biggest barrier is an author just wants to write, when now I would say, 50 to 60% of being an author is the business side and running it like a business, knowing exactly how much you're investing, having it set up properly for your taxes, understanding that is.
Speaker 3:You know, this is a commitment that goes beyond just getting words down on the page, and so what do I do to help them? I'm constantly sending here here's marketing ideas, here's a group of podcasts, here's a group of reviewers. Again like building that support group, like I said, where everybody else can share on each other's social media, as we share each other's social media, so that we can just make sure we all like each other and can like, you know, like their posts and support them. Just even. Just, like I said, even just clicking on a like or googling an author's name can help the algorithm.
Speaker 2:So just reminding everybody of that and, like I said, supporting that team, yeah, that's that's so important and it's such a pervasive myth I think, particularly for those authors who are trying to get traditional deals, that they don't. They don't have to do marketing, but it is. It's time consuming and it's incredibly important that you have to. You have to get the word out there. There's just too much noise. We have too many, too many different entertainment options these days. That to to get eyeballs on your your you know book, that's going to take somebody eight hours to read or or listen to, or whatever, however they choose to do it. I mean, you go to Netflix. You can watch a two-hour movie for quote-unquote free. Why would you like getting somebody to buy your book and sit and read? It is a huge hurdle. So you've got to get out there and you've got to get the word out. So I think that's great.
Speaker 1:It's one of the things that Megan and I teach at conferences and things is. In fact, it was the first thing we ever taught in our first book that we wrote together in it and it sort of compares and contrasts traditional publishing, which is the route that I went with my first series, and independent publishing, which is where Megan went. And so we would talk and it was amazing how many people we would bump into that would say, oh no, I need an agent and a traditional publisher because I don't want to do any marketing. And we would both laugh and say, well, not doing any marketing is not an option, regardless of which direction you go. So that is just the reality, as you said, of today's literary world. There's just a lot of noise, a lot of options, and I've got to get you. It's not the days where there was six publishers and they had a handful of people and you just got what you got when you went to the library. There's just so much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll add something else here too. Another thing that we teach and I'm curious kind of your perspective on this, amy because one thing that we do say, too, is that you don't have to share everything of yourself. You don't have to share all aspects of your personality. If you're comfortable with that, great, but if you're not, then choosing the slice of your life that you're willing to share is a sustainable way of doing it, especially for those of us who are introverted or shy, or just protect our privacy a little bit more, or however you want to phrase that. So, given that, what kind of slice of life do you encourage your writers those that are reluctant to do marketing or social media and things like that? How do you encourage them to share that piece of themselves, and how do you recommend that they go about doing that?
Speaker 3:I go with whatever they feel most comfortable with and unless she's not one of my clients, I cannot take any credit for this. But her name's, oh gosh. Now I'm going to blank on the author name, but then the name of her book is the Ghost and the Wolf and it's just a very cool work and in it they go geocaching into some spooky areas and when they are geocaching, adventures and shenanigans ensue. And her Instagram is not a whole bunch of pictures of her and her family or her and her cat or her writing. They are different spooky spots of geocached around. You can go oh, that was in the book, or, if you haven't read the book, it's still just a cool spooky picture, but it all references back.
Speaker 3:So if you have the capacity and the creativity, I'm all about you as an entity, because you can be your writer, entity, self. You don't have to be your authentic self. I'm okay with that, but I do think I do. Since it's publicity more than marketing, I think it's important to be about half and half, so half about your book and half about this is my life. This is what I'm doing little things. I also recommend to be on a schedule, a social media schedule, to make it easy on yourself. I follow this wonderful. She's a Harlequin author, her name is Silver James. She's not my author, I just like her and I follow her on Facebook. And every Saturday is Shirts Off Saturday, so I know Saturday morning I turn on Facebook there's going to be some hunky guy without a shirt on because it's Shirts Off Saturday.
Speaker 1:I'm so in line with her for a moment. I'm sorry. I just had to and I was like, wow, that's really exposing herself on social media.
Speaker 3:Okay, sorry, I just had to interject that, no, I'm still here with things. That's hilarious, but she keeps it. And then she writes her blog and releases it on Sundays. So Mondays it's a hey, here's the blog I wrote yesterday. This is a picture of me and a cat or whatever, and it's a little bit about what the blog is. So she's on this nice steady schedule so she doesn't have to come up with oh gosh, what am I going to post today? And I think that's perfectly acceptable and wonderful to go. Okay.
Speaker 3:On Wednesdays, amanda McCabe, another romance author she does. On Wednesdays, we wear pink sometimes because you know she's that and so it's really handsome guys wearing pink shirts. Or when she's researching a book, because she writes historicals. When she's researching a book, she has a wonderful series that is like a 20s mysteries, and so it will be getting, you know, 20s fashions because she's researching all of this stuff. Or if she's, you know, going deeper or in a regency area, we'll get all of this regency stuff.
Speaker 3:So I think you can, like I said, do a little bit, because sometimes it's okay. Here's me and my dog snuggled up, or you know me having a glass of wine after a hard day or something like that, but I do think about 50% book related and 50% this is me, or this is at least my author persona. Now, some people don't have the oh, like you were saying, are shy, but that's why I think the whole word persona kind of comes in, because even if they're not, you could sort of do a Lemony Snicket situation where he was there but it wasn't actually him and he could be bigger and bolder and wilder because he wasn't representing himself. He was representing Lemony Snicket and I think that's perfectly acceptable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've heard about, you know.
Speaker 1:You hear about like people who are very shy, retiring people, and then they get into puppetry and you see their puppet characters and they're just like the most outgoing, extravagant, loud puppet characters and you think that is that.
Speaker 1:But there's something about having this other character in front of you that just can make you feel more bold. I had a kind of a nice book release recently and instead of I felt embarrassed, sharing some of the good reviews like, oh, look at me, I got this good review. So instead I just was it said oh, you know, imogen and the gang at Greener Pastures were so excited to see and for some reason, just saying like it was coming from my characters just made it so much easier for me. So I think that's a really good tip. You know that sometimes or they for authors who have a pen name that you know your pen name kind of represents the voice of your characters and the voice of your writing, so you can kind of respond to things in your book the way that your characters would. And you know it's a part of that, is a part of you, but it isn't 100% you and that can make you feel a little more bold, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to one other quick story too. Faith Hunter, who writes urban fantasy I don't know if she still is doing this or not, she might be, but for a while one of her main character, jane Yellowrock, is a shapeshifter and shares kind of a soul with a mountain lion or a puma, and so that mountain lion has now, because of magic and time and so forth and so on, taken on a anthropomorphic personality, and so she was doing posts from Beast as the as this mountain lion, and it was all about like hunting deer and not understanding human psyche at all and you know, like it was very funny and very cool and it was such a great way to engage with readers from a completely different perspective.
Speaker 2:Now I don't know. I don't know Faith personally. I don't know why she chose to do that. If it was, you know, because of her own personal you know boundaries and things. But it worked really well and if you do have those issues, then that can be a great way to overcome them.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and we do character interviews as part of our Metamorphosis blog, which is always really nice and so that it is the character answering the questions and you can be in character doing that, and I think that is important. But another part of sort of marketing and publicity is for me, because this was actually before TikTok on Instagram, as we led up to the release of texting Prince Charming, I did a who Is your Prince Charming? And so every day was a post of another hunky, you know, man, woman, it didn't matter. You know, is this your Prince Charming? Could this be your Prince, you know, and just to get interaction and things like that. And so there wasn't a whole lot of visuals of you know, here's Patty and I, excited about this. It was more hey, you know, let's start thinking about who Prince Charming could be, because that's the premise of the book. So you can always find ways to not to protect yourself and your privacy, I think. But you have to have a little bit.
Speaker 1:Well and honestly, readers, when we're talking fiction readers are mostly attracted to the book, the world of the book. So if you're sharing something that is going to be interesting to people who like that world, you know, I think, more than what you ate for breakfast, it's just I mean like okay, here I had this amazing meal and you wanna share a picture of the amazing meal? Well, yeah, if you write a book about that takes place in a restaurant, you could share meals all day long. My books, my new series takes place mostly in a mortuary. They're not gonna be interested in meals so much. You know what I mean so, but they're like, yeah, right, so you know, thinking about what your readers might be interested in.
Speaker 3:I think that's a really that is a really really Knowing your demographic is also extremely important, so yeah, Import very, very good, so there's also so shifting off of how you help your current authors.
Speaker 1:I know that this is something that a lot of our listeners are gonna wanna know. Other than what we covered about getting your manuscript in as clean and beautiful condition as you can get it, can you give our listeners some tips? You know, if they are seeking representation, what are some best practices and things that might help them along the way?
Speaker 3:Understanding your genre, which means, if you are writing a romance, don't send me a hundred thousand word romance and say, oh okay, I'm gonna break all the rules, because, as a debut author, unless you are something profound, you're not going to break all the rules. That's, the publishing industry is not going to let you. So, knowing your genre and I say this because I have my favorite honestly, my favorite submission, maybe of all time, was and I don't even remember the title of the book, but it was an erotica novel and it was 300,000 words. Oh my gosh.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I don't even wanna think about what is in that 300,000 erotica words?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't even wanna think about that.
Speaker 3:That's long, exactly Because they were so out of touch with the erotica genre which is usually about 30 on the long side that they had no idea they had just. And I get so many folks sending me stuff that is just like they have never researched, they've never Googled it, they don't know what their word count should be, they don't understand that. You know, especially like if you're writing a formulaic romance or commercial romance, that you have to hit the points or that you have to have a happily ever after. Some people don't realize that, and so when I give feedback I try to say, hey, look at this, look at that, be aware of this because, like I said, a lot of it is just new writer stuff. But this is before you get to an agent level. You really need to be at a point where you have studied, you've researched, you know you are spot on the money for what that agent is looking for.
Speaker 3:That is another thing where I would say a significant portion of the rejections that I hand out, or for people that send me stuff on genres I don't represent, and I understand that right now my wish list is a little bit vague and it's sort of vague on purpose, but I have gotten so many submissions for like dark psychological horror, and I have accidentally sold a couple of those, but not on purpose, because I don't read horror. I don't enjoy it. I think it's a wonderful genre and I mean no shade at all to it, but it's just not what I represent. I don't know a lot of editors in that genre and so I like to. I love to read YA and I love to read romance, so that is what I specialize in.
Speaker 3:But it is shocking the amount of people that are sort of a oh any portness storm, any agent, and you can feel that when it's out there and you're like, oh, they don't even know what I represent or what I have had success in selling. So do some due diligence and look up the agents. Look up what they actually buy and sell. Pay attention to what they have, like I said, had success in. Because, like I said, a giant chunk of my rejections are just because it's so off genre for me and no, I haven't even read a word of their work. But I'm like, oh, no, I don't wanna read that because that's not a genre that I enjoy. So that's kind of a thing.
Speaker 2:Submission guidelines. Is that something that you post like on the Metamorphosis website? Is that like, stop number one, or does it go what's the best?
Speaker 3:path. I would say submission guidelines it's the submissions page on metamorphosisliteraryagencycom. But, and almost every agent has some submission guidelines manuscript wish list or even on query manager. I think that's yeah, submission manager or whatever. The flip side of the program is, they'll tell you exactly what agents are buying. It's not that hard even to just punch an agent type in Amy Brewer, literary agent and see what pops up. Checking it out, looking at sort of the agencies too.
Speaker 3:I send a lot of folks who send me really high fantasy and I love, like a YA fantasy. But again, and I've accidentally sold some but I send really high fantasy folks usually over to Jabberwocky because that whole house specializes in that and so that just knowing sort of okay, even you don't have to dig deep, you don't have to get into FBI business where you find their Facebook page and go, oh, I have two kids too. That isn't relevant, but like it's just making sure that they're gonna be a fit for your genre. It's just, I think, step one that a lot of people don't make.
Speaker 3:Another thing is I don't even know how many people have sent me manuscripts on LinkedIn, even though it says specifically on my LinkedIn profile do not query me or I do not take this here, but and I have no idea if they count that as a rejection, because I do not interact on LinkedIn hardly at all but also sort of being aware of okay and everything on Metamorphosis will direct you towards query manager to submit to us, to all of the agents there, but knowing exactly what format the agent takes clients in. I might be my fourth or fifth podcast interview that I've done and it's always nice when I'm talking to someone, they're like oh, I listened to your podcast, I know this would be a fit for what you're doing right now, or something like that, something a little bit more fresh, because sometimes somebody will hit me with oh well, you were looking for this back in 2018, and I'm like well, it's 2023, the market has changed and, as any agent, my taste has changed with it. So, yeah, that awareness, I think, is step one.
Speaker 1:That's sort of a respect thing too, isn't it? It's kind of like you're asking somebody for a date and you don't even know anything about them. You don't even know if they're single. Whatever it's a respect issue to. If you're asking someone to take the time to take a look at your work and potentially enter into what could be a very long-term relationship, you better darn well know a few things about them and what they're interested in and what they're looking for. You know, I was talking to a man agent at a conference one time and he told me his worst so like yours was getting the 300-word erotica novel and his was somebody pitching him at the urinal at a conference. He was like I don't care what I'm doing, I'm going to the bathroom here. I mean, it's like there is. There can be a desperate sense in some writers sometimes and I can imagine that as an agent that's just a real turn off right there. You know.
Speaker 3:Yes, and like him, I have been pitched in the bathroom.
Speaker 2:I really hoped that was like a rare anecdote, which is not a standard thing that every Asian experiences.
Speaker 3:It's not. I've actually been pitched in the bathroom and then had somebody waiting for me outside the bathroom, which is, I guess, a little bit better, but still just as off-putting. And if I'm sitting somewhere quietly at a conference, I don't mind if someone walks up and says, hey, can I have a minute of your time? That's fine, but some people feel entitled to agent time and that is, and you said, exactly right. Because what you're asking someone to read when they send you a query and they send you the first three chapters, is you're asking for about a half an hour of a very busy person's time, and that is. That can be daunting to do. But it also isn't every single human being's right to have that much of my time. I have to kind of respect my time and my boundaries and say, oh no, this is not appropriate, or just easily, like I said, let it go without that Because it's yeah, otherwise I would never leave my desk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, like I said, I do think a lot of that's a respect thing, and so people don't recognize always that, yes, there's the book, there's the manuscript, there's that whole side of it, but then there's just also the common sense, common decency, human side of it. Like nobody wants to enter into a long-term relationship with somebody that they find obnoxious or off-putting, even if their book was great. You know what I mean. So there is this, it's a book and it's a human being. So be a good human being too. I think is an excellent tip for people.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's just sort of common sense.
Speaker 1:But why does common sense fly out the window sometimes?
Speaker 3:Well, and I think you said it, it's a fear and desperation Forces people to sort of behave in ways they wouldn't normally behave, or at least that's what I assume Sometimes I will be. And I don't mean any disrespect to older white gentlemen, but they just think that I owe them time so they will stop and talk to me and ask questions, like when I'm brushing, like if I'm in a conference and I'm going between speaking and then taking pitches or whatever I'm usually in motion, and they'll stop me just to chat because they have that entitlement. I think and I'm not saying not all white men, I'm not saying any of that kind of foolishness, but it is a common issue that they feel like entitled to talk to me and to have whatever information that they can get out of me without respecting my time or my boundaries.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what Everybody needs to learn to Google, even my dad. My dad is 94, and sometimes he'll ask me something and I'll give him an answer. And then other times I'm like, hey dad, ask the Google. Gods, you know, you have a computer, you can do this. It's good for you, it will make you more independent. He's like, oh, you're right, you're right, and my dad can still like he just got a new computer, he can still manage and get himself in trouble on his computer. That's the other thing with my. Yeah. Anyway, that's another topic. We won't go there. So, but I guess my last question, because we're kind of running out of time here.
Speaker 2:This has been so, so interesting.
Speaker 1:I was gonna ask you a little bit about, like, subsidiary rights, but maybe we should just save that for an off-air conversation. I don't know how many people are. Do you briefly, just a briefly, because that is I know you're working with Fox Press on that what are you doing with subsidiary rights?
Speaker 3:Subsidiary rights are audio television it's movie television, stage actually and now video gaming rights are very big, even large print rights are things that I have dealt in. So basically it's not just the publishing, because publishing is such, it's not just a print book anymore, it can be five other things. So for publishers, I reach out to audio publishers and we'll sell audio rights for them so that the author will get whatever, will get a percentage of whatever's their contract, and then they'll have an audio book of their work. Or gaming rights is kind of the newest one where gaming companies are actually they're read-along apps, usually in other countries, but they will come in and purchase an entire catalog of it and then just take all the stories and translate them and turn them into these little read-along reading apps, which is kind of brilliant and wonderful, because that percentage of the world there's a percentage of the world that read on their phones and it opens up some opportunities there.
Speaker 3:And then, of course, everybody's big lottery ticket is the. I don't even know how many times people come at me with, oh, my book would be a great movie, and I was like that's good, because writing a book and thinking it's going to be turned into a movie or a Netflix series is the same as buying a lottery ticket. You bought the ticket at least, and what I do is and in fact I just did send some, a couple of books off to a producer that is interested in a certain genre, and I happen to know a few different producers. We also have some co-agents out in California where if we have something come our way, we send it out to them and say, hey, you should start this.
Speaker 3:One's got the potential. I can see that it's commercial marketability or whatever it might be, and they will also shop them to producers as you shop it to publishers. And so basically, that is that's my short story for subsidiary rights. But in this day and age, just because you write a book doesn't mean it will be a movie. But it is like I said, it's a lottery ticket. So at least you bought your ticket.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's really good. Well gosh. Thank you so much for all this, amy. It's just a very eye-opening for a lot of our listeners, I am sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So why don't you tell us to kind of wrap this all up? Why don't you tell us where can people find out more about you or metamorphosis? And if they're interested in learning more about querying and things like that, where would you send them?
Speaker 3:I would say go to metamorphosisliteraryagencycom, our main website, or we have a Facebook page. We've got a TikTok, all the things, and it's all under metamorphosisliteraryagency. So any of those spots are gonna be great and just be open to any information that comes your way. Like, if you wanna know how to query, Google it and then before we try, there you go, there you go.
Speaker 2:Ask the Google gods yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, amy. I know this was absolutely fascinating for me as an outsider of never having queried before. It's always good to hear what's going on on that side of the industry. So thank you so much for joining us To all our listeners. Thank you also for being with us today. Don't forget, you can join our seven days to clarity of many course via email. We have officially just launched the new website so you no longer have to go to authorwheelcom slash stuff. Now. You can just go to authorwheelcom. It's right there on the front page. You can't miss it. So join our seven day mini course and learn how to write a mission statement and tagline for your author career and, until next time, keep your stories rolling.
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