Transcript
Speaker: So our podcast is called Right and Wrong.
Speaker: Are these your notes?
Speaker: These are your notes about what we're going to say.
Speaker: What does it say?
Speaker: I thought it would be a good... I didn't even get the idea.
Speaker: Maybe I can just ask you the question.
Speaker: It's going well.
Speaker: It's going really well.
Speaker: Hello and thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Right and Wrong podcast.
Speaker: I'm Jamie and joining me today is the Romantic Novelists Association's Agent of the Year, Juliet Pickering.
Speaker: Hello.
Speaker: Hi Juliet.
Speaker: Hi.
Speaker: Congratulations.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you very much.
Speaker: It was a big surprise.
Speaker: How does it feel?
Speaker: It feels, um, I have only walked on red carpet since it was announced.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: I refuse to drink anything but champagne.
Speaker: So yeah, it's all been extremely glamorous.
Speaker: Sounds expensive.
Speaker: Yeah, it actually felt really fun.
Speaker: I was at home, unfortunately.
Speaker: I'd just been recovering from a bug that my toddler gave me kindly.
Speaker: And so I had half a Twix in my pyjamas when it was announced.
Speaker: And that was my celebration.
Speaker: But it's been absolutely lovely.
Speaker: And yeah, my authors are just absolute stars.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: especially the ones that are part of the RNA that gave me the award.
Speaker: So yeah, it was a joy.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: It's so nice to, and I've spoken to a few agents and it's so nice to hear about the sort of nurturing relationship between authors and agents.
Speaker: It's such a mutual thing.
Speaker: You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah, it really is.
Speaker: I mean, one of the main reasons I got this award was my author, Sue Walker.
Speaker: So I took her on when she was quite a few books down the line and she'd taken a bit of a career break.
Speaker: She'd had an agent previously and she'd also sold some books direct to an independent publisher herself before that.
Speaker: And so she had quite a kind of publishing history.
Speaker: And my colleague, Carol Blake, was a very active member of the RNA when she was alive.
Speaker: And she knew Sue and Sue was sort of thinking about writing again and got in touch with her.
Speaker: And Carol was one of those incredible agents who was kind of in her 60s and had her kind of 20 authors that had done brilliantly for her and was just like, that's it now for the rest of my life.
Speaker: And she introduced me to Sue and I just really liked what Sue was about because I was looking for romantic fiction that was contemporary, that had kind of contemporary issues at the core of it.
Speaker: It wasn't...
Speaker: the kind of classic woman pining for a man waiting to be swept off her feet and rescued from her sad single life.
Speaker: Like I haven't really talked with those stories at all.
Speaker: And they were very much what I was reading on submission before Sue came along.
Speaker: And then
Speaker: Suze were just, they were older women.
Speaker: They weren't just kind of early 20-somethings.
Speaker: These women, the story that I first read, this woman was struggling financially.
Speaker: And I thought, yeah, I mean, so many people can relate to that.
Speaker: And yet she can also have all this other stuff going on in her life.
Speaker: She can keep bumping into her friend's boss, wondering if there's a spark between them, you know.
Speaker: So it has all the fun of romance and the kind of lovely, rich emotional investment, but it also has real stuff going on.
Speaker: This is an extremely long way of explaining.
Speaker: But when Sue came along, you know, it was my job to kind of revive and revamp her career a bit.
Speaker: Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker: So it was a very, it's a very different process to taking on a debut author who's got no history and is starting from scratch.
Speaker: So, you know, Sue and I found her a publisher at HarperCollins, Avon, and she
Speaker: She has, you know, we were really committed to growing her readership and they've done brilliantly at it.
Speaker: So it's very, yeah, it's been fantastic.
Speaker: And I know that that's a large part of the reason why the RNA were behind me getting the award because Sue and I have worked so hard together and with Avon.
Speaker: to make sure that we increase her sales numbers each time.
Speaker: She's my hardest working author.
Speaker: She's publishing and writing two books a year.
Speaker: In fact, this year she's had three, which is incredible.
Speaker: So we had a really unusual opportunity whereby Avon, you know, now we're sort of,
Speaker: 12 books or something down the line with them.
Speaker: They said, is there anything on your backlist, Sue, that you published a long time ago that you think could have another life?
Speaker: And the rights are free for us to pick it up.
Speaker: And Sue had had a book published on a very short term license, like a five year license, way back in something like 2008.
Speaker: And the license had expired and she just put it out on Kindle herself.
Speaker: So she published it on Amazon just so it was available, but wasn't really doing a load of promotion.
Speaker: And we offered it to Avon.
Speaker: And they said, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And they bought that book separately to her usual kind of three book contract.
Speaker: Sue updated it because obviously there's new technology now.
Speaker: 2000, we were probably all using those flip mobile phones again.
Speaker: We brought it up to date.
Speaker: We gave it a new title.
Speaker: We obviously gave it packaging that sat alongside all her recent books.
Speaker: And it's done incredibly well.
Speaker: And it's such a joy to be able to offer that later opportunity to an author.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And a sort of rebirth in her career.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: And I always say to authors, you know, I get asked a lot at events and things, if I self published a novel, is that a problem?
Speaker: You know, and I'm like, no, it's not, it's not a problem at all.
Speaker: Um, it will talk about that when you come to us, you know, as agents for representation.
Speaker: And if there's nothing we can do with that self-published novel and we need to move on to something new, then you never know later down the line if there might be an opportunity to get that out there to a much bigger readership once we've kind of built that author's profile.
Speaker: So it's really, you know, it's really pleasing that we were able to do that for Sue.
Speaker: Yeah, no, that's brilliant.
Speaker: And it's nice that that's been the sort of story of your RNA nomination as well.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: The other of my RNA authors that has had a really interesting career is on her second publisher.
Speaker: So she had a few books published with Orion.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: And actually she had a very different start because Orion came to us with an idea and said, do you have an author who might write this book for us?
Speaker: And I can talk about it now because we signed an NDA at the time.
Speaker: But basically, Mamma Mia 2, the film, was coming out.
Speaker: And they wanted someone to write a story about a woman who is obsessed with Mamma Mia.
Speaker: And, you know, girls are kind of, she goes to the Greek island where it was shot and she meets the locals and she falls in love.
Speaker: And it's just a gorgeous summer romantic novel.
Speaker: but they needed someone to write it in about six weeks.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's a very different process.
Speaker: And it's something that some publishers are doing, particularly in the more kind of commercial romantic fiction space where they come up with ideas and find authors to match.
Speaker: And yeah, so Annie Robertson, that was that author.
Speaker: She wrote a kind of sample chapter.
Speaker: We sent it back kind of within 24 hours of signing this MDA and stuff.
Speaker: And they were like, yeah, it's great.
Speaker: Let's go for it.
Speaker: And she dropped everything, including her poor son.
Speaker: And I was like, right, I'm writing this book in five weeks.
Speaker: And she would deliver five chapters every Friday.
Speaker: get the feedback again on Monday and work on the next five chapters, but also edit those she'd already written.
Speaker: I mean, it's incredible.
Speaker: Gosh, it's a lot of work.
Speaker: Intense, yeah, writing experience.
Speaker: But it was really worth it because we had the book, which is called My Mama Mia Summer, out to go alongside the film.
Speaker: And it sold really well in Sainsbury's where they put it alongside the Sun Queen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they really kind of sold it as a happy summer product and obviously the film did well as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We were able to sell that in translation too.
Speaker: So there are all sorts of opportunities out there.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's just, it's fascinating as an agent kind of being kept on your toes when stuff like that comes along.
Speaker: Yeah, it's those alternative kind of breaks in the industry and things like that.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And, you know, as an agent, I will, of course, sign someone for the book in front of me that they sent me.
Speaker: I'm also really signing them for their writing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And both Sue and Annie Robertson, I knew that,
Speaker: whatever they turned their hand to was something I wanted to get behind.
Speaker: And it's a joy to kind of go out in the industry and say to editors, look, I have these writers here, you know, Sue's, you know, pretty much fully committed to writing two books a year.
Speaker: But Annie Robertson, at the time that I took her on, was writing her own novel.
Speaker: But it was just also so nice to kind of pitch it to an editor when we met for coffee or something.
Speaker: And for her to come back to me and say, oh, do you think she'd want to write something that we have the idea for?
Speaker: And then she did a couple more books along those lines.
Speaker: and now has her own novels being published by Welbeck.
Speaker: So she's just got The Christmas at Lobster Bay publishing tomorrow.
Speaker: Oh yeah.
Speaker: She's adopted the two books a year pattern as well, which is what you often do in that market.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Is that a big selling point for publishers?
Speaker: If you as an agent go and speak to them and say, this author writes X number of books a year.
Speaker: Well, it's often the publishers that dictate that to us.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: So when my authors might be very willing or not to do two weeks a year, it's really down to the publisher to say, you know, if we want her, basically the romantic fiction market is ruled by the supermarkets.
Speaker: So if you get your paperbacks into the supermarkets and you are, you know, you're doing well, basically.
Speaker: But that's becoming an increasingly difficult space to get books into because it's so crowded already.
Speaker: And, you know, there are lots of brand name authors in there.
Speaker: So for Sue, she usually gets fairly solid supermarket support, and that's fantastic.
Speaker: And so we do do the summer book and the Christmas book every year.
Speaker: So she's delivering at the same time every year.
Speaker: She's publishing at the same time every year.
Speaker: For Annie Robertson, because she's much newer in that world of supermarkets,
Speaker: Um, we sort of take it book by book and we sort of decide, you know, when we signed the contract, we said, yes, there will be, we signed a three book contract and there was a summer and a Christmas book this year.
Speaker: And then next year we're still dithering over whether a third book should be a third one in the series of two that she's published so far this year, or whether we should look to a different direction.
Speaker: It's quite, it's, it's quite a tricky market to, uh,
Speaker: to kind of predict because things change so fast.
Speaker: And of course, over the last couple of years, the pandemic shut down the supermarkets or the supermarkets kind of stopped necessities during the spring of 2020.
Speaker: and took a very limited number of books, completely understandably.
Speaker: But that kind of wrecked the market for a lot of those books.
Speaker: And it's still, it's recovered.
Speaker: But I think supermarkets are still very cautious about how many books they'll take because we are still in the pandemic and people will still need essentials throughout the winter, particularly.
Speaker: So it's constantly...
Speaker: a challenge to kind of predict what people are going to be reading in that space and how well we can get the books to them via those supermarket sales slots.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And obviously, you know, places like W. Smith, particularly the travel shops were huge, but when everyone stopped traveling, that obviously folded and it's kind of recovering a bit, but again, it's very, very different to how it was two years ago.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: yeah yeah so two books a year quite a common thing for a romance author are they always um when romance is sort of one of those genres that's oddly seasonal so is it is it always christmas and summer most of the time yes um
Speaker: There are very distinct seasons in publishing anyway for all sorts of books.
Speaker: So I'm sure it's very obvious to most people that, you know, January we'll see all the new year, new you type books and all the kind of self-help and diet and blah, blah, blah.
Speaker: And then we have a kind of run from, it's always kind of big extended and I think, you know,
Speaker: we're running the risk of just everything blurring into the entire 12 months of the year.
Speaker: But from February to about June...
Speaker: we usually publish kind of debut literary fiction.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: That's interesting.
Speaker: Or debut books because it's obviously becoming increasingly crowded there too, but there was always the belief that there was more space in review pages around that time of year.
Speaker: And also the autumn is all about those big Christmas books.
Speaker: So, you know, I'm sure you're all aware that the Nigel Slater, the Jamie Oliver's, the big...
Speaker: kind of celeb memoirs, all of that stuff is published in autumn.
Speaker: And we have those kind of super Thursdays in September and October where 400 books are published on one day or something ridiculous like that.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: So, yeah, so we have a real...
Speaker: kind of set of unwritten publishing rules that we talk about in the industry about when books might be published and so for Sue and Annie their books to be published every summer and every Christmas just fits their market but if you're writing something very different um
Speaker: So what have I got?
Speaker: I'm just thinking ahead.
Speaker: I've got a lot of debuts next spring.
Speaker: I say a lot, you know, a handful, but that's quite a lot for one agent.
Speaker: So I have two big debuts in March and April and those places have been very kind of carefully chosen for them.
Speaker: And then I've got a
Speaker: debut novel from a short story, a previously short story writer called Bolly Babalow, publishing in June.
Speaker: And June is probably about the latest you can get away with putting a kind of big, bold, fresh novel into kind of readers' hands and into the retailers, really, because then we've got the run of summer before all the autumn books hit.
Speaker: So you're constantly looking at what's out there in the market more broadly, not just at your book and thinking,
Speaker: when is the best time to make people see this?
Speaker: You know, how visible will it be if it's autumn and all those celebrity faces are crowding our social media timelines and that kind of thing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's so interesting.
Speaker: I didn't realise that these things were so set in their sort of ways.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But we covered a lot of the sort of industry stuff.
Speaker: We've covered the individual work of some of your authors and that journey.
Speaker: Let's dial it back and focus in on you.
Speaker: The RNA is agent of the year.
Speaker: You've been in publishing for quite a long time now.
Speaker: Where did it all start for you?
Speaker: Oh God, it made me feel old.
Speaker: So it started for me when I was at university.
Speaker: I'm such a cliche, but I'd always loved books.
Speaker: I'd always loved reading.
Speaker: I was at university doing drama and English because I just didn't know what I wanted to do.
Speaker: I sort of thought I'll probably end up as a teacher, but I'm not sure I want to be with kids 24-7.
Speaker: So I hadn't really got any clue what I was going to do when I came out of my degree.
Speaker: I just went and did a degree to kind of stall, really, and try and work it out.
Speaker: And when I was at university, I needed a weekend job because I didn't have much money.
Speaker: And I took various weekend jobs at shops, uh,
Speaker: shops in the local town.
Speaker: So I was at university near Putney and I was working in Richmond and a Christmas job came up at Waterstones and obviously I would have loved to work there with all those books.
Speaker: So I got it and it was great.
Speaker: And then they kept me on afterwards.
Speaker: And when I finished my degree, I stayed at Waterstones for another kind of nine months and worked full time there.
Speaker: And one of my friends, we had a really great group of
Speaker: booksellers we were all really close friends and stuff you were a buyer at waterstones yeah so i was a bookseller and a buyer so i was you know behind the tills on the shop floor but i was also uh responsible for fiction so i was buying uh and it's it was so interesting because i hadn't clicked until i worked there that of course each branch has to be responsive to the demographic around it and which one is obviously extremely privileged people are quite
Speaker: knowledgeable and have had expensive educations and they love their kind of serious nonfiction and that kind of thing.
Speaker: You know, we had to stop the kind of big historical books.
Speaker: And I think that was the year that Life of Pi won the booker.
Speaker: So we had, we were drowning in Life of Pi.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it was literary fiction and serious nonfiction really that people brought around there.
Speaker: And that was really interesting to navigate because that wasn't really a world that I knew very well.
Speaker: Then one of my bookseller friends there was a writer and had an agent.
Speaker: And I met his agent at a gig at Shepherds Bush.
Speaker: So there was no formality about it at all.
Speaker: I just was introduced to her.
Speaker: She's Judith Murray at Green and Heaton.
Speaker: And I was like, oh, this is a job.
Speaker: I'm selling all these books.
Speaker: I've got absolutely no idea who's behind them apart from the author's.
Speaker: I have no idea about the publishing process, but I was really interested by it.
Speaker: And I asked her if I could come and do work experience.
Speaker: And she said, yes, come in.
Speaker: You know, basically she went on holiday for two weeks.
Speaker: I went and sat in her office and reorganized her filing system and read her questions.
Speaker: And that was it.
Speaker: I'm not sure even that her colleagues were fully aware that I was there.
Speaker: I just kind of went in and out.
Speaker: But I loved it.
Speaker: And I just thought, wow, to be an agent, you can represent
Speaker: So she had Sarah Waters, who I loved and still love.
Speaker: And then she also had some very commercial romantic fiction writing.
Speaker: So she had a real mix of authors.
Speaker: And there were people calling the agency, like Hugh Fanny Whittingstall from River Cottage at the time, about his comics.
Speaker: And I just thought, wow, so you can be an agent and you can represent
Speaker: pretty much exactly what you want.
Speaker: There's no restrictions to it.
Speaker: Whereas being an editor, you're often in a very particular role.
Speaker: So you do the literary fiction, you do the commercial fiction, maybe you might do a little bit of kind of narrative nonfiction if you're on the literary end of fiction, but there's not much freedom to
Speaker: Whereas as an agent, I can do cookery, I can do memoir, I can do romance.
Speaker: You know, it's brilliant.
Speaker: You can stretch yourself.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: And there's no one telling me, and you know, this isn't true of all agencies, but the two agencies I've worked with, they've just let me have free reign, which is maybe wise, maybe not.
Speaker: And, you know, they trust you to just see an idea in the case of nonfiction or see a novel in the case of fiction and think, yeah, I can find a publisher for that.
Speaker: So after doing work experience there, I went to the Writers and Artists Yearbook and I just printed out a cover letter and a CV.
Speaker: This was in the days for heavy emailing and mailed it across town, like everywhere I could find.
Speaker: And I got loads of lovely replies just being like, just me and my dog and, you know, we can't take anyone on, but good luck.
Speaker: So I got picked up by an agency called AP Watt.
Speaker: And I was so, so lucky to start there because they were the first ever literary agency to exist.
Speaker: They had come about because of a conversation between, I think it was Arthur Conan Doyle and Alexandra Watt.
Speaker: And Arthur Conan Doyle was complaining about his publisher.
Speaker: And Alexandra Watt was like, let me step in and just, you know, if you've got some beef with them, I'll sort it out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's kind of how a literary agent was born.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And because they were the oldest, the first literary agency, they had this incredible list of authors.
Speaker: So they had a lot of estates, which is, you know, when the author has died, but the books are still in copyright.
Speaker: And they had like Raja Kipling and P.G.
Speaker: Roadhouse and Sunset Maugham and Pearl Buck.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: And then they also had a real kind of impressive list of mostly literary fiction writers, some children, some nonfiction.
Speaker: So I ended up starting out at the agency that represented people like Zadie Smith, which was just incredible.
Speaker: You start out as a general assistant, you're at the photocopier 24 hours a day.
Speaker: And then you kind of grow up to be assistant to an agent and kind of learn their list and interact with their authors and look after their contracts and things.
Speaker: And then at a certain point, so I was probably three or four years down the line, they said, you know, if you want to start looking for your own authors, then go for it.
Speaker: And that was fantastic.
Speaker: And I had a boss who had a very particular taste and took on new authors very rarely.
Speaker: So I really had kind of, I was able to roam all over his submissions, see what I could find.
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: Because he just wasn't really that interested in taking on debuts.
Speaker: Well, yeah, he only took on the very, very particular literary stuff.
Speaker: And he had a big, healthy list of incredible authors.
Speaker: So he didn't need to add to it very much.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: But I thought, you know, literary fiction is where my heart is.
Speaker: And then you sit around waiting for incredible novels to come in and it just doesn't happen like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I went out and approached a few people about writing nonfiction books, which is what I love about representing nonfiction.
Speaker: You can read an incredible journalist.
Speaker: You can read a great blog post.
Speaker: You can read a viral piece online.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And if you think there's potential there to grow it into something book length, you can contact that author and say,
Speaker: have you thought about this?
Speaker: Would you like to meet and chat?
Speaker: I might have an idea for them.
Speaker: They might already be thinking about a book.
Speaker: So it's just a really fantastic way of being proactive about building your list while you wait for the incredible fiction writers to come in as well.
Speaker: Yes, because you never know how long that's going to take.
Speaker: Absolutely no idea.
Speaker: And, you know, I think one of the questions we also get asked a lot is how many people do you take on in any one year?
Speaker: And it's, there's absolutely no rule to it.
Speaker: Some years it's five, some years it's one.
Speaker: You just cannot predict it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's, you know, it's not, it's not, we take on X per year.
Speaker: It's how many, you know, great submissions do we get?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And you just don't know when something might come in and you'll be completely surprised by it.
Speaker: And you might be, you know, really snowed under, but you can't possibly let this thing go.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's coming in as an exception and you'll make time for it.
Speaker: And then other times you're kind of sitting around twiddling your thumbs just thinking,
Speaker: have I lost all sense of taste?
Speaker: Why is nothing I love coming in right now?
Speaker: And it feels a bit drier.
Speaker: But, you know, it's also subjective as well.
Speaker: You know, other agents are jumping on things in the meantime.
Speaker: Does that ever, because I hear about agent auctions, and I know with publishing sometimes if one publisher shows interest in something, lots of publishers suddenly put a bid in.
Speaker: purely because they've decided that that's been vetted by a publisher and it's probably quite good.
Speaker: Does that happen with agents in the same way?
Speaker: Where like if agents, if a lot of agents like one thing, will it then get a buzz and lots of agents will throw their hat in the ring?
Speaker: Well, I mean, first of all, to the point about publishers jumping on something because other publishers have, I think that's true of a couple of places, but in the main, most editors have integrity and think,
Speaker: is this a book that I love and I want to work on?
Speaker: Because they have to champion it throughout its lifetime.
Speaker: They have to edit it.
Speaker: They have to push it with their publicity and marketing teams.
Speaker: And they in turn have to kind of pitch it out to the wide world and get that appetite going for it.
Speaker: And I think it's really telling if someone's heart isn't in it.
Speaker: And I think as an agent as well,
Speaker: And so if I get a book, and it happens all the time, I get a book in and I think, yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker: I'm not 100% sure it's for me.
Speaker: And then I get a few follow-up emails being like, you know, I've had interest or I've now got an offer of representation.
Speaker: then it's very it's an encouragement of course to kind of read that quickly and move it up the pile but I will never offer to represent something just because someone else or various others have jumped on it because I won't be the right agent for it if I don't absolutely love it yeah and there are those beauty contests with agents where lots of agents are after the same thing so I think
Speaker: one of the ones that I will always remember is for the mermaid of Mrs. Hancock.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: By Imogen Hermes Gower.
Speaker: So she sent that out and, um, she wrote such a good cover letter.
Speaker: And I immediately thought, um,
Speaker: It's historical.
Speaker: It's got a mermaid in it.
Speaker: I just don't know if that's for me.
Speaker: But there was something about her letter that I just thought, but here's a really interesting writer.
Speaker: And there's something about it that just compels me.
Speaker: So I sent it to my Kindle, didn't get a chance to read it yet.
Speaker: And then a week later, she emailed and said, I've got serious interest.
Speaker: And I thought, right, now I'll jump on it.
Speaker: I read the chapters.
Speaker: I called in the whole manuscript.
Speaker: I loved the manuscript.
Speaker: And then, you know, suddenly I was one of 20 agents chasing that book.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: And Imogen was kind of meeting people and chatting to them and working out what was what.
Speaker: And it was...
Speaker: she didn't come with me in the end and i thought and i was gutted because i loved the book yeah i also thought you know that's okay i don't i don't really have any regrets over the books that i read on submission but don't sign that go on to do well i think absolutely fair enough and good for them and often they just weren't right for me personally and
Speaker: So another agent has done a great job with it and kind of getting it to the right publisher and the publisher making it a bestseller that wouldn't necessarily be the case if I'd taken it on.
Speaker: So you just can't, you know, rue the day over those things.
Speaker: Yeah, well, that's a very healthy way of looking at it.
Speaker: Here's a question for you.
Speaker: Have you personally ever thought about writing?
Speaker: So when I was at university, I used to read books, particularly ones that I picked up from Waterstones.
Speaker: So I read like Mirakami's Norwegian Wood.
Speaker: And I finished it and I was like, oh my God, that's so beautiful.
Speaker: And let me write a story.
Speaker: And I wrote a story that was basically a really poor derivative of whatever I just read.
Speaker: And I think that was always my issue.
Speaker: So as soon as I stepped into the agenting world, I was like, can't, I just can't write because I'll read something.
Speaker: It might even be on submission and I'll unconsciously copy it because I'm so unoriginal.
Speaker: And then I'll think, oh my goodness, this is great.
Speaker: And I'll send it out and everyone will be like, yeah, that's just like that book that's already published.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: The short answer is no, because I don't have the stamina.
Speaker: I'm so, so much happier reading my author's work and then, you know, working with them on it and editing and kind of giving them feedback and that sort of thing.
Speaker: And I don't have ultimate responsibility for that, but that's great.
Speaker: You know, the kind of commitment of an author to sit down, particularly when they have 10 other things going on and a day job and kids and whatever else it is,
Speaker: I just think, wow, that's incredible for them, but I can never do that.
Speaker: But there are lots of people in publishing who are doing it, and particularly on the editor's side, you know, editors writing novels and things like that.
Speaker: And my thought whenever I see one of those stories is just like, how do you have the time?
Speaker: Not only the time, but kind of the mental space to kind of separate, because it's such an all-consuming job and all my hours are taken up with, outside of, you know, the nine to five.
Speaker: I take it up with reading and editing really.
Speaker: And then also my child.
Speaker: So, um, yeah, I just, I just don't know when I could write.
Speaker: I mean, maybe, maybe one day, never say never.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: When I was, when I was small, I always thought I'd be an author, but for some reason I thought I'd be a sort of James Herriot ish author.
Speaker: And then I realized I'm a vet first and I wasn't going to do that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, there's still time.
Speaker: Yeah, who knows?
Speaker: Maybe a second career is waiting for me.
Speaker: Although I think training to be a vet takes like almost a decade.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a long time.
Speaker: I don't have that stamina either.
Speaker: So not for me, not for me.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So am I right in thinking you're not currently taking submissions?
Speaker: Yeah, so I have literally just closed my submissions until the end of the year.
Speaker: I've never done that.
Speaker: The only time I've ever closed submissions is when I went on maternity leave, understandably.
Speaker: That makes sense.
Speaker: And I just looked around.
Speaker: I've had quite a lot of deliveries recently.
Speaker: I looked around at what I've got on my plate.
Speaker: So I have deliveries from my authors and then from a couple of others.
Speaker: who I'm talking to with a kind of view to maybe representing them.
Speaker: I just thought I've got so much on my plate.
Speaker: There's not long till Christmas.
Speaker: I've got to just be honest and say I can't read anymore because it feels so much worse to have people send in something and then not be able to respond and let them down.
Speaker: So I just thought, yeah.
Speaker: But I may open again anyway because –
Speaker: Blake Freeman is going to do an online festival for writers and we are going to have kind of tips and tricks.
Speaker: We're going to do a couple of Ask Agents on Twitter.
Speaker: We're going to write some blog posts about ways that you can kind of, you know, find an agent or I'm going to write...
Speaker: a blog post myself on kind of money in publishing and kind of what to expect from a book deal and that kind of thing and the idea is just to be super open and accessible and it feels really wrong if I'm then like but don't send me anything so yeah I think I will probably review that but okay probably not get to reading anything until January anyway and let me close the office for Christmas anyway so yeah
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's always updated on the website.
Speaker: So you can always see which of the agents at Blake Friedman are open or not.
Speaker: So the submission pack at Blake Friedman, it's quite the, it's a, it's relatively standard one.
Speaker: It's cover letter, the synopsis, first 10,000 words.
Speaker: If you're doing nonfiction, there's a chapter plan and, and, um, chapter samples.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So here's a question I always ask agents when they come on, because it's really interesting how it varies.
Speaker: When you receive a submission, you open it up, what order do you look at the different parts and where do you put the most weight on?
Speaker: Well, I'm always cover letter and a great cover letter leads me on to the chapters.
Speaker: And after I read the chapters, I'll read the synopsis.
Speaker: So I think cover letters should pretty much do half the work in terms of just write a great pitch.
Speaker: And then I'm immediately excited about reading your chapters.
Speaker: And if I go into your chapters and I think I love the pitch, the writing's brilliant.
Speaker: Maybe, you know, the opening isn't perfect, but that doesn't matter because I just really like the idea.
Speaker: then I'll kind of call in the full manuscript.
Speaker: The synopsis is so interesting because I know a lot of people are really kind of really struggle with it and I don't envy them.
Speaker: We struggle over some of the similar stuff when we're pitching to publishers or putting those blurbs into our rights guide and that kind of thing for the book fairs.
Speaker: So the synopsis for me, it's really just a check that I'm reading this great story and I'm
Speaker: then a dragon doesn't come in, you know, chapter 10.
Speaker: So it's really just kind of ensuring that.
Speaker: And recently I think there's been a lot of fiction that's quite, I think troubled might be the wrong word, but it's about darker stuff.
Speaker: And I've represented some nonfiction books on darker stuff like domestic abuse and trauma.
Speaker: And I think people see my list and think, oh, well, I'll send to that fiction and that's absolutely fine.
Speaker: But it's hard to, if I read a great three chapters and then I go and read the synopsis and it's like, you know, they all die at the end.
Speaker: I just think, well, it's going to be really hard.
Speaker: So the synopsis is kind of a little, a practical tool for agents, I think, to understand where the story goes, to make sure that maybe if you're writing crime or thriller, for example, it needs that kind of pacey plot, that that plot is there.
Speaker: beyond those first three chapters and you know the general advice is to write everything into the synopsis including the ending including the reveals the twists whatever it is because we want to just make sure that there's nothing completely surprising about where the story goes from what we've read
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You don't want to be missold the thing.
Speaker: No, and it happens rarely, but it does happen.
Speaker: And some of the, um, pictures I've read in cover letters recently sound great.
Speaker: And then I've gone to the synopsis and I've just been a bit like, well, that's going to be tough.
Speaker: I think unfortunately the last couple of years have changed people's fiction reading tastes slightly.
Speaker: into an area that kind of feels safe and cozier and happier because the world is so awful.
Speaker: So yeah,
Speaker: it's very hard to look at memoir or fiction that is about particularly dark issues and think that I'm going to find a publisher for that at the moment.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And you're talking about the cover letter doing half the work, so that would be the pitch specifically.
Speaker: How long do you think a good pitch should be?
Speaker: For me, a kind of cover letter is probably about three good paragraphs.
Speaker: So you open with why you're sending to that agent,
Speaker: introducing your book, maybe using a couple of comparisons.
Speaker: So, you know, my book is X cross with Y or similar to, I don't know,
Speaker: Sam Rushdie and Ima Q and whatever it is that you want to quote.
Speaker: So that gives us a stronger sense of what the book is and why you sent it to us.
Speaker: Then that middle paragraph is the blurb.
Speaker: So I would say that's as if it's on the back of a book jacket.
Speaker: And if you're really struggling to pitch your book, you know, go into All Stones or go online to Amazon, bookshop.org, whatever.
Speaker: Snoop around books that are similar to yours and see how those publishers are pitching those stories.
Speaker: And use that to kind of help inform your own pitch.
Speaker: So they should be intriguing.
Speaker: You know, that's the place to make it a little bit tantalising, interesting, introduce your main characters, set up that main kind of narrative thread, you know, what big thing is going to be happening to them in this book.
Speaker: The final paragraph is about you as the author and kind of, you know, have you had any writing experience in terms of kind of short story competitions or writing courses?
Speaker: and it doesn't matter if you've had none of that, that's absolutely fine.
Speaker: Maybe if you've written a novel that might have required heavy research, so something historical, for example, a little note about your research might be quite interesting there.
Speaker: Anything that kind of validates your writing in your book is great, but again, if you don't have it, that's fine too.
Speaker: And then, yeah, that's all you need really.
Speaker: It's quite succinct and professional and direct and
Speaker: Yeah, just give us a sense of what your book is about because that's the first thing we are interested in.
Speaker: I think we get quite a few cover letters where the authors are just talking about themselves.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think it's nice that, you know, you went to this university or you have two cats or your mum loved the book or whatever, but I don't really care.
Speaker: I'm horribly brutal about it.
Speaker: I actually really care about what the story is first and foremost, and then I care about you as the author.
Speaker: I want to know all about you.
Speaker: but only once I've kind of read and loved your book or your proposal.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's very helpful for anyone thinking about submitting to you and I think submitting to any agent really.
Speaker: Yeah, I hope so.
Speaker: And as we approach the final question, I just have one more question.
Speaker: You're not currently open to submissions, possibly will be soon.
Speaker: We'll see.
Speaker: When you do open submissions again, are there any specific genres or styles that you will be looking for?
Speaker: So I would really like to find more contemporary romance.
Speaker: I've got three writers who are doing it really well, but I'd love to find more in that area.
Speaker: I'm always looking for great family stories.
Speaker: I just read Sorrow and Bliss.
Speaker: And I absolutely loved that book.
Speaker: I think it's so much more about complicated family than the blurb suggests.
Speaker: And it's really funny as well.
Speaker: Honestly, I'd like something fun, funny, uplifting would be nice, but it's not a requirement.
Speaker: Something that's quite joyful and it's joyful about humanity and our relationships with people.
Speaker: Because, you know, like everyone else, I am that boring person who has lived the pandemic as well and would like a bit of escapism.
Speaker: I don't think I'm, you know, I'm not after a whole other world to escape into, but I am after something that...
Speaker: It is emotionally investing and I can kind of get excited about reading, definitely.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And for anyone thinking about submitting to Juliet, Juliet does not represent fantasy, horror, sci-fi, dystopian.
Speaker: Did I miss anything?
Speaker: uh it's ya and crime and yeah most of that is covered by my colleagues as well so you know don't worry if you can't see that on my list go and have a look at the other agents of blake friedman and see what you can find there yes and that brings us on to the final question which is if juliet you were stranded on a desert island with one book which book would it be
Speaker: I was absolutely pulled by this question because I've never, I've never in my entire life been able to have a favorite sing a single favorite book.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: And even if I had, that being the only one I take to a desert island is a whole other thing, isn't it?
Speaker: So I was talking about this yesterday with colleagues.
Speaker: And I don't know if it's interesting to tell you why I landed on why I landed.
Speaker: Oh, I want to hear it.
Speaker: Yeah, okay.
Speaker: At first I thought, how about A Fine Mammoth by Rent and Mystery?
Speaker: It's a novel I absolutely love.
Speaker: It's full of humility, but it's ultimately quite sad.
Speaker: yeah and i just thought if i'm not in the mood for that on any one day then how do we get around that my other favorite novel is uh heartburn by nora effron it's so funny and so brilliant and it's got a bit of food in there which i love as well but again if i'm not in the mood for that sardonic american voice how am i gonna you know how am i gonna take anything from it so i came to the conclusion that i'd like to take a book of
Speaker: poetry and i know nothing about poetry i'm totally not a reader of poetry okay but there have been a couple of poets that just crossed my path in terms of kind of you know spotting something by them online um so mary oliver who died quite recently and uh you know after her death quite a few papers and the intellect quoted her poems and i just thought there's something
Speaker: really lovely about those.
Speaker: They evoke a real sense of place and a real mood.
Speaker: And that's what I kind of loved about the idea of taking a book of poetry is that you could dip in and find a poem for your mood.
Speaker: And there's lots offered there.
Speaker: It won't just be kind of one novel, one feeling.
Speaker: it could be that, you know, if you need a kind of bit of a melancholy poem one day, then hopefully there'll be something there for that.
Speaker: If you need something completely irreverent about a dog, Mary Oliver also loved her dog.
Speaker: So, so, um, I think that's what I do.
Speaker: I take a collected book of poetry, i.e.
Speaker: the biggest book I can find.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, and I was thinking Emily Dickinson or Mary Oliver, one of those.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: It's a little bit of a cop out, but I couldn't honestly land on a single novel.
Speaker: So yeah, there we go.
Speaker: I like your rationale.
Speaker: And also as someone who's not, you know, you don't read that much poetry, it would be a sort of journey for you as well, learning that kind of art form.
Speaker: And maybe I'd hate it and kick myself.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But I'm willing to find out.
Speaker: Yeah, that's the risk.
Speaker: The risk you've got to take.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, it's a great answer.
Speaker: Very, very well thought out.
Speaker: Thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your experiences and your knowledge and news with us.
Speaker: Thank you so much for having me and apologies for the stinking cold.
Speaker: That's all right.
Speaker: It's going around.
Speaker: Yeah, it is.
Speaker: We all share the fun.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If anyone listening wants to keep up with Juliet and her latest news, what's going on with her, you can follow her on Twitter at Juliet Pickering.
Speaker: You can also follow the agency at Blake Friedman that has two N's at the end of it.
Speaker: And if you're looking to submit, head over to their website and read through the submission guidelines.
Speaker: If it is fantasy or one of those prohibited things that Judith doesn't want, check out the other agents at Blake Friedman.
Speaker: They might have what you're looking for.
Speaker: If you want to keep up with everything with this podcast, you can follow us on Twitter at RightAndWrongUK and on Instagram at RightAndWrongPodcast.
Speaker: Thanks again, Juliet.
Speaker: It's been such a pleasure chatting with you.
Speaker: And thanks to everyone listening.
Speaker: We will see you next time.
Speaker: Bye-bye.
