Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
#42 - Juliet Pickering
268 Plays3 years ago
Adult literary agent and the RNA's Agent of the Year 2021, Juliet Pickering drops in to chat about the exciting year that lead up to her being awarded Agent of the Year. We talk about a couple of her RNA authors, Sue Moorcroft and Annie Robertson, and their journey to publication as well as the wider industry and its seasonality. And we find out exactly how Juliet approaches a submission at Blake Friedmann and what she thinks are best practices for authors to focus on.
Signing up to the Patreon will give you access to the Discord server, where you'll be able to interact directly with Jamie as well as many of the previous agents, authors and editors who have been on the show. You'll also be able to see who the upcoming guests are and put forward questions for Jamie to ask them.
Get a whole month with WriteMentor's Hub for free using the coupon code 'Write&Wrong'.
The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes
Jamie, Melissa and Noami talk about the best and the worst writing tropes!
Click here to find all of our guests' books as well as the desert island library over at bookshop.org.
Click on this referral link to get 30% off your first three months with Zencastr.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Juliet Pickering's Award
00:00:00
Speaker
So our podcast is called Right and Wrong.
00:00:02
Speaker
Are these your notes?
00:00:03
Speaker
These are your notes about what we're going to say.
00:00:06
Speaker
What does it say?
00:00:06
Speaker
I thought it would be a good... I didn't even get the idea.
00:00:12
Speaker
Maybe I can just ask you the question.
00:00:16
Speaker
It's going well.
00:00:16
Speaker
It's going really well.
00:00:22
Speaker
Hello and thanks for tuning in to this week's episode of the Right and Wrong podcast.
00:00:27
Speaker
I'm Jamie and joining me today is the Romantic Novelists Association's Agent of the Year, Juliet Pickering.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hello.
00:00:36
Speaker
Hi Juliet.
00:00:37
Speaker
Hi.
00:00:37
Speaker
Congratulations.
00:00:39
Speaker
Thank you.
00:00:39
Speaker
Thank you very much.
00:00:40
Speaker
It was a big surprise.
00:00:41
Speaker
How does it feel?
00:00:42
Speaker
It feels, um, I have only walked on red carpet since it was announced.
00:00:49
Speaker
Um,
00:00:50
Speaker
I refuse to drink anything but champagne.
00:00:52
Speaker
So yeah, it's all been extremely glamorous.
00:00:56
Speaker
Sounds expensive.
00:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, it actually felt really fun.
00:01:00
Speaker
I was at home, unfortunately.
00:01:02
Speaker
I'd just been recovering from a bug that my toddler gave me kindly.
00:01:06
Speaker
And so I had half a Twix in my pyjamas when it was announced.
00:01:11
Speaker
And that was my celebration.
00:01:13
Speaker
But it's been absolutely lovely.
00:01:15
Speaker
And yeah, my authors are just absolute stars.
00:01:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:01:20
Speaker
especially the ones that are part of the RNA
Revamping Sue Walker's Career
00:01:23
Speaker
that gave me the award.
00:01:23
Speaker
So yeah, it was a joy.
00:01:25
Speaker
Amazing.
00:01:25
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.
00:01:36
Speaker
It's such a mutual thing.
00:01:38
Speaker
You know what I mean?
00:01:39
Speaker
Yeah, it really is.
00:01:40
Speaker
I mean, one of the main reasons I got this award was my author, Sue Walker.
00:01:46
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.
00:01:54
Speaker
She'd had an agent previously and she'd also sold some books direct to an independent publisher herself before that.
00:02:00
Speaker
And so she had quite a kind of publishing history.
00:02:03
Speaker
And my colleague, Carol Blake, was a very active member of the RNA when she was alive.
00:02:08
Speaker
And she knew Sue and Sue was sort of thinking about writing again and got in touch with her.
00:02:14
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.
00:02:24
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.
00:02:35
Speaker
It wasn't...
00:02:37
Speaker
the kind of classic woman pining for a man waiting to be swept off her feet and rescued from her sad single life.
00:02:44
Speaker
Like I haven't really talked with those stories at all.
00:02:47
Speaker
And they were very much what I was reading on submission before Sue came along.
00:02:53
Speaker
And then
00:02:54
Speaker
Suze were just, they were older women.
00:02:57
Speaker
They weren't just kind of early 20-somethings.
00:02:59
Speaker
These women, the story that I first read, this woman was struggling financially.
00:03:03
Speaker
And I thought, yeah, I mean, so many people can relate to that.
00:03:07
Speaker
And yet she can also have all this other stuff going on in her life.
00:03:11
Speaker
She can keep bumping into her friend's boss, wondering if there's a spark between them, you know.
00:03:16
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.
Publishing Success Stories
00:03:24
Speaker
This is an extremely long way of explaining.
00:03:27
Speaker
But when Sue came along, you know, it was my job to kind of revive and revamp her career a bit.
00:03:34
Speaker
Oh, that's interesting.
00:03:36
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.
00:03:44
Speaker
So, you know, Sue and I found her a publisher at HarperCollins, Avon, and she
00:03:51
Speaker
She has, you know, we were really committed to growing her readership and they've done brilliantly at it.
00:03:56
Speaker
So it's very, yeah, it's been fantastic.
00:03:59
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.
00:04:09
Speaker
to make sure that we increase her sales numbers each time.
00:04:12
Speaker
She's my hardest working author.
00:04:13
Speaker
She's publishing and writing two books a year.
00:04:16
Speaker
In fact, this year she's had three, which is incredible.
00:04:20
Speaker
So we had a really unusual opportunity whereby Avon, you know, now we're sort of,
00:04:27
Speaker
12 books or something down the line with them.
00:04:30
Speaker
They said, is there anything on your backlist, Sue, that you published a long time ago that you think could have another life?
00:04:37
Speaker
And the rights are free for us to pick it up.
00:04:39
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.
00:04:49
Speaker
And the license had expired and she just put it out on Kindle herself.
00:04:53
Speaker
So she published it on Amazon just so it was available, but wasn't really doing a load of promotion.
00:04:59
Speaker
And we offered it to Avon.
00:05:02
Speaker
And they said, yeah, absolutely.
00:05:04
Speaker
And they bought that book separately to her usual kind of three book contract.
00:05:08
Speaker
Sue updated it because obviously there's new technology now.
00:05:11
Speaker
2000, we were probably all using those flip mobile phones again.
00:05:17
Speaker
We brought it up to date.
00:05:20
Speaker
We gave it a new title.
00:05:21
Speaker
We obviously gave it packaging that sat alongside all her recent books.
00:05:26
Speaker
And it's done incredibly well.
00:05:28
Speaker
And it's such a joy to be able to offer that later opportunity to an author.
00:05:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:34
Speaker
And a sort of rebirth in her career.
00:05:37
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:05:38
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?
00:05:46
Speaker
You know, and I'm like, no, it's not, it's not a problem at all.
00:05:50
Speaker
Um, it will talk about that when you come to us, you know, as agents for representation.
00:05:56
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.
00:06:10
Speaker
So it's really, you know, it's really pleasing that we were able to do that for Sue.
Innovative Book Projects
00:06:15
Speaker
Yeah, no, that's brilliant.
00:06:16
Speaker
And it's nice that that's been the sort of story of your RNA nomination as well.
00:06:23
Speaker
Yeah, yeah.
00:06:24
Speaker
The other of my RNA authors that has had a really interesting career is on her second publisher.
00:06:32
Speaker
So she had a few books published with Orion.
00:06:34
Speaker
Okay.
00:06:35
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?
00:06:45
Speaker
And I can talk about it now because we signed an NDA at the time.
00:06:49
Speaker
But basically, Mamma Mia 2, the film, was coming out.
00:06:53
Speaker
And they wanted someone to write a story about a woman who is obsessed with Mamma Mia.
00:06:58
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.
00:07:07
Speaker
And it's just a gorgeous summer romantic novel.
00:07:10
Speaker
but they needed someone to write it in about six weeks.
00:07:13
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:07:14
Speaker
Yeah.
00:07:15
Speaker
So that's a very different process.
00:07:17
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.
00:07:26
Speaker
And yeah, so Annie Robertson, that was that author.
00:07:31
Speaker
She wrote a kind of sample chapter.
00:07:33
Speaker
We sent it back kind of within 24 hours of signing this MDA and stuff.
00:07:38
Speaker
And they were like, yeah, it's great.
00:07:40
Speaker
Let's go for it.
00:07:41
Speaker
And she dropped everything, including her poor son.
00:07:45
Speaker
And I was like, right, I'm writing this book in five weeks.
00:07:50
Speaker
And she would deliver five chapters every Friday.
00:07:53
Speaker
get the feedback again on Monday and work on the next five chapters, but also edit those she'd already written.
00:07:59
Speaker
I mean, it's incredible.
00:08:00
Speaker
Gosh, it's a lot of work.
00:08:01
Speaker
Intense, yeah, writing experience.
00:08:03
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.
00:08:11
Speaker
And it sold really well in Sainsbury's where they put it alongside the Sun Queen.
00:08:15
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:16
Speaker
So they really kind of sold it as a happy summer product and obviously the film did well as well.
00:08:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:23
Speaker
We were able to sell that in translation too.
00:08:25
Speaker
So there are all sorts of opportunities out there.
00:08:28
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:30
Speaker
And it's just, it's fascinating as an agent kind of being kept on your toes when stuff like that comes along.
00:08:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's those alternative kind of breaks in the industry and things like that.
00:08:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:42
Speaker
And, you know, as an agent, I will, of course, sign someone for the book in front of me that they sent me.
00:08:48
Speaker
I'm also really signing them for their writing.
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah.
00:08:51
Speaker
And both Sue and Annie Robertson, I knew that,
00:08:56
Speaker
whatever they turned their hand to was something I wanted to get behind.
Publishing Industry Insights
00:09:01
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.
00:09:11
Speaker
But Annie Robertson, at the time that I took her on, was writing her own novel.
00:09:15
Speaker
But it was just also so nice to kind of pitch it to an editor when we met for coffee or something.
00:09:21
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?
00:09:28
Speaker
And then she did a couple more books along those lines.
00:09:31
Speaker
and now has her own novels being published by Welbeck.
00:09:35
Speaker
So she's just got The Christmas at Lobster Bay publishing tomorrow.
00:09:41
Speaker
Oh yeah.
00:09:42
Speaker
She's adopted the two books a year pattern as well, which is what you often do in that market.
00:09:48
Speaker
So yeah.
00:09:49
Speaker
Is that a big selling point for publishers?
00:09:52
Speaker
If you as an agent go and speak to them and say, this author writes X number of books a year.
00:09:58
Speaker
Well, it's often the publishers that dictate that to us.
00:10:01
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:10:01
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.
00:10:14
Speaker
So if you get your paperbacks into the supermarkets and you are, you know, you're doing well, basically.
00:10:20
Speaker
But that's becoming an increasingly difficult space to get books into because it's so crowded already.
00:10:26
Speaker
And, you know, there are lots of brand name authors in there.
00:10:30
Speaker
So for Sue, she usually gets fairly solid supermarket support, and that's fantastic.
00:10:36
Speaker
And so we do do the summer book and the Christmas book every year.
00:10:40
Speaker
So she's delivering at the same time every year.
00:10:42
Speaker
She's publishing at the same time every year.
00:10:45
Speaker
For Annie Robertson, because she's much newer in that world of supermarkets,
00:10:50
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.
00:11:02
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.
00:11:13
Speaker
It's quite, it's, it's quite a tricky market to, uh,
00:11:17
Speaker
to kind of predict because things change so fast.
00:11:20
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.
00:11:36
Speaker
and took a very limited number of books, completely understandably.
00:11:40
Speaker
But that kind of wrecked the market for a lot of those books.
00:11:44
Speaker
And it's still, it's recovered.
00:11:47
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.
00:11:57
Speaker
So it's constantly...
00:12:00
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.
00:12:08
Speaker
Sure.
00:12:09
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.
00:12:25
Speaker
So yeah.
00:12:26
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
00:12:46
Speaker
There are very distinct seasons in publishing anyway for all sorts of books.
00:12:51
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.
00:13:02
Speaker
And then we have a kind of run from, it's always kind of big extended and I think, you know,
00:13:08
Speaker
we're running the risk of just everything blurring into the entire 12 months of the year.
00:13:13
Speaker
But from February to about June...
00:13:17
Speaker
we usually publish kind of debut literary fiction.
00:13:20
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:13:21
Speaker
That's interesting.
00:13:22
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.
00:13:34
Speaker
And also the autumn is all about those big Christmas books.
00:13:38
Speaker
So, you know, I'm sure you're all aware that the Nigel Slater, the Jamie Oliver's, the big...
00:13:44
Speaker
kind of celeb memoirs, all of that stuff is published in autumn.
00:13:48
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.
00:13:56
Speaker
Wow.
00:13:57
Speaker
So, yeah, so we have a real...
00:14:01
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
00:14:20
Speaker
So what have I got?
00:14:21
Speaker
I'm just thinking ahead.
00:14:23
Speaker
I've got a lot of debuts next spring.
00:14:25
Speaker
I say a lot, you know, a handful, but that's quite a lot for one agent.
00:14:30
Speaker
So I have two big debuts in March and April and those places have been very kind of carefully chosen for them.
00:14:37
Speaker
And then I've got a
00:14:39
Speaker
debut novel from a short story, a previously short story writer called Bolly Babalow, publishing in June.
00:14:46
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.
00:14:59
Speaker
So you're constantly looking at what's out there in the market more broadly, not just at your book and thinking,
00:15:05
Speaker
when is the best time to make people
Juliet's Career Path in Publishing
00:15:08
Speaker
see this?
00:15:08
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.
00:15:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:17
Speaker
That's so interesting.
00:15:18
Speaker
I didn't realise that these things were so set in their sort of ways.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:22
Speaker
Yeah.
00:15:24
Speaker
But we covered a lot of the sort of industry stuff.
00:15:26
Speaker
We've covered the individual work of some of your authors and that journey.
00:15:31
Speaker
Let's dial it back and focus in on you.
00:15:35
Speaker
The RNA is agent of the year.
00:15:38
Speaker
You've been in publishing for quite a long time now.
00:15:41
Speaker
Where did it all start for you?
00:15:44
Speaker
Oh God, it made me feel old.
00:15:47
Speaker
So it started for me when I was at university.
00:15:51
Speaker
I'm such a cliche, but I'd always loved books.
00:15:55
Speaker
I'd always loved reading.
00:15:55
Speaker
I was at university doing drama and English because I just didn't know what I wanted to do.
00:16:03
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.
00:16:10
Speaker
So I hadn't really got any clue what I was going to do when I came out of my degree.
00:16:14
Speaker
I just went and did a degree to kind of stall, really, and try and work it out.
00:16:21
Speaker
And when I was at university, I needed a weekend job because I didn't have much money.
00:16:28
Speaker
And I took various weekend jobs at shops, uh,
00:16:32
Speaker
shops in the local town.
00:16:33
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.
00:16:44
Speaker
So I got it and it was great.
00:16:45
Speaker
And then they kept me on afterwards.
00:16:47
Speaker
And when I finished my degree, I stayed at Waterstones for another kind of nine months and worked full time there.
00:16:53
Speaker
And one of my friends, we had a really great group of
00:16:57
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
00:17:27
Speaker
knowledgeable and have had expensive educations and they love their kind of serious nonfiction and that kind of thing.
00:17:34
Speaker
You know, we had to stop the kind of big historical books.
00:17:37
Speaker
And I think that was the year that Life of Pi won the booker.
00:17:41
Speaker
So we had, we were drowning in Life of Pi.
00:17:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:46
Speaker
So it was literary fiction and serious nonfiction really that people brought around there.
00:17:51
Speaker
And that was really interesting to navigate because that wasn't really a world that I knew very well.
00:17:55
Speaker
Then one of my bookseller friends there was a writer and had an agent.
00:17:59
Speaker
And I met his agent at a gig at Shepherds Bush.
00:18:03
Speaker
So there was no formality about it at all.
00:18:06
Speaker
I just was introduced to her.
00:18:08
Speaker
She's Judith Murray at Green and Heaton.
00:18:11
Speaker
And I was like, oh, this is a job.
00:18:16
Speaker
I'm selling all these books.
00:18:18
Speaker
I've got absolutely no idea who's behind them apart from the author's.
00:18:22
Speaker
I have no idea about the publishing process, but I was really interested by it.
00:18:26
Speaker
And I asked her if I could come and do work experience.
00:18:29
Speaker
And she said, yes, come in.
00:18:31
Speaker
You know, basically she went on holiday for two weeks.
00:18:33
Speaker
I went and sat in her office and reorganized her filing system and read her questions.
00:18:37
Speaker
And that was it.
00:18:39
Speaker
I'm not sure even that her colleagues were fully aware that I was there.
00:18:43
Speaker
I just kind of went in and out.
00:18:46
Speaker
But I loved it.
00:18:47
Speaker
And I just thought, wow, to be an agent, you can represent
00:18:51
Speaker
So she had Sarah Waters, who I loved and still love.
00:18:55
Speaker
And then she also had some very commercial romantic fiction writing.
00:18:58
Speaker
So she had a real mix of authors.
00:19:01
Speaker
And there were people calling the agency, like Hugh Fanny Whittingstall from River Cottage at the time, about his comics.
00:19:07
Speaker
And I just thought, wow, so you can be an agent and you can represent
00:19:12
Speaker
pretty much exactly what you want.
00:19:15
Speaker
There's no restrictions to it.
00:19:17
Speaker
Whereas being an editor, you're often in a very particular role.
00:19:20
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
00:19:31
Speaker
Whereas as an agent, I can do cookery, I can do memoir, I can do romance.
00:19:36
Speaker
You know, it's brilliant.
00:19:37
Speaker
You can stretch yourself.
00:19:39
Speaker
Exactly.
00:19:39
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.
00:19:49
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.
00:20:01
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.
00:20:08
Speaker
This was in the days for heavy emailing and mailed it across town, like everywhere I could find.
00:20:14
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.
00:20:19
Speaker
So I got picked up by an agency called AP Watt.
00:20:23
Speaker
And I was so, so lucky to start there because they were the first ever literary agency to exist.
00:20:31
Speaker
They had come about because of a conversation between, I think it was Arthur Conan Doyle and Alexandra Watt.
00:20:37
Speaker
And Arthur Conan Doyle was complaining about his publisher.
00:20:40
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.
00:20:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:47
Speaker
And that's kind of how a literary agent was born.
00:20:50
Speaker
That's cool.
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:52
Speaker
And because they were the oldest, the first literary agency, they had this incredible list of authors.
00:20:58
Speaker
So they had a lot of estates, which is, you know, when the author has died, but the books are still in copyright.
00:21:04
Speaker
And they had like Raja Kipling and P.G.
00:21:06
Speaker
Roadhouse and Sunset Maugham and Pearl Buck.
00:21:09
Speaker
Oh, wow.
00:21:09
Speaker
And then they also had a real kind of impressive list of mostly literary fiction writers, some children, some nonfiction.
00:21:21
Speaker
So I ended up starting out at the agency that represented people like Zadie Smith, which was just incredible.
00:21:30
Speaker
You start out as a general assistant, you're at the photocopier 24 hours a day.
00:21:34
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.
00:21:46
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.
00:21:57
Speaker
And that was fantastic.
00:21:58
Speaker
And I had a boss who had a very particular taste and took on new authors very rarely.
00:22:05
Speaker
So I really had kind of, I was able to roam all over his submissions, see what I could find.
00:22:11
Speaker
Oh, okay.
00:22:12
Speaker
Because he just wasn't really that interested in taking on debuts.
00:22:15
Speaker
Well, yeah, he only took on the very, very particular literary stuff.
00:22:21
Speaker
And he had a big, healthy list of incredible authors.
00:22:24
Speaker
So he didn't need to add to it very much.
00:22:26
Speaker
Sure.
00:22:27
Speaker
But I thought, you know, literary fiction is where my heart is.
00:22:29
Speaker
And then you sit around waiting for incredible novels to come in and it just doesn't happen like that.
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:35
Speaker
So I went out and approached a few people about writing nonfiction books, which is what I love about representing nonfiction.
00:22:43
Speaker
You can read an incredible journalist.
00:22:45
Speaker
You can read a great blog post.
00:22:47
Speaker
You can read a viral piece online.
00:22:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:22:50
Speaker
And if you think there's potential there to grow it into something book length, you can contact that author and say,
00:22:58
Speaker
have you thought about this?
00:22:59
Speaker
Would you like to meet and chat?
00:23:01
Speaker
I might have an idea for them.
00:23:03
Speaker
They might already be thinking about a book.
00:23:05
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.
Challenges in Agenting
00:23:14
Speaker
Yes, because you never know how long that's going to take.
00:23:17
Speaker
Absolutely no idea.
00:23:18
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?
00:23:23
Speaker
And it's, there's absolutely no rule to it.
00:23:26
Speaker
Some years it's five, some years it's one.
00:23:29
Speaker
You just cannot predict it.
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:31
Speaker
It's, you know, it's not, it's not, we take on X per year.
00:23:34
Speaker
It's how many, you know, great submissions do we get?
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
00:23:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:40
Speaker
And you just don't know when something might come in and you'll be completely surprised by it.
00:23:44
Speaker
And you might be, you know, really snowed under, but you can't possibly let this thing go.
00:23:50
Speaker
Yeah.
00:23:50
Speaker
So it's coming in as an exception and you'll make time for it.
00:23:54
Speaker
And then other times you're kind of sitting around twiddling your thumbs just thinking,
00:23:58
Speaker
have I lost all sense of taste?
00:24:01
Speaker
Why is nothing I love coming in right now?
00:24:05
Speaker
And it feels a bit drier.
00:24:06
Speaker
But, you know, it's also subjective as well.
00:24:09
Speaker
You know, other agents are jumping on things in the meantime.
00:24:12
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.
00:24:26
Speaker
purely because they've decided that that's been vetted by a publisher and it's probably quite good.
00:24:31
Speaker
Does that happen with agents in the same way?
00:24:33
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?
00:24:41
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,
00:24:56
Speaker
is this a book that I love and I want to work on?
00:24:58
Speaker
Because they have to champion it throughout its lifetime.
00:25:02
Speaker
They have to edit it.
00:25:04
Speaker
They have to push it with their publicity and marketing teams.
00:25:08
Speaker
And they in turn have to kind of pitch it out to the wide world and get that appetite going for it.
00:25:14
Speaker
And I think it's really telling if someone's heart isn't in it.
00:25:19
Speaker
And I think as an agent as well,
00:25:21
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.
00:25:28
Speaker
I'm not 100% sure it's for me.
00:25:30
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.
00:25:36
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
00:26:03
Speaker
one of the ones that I will always remember is for the mermaid of Mrs. Hancock.
00:26:07
Speaker
Okay.
00:26:08
Speaker
By Imogen Hermes Gower.
00:26:10
Speaker
So she sent that out and, um, she wrote such a good cover letter.
00:26:16
Speaker
And I immediately thought, um,
00:26:18
Speaker
It's historical.
00:26:19
Speaker
It's got a mermaid in it.
00:26:21
Speaker
I just don't know if that's for me.
00:26:23
Speaker
But there was something about her letter that I just thought, but here's a really interesting writer.
00:26:29
Speaker
And there's something about it that just compels me.
00:26:32
Speaker
So I sent it to my Kindle, didn't get a chance to read it yet.
00:26:36
Speaker
And then a week later, she emailed and said, I've got serious interest.
00:26:41
Speaker
And I thought, right, now I'll jump on it.
00:26:43
Speaker
I read the chapters.
00:26:44
Speaker
I called in the whole manuscript.
00:26:45
Speaker
I loved the manuscript.
00:26:47
Speaker
And then, you know, suddenly I was one of 20 agents chasing that book.
00:26:53
Speaker
Wow.
00:26:55
Speaker
And Imogen was kind of meeting people and chatting to them and working out what was what.
00:26:59
Speaker
And it was...
00:27:02
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
00:27:23
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.
00:27:32
Speaker
So you just can't, you know, rue the day over those things.
00:27:36
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's a very healthy way of looking at it.
00:27:39
Speaker
Here's a question for you.
00:27:40
Speaker
Have you personally ever thought about writing?
00:27:48
Speaker
So when I was at university, I used to read books, particularly ones that I picked up from Waterstones.
00:27:57
Speaker
So I read like Mirakami's Norwegian Wood.
00:28:00
Speaker
And I finished it and I was like, oh my God, that's so beautiful.
00:28:04
Speaker
And let me write a story.
00:28:05
Speaker
And I wrote a story that was basically a really poor derivative of whatever I just read.
00:28:12
Speaker
And I think that was always my issue.
00:28:14
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.
00:28:20
Speaker
It might even be on submission and I'll unconsciously copy it because I'm so unoriginal.
00:28:25
Speaker
And then I'll think, oh my goodness, this is great.
00:28:27
Speaker
And I'll send it out and everyone will be like, yeah, that's just like that book that's already published.
00:28:32
Speaker
So, um,
00:28:33
Speaker
The short answer is no, because I don't have the stamina.
00:28:38
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.
00:28:48
Speaker
And I don't have ultimate responsibility for that, but that's great.
00:28:51
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,
00:29:01
Speaker
I just think, wow, that's incredible for them, but I can never do that.
Juliet's Personal Reflections
00:29:06
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.
00:29:13
Speaker
And my thought whenever I see one of those stories is just like, how do you have the time?
00:29:19
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.
00:29:30
Speaker
I take it up with reading and editing really.
00:29:32
Speaker
And then also my child.
00:29:33
Speaker
So, um, yeah, I just, I just don't know when I could write.
00:29:38
Speaker
I mean, maybe, maybe one day, never say never.
00:29:41
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:42
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:43
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.
00:29:49
Speaker
And then I realized I'm a vet first and I wasn't going to do that.
00:29:53
Speaker
Yeah.
00:29:54
Speaker
Well, there's still time.
00:29:55
Speaker
Yeah, who knows?
00:29:57
Speaker
Maybe a second career is waiting for me.
00:29:59
Speaker
Although I think training to be a vet takes like almost a decade.
00:30:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's a long time.
00:30:04
Speaker
I don't have that stamina either.
00:30:06
Speaker
So not for me, not for me.
00:30:08
Speaker
Yeah.
00:30:09
Speaker
So am I right in thinking you're not currently taking submissions?
00:30:14
Speaker
Yeah, so I have literally just closed my submissions until the end of the year.
00:30:20
Speaker
I've never done that.
00:30:22
Speaker
The only time I've ever closed submissions is when I went on maternity leave, understandably.
00:30:25
Speaker
That makes sense.
00:30:27
Speaker
And I just looked around.
00:30:30
Speaker
I've had quite a lot of deliveries recently.
00:30:31
Speaker
I looked around at what I've got on my plate.
00:30:34
Speaker
So I have deliveries from my authors and then from a couple of others.
00:30:38
Speaker
who I'm talking to with a kind of view to maybe representing them.
00:30:42
Speaker
I just thought I've got so much on my plate.
00:30:44
Speaker
There's not long till Christmas.
00:30:45
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.
00:30:55
Speaker
So I just thought, yeah.
00:30:57
Speaker
But I may open again anyway because –
00:31:03
Speaker
Blake Freeman is going to do an online festival for writers and we are going to have kind of tips and tricks.
Future Submissions and Advice
00:31:11
Speaker
We're going to do a couple of Ask Agents on Twitter.
00:31:14
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...
00:31:22
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
00:31:45
Speaker
Sure.
00:31:46
Speaker
Yeah.
00:31:46
Speaker
And that's always updated on the website.
00:31:49
Speaker
So you can always see which of the agents at Blake Friedman are open or not.
00:31:54
Speaker
So the submission pack at Blake Friedman, it's quite the, it's a, it's relatively standard one.
00:32:00
Speaker
It's cover letter, the synopsis, first 10,000 words.
00:32:04
Speaker
If you're doing nonfiction, there's a chapter plan and, and, um, chapter samples.
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah.
00:32:10
Speaker
So here's a question I always ask agents when they come on, because it's really interesting how it varies.
00:32:16
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?
00:32:27
Speaker
Well, I'm always cover letter and a great cover letter leads me on to the chapters.
00:32:33
Speaker
And after I read the chapters, I'll read the synopsis.
00:32:37
Speaker
So I think cover letters should pretty much do half the work in terms of just write a great pitch.
00:32:43
Speaker
And then I'm immediately excited about reading your chapters.
00:32:46
Speaker
And if I go into your chapters and I think I love the pitch, the writing's brilliant.
00:32:51
Speaker
Maybe, you know, the opening isn't perfect, but that doesn't matter because I just really like the idea.
00:32:56
Speaker
then I'll kind of call in the full manuscript.
00:33:00
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.
00:33:08
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.
00:33:17
Speaker
So the synopsis for me, it's really just a check that I'm reading this great story and I'm
00:33:25
Speaker
then a dragon doesn't come in, you know, chapter 10.
00:33:29
Speaker
So it's really just kind of ensuring that.
00:33:32
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.
00:33:40
Speaker
And I've represented some nonfiction books on darker stuff like domestic abuse and trauma.
00:33:46
Speaker
And I think people see my list and think, oh, well, I'll send to that fiction and that's absolutely fine.
00:33:53
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.
00:34:00
Speaker
I just think, well, it's going to be really hard.
00:34:04
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.
00:34:20
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
00:34:38
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
Yeah.
00:34:39
Speaker
You don't want to be missold the thing.
00:34:43
Speaker
No, and it happens rarely, but it does happen.
00:34:45
Speaker
And some of the, um, pictures I've read in cover letters recently sound great.
00:34:51
Speaker
And then I've gone to the synopsis and I've just been a bit like, well, that's going to be tough.
00:34:57
Speaker
I think unfortunately the last couple of years have changed people's fiction reading tastes slightly.
00:35:03
Speaker
into an area that kind of feels safe and cozier and happier because the world is so awful.
00:35:10
Speaker
So yeah,
00:35:12
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.
00:35:22
Speaker
Right.
00:35:23
Speaker
And you're talking about the cover letter doing half the work, so that would be the pitch specifically.
00:35:28
Speaker
How long do you think a good pitch should be?
00:35:33
Speaker
For me, a kind of cover letter is probably about three good paragraphs.
00:35:38
Speaker
So you open with why you're sending to that agent,
00:35:41
Speaker
introducing your book, maybe using a couple of comparisons.
00:35:45
Speaker
So, you know, my book is X cross with Y or similar to, I don't know,
00:35:52
Speaker
Sam Rushdie and Ima Q and whatever it is that you want to quote.
00:35:57
Speaker
So that gives us a stronger sense of what the book is and why you sent it to us.
00:36:00
Speaker
Then that middle paragraph is the blurb.
00:36:03
Speaker
So I would say that's as if it's on the back of a book jacket.
00:36:07
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.
00:36:16
Speaker
Snoop around books that are similar to yours and see how those publishers are pitching those stories.
00:36:22
Speaker
And use that to kind of help inform your own pitch.
00:36:25
Speaker
So they should be intriguing.
00:36:27
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.
00:36:38
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?
00:36:49
Speaker
and it doesn't matter if you've had none of that, that's absolutely fine.
00:36:53
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.
00:37:03
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.
00:37:09
Speaker
And then, yeah, that's all you need really.
00:37:12
Speaker
It's quite succinct and professional and direct and
00:37:18
Speaker
Yeah, just give us a sense of what your book is about because that's the first thing we are interested in.
00:37:23
Speaker
I think we get quite a few cover letters where the authors are just talking about themselves.
00:37:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:28
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.
00:37:41
Speaker
I'm horribly brutal about it.
00:37:42
Speaker
I actually really care about what the story is first and foremost, and then I care about you as the author.
00:37:47
Speaker
I want to know all about you.
00:37:48
Speaker
but only once I've kind of read and loved your book or your proposal.
00:37:53
Speaker
Okay.
00:37:53
Speaker
That's very helpful for anyone thinking about submitting to you and I think submitting to any agent really.
00:37:59
Speaker
Yeah, I hope so.
00:38:01
Speaker
And as we approach the final question, I just have one more question.
00:38:06
Speaker
You're not currently open to submissions, possibly will be soon.
00:38:10
Speaker
We'll see.
00:38:12
Speaker
When you do open submissions again, are there any specific genres or styles that you will be looking for?
00:38:23
Speaker
So I would really like to find more contemporary romance.
00:38:28
Speaker
I've got three writers who are doing it really well, but I'd love to find more in that area.
00:38:35
Speaker
I'm always looking for great family stories.
00:38:39
Speaker
I just read Sorrow and Bliss.
00:38:43
Speaker
And I absolutely loved that book.
00:38:45
Speaker
I think it's so much more about complicated family than the blurb suggests.
00:38:49
Speaker
And it's really funny as well.
00:38:53
Speaker
Honestly, I'd like something fun, funny, uplifting would be nice, but it's not a requirement.
00:39:00
Speaker
Something that's quite joyful and it's joyful about humanity and our relationships with people.
00:39:07
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.
00:39:15
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...
00:39:23
Speaker
It is emotionally investing and I can kind of get excited about reading, definitely.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah.
00:39:28
Speaker
And for anyone thinking about submitting to Juliet, Juliet does not represent fantasy, horror, sci-fi, dystopian.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:39:39
Speaker
Did I miss anything?
00:39:41
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
00:40:08
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.
00:40:17
Speaker
Um,
00:40:19
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?
00:40:24
Speaker
So I was talking about this yesterday with colleagues.
00:40:27
Speaker
And I don't know if it's interesting to tell you why I landed on why I landed.
00:40:31
Speaker
Oh, I want to hear it.
00:40:32
Speaker
Yeah, okay.
00:40:34
Speaker
At first I thought, how about A Fine Mammoth by Rent and Mystery?
00:40:38
Speaker
It's a novel I absolutely love.
00:40:40
Speaker
It's full of humility, but it's ultimately quite sad.
00:40:43
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
00:41:10
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
00:41:38
Speaker
really lovely about those.
00:41:39
Speaker
They evoke a real sense of place and a real mood.
00:41:42
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.
00:41:49
Speaker
And there's lots offered there.
00:41:51
Speaker
It won't just be kind of one novel, one feeling.
00:41:55
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.
00:42:01
Speaker
If you need something completely irreverent about a dog, Mary Oliver also loved her dog.
00:42:05
Speaker
So, so, um, I think that's what I do.
00:42:10
Speaker
I take a collected book of poetry, i.e.
00:42:13
Speaker
the biggest book I can find.
00:42:16
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:17
Speaker
Um, and I was thinking Emily Dickinson or Mary Oliver, one of those.
00:42:21
Speaker
Um, yeah.
00:42:21
Speaker
So,
00:42:23
Speaker
It's a little bit of a cop out, but I couldn't honestly land on a single novel.
00:42:27
Speaker
So yeah, there we go.
00:42:28
Speaker
I like your rationale.
00:42:29
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.
00:42:38
Speaker
And maybe I'd hate it and kick myself.
00:42:40
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:41
Speaker
But I'm willing to find out.
00:42:43
Speaker
Yeah, that's the risk.
00:42:44
Speaker
The risk you've got to take.
00:42:45
Speaker
Yeah.
00:42:46
Speaker
Well, it's a great answer.
00:42:47
Speaker
Very, very well thought out.
00:42:50
Speaker
Thank you so much for coming on and sharing all of your experiences and your knowledge and news with us.
00:42:58
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me and apologies for the stinking cold.
00:43:03
Speaker
That's all right.
00:43:03
Speaker
It's going around.
00:43:04
Speaker
Yeah, it is.
00:43:05
Speaker
We all share the fun.
00:43:07
Speaker
Yeah.
00:43:08
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.
00:43:17
Speaker
You can also follow the agency at Blake Friedman that has two N's at the end of it.
00:43:24
Speaker
And if you're looking to submit, head over to their website and read through the submission guidelines.
00:43:30
Speaker
If it is fantasy or one of those prohibited things that Judith doesn't want, check out the other agents at Blake Friedman.
00:43:37
Speaker
They might have what you're looking for.
00:43:40
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.
00:43:48
Speaker
Thanks again, Juliet.
00:43:49
Speaker
It's been such a pleasure chatting with you.
00:43:52
Speaker
And thanks to everyone listening.
00:43:53
Speaker
We will see you next time.
00:43:55
Speaker
Bye-bye.