On this episode, we talk to agenting powerhouse Devra Jacobs, who’s worn more hats than we can count over the course of her career. After selling mind/body/spirit magazine Mystic Pop, she decided to switch gears entirely to being a literary agent, much to the benefit of her lucky clients. We chat about the quickest ways to get your manuscript rejected, red flags to watch out for when choosing an agent, Devra’s painstaking work steering self-published authors away from predators who want to rip them off, and the importance of admitting to yourself that you maybe DON’T have a book in you—maybe you have an article, or you just need to write for yourself—and how that’s perfectly fine. Also, Emily does a pitch perfect Carol Channing impression, while Corinne’s Mrs. Doubtfire could use some work, but in her defense, she had very little time to warm up.

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I've actually had authors that I have passed on

because they're too spiritual. They cannot make that bridge

from 5d to 3d and that's a real important thing. When I hear

somebody say, when I say, what are you going to do to market

your book? And they say, Oh, well, it should be able to be

word of mouth.

I go, You know what? You're gonna have to come and get your

feet back on this planet for to be successful. You

foreign

Welcome to the hybrid pub Scout podcast with me, Emily

einerlander and me. Corinne kolasky, hello. We're mapping

the frontier between traditional and indie publishing, and today

we are going to have an interview with Deborah Jacobs of

dancing word group. How's it going? Corinne, it's going

pretty well. Emily, I can't complain. I feel like it's been

forever since we've talked about book things on the microphone.

Yes, it's true. It really has been a while, so it's nice to be

back.

Yep, yep, yep, it sure is. Oh, I have one thing that I would like

to start doing. Faithful listeners, if you have been a

contributor to us at one time or another, either through

interview or blog or just if you're active, participating

with us, we would like to know of your publishing triumphs and

new releases and all that good stuff so we can put it in our

newsletter and feature you. I would love to kind of you know,

the way that publishers, publishers lunch does at the

bottom with all of the job listing stuff. So if you have

anything new and exciting going on, please email me at

emily@hybridpubscout.com

and we'll put you in the newsletter so we can celebrate

your achievements. Yeah, idea. So a little bit more podcast

business before we move on to the interview. We got another

review by a wonderful person. Hell yeah. Thank you, wonderful

person. Thank you. We really appreciate it. Yeah. So, um, so

Corinne, are you gonna Are you gonna read it? I will read it

when I can find it.

Well, I should be thinking about like, who's your favorite

celebrity impression? My favorite celebrity impression?

Probably Mrs. Doubtfire. Oh yeah. Well, that's a lie. I'm

pretty good at the part where Robin Williams like sticks his

face in the cake in the fridge. And then it's like, hello, like,

I'm good at that. But then anything beyond that, I don't, I

can't really do that. So it's sort of like, you know, I don't

know. Carol Channing,

oh, my god,

okay, I could do that. Okay, I can do that one. Okay. All

right, all right, okay, huge range of topics,

erudite and admemorable.

This has become one of my weekly lessons. I've learned a huge

amount about various aspects of the book publishing industry,

well chosen guests and witty hosts

who take conversations new directions. Their mission, give

map. The frontier between traditional and indie publishing

is exactly what we needed this fast, changing and distributed

industry.

Yeah, all right. Okay, that was really impressive. I honestly, I

was trying to think of, do you watch RuPaul drag race

sometimes? Okay, so they have this one like segment they call

the snatch game, which is like the Match Game, obviously. And

so everybody does a different celebrity impression. And I just

remember the best one ever was this drag queen who did Carol

Channing. So that was, for some reason, the first thing that

popped into, no, that's a good impression. Yeah. Funny enough

voice that, yeah. I thought that was great. So we'll have to make

another list. Yeah, yeah, actually, yeah, tweeted at us at

hybrid pub scout.

All right. Well,

let's, let's not wait any longer. Let's get down to the

interview. Yeah. All right. So nice to have you on Deborah.

It's great to be here. All right. Chris.

And will you please read Deborah's bio for us? Oh, I sure

will All right, here we go. Deborah has been an influential

business woman and speaker. She founded and served as editor in

chief of mystic pop magazine for nine years until its sale in

2008

Deborah has been a successful literary agent, owner of dancing

word group agency since 2008 representing both mainstream and

higher consciousness authors as a representative of excellence,

Deborah has an extensive networking model which aids her

in representing her authors. She has established contacts with

both large and small publishing houses. Her drive to represent

the interests of her clients comes from a deep seated base of

ethics, concern, experience and understanding. Deborah offers

services as an agent coach to both traditionally published and

self published authors, as well as her years of experience as a

publicist. Welcome Deborah.

Long bio.

I mean, it's the one done a lot you should be saying that much.

Yeah, 63 I would have hoped to have accomplished that much.

Yeah, exactly. I feel like I need to get a move on, to catch

up.

All right. Well, we the

first of all, and I think you acknowledge this when we were

talking about it before, like we're not going to be able to

get to everything we want to talk about today, because

there's just so many things in your your storied career that

that are just not going to be able to be covered. However,

let's just start with where you are right now. How long have you

been an agent and what brought you to that point?

Well, I I'm actually going into my 11th year as an agent.

What brought me to this point? Well, you know, it was kind of

interesting, because I owned, as you said, Mystic pop magazine

for nine years, and during that time, I got to know authors and

publishing houses, and I kept hearing all these terrible

things about that were going on, not with publishers or the

authors, but with their agents. And so my mother had gotten

cancer, and I knew I had to sell the magazine because I couldn't

do it all and take care of her. So when I sold it, I was talking

to an author. And I said, I don't know what to do now. And

she goes, You should be an agent. I went, but agents are so

blue

salesman with the flashing pies and all that. But if you do you

you'll do well. And I was like, okay, there is an idea I had

gotten so connected with, especially in the New Age

metaphysical world, all the publishers and and several of

the authors. So I made an announcement that day, hey, I'm

going to be an agent. And to my surprise, quite a few authors,

including like Lynn Andrews, contacted me immediately and

said, Oh my gosh, my agent died. I would love to have you as my

agent. Oh, wow. So I had like eight clients the end of the

first day with absolutely no experience of not knowing

anything. That's amazing, incredible, but you know, it's

and I do these things, I dive into these different careers

with no knowledge, and figure, okay, I need to go learn from

somebody. And so I did get in contact with somebody who will

remain nameless, and I did work in conjunction with them to

supposedly learn everything I needed to know about being an

agent. And in six months, I learned everything I would

never, ever do as an agent.

Oh, man, ain't that the way,

like the education and

then established, you know, dancing word group. And

by the way, the reason for that is, I think books as words

dancing on pages. Oh, I see that right away.

I wanted some corny logo, but my daughter talked me like clip art

just spinning.

So that's how I became an agent. Isn't it amazing when like

someone, how groundbreaking it is when someone reminds you to

be yourself? Yeah, I know, and it's like a lot of times I find

that this happens with people that I work with is you don't

need to restructure yourself into some picture someone else

has of you, right? Yep, absolutely. Well, we're glad you

did that.

So can you tell us some of the you mentioned Lynn Andrews, but

can you mention some of the other books you've worked on and

authors you've worked with, Oh, lordy, it's quite the

interesting trip. I am all over the place. I was told one thing

you never tell a Torian female is you can't do this. And the

Torian pulls out their ball and go, you watch me.

You're a Taurus.

So, yeah,

light goes on.

That's how we think of everything around here.

Well, and, you know, I I just sort of, I was told, when you

become an agent, okay, New Age metaphysics is your thing. Stay

within those lines. And I'm like, well, that's going to get

boring. So

I have, and I've been told I've sold quite a few books, made a

lot of book deals. I think I'm at like number 69 or 70 nice,

and it's all over the map. I mean, I represent people like

Lynn Andrews and Maureen St Germain and

Meg Blackburn, Losey, a lot of new age metaphysical you know,

people. I don't just represent famous. I do what I call famous

and infamous, and the

ones that just haven't gotten going yet. So I do a lot of

first time authors,

but I'm all over the map. I believe in just representing

good work, and so I've represented fiction, nonfiction,

medical, alternative medicine.

I even did a romance novel, sort of just everywhere,

if I like it, and I think it's that good. I don't believe an

agent has to stay in our light. It just takes more work. You got

to go out find the right people to pitch it to. Right, right?

Well, I'm going to actually skip ahead on this question list

based on what you were saying and you mentioned that you have

worked with self published and traditionally published authors,

and I was wondering about how you've how you've done that

well,

a couple years ago, I started seeing this well, really, about

four years ago when the bottom sort of fell out in the

publishing world, I saw this instant thing of, you know, self

publishing, and people really, for lack of better terminology,

getting ripped off, right or, or throwing something out there and

thinking somebody was going to do something to help them in

self publishing world, because they bought a package and it was

supposed to include this, this and this. And I believe that

everything in life that function well, does it by ethics. And

seeing so much unethical stuff going on, I started offering

coaching. Uh, through my website, I offer coaching one on

one with people to teach, especially self published

people,

what they need to do in preparation which companies to,

you know, get estimates from which to stay away from,

and what they're really going to have to put in to make it

successful, right? And so I do that for self publishing. And

then traditional publishing is kind of, you've known me for a

while. It's kind of all over the map. I mean, I work with Mom and

Pop publishers to the big top 10

and, you know, and it really doesn't necessarily matter,

excuse me, if somebody's with one of the big top 10 versus a

small, or what I call second or third level publisher, because

they may get more exposure and get more help from a second tier

or third tier publisher, then get buried with one of the big

cops, right, right? Won't get as much marketing attention and

whatnot. I mean, I do think it's very, it's like, you're, you

know, a self published authors, guardian angel. And I think

that's really, it's just really nice to see that, like someone

jumping in and doing that. Because I do think that's a

world that, like, I feel like a lot of people get into it

because they're just so frustrated with traditional

publishing, you know. And so sometimes I can see that just

being like, they're so I don't want to say desperate, but they

just want to get their work out there. And so they get, you

know, they're just like, well, I'll do whatever I have to do.

And so of course, it's easy to get ripped off. So it's just

nice to see that there are people like you who are, like,

preventing them from being taken advantage of by like charlatan

so just, just thank you. Just thank you, honestly, because I

think that's a really great thing to be doing. So thank you.

I am extremely reasonable priced on my coaching

again, because I stand in ethics, you know, and I feel

like in one session, somebody can get basically all of the

needs that they're going to have. So it's not like they need

to do anything ongoing with me, right? That makes me crazy when

people are like, here's a taste, and if you want the rest of the

meal, right? Um, I know there are a lot of companies out there

that that do coaching for self publishing.

Coaching, but you have to spend, like, 1000s of dollars for this

package. And my whole concept of doing the coaching I'm doing

with self published is for them to save money and not get ripped

off. And there are really with, you know, the way Amazon's come

in with it, self publishing with KDP, their new self publishing

model, traditional publishers going to have to wake up and get

on board, because there aren't the benefits to traditional

publishers that there used to be

sure,

yeah, when I first started as an agent, you couldn't get your

books into a bookstore if you were self published, you

couldn't be on the New York Times list, list if you were

self published, all that's changed, right? You couldn't

even get galley copies before your book was published. If you

were self published, that's not true anymore. KDP now offers

that so people can do all the pre PR, right? Couldn't do

you know? So I think it is a viable option. And there's been

some really famous, famous like one mystery writer who's chosen

to go self published. The difference in the royalties,

James Patterson, yeah, yeah, he had run out on his contract with

his publisher, decided to do his next book, self published, and

made a million dollars in like, the first three hours. That's

right, oh my god, like a factory, yeah. He really is

saying, Remember, that's James Patterson, right for everybody,

yeah.

But it is a viable alternative now, and I think you know, if

people do what they need to do,

they can be just as successful. So how do you you probably get a

lot of people contacting you for help or for representation. How

do you decide who to work for?

Okay, well, that's sort of an interesting question, because

that takes me into, like my other line of work,

I've actually been a practicing Intuitive Life Coach for 48

years. Was the psychic on Shirley maclaine's website for

many years. Oh, my God, so amazing. And I used to keep that

hidden, you know, from my agentine as a separate thing. I

didn't talk to people about. And then I decided, if I'm going to

be me, I need to be me all together. Yes. So when I read a

manuscript, I read the manuscript, and then I do an

intuitive read on it. And it's not just manuscript or whether

or not I get the feeling the manuscript will be successful, I

get a read on the author. Yes, the author really walking their

talk. Is the author going to be good to work with? Because to

me, my my clients are my friends, and, you know, they're

long, forever, hopefully relationships. And when I first

started, that wasn't necessarily the case. I had a few prima

donnas, and I decided it wasn't worth it. So now I do a psychic

read on on them if I get the feeling, and I so far, knock

wood. I've been right.

If I get a read, I not only can get a feeling for if I want to

represent it, but I also can get a read with who, what company is

going to be the best to handle it. And do you find that works a

lot of the time?

Yeah, and some of the publishers are actually starting to get

used to my woo, woo side

when I, when I, and I, I'm not one of those agents that does

what they call

free emailing, where they just email 100 different places,

right? Yeah, and hope you know they play numbers. I don't do

that. I think that's such a waste of everybody's time, so I

call people ahead of time, if they're interested, then I'll

submit it to them. But if I get a hit that this is going to be

the right company, as you know, because you and I have done this

before, I'm like, I will jam it down the publisher.

Oh, I can see this done. I can see, I can look and see title

changes. I can see covers and so, yeah, I I knew merged my

gift into my my work, my daily work, that probably has

something to do with how you became interested in mind, body,

spirit or like, where did, where did your spiritual side kind of

begin to come together with your career side. Okay, so now

everybody's gonna go, okay, she's really weird

on our show there.

When I was six years old, I had mumps, and I was very, very,

very sick, and

what I thought at the time was my girl.

Grandfather, who was a doctor, showed up at the end of my bed

telling me how what was going on with me, and then suddenly,

wings popped out of this man and this bright, white light. And I

was like, Okay, I was six years old. What did I know? I woke up

the next morning I was completely healed. Wow. And it

wasn't until now I still had conversations with this I knew

it was an angel, but I had conversations with this angel

until I was about 12,

but I My parents always said it was my invisible friend. I never

knew who it was until I was about 15, and one of my

girlfriends in high school, his mother was a shaman and and a

psychic reader and all this. And so we went to her, her house for

after school. I walk in the door, and she looks at me, and

she goes, what is Archangel Michael doing with you?

And I look up, and I'm like, Oh my gosh, she could see him, you

know, and I just never told people about it in our

conversations, because I didn't want to be that freak. And but

she saw him, and she explained to me who he was, and from that

point on, I knew it was Archangel Michael, and I've

heard his voice and seen him since I was six, so I kind of

got thrown into New Age metaphysics. Michael's the

perfect angel for a Taurus.

It's really funny, because I've over the years, I've met so many

people that talk to Michael, and there are a lot of people that

talk to Michael. I'm not that special, but they, everybody

sees them the way you Intuit them. And because I'm a very

shoot from the hip kind of girl, Michael is very straightforward

and very sarcastic, and I even have to filter him at times

other people I've talked to, it's like, oh no. He's so sweet

and kind and loving. It's like, not my Michael.

He has literally saved my cookies many, many, many times

in my life and warning me and giving me the

visions that I needed to be successful. And when I first

said, Okay, maybe I'll be an agent. He went, Yeah, let's be

an agent.

I knew it was a good path to go down. Oh, good. That's a That's

some good, divine guidance to have. It

was funny when about about six years ago, seven years ago, I

guess now I was asked to be somebody's publicist. And I was

like, publicist, okay, that's what sounds like a lot of work.

And Michael was like, Oh, you can do this. You can do this.

And so I put on that hat and became a full time publicist for

Lynn Andrews

and booking or radio shows and everything. Yeah, I think

anybody can morph if they listen to their own guidance. You can

morph in almost anything. Yeah, yeah, I think so do. Well,

that's actually a perfect segue into our next question about, do

you sort of have a preference between publicity and agenting.

Or do you enjoy them both equally, or one more than the

other?

Well, monetarily, yeah, publicity, you make more money.

You make constant money.

The agenting people who say they're a rich agent, I always

shake my head and go, how'd you do that?

It's not, it's not a really good financial basis for me. Agentine

is for the work. I love to see people fulfill their dreams. I

love to especially with first time authors. I like that first

call, when they get that book in their hands for the first time,

and they can feel it and touch it, and I know I helped create

that path, right? So it's probably more fulfilling.

Publicity is definitely much more financially Okay.

Publicity is incredibly time consuming, so I only do it in

short things. I'll do, like a three month book release for

summer, yeah, yeah. I prefer to do the coaching to teach people

how to do their own publicity. Not hard. It's just time

consuming. It's just Yeah, yeah. You just have to be very

persistent. I feel like that's Yep. That's it, yeah. Okay. And

then we also had a question about, if you have advice for

what authors should look for an agent, and especially what flags

or red flags they should watch out for? Yeah. And actually,

let's move to a step before that. Sure some people, there's

like this in.

New thing going on for the last few years. I'm sure you guys

have heard about agent managers.

It's like somebody created this whole new job,

and what they're doing is they're saying, you pay us, we

will get you an agent. Oh, well, for $3,000

or $5,000 we'll help you write your proposal a query letter,

and get you an agent that will sign you

It's driving me crazy because that, you know, it's like this,

you know, maybe some people do need that. I don't know, but I

think it's kind of a rip off. Yeah, get contacted by these

quote, unquote managers all the time. I want to say this client,

you're going to split 5050 commission,

50% of your 15%

I barely make anything now I am not splitting anything with you,

sorry.

And it I just think it's a step people don't need. I think it's

a sign of people either not doing the work they need to.

I mean, there's some great free information out there that you

can get on how to find an agent or and really, as you guys know,

getting an agent is actually harder than getting a book deal

in these days. Yes, and most publishers, at least the smart

ones, are not going to work with authors directly. They want a

middle man, right, right? They want somebody in there. And I

always think about it, and maybe it's because I was a realtor for

a few years. I'm like the realtor of books, you know? I'm

the middle person. I'm the one that's supposed to know what

everybody's supposed to be doing, right? And

and it'll lead me into something else we'll go into next

but the management thing, I just don't think it's necessary. Also

writing proposals. These management companies are saying,

you know, we'll give you a 2630 page proposal. And I go, yuck.

No, I do many proposals. When I send something to a publisher,

they see my email. They go, Oh, I can read this real quick,

because they know it's going to be like, four pages. They don't

print out a 30 page proposal that's going to sit on a pile

someplace until somebody gets time to read it. And what

information do you want to have in the proposal? I mean, because

I know that a lot of people will just send a manuscript, and then

it's like, Whoa, what is this? What do I do with this? I got

four query letters today that didn't even have a synopsis

about what their book was. Yeah, my God. It's like, how am I

supposed to make a decision? And if I want to see your

manuscript, if I don't even know what you've written about, I

actually offer for free on my website, if they click on

submissions on dancing work group, it's a mini proposal

guide. It's everything you need to put in a proposal and how to

put it in there. It's very short, very simple. And you

know, for a lot of publishers these days, your proposal is

kind of a sampling of how the author is going to write. So

they don't want agents or managers writing them anymore,

right? How will you know it's them? Yeah, yeah. You want to

have a feel for their voice. So I make all my authors, even if

they just are coming to me for the first time wanting me to

represent them, they've got to write the proposal, and I will

help them, you know, fill in what are the important things,

like marketing, you know, for everybody listening, most

traditional publishers do not care who you are. They don't

even care too much what your story is going to be. They want

to know what your platform is, what your LinkedIn and social

media is, and what you're planning on doing to market your

book. Then if they go, Wow, this person's on top of it, they've

got the connections to make a lot of sales, then they go back

and look at the synopsis of the book to see if they're

interested in the book. Am I right? Yes in a lot of ways,

yeah. And I want to know what you think of that in terms of,

like, quality of the books that come out and the authors,

whether people are being passed over, who are actually good, and

that kind of thing. Well, I'll tell you, with fiction, it does

not matter at all. It's very interesting. I've realized that

in the last few years, they're just looking for the next

Twilight,

they're like in for the next Harry Potter. So if for fiction,

it totally does not matter if you've ever even written a book

before, anything non fiction. And it's not just numbers I

have. There are companies. A couple of the big 10 companies

actually have a program.

Email that they can plug into your, let's say, your Facebook

page, and not only see how many followers you have, but they can

see how many times you're interacting with them. So they

no longer care that you have 200,000 followers if you're only

posting something once a month, they don't think you have any

communication with these followers. It's that was an

interesting twist, because a lot of people are doing the the pay

to play kind of thing where you pay so much to add likes doesn't

matter anymore.

I think the traditional publishers the minimum, the big

10, I'll say the big 10

want to see a minimum of 20,000 followers, active followers

on social media. And I do think it does a disservice. I had

somebody come to me last week who speaks all over the world,

has, I mean, these groups and organizations all over the

world. She just doesn't happen to have anything on social media

because she doesn't agree with social media. Okay? I mean,

that's fair, especially for a spiritual person. And it's like

exactly, and you would think spiritual, metaphysical

publishers would be a little bit more awakened, right? But

they're not. I mean, the bottom line is money, and it's going to

be, I don't care if you're a five dimensional person, you're

functioning in a three dimensional world. And

publishing is, it's the cost of print, shipping, all the

marketing, all of the expense to put it together, the editing.

And so no matter how enlightened they are, they're still going to

be coming from that place, and you have to be able to fit into

that place. Yeah, I've actually had authors that I have passed

on because they're too spiritual. They cannot make that

bridge from 5d to 3d and that's a real important thing. When I

hear somebody say, when I say, what are you going to do to

market your book? And they say, Oh, well, it should be able to

be word of mouth. Ah, I go, You know what? You're going to have

to come and get your feet back on this planet for to be

successful. Karen, have you ever had to have that come to Jesus

talk with someone?

I'm sure I have. I'm Yeah, I mean, and I feel like, you know,

obviously that's something that was really different 10 years

ago. Even, I think, like, publishers did not the lion's

share of the marketing, but like, certainly more than we're

able to do now. So it's just yeah, it's just interesting how

the conversation has evolved, I think, of even the past decade

or so. But yeah, I've certainly had to have conversations with

authors that, you know, it's like, this is a collaboration,

and it's not just us doing all the marketing. You need to

participate in this too, because nobody knows your audience

better than you do. So I think most authors seem to get it.

Some of them are pretty resistant, but it's just, you

know, I explain until I'm blue in the face. Sometimes it works,

sometimes it doesn't. So then you move on.

Do you find, though, if they're working with an agent that's

sort of vetted them ahead of time, that it's easier for you?

Yeah, oh, absolutely for sure. But yeah, because I think at

least with my most stated while the good agents, I should say, I

think, like, they manage the author's expectations pretty

well, you know. So it's not, they don't have these

unrealistic, you know, like, Oh, this is going to be the next

secret, or this is going to be, you know what? I mean, it's sort

of like, it's a marathon, not a sprint, and it's going to start

slow, but it'll build. And if you, like, continue with your

efforts, and you just give it a lot of attention and love and

whatever, it'll grow. But it's just, you know, yeah. I mean, I

think it definitely helps having an agent there to sort of start

that conversation with them about sort of needing to market,

you know, themselves and market the book too. So, yeah,

definitely. I give you a really good example of this.

I had an author who wrote a nonfiction, it wasn't new age or

metaphysical book and the first six years literally only sold

230 copies, and it was through a traditional publisher, okay? And

he was like, Oh, this is just never going to go anywhere. I

said, Well, you didn't do any of the things that I recommend. You

know, his life gets in the way. But, you know, just try writing

some articles and start posting them. Yeah, and he wrote his

first article on LinkedIn, and it was like this deep, heavy,

moving article. It went viral. They sold over 6000 copies in

the next 60 days. Awesome. Wow, that's incredible. So it doesn't

take a lot of money or effort, yeah, yeah. It just has to be

something yeah and Right, right. Try this. If this doesn't work,

try that. Mm, hmm, right. And that, that's probably one way. I

know Emily knows this too me driving her absolutely crazy.

And

is i.

Tend to be a different kind of agent, because once contracts

are signed, usually agents just sort of disappear. Yes, yes. I

stay with the process until the date of release, and usually

beyond that, but I want to make sure everybody has somebody to

yell at. You

can clearly handle it.

Somebody's running behind or maybe somebody missed an email

that there's a middle person who's making sure everything is

staying on track. Author knows exactly what they're needing to

do, and the publisher is is handling what they're needing to

do and letting me know so I can keep the author informed of

what's going on the eight your agent commission goes on for the

life of the book, right in the publishing contract. As far as

I'm concerned, that means my job goes on for the life of that

publishing contract. I mean, in a way, it's your book too, at

that point, if it's you're attached to it in that way,

absolutely and really, you know, the agent, I think a lot of

agents are missing the mark here, because the more excited

you can keep your your author about upcoming sales and things

they can do, the more money you're going to make. Because,

you know, as you know, the average, and I think your

listeners should be aware of this. The at the normal fee for

a literary agent is 15% of everything you get. You get the

author gets, not as total sales, but the author gets from a

publishing deal for the life of that deal, and that includes

advances if you have one of these management companies, and

we have to stick within this because of agency law, okay, but

these management companies are coming in saying, Pay us $3,000

we'll do this for you. Or there's now this new one coming

up that's a self publishing tradition, slash traditional.

Pay us $5,000 we'll publish your book. We'll pay you $1 royalty,

so you can say it was done traditionally, for traditional

publisher and put it together and design it. You won't get any

say in it. They don't tell you that,

you know. So you really got to watch for all those little What

is it they say in legal contracts, the watch, the small

print, fine print, yeah,

have you ever had to, like, rehabilitate an author who has

been scammed in that way before? Like, who comes to like, Oh, my

God, I had this terrible experience? Please help. I get,

I get a lot of those. That's another one of the coaching I've

actually started,

even if I'm not representing somebody, somebody can hire me

for a coaching session just to review a contract. Oh, right,

cool. Or they sign it.

And, yeah, I just had somebody with a children's book do that,

and she had no idea how badly they were going to rip her off

until we went through the contract, and it was like, you

don't want to do this, you know. It saved her 1000s of dollars

for paying me for $150

you know, session, so, yeah, like a so you're saying there's

a difference between someone reviewing your proposal or your

contract on a one time basis, maybe editing it, helping you

spruce it up a little. And imagine management company who

basically takes over everything and charges you 1000s of

dollars. Yeah, okay,

that's not to say no one should look at your proposal before you

turn it in. Someone Yeah, you should absolutely. I mean,

there's some really great people out there that are editors

that'll write proposals, and if you tell them, I don't want one

of those long, 26 page proposals, please follow this

guide. I want a mini proposal. It will cost you far less. Just

make sure they write it in your voice, because otherwise, as

soon as the publisher sees your manuscript, they're going to

realize it's two different writers, right, right? So the

pass on your work,

yeah, we have to see the that the author has a certain amount

of initiative and responsibility taking for the process. Because

I think that would be a bad sign to me, like a red flag. If I

looked at something and was like, Oh, this is clearly, like,

they handed it off to someone else to do the work for them,

right? Gonna be like that in the future with everything? Yep,

yep, they're not gonna want to market their book. Yeah. We also

don't want to take people away from the idea of a ghost writer,

because I have had quite a few authors that are amazing

speakers, amazing teachers who can't write a word, yeah, but

they are smart enough to hire amazing ghost writers that write

in their voice.

You you know

that it's the same?

Person,

I had an author who recorded her entire fiction novel in like

vignettes. She'd wake up in the morning. It was like she was

dreaming chapters and give it to a ghost writer who specialized

in fiction drama, and it came out amazing,

you know, so, but you have to be, I think, just don't be

naive, you know, really do your homework. Really do research.

There is a great website that I recommend to everybody called

Publishers Marketplace, which used to be strictly for

professionals, but it isn't anymore. You can be a member on

a non professional level and go and search out agents and

specific genres, ghost writers that have written best sellers,

and it gives you all their contact information, so you can

really do your research, and not just, Oh, my brother's uncle is

a has written a document for work. He'll write my book for

invest the time, the energy and the money.

I want to backtrack a little bit actually and ask you a little

bit about magazines versus books, because I know that you

had, can you tell us a little bit more about your experience

with your magazine? To start

with, oh, Mystic pop.

That was, that was quite the adventure again, doing something

I had never done. I didn't even know how to turn on a computer

when I decided to start this magazine, and I had $25 in my

pocket, and the first Apple Mac ever made, and all I thought

about was there being a new age metaphysical at the time, there

was only really one magazine out there, which I won't mention

what it is, but it didn't really cover anything. And it was like

all advertising, and it was rounded. I mean, you had to have

one perception to get anything out of it. And I said, you know,

I want something in this world that gives everybody a taste and

a flavor for all paths to spiritual enlightenment. And so

I went home and started I knew how to email. That was the only

thing I knew how to do. And I emailed all of these people like

Doreen Virtue, Wayne, Dyer, Neil Don Walsh, all of these people

who I love their work, and said, I'm starting this magazine. Do

you want to play with me? I would love to have an article.

And oh my gosh, they all responded, yes. This sounds

wonderful. I gave them the the concept of the magazine. It was

called mystic pop for the new popular stuff, and I was off and

rolling, and I had to teach myself how to do desktop

publishing, because I couldn't afford anybody to lay it out and

design it. And then I had to learn what how to get you your

magazine printed. You know, the only thing I knew was how to

sell ads for him, because, well, that's good. I need money to

print this. Okay, let me go sell ads. And I started off just like

a regional magazine, and within the first year, went to a

conference where I met Wayne Dyer and Alan Cohen, who both

gave me their current work and said, If you do this, you can

have this magazine be whatever you envision. And one of them

was Wayne Dyer's power of intention, and I wanted to put

him on the cover of my magazine. He goes, I'm not going on a

newspaper, print magazine. What do you envision? I said, I see

Vogue quality, high gloss, full color, sold in every bookstore

in the country, because you listen to the CD set, and then I

will be on your cover. And literally, three months later, I

sent him the first high gloss, full color magazine

with him on the cover. Nice.

And it was, it was in Barnes and Noble and Borders and

everywhere. Where else I will tell you magazines like if

you're an author and you want to get articles published,

90% of them do not pay a dime for freelance anymore, unless

you're a staff writer. You know people trying to get even in

some of the online magazines like Ted, TED talk online, and

some of the business journals and Harvard Business Review and

things like that. You used to be able even Reader's Digest. You

used to be able to send in articles and they would pay to

publish your work. Not so much anymore. There when everybody

lost their jobs, when the bottom fell out, everybody decided they

could write, and so they were

and.

Yeah. So it's really, really hard to get things published for

pay. That said, it's very easy to get things that are good

published for free, which is a tool I highly recommend to

authors to promote their books, write articles,

they'll all give you a byline at the bottom, if you're sending it

out for free. The catch is, they all want exclusive articles that

you can't send the same article to every magazine out there,

they won't print it. Yeah,

yeah. I mean, everyone wants to feel like it's tailored just for

them, and as well they should, yeah, and don't leave out online

magazines. I think a lot of people still have this mindset

that they're not real magazines. That's insane.

I mean, like Thrive global, which is Arianna Huffington. New

thing when she sold Huffington Post is huge. Yeah, yeah, just

sign up to be a contributor. And you know, they publish really

good stuff, and they always link it back to your website.

I actually have an author right now who, you know, who has had a

column in a magazine in Seattle for several years, and is now

done a book of all these columns, which I have not sold

the book yet, but I know I will. It's going to be huge when I do,

but she wouldn't have ever had a book if she hadn't done this

column. So I, yes, recommend to people you know, find a medium

that works for you, whether it's an online magazine, a local

newspaper, you know, or a regular print magazine, and

start writing for it. And it's amazing what can come out of

that.

One of the doctors that I worked with early on didn't realize how

much problems people had with sleep it. And he started

submitting these articles to magazines, to medical journals

and things, and then suddenly started getting all these emails

about, but how, how can I sleep? How can I do this for sleep?

What can I do about this for sleep? And we ended up

publishing a great book on sleep, so you never know what,

what's going to lead to. It always just remain open to

whatever. If your skills are writing short things, don't

write a book.

Read a collection, exactly, and some of those do very, very

well. I mean, like a Chicken Soup for the Soul books? Yes,

Yep, absolutely. I They. That's something that, and we may have

to talk about this on some future one, but I think that's

something that I would really like your listeners to

understand, is you don't always need to have a book. It's pretty

controversial, but I definitely agree with it in a lot of ways,

because there's that idea of like, you have to, you have to

be important in some way, like, and the only way you can be

important is to prove it to everyone through, like, having a

book or some great work of your life. And yeah, the other thing

I hear all the time is, I just want to help everybody in the

world, and I had this experience, and therefore I

could put that experience out there and help everybody in the

world. And although that may be a wonderful mindset to come

from, there may be 8000 of the books where people had similar

experience already on Amazon. Yes, and nobody even looks what

I tell people, especially in memoir, kind of books like that

is,

I have one woman who worked eight years on this book, and it

really was not good. And, you know, I want, although I shoot

from the hip, I do it with love. So, you know, I like people to

sit with it and make a decision. Am I was this for my own

catharsis? Was this for my own therapy? Did I need to really

get this out on paper for myself? Maybe it doesn't need to

go out into the world. Maybe it does. You know, Eat, Pray, Love

did really well for a lot of women, but there wasn't anything

really out on the market like it. So when you get done writing

it, or if you're halfway through it and you're not sure what

you're doing with it, make those look at that. Is this for me,

does anybody in the world really need it? And is there anything

out there already? Yeah, yeah. A lot of times

I think the other thing Michael's talking, he's like,

the other thing people really need to remember is that only 1%

of all authors in the planet make more than $10,000 a year.

Yes, right?

That

first book can cost you up to 20, $30,000

if you do it right, if you promote it properly, and do

everything you need to do, you may not make that money. So and

if you're one of these that well, I'm going to self publish

it and throw it out there on Amazon and see what happens. Why

all you're doing is diluting it for the rest of the world, if

you're not going to do the effort behind it, you know? So I

think ethically, as a writer, look at all the different

aspects of it. Why am I doing that's the first question, by

the way, I ask people when they call me about having a book. I

say, Why do you want a book?

A lot of times, it's a business person who's smart enough to

understand that the book is their business card, right?

Going to make money from the book. They're going to make

money from the speaking engagements

from people who've read the book.

You know, if they say, Well, I want to help the world, I'll

say, Well, do you want to make any money? Well, that's not

important to me. Well, then I'm not going to represent it

because it's important to me,

not just because I have a right to pay my bills, yeah, the work

I do, but because it is an exchange of energy,

and you have to, I mean, money is one way of getting the the

pat on the back for having good work you don't care. Then you're

not going to do any marketing. You're not going to do anything.

And honestly, if you want to help the world like you can

start, you can start a blog for free and make some friends on

Facebook and send them to your blog, and you can all have, you

know, commiseration, and have a nice network of friends to feel

good with, and you don't have to go through any of

the Oh my gosh. I don't mean like ego as in a bad ego, but

all of the bruising and the like need for validation from other

people, and all the emotional trauma that comes from going

through this process that I mean for a lot of people, maybe

that's jaded, though. No, you're absolutely right, because I get

contacted by people that are in such an incredible state of

depression because they worked for years to write this book

that gave up on not being able to get an agent and self

published it and sold 15 copies. Yeah, and they're crushed, and

they they wish they never have done it to begin with. So come

to me beforehand. Don't put yourself through that. It may be

a book. It may not be a book. It may be a great book that I know

a publisher is not going to buy because they don't have the

foresight, which a lot of publishers are really lacking,

this foresight on things, you know, and I may recommend you

self publish, but I'm going to tell you how to self publish and

why, and it doesn't demean you as an author at all, especially

when you're suddenly a New York Times bestseller and you've got

publishers coming at you to buy your work,

you know? So I think it's just really having this knowledge,

but

probably this is sounds so bad, I get probably 10 manuscripts or

queries a week. Yeah, sometimes more. I

probably only read one out of every 100 that manuscripts from

those queries that I get,

because they're just not good. I mean, like the one that sent me,

the one today who didn't even put the synopsis in her in our

query letter. Well, you know, if you're if you're going to go

after an agent, be as professional as if you were

going to go after a publisher, right, right? Oh, this is one

that I love. This is one that I love. Do not send your

manuscripts to agents before you edit them.

You know it's such it's such a slap to me as an agent, being a

professional, to receive a manuscript where I can't get

through the first four pages without redlining and circling

every spelling error,

spelling error, even it's like have enough respect for yourself

before you send this work out. If you've taken the time to

write it, take the time to edit it, right?

So what's another thing that you see a lot of that's kind of a no

no for turning inquiries and proposals, getting them without

somebody's name on them. Oh, I get manuscripts where and I

tear, tear off the packaging and stack like any publisher would,

right to keep track of them. And I'll, I'll be reading one. I'll

be like, This is really good, and I'll go back to look at the.

Intro page in the proposal to see who it is to contact them.

There's no name on anything. Oh, God, I saw that from an agent

before. They didn't have the author's name in the in the

cover letter. Oh, that's crazy. I had to dig through their the

PDF to find the name of the author, and I was just like,

person,

yeah. I was like, You need to go back to cool. When you get

those, they go in the shredder, right? So six months later, I'm

getting an email from Kathy, whatever say, did you ever read

my manuscript? And I'm looking at the pile and looking at the

ones that I've accepted, and looking at the ones I passed on

and said, Well, if I did it and you didn't have your name on it,

it went in the shredder.

Let's start over, yeah,

or they won't put their phone number and email address on it.

And instead of like on my website, say, please call or

email me prior to sending I don't want people wasting their

money on things that I'm not going to be interested in,

right? And they won't do that. They'll ignore that completely,

and they'll send me a manuscript, and it'll have their

name, no email, no phone number, like, Oh, great book. Have no

way to reach you. Oh, well, Shredder,

you mostly have people send you manuscripts in print, or I

require it, and most don't. I will tell you there's two

reasons why I require one. I can't afford. The really cool

machine that you can drop a Word document in and it'll read it to

you in a real voice.

Some of the big publishers I saw those when I was in New York,

and I was like, Oh my gosh, I want one of those,

but I can't afford that, and I'm dyslexic, so I have a really

hard time reading on a computer. Gotcha. Having been an editor of

magazine, I also want to feel touch, take my red pen out

notes, put fold pages. So instead of this is another thing

I guess that bothers me about agents, and I understand a lot

of them don't have a lot of time, or they have people

reading for them,

but I want to give feedback, even if I'm going to pass on a

manuscript, I want to be able to contact them and say, You know

what you have the basic function of a really good book here, but

it's too long, or you too wordy, or you got to quit using so many

swear words or, and it's all based on how I've read line

their manuscript. So if I don't have it in physical form, you

know, I can't, I can't do that, right? So you would, you would

suggest that people actually read the requirements of each

agent before they imagine that

that would always be a good start. I mean, my my outline, I

don't know if you guys have been on my website, but my outline

for my mini proposal guide is pretty do this, do that, then

add this, then add that. I got one yesterday that they said I

followed your guide. Here it is, and it wasn't even separated in

sections,

trying to find the author's bio and the marketing information

and the comparative titles, please only use three. If you

use 15 titles that are already out there in a print, the

publishers and the agents are going to go, this is a saturated

market. We're not interested, right? So pick three top

sellers. You know why you're alike, why you're different,

and that's it. You know, don't go into overkill. Well, we'll

definitely link to that.

The submission guidelines that you mentioned for sure that'll

hopefully help.

You would ask me a question earlier that I want to make sure

I touch on about how to look for an agent. Yeah, red flags and

stuff. Do you mind if we circle back to that for a bit? No, not

at all. Yeah. I think this is the most important thing. Like

in any business, there are really good, ethical people out

there, and there are really slimy people out there, and

there are people out there that are neither and actually they're

the more dangerous ones. They're the ones that are just plain

numbers. Love your book, want to handle your book, and you may

not have even contacted them.

There's a lot of that, for some reason going on right now, and

it's a few companies that we will publish your book for you.

You know they find somebody who's self published on Amazon,

and they'll write them and say, I loved your book. We want to

publish your book in a traditional publisher. And they

get them all excited and hit their emotional base, and then,

and they don't care. They're not.

To be slimy. They're not trying to be nice. They're just trying

to run numbers. And they'll convince somebody for $2,800

will, you know, we'll take the work that you have, we won't

change your cover anything and but we'll give you all the

benefits of traditional publishing with distribution and

blah, blah, blah. They don't have anything that you that you

don't have in self publishing already. They're just making

money to have somebody type up exactly what you have and scan

the cover of your book and put it out there with their name on

it. Right? Don't fall for it. It's hard when you're a first

time author. You're so emotionally connected to your

baby that when somebody says, I read your book and I loved it,

we would love to publish it. It's going to trigger you, and

you're going to go, wow, that's really cool. My advice, don't do

it period.

You know, if it's that good and you're self published, keep it

self published,

it papers and Amazon ads, yeah, if it's that good and you're

selling 10,000 copies of it, a traditional, really good

publisher is going to pay you to buy it in public, right? You

shouldn't have to pay to publish. Oh,

and anytime it's an agent, Agent slash management company, if

they want you to pay something in advance to get you published,

no

agents get a percentage of what they get you in a contract, and

that's 15% right? It averages 15% I I'm a little flexible,

like sometimes people come to me and they just, they've already

gotten an offer, and they and it's from a good company, they

just really want somebody to oversee it and look over the

contract and everything and make sure they're doing well. And so

since I don't have to go find them a publisher. I'll work with

the percentage, but I don't work for free,

right?

You know, if you're talking to an agent and you get a sense

and, oh, that's the other thing, if you contact an agent and they

won't get on the phone with you, I don't care how many emails

they send you, do not go with them, because they're never,

ever going to get on a phone with you. Yeah, and there are a

lot of them like that. They're big agencies. They've got 50

agents working for them, and you'll get emails, you know,

yeah, we're representing your book. You'll never hear, you

know, until you get an offer. You don't hear anything, yeah,

at all. And they're running numbers that the more people

they can sign, the more probability of things that

they'll sell, right? Not a negative. But if you like to

have a personal involvement with somebody, you don't want an

agent like that, yeah, sure, not at all.

And vet your agent.

If you if somebody says they're an agent, and I don't care what

names they drop or anything, if they don't have proof

they've represented, don't go with them.

Back to your psychic side of this. If you're talking to

somebody and you don't feel an absolute state of resonance with

Oh, wow, I like this person. I feel good with this person

again. Don't go with them. Yeah, no. And I love the agents that

say, Oh, you need to sign with me. I can get you a huge

advance. They're lying.

They don't know what kind of advance. How could they

but it's, it's an emotional business. You know, when you're

dealing with somebody who's put everything they got on through

their hands on paper, it's really easy to manipulate

somebody emotionally, oh, yeah, yeah, oh. I just, I worry for

them. Sometimes I'll just read something, and you can tell that

every they're wearing their hearts on their sleeves, and I'm

just like, Oh no, protect person. Some of these contracts

that people have brought to me to try and get them out of

contracts that they have been under, I just shake my head.

Like, did you not read this? I mean, did you not, if you don't

have an agent, take it to a lawyer? You know, some of these

things. A good example, this woman had had three books with a

company,

never had seen a single dime. Was always told she was in the

negative, yet she had sold over 100,000 copies of her books.

Okay, okay, so they, that's what I said. I went, Well, okay,

how's this work? Send me your contract. They were charging her

for the actual printing of the book, the shipping of the book,

the warehousing of the books.

Was that in the contract, it was in the contract that she would

receive net after expenses, with no description of what net would

be.

And how is she supposed to know, you know, like, if you're not in

publishing, you don't know what goes into all that stuff. First

time author, she was very excited. Somebody loved her

work, and they did a beautiful job on it, yeah, yeah. Do a

beautiful job on something. You know, you're the only person

who's gonna make any money from it. Yeah, exactly. You

know, eventually they're going to get slowly pushed out of the

process. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. I think that for all of the, just

to kind of sum it up, for all the sliminess that you, even you

ascribe to agents before you got started, like, I think that they

serve a very important purpose to to protect and guide authors.

And I usually suggest to people that if they're going to go

anywhere near traditional publishing, that they should

have one

instead of just, you know, casting their fate to the wind

Absolutely. It's it. It's, I wouldn't buy a house without a

realtor. I want somebody supposedly knows what it is that

we're looking at in there. I mean, even when I first started,

I made a few boo boos on contracts, until I learned what

was real and what wasn't, what needed to be in there, what

wasn't. I mean, a lot of publishers already know all the

things I'm going to take out of their contracts. So when they

send them to me to begin with, they don't include them, right,

right? They know better. Yeah, exactly. You know, first writer

refusals is a biggie that nobody pays attention to, and they

could be locked into a publisher for life, for anything else they

ever write, just because of that clause. Yeah, you know. So if

you don't, if you don't want to have an agent, you know, at

least get somebody who knows what they're, what you're,

before you sign something. Yeah, or even if you're thinking of

talking to someone, at least, find your your friend who talks

to Michael, who will tell you that's, that's a load of

nonsense, right there. Michael is not a lawyer, and he does not

do contracts, yeah? But he, I'm sure he can smell a smell of

phony, yeah? I'm sure.

Well, I got a text from Corinne, and it looks like their internet

just failed, and that's why she disappeared from our call. Oh, I

wonder where she was like, oh, no, yeah, that sucks,

but I know that she had a wonderful time talking with you

as much as I did. This was wonderful, yeah, and we'll make

sure, is there anything else that you want to promote other

than, other than just your website and the submissions

advice that you have just dancing work group, just, you

know, the fact that I do offer one on one coaching, because I

don't know too many agents out there that do that. No, I don't

either. So, yeah, I'll send people your way. Thank you for

making yourself available in that way, awesome. Well,

anytime, dear, let me know. Well, you have a wonderful rest

of your day, and thank you for your time. Thank you. Bye.

All right. Well, that was very educational. What do you think,

Corinne, I had a great time, and I learned a lot. Yeah, who is

your guardian angel? Oh, my publishing guardian angel, sure.

Oh boy, I would probably say probably one of my former

bosses, but I'm not sure which one.

But yeah, I had some bosses who were really, like, very, like,

nurturing and like, guided me in the right direction, and were

very helpful. So I guess I would say probably one of them. Oh,

yeah. Well, you know, if you have your your angels in daily

life, if you, if you're not lucky enough to speak to an

archangel from an age, yes,

we can all find those protectors out there. So true. Yeah. Also,

I think it was important that that we talked about how not

everyone needs to have a book. Yes, I thought so too, yeah. And

I think it really goes with the idea of like your life has more

value than like, what other people think of you? Yeah,

absolutely right. Yeah. Like, you don't need to be validated

by traditional publishing or like, even readers honestly,

like, that's your worth as a person is more important than

that, exactly. Yeah. We would love to talk to more agents,

maybe some fiction agents

in the future. So you can get in touch with us, either

emily@hybridpubscout.com

or corrine@hybridpubscout.com

tell her how funny she is.

Ah,

I eat that shit up. Please tell me honestly. Yeah, speaking of

not needing validation,

please validate me.

You can follow us on Twitter at hybrid pub Scout, Facebook,

hybrid pub scouts, and then Instagram, which is pretty fun,

at hybrid pub, Scout pod. And, yeah, we would love to hear from

you. We would love if you would go on to iTunes and leave us a

five star review, yep, and, and, you know, a celebrity impression

for us to attempt, because otherwise we'll just pick, yeah,

you know how that goes? Be a disaster. Yeah? We'll just sit

there going,

we can't think of any celebrity. We told you all to do this, but

now we're totally drawing a blank.

Anyway, we'll see you next time, and thanks for giving a rip

about books. You

you.