This week, literary agent DongWon Song provides insights on the #PublishingPaidMe discussion and why decolonizing—rather than "diversifying"—publishing, really makes a lot of sense if you think about it. He also talks about how to find an agent that is right for your communication style and a writing community that will help you navigate a tough, rejection-ridden, and often inequitable industry. He also tells us what he's doing as an agent to amplify black voices.

If you are a BIPOC aspiring author or an author from another marginalized group looking for some encouragement, or an aspiring ally who wants to help dismantle white supremacy in publishing, today's interview is for you. And wherever you happen to be right now, hopefully this gets you thinking about how you can help elevate stories that have long been ignored.

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Yeah, and I just really want people to remember that

each deal is a very individual thing, right? Every book that

you sell, every opportunity that you have, is specific to you, is

specific to the agent, is specific to the editor, and all

those different elements. So don't worry about the systemic

thing when it comes to your work, but when it comes to us

pushing the industry forward. We need to think on that, that that

group level, right? But keep those two things separate in

your head, if you're a writer or if you're an agent, even trying

to figure out, how am I gonna How am I gonna profit and feed

myself and pay rent on this business? You

foreign Welcome to the hybrid club Scout podcast between Emily

einerlander, we're mapping the frontier between traditional and

indie publishing, and today, Don Juan song is joining us. Don

Juan song is an agent at Howard morheim literary agency,

representing science fiction and fantasy for adults, young adult

and middle grade readers, as well as select nonfiction. He

was formerly an editor at orbit, a product manager for an ebook

startup and has taught as an adjunct instructor in the

publishing program at Portland State University. Welcome. Don

Juan, hi, thank you so much for having me on Yeah. It's been

nice to it's nice to talk to you again since you moved out of

Portland before Yeah. Say goodbye, yeah. And you know, we

know each other through my brief time with Portland State

University and yeah, so it's really nice that a couple years

later, we're all being able to have this conversation once

again. Yeah, I just

agitated in your

class with Jordana.

Good class. I enjoyed that one a lot. So I'm surprised you like,

I'm very happy that you want to talk to me again after all of

the trouble we gave you. No, you guys kept it interesting that,

if I remember correctly, that class was like, at seven o'clock

at night. So anything that kept us all awake at that point was

good, yeah, and I think that had a big effect on the behavior as

well, because you have to You're either, like, asleep or you're

completely wired Exactly, exactly,

all right? Well, you are in New York right now, which is, I

mean, if I am looking at the Internet correctly, just been

completely bonkers for the last several months. It has been a

very interesting time to live in New York City. You know, between

the pandemic and quarantine and then all the protests over the

past week or past few weeks. At this point, it's been, it's been

a really interesting time. Not that Portland is immune to that

either,

but, you know, it's also, it's also been a good reminder of how

great the city can be and how exciting it can be to be here.

As you know, communities come together, and it's really

difficult time. Oh, that's good. I saw you were doing some mutual

aid out there. Yeah, very cool. So here's a fun icebreaker

question, what cool birds have you seen lately? Oh, man. The

other day, I misidentified a yellow warbler on Twitter. I

said it was a palm warbler because we'd been seeing lots of

palm warblers early in the day, and I just posted a photo that I

assumed was one of those, and I was wrong, and I was told so on

Twitter. So this is me publicly admitting that I screwed up, and

I apologize to everybody. No, we, I don't know. It's been nice

to go do a little bit of burning recently, especially with the

pandemic. It's a way to sort of get outside, be socially

distance and, like, feel connected to the world and nice

things in the world.

So yeah, saw a peregrine falcon on that same walk, which was

really cool. And,

yeah, it's been a nice time. Nice. We've got some kind of

Falcon that lives out in the field near our house. And oh,

hell yeah, yeah, he's great. I haven't named him yet, but I

feel like I don't deserve to.

Probably has his own name. All right, so let's jump in to all

of the good publishing stuff and the bad publishing stuff.

It's all mixed up. So why did you become an agent, and what

path did you take to get there.

Ooh, I took a very complicated path to get here. You know, the

main reason that I became an agent, and the reason I enjoy

being an agent so much is getting to work directly with

creatives and getting directly to work with writers and help

them, you know, manage the careers and support them in all

the ways in which that, you know, anyone who's in creative

industry, but particularly writers, need support, right,

helping them get income, helping them manage the careers,

strategize all those kind of things. And you know, I had

worked in publishing for probably about 10 years before I

sort of became officially an agent most recently, but

ironically, my first job in publishing was also at an

agency.

Me. I started out as an assistant at a big agency,

Sterling Lord of the Aristotle, and I worked there for, I think,

about three, three and a half years, something like that. And

had just gotten to the point where starting to take on

clients, and then decided what I wanted to work in editorial

instead. So that's when I moved to Hachette, when I was working

in orbit. And, you know, the funny thing was, at that point,

I thought I didn't like pitching books. I thought I didn't like

selling books, so I figured, oh, I'd switch to the point where I

can buy books instead of sell books. Unfortunately, the joke

was kind of on me, because all editors do all day is pitch and

have to, like, convince everyone in their company to be behind a

book. So ironically, even though I didn't like pitching, I ended

up getting really good at pitching by trying to avoid

having to do that very thing. So which was worse,

you know, at the end of the day, once I was forced to do it, I

was like, Oh, actually, I'm pretty good at this, and I

actually really like doing this. So, you know, as usual, was just

me being forced to do the thing that I thought I didn't want to

do, and then be like, Oh, fine. These vegetables are good,

actually.

This is my favorite. I'm going to go buy a grill. Exactly, all

right.

I love that. And you were actually, you were at Hachette

when Twilight happened, right? I joined Hachette sort of

immediately in the aftermath of Twilight. And, you know, a funny

thing happened that Twilight did so well that they basically gave

every single person in the company, just a flat bonus. They

just was like, here's an extra paycheck, basically. And I had

been there for, I think, literally, a week and a half,

and then I just got this extra check. And I was like, wow,

what's happening? This is not my experience of publishing so far

that somebody just hands me money for no reason. So, yes, I

joined hashed at a very good time. And you know, that was,

that was right before the the 2008 you know, housing crisis

and the recession. So it was very good to be at a place that

was financially secure, unlike a lot of my colleagues who were at

other publishers at the time. So I happened to be landed in a

really good spot right just then. Do you feel like it kind

of was was helpful in you being where you are today, rather

than, like, I don't know this is a terrible way to say it, but

like, lower on the hierarchy. I mean, I sort of started and

restarted my career several times at this point. So in one

way, maybe not, but also, like, yes, being at a place that had

resources, and be in a place that was, you know, I had the

security of my job really let me focus on all the things that I

learned in that position and really growing as an editor and

as someone who, like, was wrapping my brain around how

publishing worked at that point in time. So, you know, I think

there were material benefits to it at the same time that I don't

know, maybe if I'd gone to Random House I might have ended

up here anyways. I think, I think every single person I've

talked to has has responded to the like path question with, oh,

it was all over the place.

I don't think there's any, like, traditional linear path, right?

Like, maybe it's like, Oh, I do know people who started out as

an assistant and then became an editor and then moved on and had

been at the same imprint for 15 years. But I think that's the

exception more than the rule, right? I think most of us,

especially on the agenting side, have very sort of circuitous

ways in and out of the industry. And you know, some people want

to be writers, some people want to be editors, and just sort of

fall into these positions over time.

So what makes a good agent, and how can people find one? A

million dollar question everybody wants to know, indeed.

You know,

the hard part is, is there a million different ways to be a

good agent? There are also a million ways to be a bad agent,

right?

I think each agent has their own way of operating, their own way

of doing things. I'm very client care focused. I like having a

smaller list. I like doing a lot of editorial development, you

know, and that is a very specific way that I work that

would definitely drive certain writers nuts. Like I definitely

talked to writers who, you know, as we talked about it, it became

very clear that, like, the kind of editorial feedback and

involvement that I wanted to have was either a mismatch for

them in terms of their interest and style, or they were just not

interested in having that relationship, right? So the

thing that makes a good agent is whether that agent is a good fit

for you as a writer, right? So the thing is, really, it's, it's

this process where you're trying to figure out, what do I want

out of my career? What do I want out of my process, and how I

like to communicate, is, is this a person who will be good

partner to me in that process, right? So that's what makes an

agent a good fit. In terms of what makes a person a good agent

or a bad agent, is kind of down to, well, a the ethics, right?

Like, are you an ethical person? Are you doing your

responsibility in terms of looking out for your clients

career over looking out for your own self interest? Are you

negotiating good faith? Are you a good person to work with?

Right? I think those are the main questions I think about

when I look around the field and think, oh, that person is doing

a good job, or that person is doing a bad job. And

unfortunately, there are some people in that latter category.

Who I look at what they're doing, and I sort of feel like,

Oh, you are not being upfront with your clients, or you're not

being upfront with your business partners, or, you know, the

other thing that I noticed is like, Oh, you're not treating

the people who work for you Well, right? You're not treating

your assistants well, and those kind of things. So the things

agency work for you exactly. Thankfully, I've never been in

that position. I've only worked for really wonderful people,

and you know, so I think for me, the thing is so much like, how

do you treat other people? How do you do business? Those the

things that I feel like really determine whether or not you're

a good agent. That said, the other side of that is there's a

certain level of aggressiveness that you need to have, right?

You need to be willing to say no, to stand up to things, to

push back and to very forcefully advocate for your writer

sometimes, whether that's we deserve more money, or whether

that's, no, you're not going to put that cover on the book, or

no, you're not going to do that copy. Or no, you're not going to

talk to my writer like that, right? So there's, there's a lot

of different aspects of it, and I think the best agents are the

ones who are very comfortable switching from making good

friends with people and building really strong interpersonal

connection, and also shutting that person down very

aggressively when that moment has to come without, without

being cruel about it, or without yelling, or without, you know,

being inappropriate.

Do you feel like that? There's more pressure on an agent

compared to other people in publishing when it comes to

like, having ethical standards, just because there's more of a

social aspect to it. Quite frankly, I feel like there's

less pressure on agents because there's so little oversight,

right? Most of us work very independently. Even at an

agency, there's not a lot of oversight in terms of

agents. Don't really have managers, right? We don't report

to other people. We're we're part of an agency, but it's not

like Howard, who owns the agency and runs it, is checking my work

every day, or I'm doing performance reviews with him,

right? You know, if word gets back to him that I've been

behaving inappropriately or badly, then that will be an

issue. But it's very different than when you are inside a major

corporation or working inside the division or working in a

team, and how your relationship with those people works, right?

So I think it's easier to get away with bad behavior on the

agenting side because it is not centralized, and there is very

little oversight on individual agents. And you know, I'm not

sure exactly when this podcasting released, but in the

past couple of weeks, we've seen a couple very large agencies, or

not large agencies, but very prominently,

sort of flame out over the past couple of weeks around some of

the Black Lives Matters, issues and, you know, ways in which

that we talk about race and equity within publishing. You

know, we've seen two fairly significant people drop off the

scene kind of shockingly precipitously.

And, you know, again, as that happened, a lot of stories came

out about previous bad behavior, and that's kind of an immediate

like, there was no one who was, who was collecting that, who was

responsible for that, who you could there's no HR department

you could call about that person, right? So, so I think

it's a big issue. I think it's a big issue that we face as an

industry of you know, how do we make sure that we are able to

call out people who are doing harm to their clients and not

serving writers well and sort of making all of us look bad as a

group, without sacrificing the autonomy that we all have and

that we all enjoy?

So how I will talk, we'll talk about this from different

perspectives, but just for regular author who's looking for

an agent, how would they kind of guard against going with someone

who is not good for them and who might take them for granted or

hurt them somehow?

There's a few things, you know, Google that person, right? Look

at query tracker. Look at what people say about them on query

tracker. Query tracker is a website that basically keeps

information on all the different agents, and is basically,

I guess, like a it's like, Rate My Professor, but for agents,

right? Like, you know, it's not gonna say rating system, but

there will be comments from people who submit to them, and

you know, how that person responded, how that person

treated them, things like that. So it's a way to get a little

bit of insight into how an agent responds and things like that. I

find

it's a little bit misleading. But, you know, I'm an agent, and

I'm the subject to these reviews, so of course, I feel

that way. That said, I don't have a problem with query

tracker. I think it's a great website. I think it's a great

resource. So that's a good place just to sort of scan and say,

oh, this person is a nightmare or not, right? Twitter

is also a good way, and that's just a way for you to sort of

judge for yourself. You can follow someone, someone, see

what they say. Do they talk about the business the way that

you appreciate? Do they seem approachable? Do they seem

smart, right?

And then the most well. And then ask your friends, right? Ask

your personal network,

you know, make as many friends with other writers as you can,

and especially folks who are at your level. And as those people

start to get agents, as they make more friends, you can ask

around and be like, Hey, what's this personal reputation? And

then the last step is when you are offered representation by

an.

An agent, you should have a conversation with them. You

know, ask them as many questions as you can about, how do you do

business? You know, what are your priorities? Those kind of

things, right? Like, really, ask the most difficult questions you

can think of in terms of how you want your career to go and what

you think difficult decision points might be. How do they

handle certain situations? And then, you know, be very

skeptical about about the responses that they give you,

and if you're not feeling good about that, then trust your

instincts, and then also ask to talk to some of their clients.

That's the thing that I almost always offer when I'm offering

representation, is the opportunity to have a

conversation or exchange some emails with someone I do

represent, and I love it when they ask for something really

targeted, right? When they're like, Okay, I'm in this kind of

a position. Have you ever worked with someone in that position?

Or, you know, I'd like to talk to someone whose project you've

haven't sold or have struggled selling, right?

And I think those are really interesting things to ask for,

and to really get a clear picture of what is it actually

going to be like working with this person. I think that last

question that you brought up is really a perceptive one for an

author to ask, like, maybe one who's been querying for a long

time. But I mean, honestly, if I were to start doing this, which

I don't foresee, that wouldn't occur to me until like, later in

the process, like, oh, maybe I should ask them this. So

hopefully that gives somebody a good leg up there. Okay, so it's

been a week as we as we mentioned earlier, and one of

the big things that's happened is the the publishing paid me

hashtag,

so we've had a lot of sudden transparency about author

advances. And I went to the bank yesterday to open a business

account, and, like, ended up trying to explain publishing,

like, traditional publishing. Look, I've been trying to do

that for 15 years. I don't think my parents still understand how

it works. So lucky. And of course, he was asking about,

like, how the authors get paid, because, you know, I was talking

about self publishing, how you have to pay upfront for a lot of

the stuff. And he's like, Well, what other authors do? Like,

they don't pay for it. And I'm like, well, and I started trying

to explain advances in royalty structures, and I can tell that

his mouth is open behind his mask, just like,

and he's like, that's, that's who does that? And I said, Okay,

so this is confusing for a lot of people. So with all the

transparency that is starting to happen, like, why weren't people

talking about this before, and why was it so nebulous, and why

does it continue to be because it's always hard to talk about

money, right? I don't know that's a cultural thing. I don't

know if that's a societal thing, but talking about how much money

you're making, especially when you're talking about a creative

project, because it's so random, right? You know, I know, or just

limiting to projects I've worked on, I've worked on books that,

you know, got paid six figures per book, and I've worked on

books that barely got paid five figures per book. And there's no

qualitative difference between those they were both really good

books. And obviously I believe in both of those things. And

I've had books that we sold for $15,000 that outsold books that

we sold for $100,000

by orders of magnitude, right? There's no guarantee that the

big advance also means that it's going to be a best seller.

Advances are so much about what you can convince somebody

something is worth, which is a really different thing from

that's what this thing is worth. The way you know what something

is worth. And again, we're using worth in terms of, purely in

terms of sales, purely in terms of royalties, purely in terms

of, this is how corporations value things, because that's how

they make money. So if we're accepting that money is a

measure here, the way you know is how many books you sold at

the end of the day. But in advance happens before you sell

the books. And advance is your expectation of what you can

convince somebody, or what something similar to it, or what

that previous authors or whatever, what other previous

books that author has published have sold, right? That's what

you're measuring to those are the comp titles that we talk

about.

Now. Comp titles put in a structural bias, right? Because

if there are 100 books by by, you know, white people that have

sold, you know, millions of copies, and then there are only

five books by black people who have sold that many copies, then

it gets very hard to say, Yes, this book is exactly like Tony

Morrison, right? But if you don't want to compare to compare

to Toni Morrison, then it's like, well, who, what are my

other options? Versus, when you're looking at, you know, the

wide range of authors who are white, you have a much greater

ability to pick and choose stuff that is very specific, right? So

in my view, a lot of the issues around publishing paid me are

less about black author specifically, or, you know, POC

authors generally getting paid less per book than a white

author or a cis author, is it's it's more about how few the

deals that we're seeing go through are for certain segments

relative to the overall market. Right? Because what?

It means is there aren't enough comp titles there. There isn't

enough range, there isn't enough body of work for us to be really

talking about, okay, how do we publish this? How do we publish

it? Well, how do we compare this? Other things, you know

what our marketing strategy is, because we're all queuing off of

the hit you give, which is such a very specific book that was

published in a very specific time. And you know, there's only

so much you can do with that, and it's a an echo chamber and

self perpetuating Exactly, exactly. So, you know, I think

the way we need to think about stuff like publishing paid me,

and I know we've wandered a little bit off your original

question there, but I don't care, I wander away is, you

know, that is the thing that's raising a systemic issue, right?

And if we're thinking about it on a systemic level, of you

know, we as an industry need to address this, because

this massive data, this massive reporting, is telling us things

that, you know, writers and the audience needs to know about how

publishing works. But if we drill down to an individual

level, and this is where I become a little concerned is I

saw a lot of writers walk away from that feeling very upset, of

like, Oh, I didn't get that, or I'm never going to get that. Or,

why should I try and sell my book? If that's what people are

getting paid? And I just really want people to remember that

each deal is a very individual thing, right? Every book that

you sell, every opportunity that you have is specific to you, is

specific to the agent, is specific to the editor and all

those different elements. So don't worry about the systemic

thing when it comes to your work, but when it comes to us

pushing the industry forward, we need to think on that that that

group level, right? But keep those two things separate in

your head, if you're a writer or if you're an agent, even trying

to figure out, how am I going to, how am I going to profit and

feed myself and pay rent on this business,

thinking about,

I covered, I covered a lot of ground there real fast, yeah,

and I think that, I think I was seeing a lot more black and

white, thinking, obviously, it's Twitter. So a lot of like, well,

this is bullshit, like,

you know, this is wrong, because this is one way and this is the

other. But then I was seeing, you know, there's the top

authors who are having these like, disparities, but then

there's just

other authors I've never heard of all over the map. And so I

was trying to, like, in my head, kind of graph them, and I

couldn't do it. I was just like, and I guess at a smaller and I

did have some experiences with this in my own, you know, work,

but you probably have had a lot more than me. One thing that's

really how you do comps for the smaller books, I guess Exactly.

Well, just to jump in real quick, one thing that's really

useful in terms of trying to make sense of useful in terms of

trying to make sense of the data is grace. P Fong, she has put

together a Google spreadsheet of all the data, and has also put

up an anonymized survey option so anyone can enter the

information without being without, you know, revealing

necessarily, their history. So they've done a lot of work, or

she's done a lot of work to build out a little bit more

robust reporting around it. And so you can, you can go look up

that information. She's at pictograph on Twitter. She's a

brilliant writer and a brilliant artist as well. So I would a

recommend following Grace generally, but also she's done a

lot of great work around this issue.

So going on to a different topic that is a major topic of

discussion this week, we have heard over the years, sometimes

in more concentrated efforts, and then, you know, sometimes

just not at all for long periods of time, about how we need more

diversity in publishing,

but you'd prefer to use the word decolonize, which I love. So can

you please explain the difference in how the work you

do as an agent serves that end, right? So

you know, my issues with the term diversity kind of cover a

few different things, right? One, diversity has been a has

been so overused that it sort of been completely defamed, and

it's hard to know what it really means anymore. But one of the

things that I always hear when people talk about diversity is

it's so it has this sort of implication of a corporate

program in certain ways. And it always feels like, okay, there's

an endpoint to diversity. There's a point at which we are

diverse enough where we've taken sort of like this, this, this

group of white people, and added enough seasoning to it that it's

no longer as white as it was. And therefore it is, it is, it

is now, it is now, reached a certain end point, right? And I

think for me, that feels like the wrong way to think about it,

because it's not about adding enough

black and brown people, enough queer people, enough disabled

people, enough people from marginalized backgrounds into

sort of a still predominantly white, cis and straight

environment. It's about, how do we shift our thinking about what

are the stories we're telling and how we're telling them, and

who are we.

Telling stories for right? So the idea of decolonizing is

addressing the historical legacy that colonization has had,

whether that's chattel slavery here in the United States,

whether that's colonization of indigenous peoples, whether you

know that is, you know American influence in East Asia or

European influence throughout the world. You know, there's a

variety of ways that that colonization impacts how

literature works, and it is a useful framework to think about

it, because it always forces you to think about the context,

right? Who's telling this story and whose story is this to tell?

Are you taking someone else's story because that person

didn't have the same level of power and privilege that you did

because of the history that of your your position relative to

that person. It's, it's a, it's a way of thinking that centers

privilege and what your privileges are relative to the

story that you're trying to tell. So that helps us, for

example, avoid an American dirt situation, right? Where you

have, you know, someone who is a well intentioned,

you know, I believe she is mixed race, but is a predominantly

white person who's grew up in a very white environment, telling

a story about,

you know, Latinx people trying to emigrate to the United

States, and really telling a story that necessarily, wasn't

necessarily hers to tell, right? And, you know, as you can tell,

even as I'm trying to talk about it, all the issues around

diversity are coming in. It's like, Well, is she brown enough,

right? And she even, like, said that that she didn't feel brown

enough to write this story. And that is, that is a messed up way

to think about it, right? Because for me, the issue is

more that she is a privilege. You know, very American, very

centered in the in our particular culture, without a

deep understanding of what the people who were emigrating were

experiencing, and what their stories were and how to center

their experience, rather than project her idea of their

experience onto them. Right? So decolonization is a way that

gives it lets us start thinking about those issues in a more

nuanced way, because it's about lines of power, it's about

history, it's about privilege, rather than about a

strict adherence to skin color or racial identity or national

history. It sounds like diversity in itself, like by

definition, is tokenizing if you're talking about, like,

putting, you know, additives to a cookie or something like that,

those are still, like, look at our chocolate chips, look at our

walnuts,

exactly. Yeah, I think

that's interesting when you talk about the not being enough

thing, because that's something that I've heard from a lot of

especially mixed race people, where they're like, I can't.

Nobody wants my story because I don't fit into one of these

boxes, right? Yeah. And especially, like, it also seems

that there's like, extreme white gays on that, especially for

like, American dirt, it's like, they want to look at it from the

you know, it makes the white ladies feel good point of view.

Like, and that kind of also brings me to like, How many

times have you heard that only white women read? Because I've

heard that a lot, constantly, constantly. And, you know, I

mean, this is, this is the problem, because as a publisher,

you need to think about demographics, right? Like for

me, in this thing I talk about relatively frequently is all the

publishing can be boiled down to one question, which is, who is

this for? Right? Anytime you're writing a book, anytime you're

publishing a book, anytime you're marketing a book, you're

what you're trying to figure out is, who's the audience for this

thing, right? So the thing that we know as publishers is the

vast majority of the book buying audience, and my vast majority,

I mean, like 65% or something like that. I'm making a number

up. I don't know if it's accurate. It's don't know if

it's accurate. It's somewhere in that ballpark that the majority

of the book buying audience is

upper and middle class white women,

which then gets translated to only white women, right? When

that's not true at all, right? And when you consider that, if

you can reach 5000 people, 10,000 people, 20,000 people,

you can make a really successful book and a really successful

career for a writer, right? You don't need all readers to get

behind a book. You don't need to aim at the center of the market

every single time. So when you hear people talking about like,

oh, you know, this book isn't for the expected sort of soccer

mom audience, that sort of, like, very ad by demographic

concept of like, who our audience is, then, you know, I

think that you end up with a very limiting idea of who

publishing is for and who books are for. So, you know, I think

the more that we can understand that a lot of different people

read books, and also just because someone didn't read a

book yesterday doesn't mean they won't put they won't pick up a

book tomorrow, right? If we only reinforce the idea that these

are the people who read books, then we're never going to grow

the audience past what we have, and frankly, we're not going to

survive as an industry, right? So, you know, I'm known, I

think, for working with a lot of, uh.

Are right, just from marginalized backgrounds of a

wide variety. And for me, that is because a I'm really

interested in the stories, those ones I respond to personally

because of my own background. But also it's, it's a little bit

of business decision too. It's a little bit of, actually, I think

we can make a lot of money by marketing to audiences who have

been traditionally ignored by the industry, right, and by

media generally. And if we start approaching those audiences and

writing books and publishing books that target them and open

up their their access, then I think we can really build a way

for publishing to be very sustainable going forward,

because we have we can access a much wider audience and a much

broader group of people than we've traditionally thought

about when we publish books, and especially as just business in

general, decentralizes. It seems like that

requirement to niche down is one of the biggest like success

recommendations that people can give. And I don't see why that

wouldn't apply to publishing as well.

Have you seen instances where you have been able to

get people who don't read to start reading like I mean,

that's interesting to me. The only time that I've had someone

reference that on this show is someone who you know was doing

publicity for YouTube stars, and, you know, seeing young

people being really excited about reading their biography.

But I mean, I feel like with all of the different ways that we

consume media now, and how like diverse that is,

it might actually be in roads to people consuming books in a

different way, like, what are, what are some examples that

you've seen? You know, it sort of comes in two forms. The one

that's the most obvious one is, I work with a few middle grade

and young adult writers, right? And they do a lot of school

visits and library visits, and so often when I talk to them

after they do those visits, you know, they're going to schools

that aren't necessarily the most well funded, that aren't in the

best neighborhoods, and they'll show up, and there'll be 300

kids there who read their book. And in part because it was a

program through the school, but it was people who we don't think

of as the book buying audience, right? For whatever reason,

right? And those reasons are profoundly flawed, and

but

you know, when I talk to the my writers who go to those things

and meet with those kids and have these experiences, and

they're always, you know, one of them in particular, they always

come back from those events with the most chaotic stories of

like, this kid asked this completely bananas question, or

this person dragged me completely for, You know, while

I was on stage, and like, getting owned by a 13 year old

while you're on stage is is deeply brutal, but also, like,

there's such a joy in that experience. Because here's this

13 year old kid who's clearly like, not well adjusted and not

doing good in school and not well liked by his teachers. But

read this book, enough that they can respond to the writer in a

way that, like shows that they understand who the writer is as

a person, because they read the book right, and that is a level

of engagement that is so exciting to me and even to that

person who's getting deeply dragged in that moment. You know

you can tell that there is a love and affection that that

they have for even that deeply chaotic, terrible child, because

that person isn't one who's normally being seen by our

educational structures, right? And isn't being seen by the

books that we're publishing. And so they have an opportunity to

connect in a way that they haven't before, right? And so

providing those opportunities is so exciting to me, right? And

you know, even as I'm talking about it, there's a way in which

I think that it can sound a little patron, can sound a

little patronizing, right? But I think so much of it is, is if we

can find stories that are really specific and really honest, then

people will find ways to connect with that. And I think that, to

me, is the core of what we're trying to do here.

Yeah. So, you know, I don't know that I've ever had someone come

up to me and say, Oh, I never read books until I read this

one. But I can see the impact that is happening at these

school visits. I can see the impact that this writer and

other writers I know, and you know people who operate in that

sort of school visit space get to have this really special

experience of meeting lots of kids who are being exposed to

their work in exciting ways, and that places a profound

importance on young people reading. I mean, because, like,

I can't imagine adults who haven't who weren't reading when

they were children starting to read more. I mean, I could be

wrong, but like, I'm having a hard time picturing it.

You know, I was lucky enough to work on a book series that has

been turned into a pretty successful TV show, and that's

the expanse. And I cannot tell you the number of people I meet,

and you know, this is a very different kind of conversation

that I was talking about in terms of, like kids seeing

themselves represent on page. But I meet a lot of people now

who are like, oh, yeah, I don't read that much, but I watched

the TV.

Show, and then I read those books, and those books are

great, right? Like, there is a way in which I do think if

you're telling good stories that are exciting, then I do think

there's a group of people who buy one book a year or two books

a year, right? And just because they're not the voracious

readers that some of us are, that we think of as, as, you

know, oh, I read four books a month, or whatever it is, right?

Just

because they're buying one book a year or two books a year, I

think that's also really wonderful. And I think getting

those people to maybe even buy that second book, or making sure

that they bought that book this year, that's a really exciting

moment and opportunity, too. So, you know, I think, I think on so

many levels, we need to be less restrictive of thinking about

who is our audience and who was our reader, right? And, you

know, I talked to writer so much, and one things I tell them

is your

competition isn't necessarily other writers. You're not

competing with other books in the market. You're competing

with like someone's Xbox, right? And you're competing with

Netflix and Amazon's, you know, Amazon Prime video, or whatever

it is. So what we need to think about more is how we making

really engaging books that draw people in. And, you know, I

think finding ways to connect with those things, right? Like

the number of people who have now read The Witcher books

because they played the game or watched the TV show, right? And,

you know, the sales of the that book just went through the roof

after the TV show happened, or the the Netflix show happened,

and I don't think that's a bad thing, right? I think so many

people will look down on that situation, but instead, I'm

like, Oh, that's a million people who have now read this

polish, this very strange polish, writers short stories,

which are effectively what those Witcher books are

that never would have been exposed to it otherwise. So,

okay, so not only is the media the other sources of media

competition, but it's also like a tool in a lot of ways. I think

we can make them tools, right? I think, I think if you learn that

you operate within a wider media marketplace, and you're it's not

just you and other books, it's you and everybody's attention,

then you can find other ways to draw people in that aren't just

about beating out that other writer who happens to be in your

category and publishing a month after you. Right? I think we

just need to shift our thinking as publishers and as writers

about who our audience is and how we want to access them.

I think it's so ironic that, like the idea of, you know,

a book needing to be for everybody, and how that

restricts, restricts the industry is like myopic, when

what you really need to do is be myopic in a different way. If

that makes sense, 100%

I mean, people respond to specificity, right? Like, the

things that always work the best are things that are like, I

mean, yes, every now and again, like, that super generic thing

does work, right?

But in general, I think the thing that's most exciting, the

things that can really blow up and make a big impact, are

things that are so specific that no one else could have written

them, right? You know, I think about like fleabag, for example,

right? That's the thing that's been a huge cultural sensation

over the past few years, and that is the weirdest, strangest,

most specific experience and most specific story that a ton

of people found connection to because of a specificity, right?

So as as someone who is identifying projects to be

published, that's always what I'm looking for. I'm always

looking for a sense that I know who the person who wrote this

is. I knew why they wrote it. I know what their point of view

is, and I know sort of the conditions under which they

wrote this book. Those are the things I really want to feel

anytime I'm picking up a book, and I think those are things

that people really connect

with. But yeah, all right, so I've gotten a couple of

questions from an aspiring author, their bipoc, and they

have run up against these problems a lot of time where

they're told, Well, we already have a brown person that is on

our list. Like, we don't, you know, what do you have to bring

to the table? Or, like, Oh, you're, you know, you're black.

Why aren't you writing about the American south like because I'm

not from there so

and they also feel very alone in this experience, and wanted to

know where they can find other people, particularly POC, in the

literary space, to commune with support. Request support from on

as they go through this, like, difficult experience of getting

rejected and misunderstood over and over again. Yeah, I mean,

it's it's so frustrating, it's so isolating. And, you know,

even as someone who has a lot of connection to industry, and, you

know, obviously I'm not a writer, I'm on this side of the

fence here, but sometimes it can feel really isolating, even for

me, in terms of, like, Oh, I'm trying to do this thing. I look

around and I'm dealing primarily with a group of, you know, white

folks, and it's, it's hard when you're trying to advocate,

especially for an author of color and or.

One who's marginalized in other ways that when you get told, Oh,

this story just isn't for us, or I don't, I didn't connect with

this or, you know, or like, what you're saying, like, oh, this,

you know, I had one, one situation where someone was

like, Oh, this character gets along with his mother, and that

doesn't seem really believable. And I'm like, wait what? We

can't have, like, good families just because you're talking

about someone who is a person of color, right? Like,

and you know, those kind of things, those kind of very

specific pushbacks,

are really damaging in a way that I don't think the people

who are saying that realize in the moment. But to answer your

question, I mean, the answer, as always, is community, right?

Like, find a community of writers that you can connect

with, and it can be really hard to find those people, because

there's a lot of people. Of people out there and a lot of

people in those writers groups, or on Codex, which is a big

website, and things like that, who won't get what you're

talking about. But if you can find that one person, two

people, three people, whatever it is, who do get it and build,

you know, a little writer's group with them, you know, share

your work, be critique partners, hold each other's hands as they

go, as you all go through this process together that can make

such a huge difference. So, you know, I know a lot of my

friends, or a lot of my clients and other writer friends are in

various slacks, like a queer slack or Translat or POC slack

or an agent slack, or whatever it is. There's all these

different or discords or what, you know, all these little

private chat rooms where I know they're all doing such good

work, supporting each other and talking about issues that they

all face. And every time I hear about what's happening in those

it always sounds really I mean, every now and again, it's like,

oh, that one went off the rails and they disappeared into some

like it. They imploded in under some political situation that

they were all fighting. But you know, every discord, of course,

listen, it's social dynamics. Friends fall apart. It happens.

But also, I think a lot of those, they support each other

too, and I think there's something really beautiful and

really essential in that. So, you know, to your listener and

to your friend, I would say, try and find those people. And I

know it's hard, and I know it's discouraging, but you know,

there's always the next book that's always the next project.

There's always someone else you can reach out to. You know, just

keep going. You know, it's, it's, it's a long road in

publishing. It's a long road to finding that community. But if

you do, it's really, really worth it, in my opinion. So do

they have to kind of start at a more general, like writers you

know, this is the big Writers Group, and you have to go into

it to find the smaller communities. I mean, I think

that's one way to do it, you know, going to writers

conferences, going to meetups in your town, hopping on Twitter

and seeing who's talking, you know. And I think those are ways

to start connect to other people.

Or, you know, you can look for people who aren't sort of in the

same situation or same city that you're in. I think trying to

build those online communities is really important, especially

if you're marginalized. Online communities are so much easier

to develop than trying to find those people in person. So, you

know, I would, I would sort of recommend starting in, you know,

forums, websites, Twitter, those kind of things, and trying to

find people who you really connect with and just reach out

to them and just talk and see if there's something there. Or, you

know, it always just ask, like, Hey, would you be willing to

look at my stuff? Or, hey, if you ever have something you want

someone to take a look at, let me know. Right? I think there

are ways to do that.

It's making friends, which is a hard thing to do. So

that's, that's, that's what I would recommend, at least. So

there's also an element of, like, being generous with your

own like, yeah, offers to read, etc. I mean, don't let people

take advantage of you, obviously. Like, watch out for

yourself. You know, keep your head on swivel, but, but, but,

you know, I do think being

vulnerable is really hard thing to do, and that's sometimes what

it takes to start a relationship.

So, and this kind of goes with the earlier question about

finding an agent you can trust, like, how can, how can this

person find non POC allies who are interested in actually

helping them and supporting them. And

she's they said, how do we trust when we've been ignored or

tokenized for a long time? It's hard. It's hard.

You know? I think this is a case where doing your research really

is important, right? Read the interviews we almost every agent

does interviews, podcasts like this one, right? So, you know,

check out what they've done. What did they say, and most

importantly, who did they publish, right? This isn't a

guarantee. I definitely know some people who publish, some

really great people who I'm like, Hmm, you have some

interesting opinions, but,

but in general, that's a good place to start. Look who they're

publishing, right? And if somebody is talking a good game

about being an ally, but their entire list is very uniform and

very homogeneous, then maybe that person's not right for you,

right? But at least if someone is publishing these voices is

showing a real commitment, not just in what they're saying, but

in the time and effort and labor they're putting into this, then

that is something that I think always earns more credit for me,

at least, right? I'm always.

Like, show me the work, right? Show me what you've done. And I

think that will change how I think about the situation a lot.

And then, you know, again, trust your instincts in that

conversation. Ask the difficult questions, right? If you're

feeling uncertain, then if you ask that question and that

person reacts badly, then what is it going to what's going to

what's going to happen if you're having an editorial

conversation, or you're, you're, you're talking about, I don't

want to work with this editor, because this editor said

something. How are you going to have that conversation where so

many more things are on the line then in this initial

conversation you're having between a potential agent and a

potential client, right?

So ask those questions, push back on those things. You're

doing yourself a favor by trying to find answers to those. And if

the agent, potential agent, doesn't want to address those

who doesn't want to talk to you about those things, then they're

not going to be willing to talk about it when it really matters.

So you're saying, Be be transparent about what you care

about from the beginning so you don't get nasty surprises later

on. Exactly on. Exactly, exactly, I mean, and don't,

don't be super aggressive about it, right? Don't be, don't be

cruel about it. But I think asking very real questions is an

important that's you looking out for yourself. So switching gears

a little bit, near the beginning of lockdown, we talked with an

editor at atria Rakesh that y'all,

he's great. It was a great conversation. So we talked about

how work was going, and it was near the very beginning. So he

was like, Well, I'm getting a lot of reading done and I'm

getting a lot of writing done, but you know, generally, it's

the same.

And now some time has passed,

you were in the same you're in the same like city.

How is it now? How is your take on it? Is, is there more

fraughtness in New York publishing right now, in terms

of the pandemic? And, I mean, for me, I've worked from home

for years. You know, back when I was in Portland, you know, I was

working from home there when I'm even, when I moved back to

Brooklyn, you know, I'm only, I was only going to the office one

day a week, and mostly just go in and see my colleagues and

gossip for a minute and then, you know, say hi, right? Like,

so, in a weird way, it hasn't, professionally, it hasn't been

that big of a change, right? I've always worked for home. I

like working from home. I do all my business over email and

phone. Anyways, you know, I'm not I miss seeing people face to

face. I miss lunches and, you know, getting drinks with

friends and things like that, who are usually also editors and

people in the business. So I'm definitely missing out on that

side of the business. But materially, it's not that

different in a weird way for me, specifically,

I think for people who work inside publishers, who you know,

had to go into the office four days a week and have a lot of in

person, meetings and things like that, I think that has been a

big shift. And I do think the first month, month and a half,

was a pretty big transition for them, as they're like, Wait, how

do we do all these things via zoom or whatever it is.

Now those things seem to be going a lot smoother. My sense

is those systems have, like, sort of resolved themselves a

little bit, and everyone's having a little bit easier time

of managing their ability to, you know, do a production

meeting over the internet, or do an art meeting over the

internet, things like that. So I think everyone's sort of

figuring it out and sort of proving that actually publishing

can work remotely just fine, in spite of what everyone's been

saying for years. And it looks like we're going to continue to

work remote until the fall, at least.

So, you know, I think we're kind of back to business as usual in

a weird way. Everything's still a little weird and a little

discombobulated, and I think that's always going to be true

until this sort of this, this quarantine pandemic era has has

truly quieted down,

but publishing seems to be doing just fine, is my general

impression of it. So you're not seeing like timidity and

acquisitions right now with the editors you're pitching to. You

know, there was, there was sort of an initial worry that people

were gonna,

you know, stop buying books or stop paying out, you know, I was

little worried about that. Initially, I was like, Oh, are

they gonna be, still be paying these advances on time, things

like that. But

in practice, that hasn't really happened. You know, I think book

sales have stayed reasonably strong, surprisingly.

And, you know, my my sense is that no one is, like

existentially worried about the industry at this point. So yeah,

people are still buying books. You know, I haven't really been

sending much out during this period, but I have friends

who've done big deals, and a number of people who are, who

business is progressing very normally. You know, I've done

some audio stuff in some foreign stuff in this time, just, you

know, standard things ticking along. So I have seen basically

no disruption in my business at all. And I think that's true for

a lot of my colleagues and friends.

I love to hear it.

Yeah. Do you think that I.

Um, now that everyone's gotten a taste of the work from home

life, that there might be a little bit of decentralization

of the industry, or do you think people are eager to return to

that enclave? People are eager to return the Enclave. Do I

think this is going to inspire a wave of decentralization? No, I

think publishers are pretty set in their ways, and I think they

want things to happen in certain way. I think this may prove it

is possible. So over the years, we'll see some more change, but

I don't think we're going to have a sudden shift in everyone

working from home and lots of people working from outside New

York

in the next year. There's five years, I think over time, that's

going to continue to shift as it has been, but this isn't going

to be some big sea change moment. I don't know. I might be

wrong. I hope I'm wrong actually, because I do think

decentralizing out of New York would be very good for the

industry in a number of ways.

Yeah. I mean, I guess. I guess, if things are progressing well

right now, there's no reason for them to worry about that.

Exactly. Yeah, that's not a threat.

Listen, publishing is under enough threats. It doesn't need

one more. I have nothing.

So do you have any parting words, things you want to shout

out

at all? You have a lot of things going on. I have so many things

going on. And, you know, I keep starting new projects. So I just

started a new project this week, actually, that is a live

streaming show that I'm doing with a friend of mine, Seth

Fishman of the Garner Agency, and the two of us are doing sort

of an educational weekly series. It's on YouTube and on Twitch,

where we talk about what it is to be an agent and the process

of being an agent. And really the goal is to educate people

who want to work in the industry, or want to be literary

agents, or already are and are trying to learn more. You know,

it's a way to address the way that working remotely doesn't

provide a lot of those ad hoc learning opportunities of being

in the same office. So that's called agent talk with Seth and

Don Juan. You can find us on Twitter at agent talk show. We

stream every Friday at one o'clock Eastern, on YouTube and

on Twitch. We've done one show so far. So when I say every

Friday, that is ambitious, and we'll see if that holds up.

I also have a newsletter called publishing is hard that you can

find on sub stack, where I write about my own experiences in

publishing, my own thoughts on on both writing craft, the

business of publishing, what's happening in the market, things

like that. It's sort of a more personal, a little bit more

emotional take on things

and yeah, and then you can follow me on Twitter. You'll see

me tweeting about all my clients, projects and upcoming

book releases and things like that,

right?

Are you accepting queries right now? I am accepting queries.

I've just reopened to queries, but only from black writers.

Great. So this is a way of me trying to address a lot of the

things that I've been talking about, and I've always believed

that we as an industry don't emphasize black voices enough.

And you know, I personally have felt that I haven't been doing

enough on that front, and this is one way that I want to

address that and start actively bringing in more black voices

into my list and being able to promote those stories and

promote those books in the world. So if you are a black

writer, please feel free to email me. You can look at my

information

on@dongguansong.com

and you'll find this mission guidelines there.

And you can find us on Facebook at hybrid pub Scout, on Twitter

at hybrid pub Scout, and Instagram at hybrid pub Scout

pod. Please visit our website, hybridpubscout.com and while

you're there, click join our troop to get our new guide, the

HPS guide to picking your publishing path. It's free, and

thanks for giving a rip about books you.

You.