Episode 55: Kate McKean, Author & Literary Agent
How do you set realistic expectations in publishing? If a book doesn’t sell, how do you cope with rejection? Literary agent and author Kate McKean chats about her latest book Write Through It! She also shares tips for honing your writer’s intuition, pitching your book, and what queries stand out in the slush pile.
transcript for episode 55 with kate mckean
Mary Kole (00:00:23):
Welcome everybody. My name is Mary Kole, and with me I have Kate McKean from the Howard Morhaim agency. Fantastic. And we are here to talk about everything publishing with a special eye toward Write Through It, your new book that is coming out on June 10th. Congratulations, by the way.
Kate McKean (00:00:46):
Thank you. I'm excited. It makes me want to hug it.
Mary Kole (00:00:49):
It also supports your wonderful Substack Agents and Books, which is kind of amalgamation of querying advice and hot takes on the publishing industry, all of that. You just have tons of amazing things to say and one of the things I love about this book is that it is ferociously human and doesn't hold back and is just realistic.
Kate McKean (00:01:20):
I really tried to do that because I don't think there's anything else that's better to do. I can't be like, this is the one book you'll ever need to blah, blah, blah. I'm like, no, that's not true. This is a resource. I hope it helps you. My point is to help.
Mary Kole (00:01:40):
Well, one of the things that I really took from it, and I wanted to read something from page 57, which is, and I've never seen it broken down quite this way. Your delineation between the writer's instinct, the positive thing, the thing that maybe allows you to self-edit that allows you to pick out the holes in your own project and fear and doubt, right? These are not the same animal.
“The voice that says this book is horrible is not your gut. It is fear and doubt, and that is not the same as your gut or intuition. What's your gut when it comes to writing? It's that small voice inside you that says, I'm not sure that part makes sense. It's not the part that screams this is worthless. It's much quieter than that, and it rarely passes judgment.”
Kate McKean (00:02:33):
And it takes a while to develop. I mean, that's true about all writing I guess, but you have to be able to sit with yourself and sit in that really uncomfortable position of being like, what do I think? What's really going on here? And be like, your gut is the one that says you're reading chapter two and you're like, it's a little slow. Is this a little slow? when you sit and think about it for a second and come back to it another day maybe. Did you still feel that way? That's intuition that you grow, and the voice that's very loud says You're horrible. You'll never work in this town again like blah, blah. That is fear and doubt. It's the same thing. That's the same thing that says everybody hates you or everybody's mad at you. The same voice that says everybody's mad at you. That's not your intuition, that's anxiety.
Mary Kole (00:03:31):
So it's this idea of your writer's intuition and your judgment and your fearmonger. And I don't think that I, because sometimes I have anxiety as a human living in today's whatever, and I sometimes have a really hard time differentiating, I'm about to get on a plane, I feel nervous. Is that a premonition of doom or is it just garden variety anxiety? And so I've never seen anybody kind of dissect it quite the way you did.
Kate McKean (00:04:10):
Thank you. I have to worry, I have to try to not be so practical that I discount people's real fears or intuitions or things like that, but it's like you can worry about the plane, but it's not going to keep it in the air.
Mary Kole (00:04:26):
Whoa, whoa, whoa, madam. I don't know if you know this, but I can keep a plane, an entire plane aloft through the sheer force of my panic.
Kate McKean (00:04:37):
I only want to fly with you. I just don't know what it is about my personality that does that or maybe I don't know, but it's just, maybe it's a self-protection thing because if I don't say that, then maybe I'll spiral off into nowhere. But in regards to writing, it's like you're going to have a feeling about it and I'm going to have a feeling and somebody else and somebody else. There's not one feeling that's going to go with any of your writing. There's not one sentence that is the sentence that works in a place. And so you have to go with yourself first, you’re the writer, it's your book, and then you want to put yourself in the reader's shoes to be like, okay, but you didn't actually tell us why the narrator needs to go up the mountain, so make sure you do that. And then how they feel about it. The reader's going to feel whatever they feel about it. So you just have to do your best. So there isn't just one answer anyway. So worrying about the one answer also doesn't help.
Mary Kole (00:05:44):
Yeah, that's a really interesting point about getting and receiving feedback. Writers get feedback from beta readers, critique partners, agents, eventually their editors. Maybe some of that feedback is going to be weighed a little bit more heavily, especially on the kind of publishing acquisition side. But how do you recommend that your clients sift through feedback and kind of metabolize it?
Kate McKean (00:06:11):
Especially when we go on submission. So if I sent out the book to a bunch of editors, and if it doesn't sell, sometimes we'll get feedback from the editors and it'll maybe 10 or 15 or 20 emails and none of them will say the same thing. And none of them will be like, here's a five point plan on the way to make your book better or whatever. Editors are not giving you that feedback when they haven't bought your book. And so I tell my clients to say, let's take the top notes. If we have a couple of people who said something about the pacing or something like that, then let's look at that and be like, is there something we didn't see? Because me and my client might've been like, oh, we read this in two seconds because we thought it was great, but other people didn't. So I like to look at the top line stuff and not be like that one person said that it should be set in Paris and not Amsterdam. And you're like, okay, why? That's just what one person thought. So I use the shruggy emoji guy a lot in my everyday life at all times, and there was a point at which I thought I was going to get a tattoo of it.
I was going to put it on my arm because I felt like everything in the whole entire world was like, okay. And unfortunately that's true. The longer I'm in writing and publishing, the more I think like, yeah, there's no one answer. There just isn't. So you do the best you can and you're not going to get it right the first time, and that's okay because nobody does. But I understand that that is easy for me to say 20 years in and a book deal, and I get it, and I would not have wanted to hear that advice at 25 or 15 or 35.
Mary Kole (00:08:03):
So how do people soldier on? I mean, if everything's kind of a shrug and we're not getting our childhood wounds met in publishing, what is the point of the whole endeavor?
Kate McKean (00:08:16):
Yeah, that's the thing is that you can't get anything out of writing. The point is don't look at writing for this thing. I guess it's the go to therapy and do yoga or do whatever it is that will fulfill you or work on yourself, but your writing is a thing you do and you can connect to it personally and viscerally, and it can be this thing in your life that is motivating or enriching or an expression of your inner soul and all those things. That's great. That's you. That's for you. And so you can get that. You can give that to yourself, it can be whatever you want, but expecting other people to be like, yes, yes, you are doing that thing and you're the best and here's your gold star and blah, blah, blah, and you are the smartest person. Writing isn't going to give it to you. No one. I was talking to a friend this weekend and we were talking about celebrities and we live in New York City, so we see them, whatever, and one of my friends works frequently with celebrities, and he was like, when you meet your hero or whatever, they can't give you what you want.
(00:09:27):
And what you want is them to be like, I'm a cool person, and so are you. No celebrity you see for six months or six minutes is going to be like, yep, you're as special as me. And publishing isn't going to do that either, so get it somewhere else. Go to therapy. That's probably what's going to happen. And then that means when you're working, then you're just working, you're working, you're writing. It's not there to fill a hole. It's a thing you do for fun or profit. I don't know, maybe one day you will profit from it, maybe you won't. And if you're trying to make a living that way, that's very, very hard. And you're not doing it wrong if you can't make a living that way. I can't live off that book. I don't live off that book, not a chance.
Mary Kole (00:10:23):
So how do you counsel some of your clients when they are trying to pick through projects? I feel like finding the thing that might be marketable is also a beautiful expression of your soul or an entertaining beach read or whatever. I'm guessing that your clients come to you with kind of a slate of things that they might be interested in sometimes. How do you pick through it and can writers see some of their work in the way that you might?
Kate McKean (00:11:02):
Yeah, it's actually my least favorite conversation I think to have with an author is like, which book should I write? Because I don't know.
Mary Kole (00:11:10)
Shruggie.
Kate McKean (00:11:11)
Shruggie. And sometimes it doesn't matter, and sometimes it's the one you want to write. And so I don't actually say this to my clients, sorry, clients, wherever you are, if you're listening where I don't want them to be pick from the platter of my book ideas, but I might be like, okay, well, your last book was like this. Readers might really like it if you went here or we struck out with a kid's book, are you sure you want to go back to that well? It is a conversation individually with the person, obviously, but if they've got a couple ideas and we're sorting through them, the one that makes me go, oh, is the one or the one that the author can't stop talking about or fiddling with because that passion is the grist.
(00:12:12):
It's not the, okay, this is the vampire one, and then this is the werewolf one. And the vampires are more popular than werewolves right now. I mean, I don't know, because the book isn't written and it's going to be two to three years before it could possibly even hit shelves. And I don't know if vampires will be still popular with readers in two to three years. So I'm looking for that little bit of frission, that passion, that like, oh, more than, okay, a historical set here and this and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I don't have a crystal ball for that. I mean, I'm trying to write another book cause I always am and it's fiction, and I was super excited about this idea and I was writing for my newsletter about the pitch, and I'm like, the pitch for this book is not good. I was like, oh, I am fascinated by this little pitch. It's a little historical thing. I'm fascinated by this little thing, but only I'm interested in it. And so when I try to tell other people about it, I lose it. And so I'm going to go back and figure out how I can make it more interesting to people than just me.
Mary Kole (00:13:29):
Yeah. I grill everybody with this question and you probably have a perfect answer for it, but how do you define high concept?
Kate McKean (00:13:41):
Ooh. Gosh.
Mary Kole (00:13:46):
We need a screenshot of us … women in thought.
Kate McKean (00:13:54):
I think that high concept is something that is really easy to pitch, and I think that that's contradictory because if I'm like, oh, I wrote a workplace romance, that's not high concept. There's a thousand of those, a billion of those, and that's fine. But if I'm going to say it's a workplace romance on the moon, that's the thing that makes it a little unexpected. And in just those few words, you can paint the world with just a drop and you're like, workplace, moon, great. The details will come out in the book, but it gives the listener or the reader a little snapshot of just where they can put their book or where the book will take place or what it's about. I think that's the best answer I can come up with without literally writing a thesis on it, I think. But it's tough. I mean, it's tough to write something high concept.
Mary Kole (00:15:07):
So when you talk about your book, obviously haven't read it, it might not even exist fully formed yet, but if it's just you saying, here's my little weird thing that I'm interested in, and let's say the writing craft is there and it's well done, and the characters are very well developed. You've thought about stakes, you've thought about pacing. There is a plot. Let's say all of the stuff is working. As an agent, what do you say to a writer who may not have something high concept necessarily, but where the passion is evident? Is that ever enough to sell a book, a novel, let's say?
Kate McKean (00:15:53):
Yeah, I don't think the only thing that sells right now is high concept. I think that you can describe a lot of things that are low concept in a way that is enticing and interesting and makes the reader want to go grabby on it. High concept is flashy and kind of does a lot of the pitch for you. Cause you’re like on the moon! It's like, oh, okay, great surprise. But it's not the only way to talk about a book. And if I have something that I would say is quiet, maybe that's the opposite of high concept, is quiet. I mean, quiet is tough. I wrote a novel that did not sell. We sent it out in 2020. That's not why it didn't sell. It didn't sell cause it was quiet. And one of the clues to me in hindsight of how it was quiet is that when I pitched it, I was like, oh, it's a story about this and the woman and the Brooklyn and the kids and the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
(00:16:53):
And it was like I had to go on and on and explain this whole thing before anybody understood what it was. And that's because it wasn't distilled enough. And if you find that you have to explain your book with 800 words, even just in a conversation, then it's probably not distilled enough. You haven't hit the nail on the head of what that pitch is. And so when I'm struggling with that either myself or with my clients, I try to figure out what the reader wants. What does the reader want out of this experience? What is the reader going to use to tell their friend to get them to read the book? Because even a quiet, beautiful, literary novel, there's a thing in it that you do that's just like, you guys, the writing is so good. It's like, what is that one little thing? And then I want to spoonfeed that to editors and just be like, this book will knock your socks off and you will want to press it into the hands of people. And I'm not leading with the, oh, it's about this thing on the moon. And then if I can't find any of those things, then we have to go back to the drawing board because it's like I got no pitch. And usually that doesn't happen after we get to the point of where we're about to send it out. But if I can't think of my pitch as the writer, I want to turn it around and look at it as the reader. The reader doesn't care about your book. They really don't. Nobody cares about your book, but you do.
Mary Kole (00:18:33):
Yeah. Do you think, when should a writer start thinking along those lines? You were saying vampires and the market and what the market's going to be doing in three years. We have a lot of people find success, especially in the indie space, by looking at the market and writing directly to market. You're saying think about the reader, what the reader might want. Do you think a part of how novelists specifically can be successful or is looking outwardly detrimental to the creative process at least?
Kate McKean (00:19:12):
If you're indie, you can play to the market because you can get it out there fast. If you can write it and publish it in four months, then you can play to the market. But you can't do that in traditional publishing. They're not going to what we call crash your book just because you wrote a vampire book and vampires are hot now, so we need to get it fast as possible to capitalize. It's not going to happen. It is incredibly taxing on everybody in the system to put a book out very quickly, including the author. It's like you might have one day to look at your entire book for the copy edits. You really have fun reading your book in eight hours straight. So if you're indie, great, do it. I think it's hard if you are going traditional because there's that lag if you're starting today on a vampire novel because everything is vampires right now. Well, you've got to write the book, you've got to edit the book, you got to find an agent, you got to get blah, blah, blah. It's going to take you a couple years. And then we might not have vampires. So then that's why I encourage writers to do the thing that they're passionate about, because you might meet up with the market. And if you don't, that's a thing that could happen. And we don't have any control over that. And it's just we have capitalism. I can't fight that beast, unfortunately.
Mary Kole (00:20:50):
How do you counsel writers to get a deeper understanding of what their specific readership might be interested in?
Kate McKean (00:20:58):
I have no idea. I guess the only thing I could think of is, well, you have to talk to your reader, but if you aren't in a position to do that with a social media platform or whatever, then maybe you have to be in conversation with the other books on the shelf where you are reading the vampire books and you're saying, okay, well this one did this historical thing and this one did this contemporary thing, and I see what they're doing. And I don't want, you can be in conversation with the other books on the shelf so that you can not compare yours to be like, mine is good and theirs is bad, but to be like, oh, my book is 250,000 words and no one else's is. And you're like, hmm, why?
Mary Kole (00:21:51):
Oh, my favorite rant that you go on is This isn't Moneyball rant. I absolutely love that one. Basically it's when people try to do query math and they're like, well, what is my exact percentage? And some people, I responded to this TikTok one time that was like, it is harder to get an agent than it is to get into Harvard, and here's the math.
Kate McKean (00:22:22):
Yeah.
Mary Kole (00:22:23):
But every project is individual. And so it's your odds of getting an agent with that project as you are, right? You can't distill it to a score.
Kate McKean (00:22:36):
No, and you don't want to, the numbers are bad. You don't want to know. You don't want to know how many queries are in my inbox. You don't want to know how many new people I could even potentially take on a year. You don't want to know who you're competing against in terms of like, well, here's a referral, or here's a conference. And not that that weights things necessarily, but they're vying for my attention. And then you don't want to know in my submission database how many books I have out that haven't sold and how long they've been on submission. Something sell in a week and something sell in a year. And so both those numbers are bad and you don't want to know. And second, I couldn't Moneyball my own numbers so that I can be like, I'm an agent with an 8.65 whatever, because I could sell a book tomorrow that would make me a 9.1. So it's like, what is the numbers? It's not a numbers game. It's a numbers game in terms of write more books, give yourself chances. I’ve written seven books. This is the only one that's been published.
Mary Kole (00:23:50):
Well, you have a picture book.
Kate McKean (00:23:52):
I do have a picture book coming out next year. And that was a very weird, funny happening. I wrote that book, let's see, my kid is almost nine. I wrote that book eight years ago, and it didn't sell and it didn't sell, and we put it aside and then my agent, Michael Bourret sold this one. There were many books in between that we tried to sell. This is the one that worked. And then I went to lunch with Jenny Abramowitz, who was newly at Sourcebooks, and we were talking about this book, and I was like, yeah, I've written a bunch of crap. She's like, well, what else have you written? And then I pitched her this picture book and she was like, oh, you should have Michael send it to me. And then she bought it. And I was like, what? So it took me seven years to sell that book.
(00:24:45):
And that's the thing. And while it is very, I obviously am very privileged in the fact that I go to lunch with editors. I'm not constantly pitching my own work at lunches with editors. And my job there is to my clients, and that was just a, like we're talking, and I love this picture book idea, it's called Pay Attention to Me! It's about a cat who wants to be famous so that his humans won't leave because if he's famous, then they have to pay attention to him and won't go to soccer practice. That's it. I don't even have a cat, but I got lucky and I've gotten lucky twice and I may never get lucky again, but I going to try.
Mary Kole (00:25:31):
It sounds like writing the next thing and persevering have played a big role in your author side of your career?
Kate McKean (00:25:43):
Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have a middle grade novel in a drawer. I have an adult novel in the drawer. I have a different nonfiction book in the drawer that is about, it was very specifically about writing craft books, like sewing and knitting. And I'll never publish that because that industry has gone down. Two other picture books, two other half books. I mean, they're fine. Oh, there's a YA novel in there somewhere.
Mary Kole (00:26:12):
Yeah. I don't think you could have lived through the YA heyday of the aughts or the 2010s or whatever the flashy name is without hopping on the YA bandwagon.
Kate McKean (00:26:27):
Yep. There's a 20th anniversary edition of Twilight coming out.
Mary Kole (00:26:34):
I'm so sad about that. But it sounds like one of the things that nobody wants to talk about, nobody wants to hear is that even agents get rejected and not everything that you pitch, it's not like you're a silver bullet. Talk to me a little bit more about that and how you contextualize it for clients who are like, well, obviously the next thing that happens is we're going to go out on submission and we're going to sell.
Kate McKean (00:27:05):
No, we're going to give it a shot. That's what I say because I can't make an editor buy a book. I cannot force them to do it. I don't control their budget, I don't control their list. I'm one of hundreds of agents that might be emailing them. All I can do is give it a shot. And I don't take that lightly of course, because it's a lot of work. And I cannot physically as an agent send out 45 books a month to maximize my salary or my commission. It takes a lot of work to send out and it takes a lot of following up and I can't, and also, I'm only as an agent, only as good as my last submission. So if I'm just throwing things against the wall, editors are going to be like, ugh, another one from Kate. And so I am putting my reputation out there as much as the authors, and I want editors to see my name in the inbox and be like, cool, what's this? Even if they don't buy it.
Most of the time, all editors cannot buy all my books. So most of the time they won't. And I have relationships with some editors where we are on the same wavelength and it's great, but they'll buy very different books. My book, I sold a book about queer people in NASA and a book about football to the same person. Cool. I dunno.
Mary Kole (00:28:45):
Even if it's a successful sale, that submission list was 12, 15 people, whatever. And a lot of those people said no to the same submission.
Kate McKean (00:28:57):
99% of them are going to say no because we are not in an auction situation all the time and it only takes one. So you cannot have two, you can't have two deals, same time for the same rights, for the same book. So 99% of them are going to fail in buying your book. And that's normal. And I mean I guess that's one of the ways that's easy or at least tolerable for me to persevere is because I get dozens of rejections a week and you're like, cool, that was not for you. Great. Try again. Maybe an editor and I will have a zoom or a coffee or a lunch and be like, oh, you like super, super dark things? Oh cool, I thought you just like medium dark things. Alright, I'll save this one for your colleague and I'll send you my next one that's super dark and you balance it out. But them saying no is not wow, you suck.
(00:30:01):
And there was definitely a point when my adult novel didn't sell, which was the book we sent out right before this one, and it had been the string of rejections. And I was like, wow, maybe I suck. I am not going to be a successfully published writer. And I had to sit with that. It was like a gut punch. And I was like, wow. And the only thing I could do in that case was keep trying because I was like, that's not satisfactory to me. And either I can improve myself or I can keep trying because it isn't necessarily that I suck. Maybe I'm not winning any Pulitzers, that's fine, but I can believe I suck and never write again. Cool, that's me. But that would make me so mad. And that's what I've said to authors too is you don't have to write your book.
Mary Kole (00:31:02):
Yeah, nobody's forcing you to do it.
Kate McKean (00:31:05):
You can stop. And if that gives you a flood of relief, then don't write that book or don't write at all, go do something else. But if that makes you mad, be like, screw you, I am going to write it. That's how you know to keep going.
Mary Kole (00:31:21):
I'm one of those you and I may have some things in common because I'm a very spite-based animal. Just ask my husband. I think it's the best motivator. Best motivator. So I would also get very angry. I have a question here. So would it be fair to say that if you don't sell it the first go around, wait a few years and try again? I could see both sides of this argument.
Kate McKean (00:31:50):
Maybe. I think that my picture book scenario is an outlier. I have not had many other, I've never brought back from the dead any of my other books and I'm not constantly pitching my other one. The reason I kept bringing up this picture book is because I thought my pitch for it was so good and the pitch was based on the title that we're not even actually using. And I was like, I want to write a picture book that's called Bright Lights, Big Kitty, and that's just good and it, so I'm going to keep doing that until I can. And that's how it turned into this picture book. And we're not using that title. So I'll write a different book that maybe fits that title.
Mary Kole (00:32:37):
It could be a series about a very attention seeking cat. Why aren't they using that title?
Kate McKean (00:32:43):
So in the edits that we made to the book, when I first wrote it, it was from the perspective of a little girl talking about wanting to make her cat famous. And then Jenny, my editor, was like, you should just write it from the point of view of the cat. And I was like, oh gosh, I'd never thought of that. Yes, and that was perfect. And so in that metamorphosis, the title didn't quite fit.
We did a different one and I'll just save it for another day. But it is possible that you're ahead of your time and going to write a book and it really is going to work five years down the line. But I wouldn't put it on a carousel and just spin it and then pick one up and see when it works. There is a point at which some books just don't work and you have to move on, but it's possible. It's just not probable.
Mary Kole (00:33:36):
I think that's a really kind and sane answer. So you mentioned, oh, maybe I put something aside and I go work on myself. What does that look like for you or for some of the clients that have done that successfully?
Kate McKean (00:33:51):
I think it's being honest about your expectations and what you really want to happen and say them out loud. You're like, I want to be a New York Times bestseller. Okay, well, how and why? What is that going to do? Even if you're a Times bestseller, your life isn't going to change. You're not instantly rich. You're not instantly granted every book deal you want. So being really honest about your expectations and what is logical to happen or possible to happen can really shine a light on where you want to point yourself to fixing it. If you're like, oh, well I want to be a Times bestseller so that I make a billion dollars and I never have to go back to my shitty day job again, well then the fix is fix your day job because you have probably more control over that than trying to become a millionaire from writing books. So I think it's very hard to be honest with yourself. And the scarier it is to admit the more true it probably is. Doesn’t it suck?
Mary Kole (00:35:11):
Well, the thing about the New York Times list, which is kind of the paragon for everything, is you can chart for a week and you have that feather in your cap forever and that's lovely and beautiful, but does that translate? What is that 1200 books sold, right?
Kate McKean (00:35:26):
There's no number.
Mary Kole (00:35:28):
Yeah.
Kate McKean (00:35:29):
There's no number that equals a threshold and some weeks are slower than others. And you have Beyonce's mom's book on the list. And why is Atomic Habits on the Times List, which is on a very specific, the thing that book's been on there for like 5,000 years, so I don't get it. And The Body Keeps the Score has been on the list for years. Yeah, that's my real indicator. We will be healed as a country when that book is not on the New York Times bestseller list.
Mary Kole (00:36:09):
When every last person that hasn't yet read it just buckles and then we can move on.
Kate McKean (00:36:16):
I don't even think it's reading it. I think it's buying it.
Mary Kole (00:36:20):
For their TikTok shelf to be like, I'm evolved now guys.
Kate McKean (00:36:25):
Definitely that for the backdrop, but it's also I have experienced trauma being alive in the world and once we are not experiencing everyday trauma, then maybe we'll be okay. I don't know.
Mary Kole (00:36:39):
Then I think it's going to be on there for quite a while.
Kate McKean (00:36:41):
Going to be there for a long time. And I have a lot of thoughts about the list and there's a lot of stuff people don't know about the list and how you can't reverse engineer it. It's a proprietary algorithm. The Times is never going to tell you what they're doing. It isn't fair and it isn't a mark of the best, it's just a mark of what's sold.
Mary Kole (00:37:08):
But if you actually, so I think the more accurate daydream would then be I want to hit the New York Times bestseller list, but then I want to stay on the New York Times bestseller list for a hundred weeks because that's where the money piece. So it's not like you hit it once you get a billion dollars.
Kate McKean (00:37:29):
There's no big check.
Mary Kole (00:37:29):
No check.
Kate McKean (00:37:31):
I mean, yes, I also too would like to be on the New York Times bestseller list for a hundred weeks. Please, that would be great. But again, I don't even think that that's a good goal. You can't control it. And also there's a lot of talk about, okay, well publishers don't market, blah, blah, blah. I don't know. My publicist and marketing team are working overtime and I love them and they're the best. Thank you Kara and Fran. But it is true, there are not enough marketing dollars out there. And it is true that publishers can choose books to really throw their weight behind, but they're not sitting here like, okay, what's the one book we care the most about this season to buy our way onto the list? It isn't that one-to-one. There's often a lead title or a big book and it does get a lot of momentum, but the outcome is not guaranteed.
Mary Kole (00:38:33):
Well, that's what you were saying about Beyonce’smom, because that was also a prominent book club pick and a lot of writers are like, she doesn't need Oprah's help. She’s Beyonce's mom!
Kate McKean (00:38:45):
Or Emily Henry getting picked for the Reese's List. You’re like, cool! Thanks Reese!
Mary Kole (00:38:49):
That Emily Henry was really struggling until you came along.
Kate McKean (00:38:56):
Yeah, Taylor Jenkins Reid, did I get her name right?
Mary Kole (00:39:01):
Yeah. Atmosphere?
Kate McKean (00:39:02):
Atmosphere. Oh, I can't wait to read this book. I cannot wait. That book was made in a lab.
Mary Kole (00:39:08):
I just read it. When you said an office romance on Mars. I was like, Atmosphere!
Kate McKean (00:39:14):
Yeah, I can't wait. I cannot wait. But she just get a book deal that was like eight books for 8 million each or something?
Mary Kole (00:39:21):
I think it was only five books for 8 million each. But.
Kate McKean (00:39:27):
I don't begrudge her that. And I don't blame publishers because that person is minting money. Good for everybody, but it's also, that's not on my radar. The feeling I've been having lately is I have the picture book coming up and that's been really exciting. And we were just finalizing the cover today and I'm doing all these things and as this is going to debut and be in its own real done life, I'm like, I can't wait to do it again. I want to do it again. Ooh, I like this. I want to do it again. And so that's my goal, not I got to do it bigger or better than that. I just want to do it again. The number doesn't always go up.
Mary Kole (00:40:20):
And that's something that we're hearing maybe 10, 15 years ago when I was agenting, you were already established. It used to be that every single title, so first of all, an option book mattered and it was job security, and then you'd maybe get X amount and then 10,000 more for your next book, and then you would kind of grow organically. And it almost seems like in today's publishing landscape, you are forced to prove yourself with every subsequent book rather than it being a sure thing.
Kate McKean (00:41:00):
Oh yeah. I mean I had a conversation with someone who was like, well, are you going to quit your job? Are you going to stop being an agent? I was like, why? No. One, I love it. And two, I paying my rent so I will continue to have a job. And they were like, but you can just get another book deal. You can just do that. And I was like, no, I cannot. I have an option with my publisher, which means they get first dibs on my nonfiction book and then next one, and then I have to think of an idea. I don't have one. And it might not work. It might not work. I don't know. And then I'm not guaranteed and I'm not going to quit my job and be like, oh wow, I have no income. Sorry, family, guess we don't get to live here anymore.
(00:41:48):
But that isn't true. And unfortunately that isn't true. And I think that the business has shifted a little bit to be like, let's get as much money upfront as we possibly can and screw the rest. And I don't necessarily think that's great either. I would love to sell, I love to sell a novel for let's say $25,000 and hopefully then sell the next one for $25,000 or 30. That would be cool. Let's keep going instead of, let me make it seem like an editor is going to miss out and do a best bids auction or some fancy footwork and have them bid a hundred just in case, first of all, I can't make them do any of that. That's not a thing, but I would rather have one $25,000 book deal than the potential of $100,000 book deal that's riskier. Does that make sense, I'm not quite explaining this.
Mary Kole (00:42:53):
No, absolutely. Because then it likely won't earn out. And if there is a subsequent book, they might say, hey, that first time was a competitive situation. We can only offer 20 for this next book. And then the client is freaking out and nobody necessarily, hey, take the money and run, take the money. It's there. But you potentially set up some downstream effects that may not be as glitzy and wonderful as all that would suggest in the Publisher's Marketplace Good deal memo.
Kate McKean (00:43:34):
And the other thing is that I can't go into a submission and be like, hey listen, we'll take just $10,000 for this. Just buy it.
Mary Kole (00:43:43):
No, no. I have always fantasized about if I have somebody on the hook being like, I'll pay you. Why don't we just do this? Let's ride off into the sunset. It's the ultimate magical thinking, let's just make a deal.
Kate McKean (00:44:04):
And people try to do that to me too. They're like, well, I'll give you 30% commission. I'm like, I can't do that.
Mary Kole (00:44:11):
I'm not set up that way.
Kate McKean (00:44:12):
No. And I kind of can't do that and still be a member of the Association of American Literary Agents. It’s tapped out guys, it's 15%, you can't … 20 in some territories, 20% blah, blah, blah.
Mary Kole (00:44:29):
Co-agents and sub rights. The exception.
Kate McKean (00:44:32):
I can't negotiate that, so that's not going to help you get my representation.
Mary Kole (00:44:41):
So what should we want as enlightened people who have read your book and now the scales have fallen from our eyes and maybe we don't want to place on the New York Times bestseller list. Is it that sort of slow, steady, build a readership, find your voice, work on your craft and kind of improve with everything but keep getting those book deals? Is that a more sane goal, do you think?
Kate McKean (00:45:11):
Yeah, I think it's a more sane goal. And I think when I talk strategy with my clients too, I really can only look as far as my headlights show. I can't say, okay, we're going to sell this book in ‘26 and then in ‘28 we're going to definitely sell that. And then by 2030, which is a real year, that will one day happen.
Mary Kole (00:45:34):
You're really bumming me out on the whole let's peg us in time right now. So if you could stop naming years that are shortly approaching.
Kate McKean (00:45:46):
I once was at a publisher, they were talking about this big spreadsheet they had of when the books were going to come in and there's always somebody on the list that is never going to deliver that book or just like it's going to take them 10 years. So they realized that the date they put in the spreadsheet of probably never going to happen was 2020. And so that was coming up and they had to move it out. That year was a real year. It's a real year. But I want, if I could magically give anything to writers that would make their lives better, is to work toward being surprised instead of expecting because do what you want. Do it well. And when a good thing happens, you're going to be like, oh! It's not that you're not like, I don't deserve it or it is only serendipity or whatever, but instead of being like, I worked really hard so I deserve a book deal, and you're like, I can't—deserve, it's got nothing to do with it. Publishing doesn't owe you anything. It's an industry, it's a retail industry. It's not art patronage. You don't earn it. You do it. So working towards an element of being pleasantly surprised by everything that happens to you may be too idealistic, but it could work, I think.
Mary Kole (00:47:24):
I think expectations are huge and I think having something a little bit more tempered what you're talking about, I mean obviously not for me because my goals for—no, but I think it's just the saner approach and I keep saying sane because it's just like you could drive yourself absolutely crazy waiting for an agent to respond, waiting for an editor to respond if you get on submission. The book didn't sell and now there's this void in your life and you're like, I just want to get back out there. You could drive yourself absolutely crazy. And so I think allowing yourself to be surprised knowing that you did good work is maybe a better approach.
Kate McKean (00:48:16):
Even my expectations for this book, I have plenty. Most of them have been met, but when I was talking to my marketing and publicity team, they're like, what's your big stretch? What's the thing you really want? I was like, I want to be on NPR.
Mary Kole (00:48:35)
I was going to say NPR!
Kate McKean (00:48:38)
Where's NPR? I have not scheduled for NPR yet. Maybe. I don't know. We'll see. And I was like, I want to write the back cover By the Book thing on the Times book section. No one's called me to do that yet. And did I have another big one like that? And I was like, oh, and someone should pick me for a morning show, please, Emma Stroud, please call me and Isaac Fitzgerald and be like, read Kate's book, Jasmine Guillory, call me. But whatever. That would be fun and great, but also maybe this book is not that stuff. It's important to me. I think lots of people want to write books, blah, blah, blah. But does your average NPR listener care about book publishing? Maybe they do, but I don’t know.
Mary Kole (00:49:32):
Writing reference is tough because it's such a specific market and yeah, there's tons of great stuff there for everyone. But is the average person, the 80% of Americans who have a book inside of them necessarily spelunking in the writing reference section?
Kate McKean (00:49:52):
Right. And so those things haven't happened yet and that's fine. Maybe they will. Maybe it'll be in six months. But the stuff that I have gotten or have the chance to do is very specific to the market, cause exactly who I should be talking to. I should be talking to you. I should be talking to people who want to write books and I'm doing a bunch of cool stuff and I've gotten to write articles and I'm pleased. I'm over the moon with the stuff that I actually get to do, but the things that are still yet to come or they may never come. Well, okay, I got all this other stuff.
Mary Kole (00:50:31):
So as we wrap up, tell me a little bit about yourself as an agent. There was mention in your book of your inbox, so optimistically speaking, when you get around to reviewing your queries, what are you looking for? Fill us in. How do people find you?
Kate McKean (00:50:54):
Well, I take submissions through Query Tracker, Query Manager. And all my guidelines are there. It's pretty straightforward. I like to see a couple chapters. I want a query letter, like a real query letter that just tells me what happens in your book because that's how we choose things to read. I don't go to the store and say, I like a book about faith. Or trauma, where's the trauma section please? Like, no, I want a memoir, I want a cancer story, something I don't know. I'm not going to go down that path. But what sticks out to me is clear stakes in a query. When I can tell what is at stake for the main character. A good pitch, a succinct pitch is really eye-catching to me. I really like historical novels with lots of stripes, usually post-industrial revolution because I don't need another Circe or something like that. And I really like fantasy and science fiction, lots of stuff. Kids books are harder these days. Middle grade and YA is harder these days than has been in a billion years.
Mary Kole (00:52:25):
What do you attribute that to?
Kate McKean (00:52:29):
A couple things. The market was flooded. Everybody wrote a YA novel. Very few people bought them or fewer than we wanted to buy them. I think that it's gone through a kind of identity crisis in the last couple years where we want to give kids the best possible experience of reading the world and showing them the world. And we can just write cool books that do that. It is like, this is the book that does A, B, and C and cool, cool, cool, great. The kid is not going into the store and being like, I would like to read this demographic. They're like, what's the cool story? What are my friends reading? And many kids' worlds already reflect everything that's out there. It is hard. It's hard. I've been in a YA and middle grade book club for 25 years and it's been hard to really get excited about some stuff. There's wonderful things out there, but it doesn't feel as fun as it used to be. And I always sound like a jerk when I say these things cause I want all the stories, but we got to have some more stories instead of this book does these things.
Mary Kole (00:54:01):
Some of the box checking, the performative box checking I think plays into it. The actual kind of backend of the YA space with some of the author dynamics and the toxicity and stuff, I feel like has also played a role, at least in the types of people that are getting excited about writing YA and what they feel like they can or should write. I feel like it's been sort of picked apart by a number of factors.
Kate McKean (00:54:33):
And I think kids still love books. And I do think that middle grade is suffering from a lag in reading from the pandemic and that there are kids who have below reading skills that need a helping hand and graphic novels have really filled that void. And I think that's wonderful. And it's not like, okay, they need to get over reading graphic novels so that they can read real books. Like graphic novels are real books, but it is a little bit behind and graphic novels are taking a lot of the air out of the room in a way. My kid really only wants to read graphic novels. I'm like, cool, great. I'll give you literally all of them. Great.
Mary Kole (00:55:09):
I have a child the same age almost, a little bit older than your child. And it's the same thing with him. And his teacher will say, well, those aren't real books. And I'm like, well, we got to take the wins where we can get 'em. And that space is more dynamic than I think ever.
Kate McKean (00:55:28):
And it is a lighter lift and that is okay. It also feels—I read Stephen King way too young and in five years I don't want my kid to read Stephen King. I'm just like, you're not going to be ready for it. Let's work our way up. But it's just been a lot of pressure on the YA middle grade market and pulling in a lot of different directions and nobody's got a handle on it yet.
Mary Kole (00:56:01):
Yeah, I think that's really, really insightful because it has been going through an identity crisis and there are a number of factors. So anything else that you are especially looking for or especially looking to avoid with your list?
Kate McKean (00:56:20):
I do not want any books about AI. No books using AI. Don't use AI to write your books. Please don't do it. AI as a plot device. I don't want it. I don't want it. Maybe other people do, but I am sick of hearing about it. It always seems to be one note. Don't want it. You can send to somebody else, it's fine. People will disagree with me. They'll be a big bestseller that is this, that the other, but I don't need to do it. Somebody else can.
Mary Kole (00:56:55):
Yeah. Okay. So one of the things you say in the book is that you should reveal the ending in your query. And this is a hill that I love to die on. Jane Friedman, who is wonderful and a publishing commentator says, don't reveal the twist, don't reveal the ending. It's going to tantalize. And you make the very good, true point. Guess whose side of things I'm on? That an agent is not going to be so tantalized that they will immediately request the full and then spend five hours reading the manuscript just because you titillated them a little bit in your query letter.
Kate McKean (00:57:40):
Nope, I'm just not. I have so many things to read, so many, and I don't know the ending of any of them. I mean, well in the query letter, if you're like, oh, and then the guy gets the girl, cool, cool, cool, great. I'll forget by the time I get to the end of a requested submission and that's fine. But in the query, I kind of want to know if you stick the landing. Does the ending justify the stakes? Do the stakes lead to the ending? And if they don't, then that is annoying and problematic. But if there's a twist and your book hinges so much, the enjoyment of your book hinges so much on the twist. What's going to happen when the media starts talking about it? I think that people are a little better about spoiler alert and things like that. That's fine. But I find that a book that is all twist is really unsatisfying. Then if you get spoiled, then it's not great. Or what if you saw it coming? It's just not that great. So I think that if the enjoyment of your book can hinge completely on the outcome or the twist, then you might need some other stuff in your book to enjoy. And I'm just going to forget.
Mary Kole (00:59:08):
Yeah, I do see a lot in my editorial practice, things that really start happening around the 80% mark, the character has been kind of in a holding pattern. They're holding off the evolution that they need to make, and we're just building, building towards something. You still have to make that 80% great before we get to that payoff, whether it's a twist, whether it's a character breaking open finally.
Kate McKean (00:59:40):
And then I think that's one of the ways people address that is the inciting incident or a big flash bang kind of active beginning. Just like, whoa, this is so exciting. It's going to, oh, what else? And then a real trough until you get back to the other part. And you might grab some people that way and that's great, but you got to keep 'em going. You have to do all the things all the time for the reader because the reader doesn't care. The reader doesn't care how great your ending is if they don't get there.
Mary Kole (01:00:14):
Yeah, no, that's very true. Thank you for agreeing with me. Obviously the only reason I asked.
Kate McKean (01:00:21):
I need to have a debate with Jane and be like, let's go head to head.
Mary Kole (01:00:27):
Yeah. No, I mean I understand where the advice comes from, but it comes at the lack of understanding of what a slush pile looks like.
Kate McKean (01:00:40):
Right. And another thing I wanted to say was that the reader I am in the slush pile is not the reader I am on the page, in these pages.
Mary Kole (01:00:50):
Tell me more about that.
Kate McKean (01:00:52):
I am looking to see if I can sell a book.
(01:00:55):
I'm not looking to see if it's good. I'm not looking to see if it's bad. I'm not saying if you deserve it or that blah, blah, blah. I'm looking to see can I sell this? And I think about how would I pitch this to an editor? How would I write about this? How would I talk about this? How can I distill this in a way that makes you want to go, Ooh, I want. And that is different than how you tell your friend why they should read the book you just loved. And I kind of have to do both of those things. But the selling part is different than the enjoyment part. And it's not that I don't only represent books I enjoy. It is not like these are books just for Kate. I don't sign up books that I hate, that I think I could sell because then I have to work with 'em for five years. But that's okay. Somebody else gets to do that. I'm not the only person in the world, so it's a balance. But I'm a different reader in the slush pile.
Mary Kole (01:01:57):
I have a really naughty, intrusive thought and I wanted to ask you about it. Does the actual story, as long as it hits its beats, the writing's great, enjoyable read, whatever. Does it matter necessarily if you're able to pitch it? Let's say it's not one of those things that you hate, that is just a great pitch. But once it's over the hurdle of the pitch and everybody's sort of on board with this is the story, these are the tropes, maybe this is the genre, the category, whatever. Does the actual manuscript itself matter as much?
Kate McKean (01:02:36):
Like the stuff that's in them, whether the office is on the moon or in San Diego, does it? No. Sometimes the stuff of it doesn't matter. Then that's why you find yourself reading a really fascinating book about mushrooms or something because they made you interested in it. And we all have our little ruts or our little preferences. I love a historical novel set at the turn of the last century about a woman who's been told she can't do something, and then she goes and does it. I don't care if it's World War I, I don't care if she's a dressmaker. I don't care if she's a librarian. I don't care if she's typhoid Mary. I just want, well, typhoid Mary would be different.
Mary Kole (01:03:20):
She really wanted to keep cooking.
Kate McKean (01:03:23):
She was a woman on a mission. She did not care. She didn't believe that she was typhoid Mary. But it's like sometimes I want to read a book about a specific subject and I can find that, and sometimes I want to read a genre or a trope or I'm surprised. So that doesn't help anybody in actually pitching their book. But that's okay because all of those things are all happening at the same time for me, and then in a different way for another agent, and then a different way for somebody else. And then you just find the right person at the right time on the right day, unfortunately.
Mary Kole (01:04:15):
Lest that was too inspiring, right?
Kate McKean (01:04:19):
Let me take everyone down a peg. Sorry.
Mary Kole (01:04:21):
Well, thank you so much for joining us. What a wonderful, insightful conversation. I don't have my prop, but Write Through It by Kate McKean coming out June 10th next week. Everybody set your expectations at a I expect something to happen maybe, and long to be pleasantly surprised.
Kate McKean (01:04:50):
I guarantee something will happen.
Mary Kole (01:04:53):
I love it. Well, thank you so much for joining us.
Kate McKean (01:04:56):
Thank you too. Have a good one.
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