Writers With Wrinkles
Authors Beth McMullen and Lisa Schmid iron out the wrinkles in writing, publishing, and everything in between . . . One podcast at a time.
Writers With Wrinkles is the go-to podcast for aspiring authors, and those in the trenches, who want to successfully publish a novel...or ten! Join us each week as we dive deep into writing and the publishing industry, providing expert interviews, insightful discussions, and practical tips. With our engaging and informative format, you'll get the guidance you need to navigate the complex world of publishing. Start your journey today!
Visit www.WritersWithWrinkles.net for more info.
Writers With Wrinkles
Insider Insights with Disney Hyperion Editor Rachel Stark
In this episode, Beth and Lisa chat with Rachel Stark, an editor at Disney Hyperion, discussing the state of middle grade and graphic novels, and providing insights into the publishing industry's inner workings. They also delve into how authors can craft compelling submissions and navigate the complexities of book acquisitions.
Guest Bio
Rachel Stark is an experienced editor at Disney Hyperion, known for editing award-winning books like Simon Sort of Says. They have also worked on launching Disney Hyperion's Kugali Ink imprint, which focuses on graphic novels by African creators. As a senior mentor with the Representation Matters Mentorship Program, Rachel aids people of color in gaining a foothold in the publishing industry.
Key Discussion Points
- Middle Grade and Graphic Novels: The conversation explores the growing demand for graphic novels and the fluctuating state of the middle-grade market, highlighting how these genres are impacted by current publishing trends .
- Publishing Insights: Rachel explains the intricacies of the book acquisition process, including the role of profit and loss statements, marketing, and the strategic discussions that determine whether a book gets published .
- Crafting Effective Submissions: Rachel emphasizes the importance of a strong, concise pitch and identifying unique elements in a book that can make it stand out. They also discuss how to effectively communicate a book's potential to various stakeholders within a publishing house .
Conclusion
The episode wraps up with a message of resilience for authors, stressing the importance of continuously writing and evolving one's craft. Rachel provides encouragement by noting that despite market challenges, there is always a place for well-crafted and meaningful stories .
Links Mentioned
- Visit the Writers With Wrinkles blog for more information about Rachel Stark and this episode.
- Cheryl Klein's Mystery Maps
- Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch, by Codie Crowley
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Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen and I'm Lisa Schmidt, and we're the co-hosts of Writers with Wrinkles. This is season three, episode 31, and today we are excited to welcome Rachel Stark to the show. Rachel is an editor at Disney Hyperion, where they have had the privilege of editing Simon Sort of Says by Aaron Bowe, which was awarded a 2024 Newbery Honor and Schneider Family Book Award Honor and was long listed for the 2023 National Book Award, as well as many other novels and graphic novels for children's and teens. They also helped to launch Disney Hyperion's Kugali Inc imprint, which publishes graphic novels by African creators. They are also a senior mentor with the Representation Matters Mentorship Program, which is designed to help people of color gain a foothold in the publishing industry. So welcome, rachel. We are super excited to chat with you today. Thank you for making the time.
Speaker 1:Of course, I'm so excited to be here, so I have a quick, funny little story. My very first novel and this was in 2012, was a Hyperion novel, and Hyperion sent me out on tour with Melissa Dela Cruz. Wow. So Melissa Dela Cruz has written, if you just think of, like witches, vampires, prep school girls. She's written all of these huge novels. Her witches book had just come out Witches of East end it was the first one from that series and they sent me out on tour with her.
Speaker 1:And I remember very distinctly being at a dinner with a bunch of bookstore owners and I think this was in LA, and somebody from Hyperion was like well, we just want to say congratulations to Melissa because we just sold her one millionth book. And I was like, wait a minute, did you just say one million? Because I don't even know how to get my head around that number. And this was literally my first novel. I knew nothing about anything and I remember thinking, oh yeah, this was the wrong choice. I should definitely go to law school or something. I should not be doing this. This is bananas. So whenever I hear Hyperion, I always remember Melissa, who was the most charming, lovely human being, gave me a serious book publishing education. We were together for like a week and a half. I learned more in that week and a half than I've probably learned since.
Speaker 2:But it was funny to say she must have been a blast to travel with. She's such a fun person.
Speaker 1:She was so funny Like we would just blow into places and she was like a tornado. Right, we'd be there and she'd just be like people would be doing things and asking for things and arranging things and I'd just be like standing there like, wow, yeah, I had no idea.
Speaker 2:You know she has an imprint with us right when she essentially so she gets to continue doing what she did with you, where she works with a lot of writers who haven't yet sold their millions book. But they'll get there. I mean and that was in 2011.
Speaker 1:That was in 2011. So how many millions more has she piled on there 2011.? So how many millions more has she piled on there? Anyway, she was a total blast. I had so much fun and I was like I just you know, how do I get to be like her? I have not sold a million books.
Speaker 2:I know I was gonna say it's interesting that your reaction was I should leave this instead of like oh, I mean, how long can I expect that to take for my book? Is that like a year, two years?
Speaker 1:Even in my completely ignorant state, I knew that a million was an astronomical number for books.
Speaker 2:I've been around books my whole life, I was a librarian for a while et cetera, so I was like a million is a huge number I remember when the first Hunger Games movie was coming out and I read an article where they were saying like before the movie was announced, the Hunger Games had sold a mere 20 to 30 million copies. And I was like you have no idea, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1:There is nothing near about that. No, and that's when you have people writing who don't understand the publishing industry at all. Yeah, Anyway, that was a fun. That's when you have people writing who don't understand the publishing industry at all. Yeah, Anyway, that was a fun. That's a fun memory. So we have some good questions for you.
Speaker 1:But I actually wanted to ask you something that came up. So Lisa's book came out last week and she had a lovely book launch at Ruby's Books in Folsom, California and there were a bunch of authors there middle grade authors primarily and we were talking about just publishing, because somebody was expressing some challenges that they were having getting attention for a new title and the conversation kind of turned to how the feedback that this person was getting from her agent and publisher was that we want graphic novels. We are now more interested in graphic than we are in not and I just wanted to get your like hot take on that kind of. What is going on with that? What are your feelings, sitting where you are kind of in the in the publishing universe?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my brain just instantly went like a million different directions in terms of how to answer this question, because there's so many things factoring into that right now. So one I mean, we've all seen how huge graphic novels can be, with Verena Toggemeyer, with Dogman, with Jen Wang, shannon Hale. There are all of these incredible creators out there whose books are really selling. And I have to say, anecdotally, sometimes I'm on the subway and I sit next to a kid and I'll be reading a graphic novel, because that's often what I like to read for fun, and they cannot stop themselves from looking over. I have kids just leaning all the way over me to try to read over my shoulder. They are fascinated by graphic novels about just about anything. It's just such an engaging art form. So I think, yes, they are really, really popular and that is exciting and publishers are looking for them for that reason.
Speaker 2:That said, that like initial boom of graphic novels that well, you know the overnight success, that's 10 to 15 years in the making. But that big boom of graphic novels we saw like five plus years ago, I feel like, is evening out a little bit At that point, like Reina and Dave Kilkey were at their absolute. Well, I think they've grown since then but you know, like, like they were big, big news and everybody was looking for their book, like that, and a lot of really good books got signed up and really blew up and thinking about, like the click series by Kayla Miller, stargazing by Jen Wang, many many great books, that sort of like, spoke to that same audience and really popped. And I know for a fact that editors were being told by publishers go acquire a graphic novel, whatever, like, whatever you have to do to do it, and so, like the advances really blew up. Every graphic novel was an auction and I think now we're kind of seeing things even out where there are so many graphic novels in the market right now that it is a little bit more like middle grade novels in that you know some of them like for a while, anytime you were putting out a graphic novel, there's just such a hunger for them. You read them so quickly and kids wanted so much that it was like, oh, there's a new graphic novel. There are now enough of them that we're sort of seeing in the research that, like certain series and certain authors consistently do really really well, but it's no longer sort of a guarantee that you're going to be successful because it's a graphic novel.
Speaker 2:There is a lot of competition in the market now and they are very expensive and very time consuming to produce. So there is that. But I'm guessing part of what is also factoring in there, beyond just the popularity of graphic novels, is the struggle the middle grade novel market is having right now because middle grade, middle grade is sort of the middle grade novel market is having right now Because middle grade, middle grade is sort of the story right now about where the struggle is. You know, kids were left behind during the pandemic. Their reading levels aren't up to what they were. They're reading for fun.
Speaker 2:Less Barnes and Noble has changed their buying habits and they're not stocking the majority of hardcover releases of graphic novels or, sorry, of middle grade novels. That story is a little rough right now and I think every publisher is sort of looking for what's going to work and not really sure, and so I wonder if it's as much like we desperately want graphic novels as it is. We're really not sure what's working in middle grade novels and maybe we find graphic novels to be still a little more predictable than that. I don't know.
Speaker 1:That paints an awfully dismal picture for the start of our middle grade book discussion no but I think that's what everybody is hearing and that's what I'm hearing and I find it. It's interesting. And I think your point about it being kind of a confluence of things it's not just that graphic novels are elbowing regular old novels out of the way, it's just these, all these other factors are coming to bear on the marketplace right now and I feel like there's always some part of some, some genre or some reading level in publishing that's going through this. You know, contracting, expanding, contracting, expanding. It just happens to be middle grade right now and all these different things are putting pressure on it. So, yeah, I think it will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few years. If we figure it out, things change, If this is just what it is it's going to have to change.
Speaker 2:I mean, it just has to like, otherwise we're not going to have adult readers. So we're gonna figure this out some way and I will say there is always the story of what's not working and what is it, or and what is, but I don't know if it feels hopeful or just reassuring to know that, like, the story isn't as bad as it sounds Like. How far into an interview can we get before I start railing about capitalism?
Speaker 1:We're not here very long, let's see five minutes Feel free to hit it any time. I did great.
Speaker 2:You know, because the big players in this industry are publicly owned and they're under pressure to turn out profit year after year.
Speaker 2:What they consider failure is this category didn't grow. No, and that's I mean books just haven't really been growing for a long time, except in a couple of key categories. So middle grade sales are actually still up from where they were before the pandemic, but they're not. Can start to seem doom and gloom and then you start to dig into the numbers and you're like it's actually not, like why are we laying people off? Why are we not acquiring these things? Like it's not terrible, but it's just a very reactive industry and because the sort of profit margins you're working on to begin with are always small, everybody's always trying to figure out the way to be safest possible. So middle grade is not in fact going away. It is not in fact that no one is reading. It's just not growing as quickly as other things and I think there's going to be a certain amount of shifting and readjusting in the market and in terms of book prices and advances and printers that we use and all sorts of other things.
Speaker 1:I think that we don't like to think about books as products like a t-shirt or a tube of toothpaste or whatever. But if you are part of this big corporate conglomerate company, you're thought of in the same way, like you are not necessarily distinguished between a book and some other product that they're selling. They're just trying to make money for their shareholders and you are subject to those same pressures, and I hate thinking about it like that, but it's the truth. It's just people want your books to sell and that's the bottom line. And that's kind of a little bit heartbreaking when you're thinking this is a great book and nobody's going to get to read it because it's not commercial enough. Anyway, wow, we have gone deep already. From that sad thought this is.
Speaker 1:I'm uplifted and inspired right now because I have a book out on sub and I can really let's do it. You Guys are like a buzzkill over here. I'm like slowly sinking into my chair. I'm kidding. No, you know what that is really. I feel like what you just said about middle grade. Actually it's kind of I think it's been overblown is what I'm hearing from you and it does have to make a comeback. And they still need books, no matter. You know what the doom and gloom news is out there? That's my takeaway from what you just said that it will adjust.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly Like the industry is going to make changes, the public is going to make changes. I don't necessarily know that it's going to be easy. I think you know, like we're seeing layoffs and we're seeing hiring freezes at publishers. I think you know like we're seeing layoffs and we're seeing hiring freezes at publishers, like it's not an easy adjustment period. But I don't see a world where books, especially books for kids, go away. Libraries and schools need them. Yeah, and I still.
Speaker 2:Kids are still reading and I promise you really, really good books that aren't quote unquote what you would call a commercial are still getting acquired and still getting published. Publishers are finding a way. We have to think about books as the product, but we genuinely love books and want to do right by the world, you know don't despair too thoroughly, I won't.
Speaker 1:It's all good, Okay. So that leads us into a really good question for our writers and From an editor's perspective what are the best things an author can do to make their submission stand out to you?
Speaker 2:So generally, writers should be working with their agents to craft a really eye-catching pitch, which hopefully that's helpful because they read a lot of pitches and they can help guide you towards what works for them and they know us editors really well and they often know what will appeal to us specifically and how to pull that thing out. The biggest piece of advice that I could give for writers would be to really find that hook and how to convey it in one or two really intriguing sentences. And here's where we get to the like. Books have to be quote unquote commercial to get acquired. I don't actually think they have to be.
Speaker 2:I personally tend to work on really beautifully crafted, really thematically rich books which often kind of seem like they defy a short summary. But you can find the way to pitch it that gets me excited in a line or two, and that's what I'm going to have to do on my side. My job is to sell it to a lot of people. I have to first sell it to our sales and marketing and publicity teams and then they have to go and they have to sell it to the general reading public and attention spans are short and phrases like it's beautifully written or a lot of heart, like they're not quantifiable. You could say it about many things. So really, really I have to have that pitch, that like when I have an immediate response to it, reading the pitch from the agent, that's a good sign that it'll capture my audience. So I'm always looking for that.
Speaker 2:And even those books that feel like they're hard to describe or are about a lot of things, I'm always encouraging authors figure out what is unique about this book. Is it an exciting premise? Does it have a different approach to a topic or a different world? Is the character larger than life? Is it so on trend with something that's coming out now but a different take? Is it funny when you wouldn't think that this topic would be funny or something like that? And figure out how to get that and then what the character wants and what the stakes are in a really short, hooky pitch. So like I went through some of my, I went through some of my acquisitions over the last couple of years to kind of find that, to give examples. So one of them, this book, shameless Plug.
Speaker 2:This book comes out August 6th. It's called this isn't middle grade friendly. You'll have to tell me if you can say this title on the air. It's called here Lies a Vengeful Bitch, and the pitch line is the biting weight of Jennifer's body meets good for her celebration of girls leaning into their monstrous urges. In this novel starring Annie Lane, who's dead but dead set against going quietly Annie will stop at nothing to avenge her murder just as soon as she figures out who put her in the ground.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love that I actually saw that title on your webpage when I was looking you up and I was like what is this book Cause I think I have to read it just based on the title.
Speaker 2:Is it YA Okay?
Speaker 1:That's what I thought it looked like.
Speaker 2:It just looked funny in that, that sort of way where you're like can't believe I'm laughing, but you know exactly, it is very darkly funny, yeah, and also like just, I find it like lovely and hopeful and empowering in a very angry way, which is often how I think, which I think totally fits the mood right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally fits the mood.
Speaker 2:It's like it's the book equivalent of like going to a rec room where you just get to destroy things like you really get that catharsis. Anyway, I have a couple more examples, but I'm not going to bore you all reading them, so maybe we circle back if there's time later.
Speaker 1:So that one. Just to note that you said that one comes out August, august 6th. Okay, good, good that I that sounds. Oh my gosh, that's super fun, that's next week. That's next week, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm sure the debut author is not freaking out at all right now. It's fine.
Speaker 1:No debut authors are really tend to be calm and mellow.
Speaker 2:This author is awesome. She is if you picture who you think would write a book called here Lies a Vengeful Bitch like you're spot on and she's. She's a sweetheart and she's an incredible self-promoter. And if she's panicking right now, she shouldn't be, but I'm sure she is, because it's really hard being a debut.
Speaker 1:It totally is, oh my gosh. So you touched on a little bit about how, in your position, you like to have that two line pitch, that log line, that way to just kind of convey the essence of the book, because you are then turning to other people within your company and trying to sell them on the idea. So that acquisition process is always a mystery to authors. They feel like it just goes into a black hole and disappears and they have no idea what's going on, what goes on behind the scenes, what are the steps and what gets you a thumbs up and what gets you a thumbs down. If you can just shine a little bit of light on that, I hope this winds up being.
Speaker 2:I hope that shining light on it actually makes it feel a little bit less intimidating. I feel like it could make it feel more intimidating, but hopefully, just knowledge is power. So I get a pitch from an agent. It sounds exciting to me. I read it. If I fall absolutely in love with it, then I send that to my editorial team. They read it.
Speaker 2:We have a weekly editorial meeting where we talk about many things, but among them it's the books that we're considering and we'll have a strategic discussion about does it feel like it fits on the list? Does it? You know, somebody will bring up maybe like well, at a past publisher I worked on a book kind of like this and it didn't work, or like this was a challenge and you might want to think about how to get away ahead of that. Sometimes we'll talk about, like you know, the response from sales is going to be this like maybe have something prepared to respond to that, or like what questions we might ask, because we all go to these acquisitions meetings and we see patterns start to form and so we can kind of help each other prepare for that meeting From there, assuming everybody likes it and we think it's a good idea to move forward. I go and I make a profit and loss statement, or a P&L, which factors in the cost of making the book, like the author's advance, the actual manufacturing cost of printing each book, what we're spending on marketing, what we would pay out in royalties and, of course, overhead, like my salary and the salary of all of my colleagues, which gets distributed among the books that we work on. And then it weighs that against the income we expect to make from book sales or sub rights deals, things like that, and it all sounds very complicated. The spreadsheets are sort of horrifying to look at. Fortunately there are Excel wizards who make those calculations work for us. But ultimately, at the end of the day, you are trying to prove that you are going to make more money than you lose and that you're making enough more money than you lose to make it worth the time to do so. Every publisher has a different margin for that sort of a percentage of what the overall spend on the book is, and often a minimum amount. You know if I'm saying, yeah, this is going to make more than it loses and what it's making is $100, they are not going to. Let me spend my time on that. So we're trying to make those numbers work.
Speaker 2:At the same time, I'm pulling data on especially comparative titles, so books that we think will sell to the same market, and I put that together along with information about the book and key selling points, which are essentially my justification of like what makes this book special, what kind, you know? What makes it reach the market, how does it fit today's trends, and I take all that and I go to our acquisitions meetings where the sales, marketing, publicity, sub rights, content, packaging, certainly other departments that I'm missing or forgetting to think about right now all get together. They've read the manuscript, they've looked at my profit and loss statement, they've looked at all of the comp titles and we have a really candid, very businessy conversation. We want to know if that profit and loss statement that I put together is actually realistic. So we'll sit there and we'll say, like are these sales predictions realistic? If I based my numbers on, say, a John Green novel for a debut author who no one's heard of, somebody is going to say Rachel, that's not a realistic comp, unless I can say everybody loved the heck out of this, we're going to put a ton of money into marketing it and we're going to build this person. So they're going to launch like the next looking for Alaska. But we have those conversations. Sometimes we do want to make a big bet on a debut, but marketing and publicity might weigh in and say, okay, if you want to make that big bet, you need more money in that marketing line, and so we'll adjust the numbers there and try to see if we add more money, how many more books do we have to sell to cover it? Does it make it feasible? It gets really granular.
Speaker 2:Our sales team, each of our reps, sells to a different account. It's like we have a rep that sells to Target, we have a rep that sells to Barnes Noble, and they will come in each of them and meet ahead of time with their estimates of what they think their account would stock, based on their experience selling books to them. And if their numbers don't add up to my numbers, then we have to sit down and hash out why, and I have to either convince them that they can sell more than they think or I have to figure out how to take my numbers down. It will also have a working conversation about sort of the audience and how to reach them. Marketing and publicity will talk about who they see as the audience and if they feel that they can make that reach.
Speaker 2:It's important not just that we like the book and think it could sell, but that it's a book that we could sell well. So there are some things that Disney does really well in some markets Disney reaches really well, and there are some that they don't have their fingers in as much. So they might say like, yeah, we see the appeal of this book, but we don't. We've not ever been able to make a book in that genre really successful the way you're talking about, and so everybody weighs in. We have that strategic conversation. We'll also talk at that time about format and timing. Do books in the genre typically publish hardcover first or are they paperback first? Is there a good moment for this? Is there an anniversary or is there like it's a beach read? So let's do it in the summer and we'll talk through all of that stuff. That's the nitty gritty.
Speaker 2:Here's the part where I hope this is sort of empowering. I don't know. Sometimes I feel like if you know that not everything is under your control, it's kind of helpful. A lot of things can break the deal at this point. This is about the business thing and it has to make sense strategically, and so there are many, many things that factor in here that have nothing to do with how good and worthy the book is.
Speaker 2:We always say at acquisitions if an editor has brought it, that is a book that is good enough to be published. It has to make sense as a business decision and there are some things that are really disproportionately affecting deals right now, like print costs are really really high, so really long books or full color books like graphic novels or any other book that might be expensive to produce, has to sell a lot more copies to make a profit than a shorter and less expensive book, and we don't know that they can sell more copies. Especially since we just talked about sales are kind of down on the whole. A lot of genres are moving to paperback first, and the lower paperback price point then means again, you've got to sell a lot more copies to make the profit that you need to make in order to justify making it. And sometimes and this for me is the most heartbreaking, but also ultimately, ultimately, I think for everybody is good.
Speaker 2:Sometimes an editor really really loves a book, but when they take it to that acquisitions room, the team just isn't as enthusiastic, for whatever reason. Maybe it's just not their genre or they just didn't feel the same. This is so heartbreaking as an editor because you've just fallen in love. But also your job as an editor is to be the champion for that project and that author. And if the rest of the people you work with to make that book successful are not behind it, you can't make that book successful. So those are the times when we wind up letting something.
Speaker 2:Sometimes I've backed out of auctions or wound up not offering on something just because when I looked at the room I said you know, the folks who are going to have to go sell this to their buyers need to walk in there and be so excited to tell them why they should sell it.
Speaker 2:And if they don't feel that way, it's not going to work and it's actually going to be better for that author to be somewhere where the whole house understands what they're doing with that book and is really enthusiastically behind it. And that can be a matter of taste in the room. That can be a matter of what that specific publisher does well or doesn't do well. It can be a matter of what that specific publisher does well or doesn't do well. It can be many, many factors and I imagine for an author it's devastating to hear that somebody loved my book and then the rest of the room didn't. But it is ultimately a lot better for their career because you don't want to take on an author in a book, not do well by it and then have that bad track record affect the rest of their publishing.
Speaker 1:I think when an author hears that they're in acquisitions and there is and thank you so much for giving so much detail about what is in the acquisitions process Because when you do hear it you're like, ooh, I'm in acquisitions and I don't think half of us you know, really know what acquisitions is. It's like this you know mysterious room where you guys all gather in cloaks and like chant, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a circle of candles and you kind of ask the publishing gods if this will be successful or not. And it's like a Ouija board in the middle Flame glows blue. Then you know, I wish, I really wish. Sometimes it feels like that's what the CEOs want us to be able to do and they're like well, why didn't these books sell as many copies as you predicted? And I'm like gosh, I don't know, but if I could know how many books it would sell, we'd be doing all of this differently.
Speaker 1:Just seems like it's such a mystery to everyone, and whenever somebody tells me they're in acquisitions, I'm like, oh, you're going to be okay, just hang tight. And I had one friend that was in acquisitions for like a year and it was just it was brutal I wish it was excruciatingly slow.
Speaker 2:Another crazy story.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's. Thank you so much for all that information because it is really truly a mystery. There could be a whole mystery book written about acquisitions, like you know, like how the movie 24, that show 24, where it was in the-.
Speaker 2:It would be so. Oh my gosh, it'd be hilarious, just like my assistant rappels into the room and hands me new, updated sales information that suddenly changes everything, just to be like some little crazy thing. Anyway, I digress, Okay, so let's moving on to our other question.
Speaker 1:This is something that I know a lot of people are wondering, like what's hot, what's not? But are there anything that's any topics that are too controversial or too dark and that you tend to just steer clear from as an editor?
Speaker 2:Well, I just told you about here Lies a Vengeful Bitch, and that very award-winning book I talked about at the beginning of the podcast is a book that uses comedy to deal with the trauma of surviving gun violence at school. So I don't really shy away from controversial and difficult topics, but part of my motivation for publishing books for children is to give them tools to understand their world and to empower them. So I'm really not looking to hide from them any of the realities of the world that they're living in. They are living in it and they have questions about it and they need to talk about it and they need ways to process it and ways to deal with it.
Speaker 2:What I do steer clear of is sort of a doom and gloom, nihilistic perspective. To me, there has to be hope in there. There has to be some ability to heal, some ability to affect things. I feel like oftentimes adult novels have some space to end in a place of bleakness, and children's and teen books just shouldn't. I have specific things that I steer clear of.
Speaker 2:I'm really not interested in sexual or gendered violence that is super detailed on the page, or is there kind of like for its own sake or for the drama as opposed to like it can be handled very, very well in books and I'm open to working on those, but I am sensitive to how much I want to put on the page. Actually, part of what appealed to me about Simon sort of says is that there is almost nothing on the page actually describing the event itself. It is so sparse and bare bones. That is not what you are supposed to be excited by in the book. That is basic data and then we move on to the character and what he's dealing with. But I think kids need literature that engages with dark and controversial subjects and I think they're capable of processing it and thinking deeply about it and holding, you know, opposed viewpoints in their mind and having empathy for both sides in a way that maybe adults aren't.
Speaker 1:I agree with you that I just more and more, especially these days, I mean just in the last eight years it's like I feel like our world has been on fire in so many different ways and kids are getting more and more thrown at them that they have to navigate through, and so I just think that books are critical, and whether it's dealing with a difficult topic or just giving them an escape to get away from just the realities of the world as it is right now. So I'm thrilled that you take on those tough topics, but with a gentle and sensitive nature, and it's all empathy building right if it is a complete escapist narrative that doesn't engage with the horrible things that kids are facing right now.
Speaker 2:Just the act of being in someone else's perspective for a long time, I think is incredibly good for kids. I think I'm a better person for having grown up a reader and I want to keep doing that for kids. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 1:Love that answer. So, thinking about authors, and we're, all you know, very stable, emotionally calm. No, wait a minute, I'm not trying to what am I? Saying Anyway, is there any piece of advice? You'd find yourself giving your stable of authors over and over again, something that the authors who aren't in your stable of authors maybe could benefit from knowing authors who aren't in your stable of authors maybe could benefit from knowing.
Speaker 2:You know, when I sat down to think about answers for this question, I was really thinking craft and then, as you said that to me, I'm now thinking general life advice. So I'm going to keep that in the back of my brain because I think there are a lot of things I tell authors about how to maintain whatever shreds of sanity you have in this industry. Often what I find I work with authors on on a craft level is really building those connections between the obstacles characters face and how they actually transform through their experience, so making sure that characters are making choices and taking action in ways that meaningfully affect the plot and then change them. I seem to gravitate towards books very often where the characters are where what they want is to avoid something. Simon sort of says he wants to avoid the pain of having to acknowledge his past or tell the story again. I have a book called Divine Mortals that comes out in a couple of months, which is a YA fantasy, and the protagonist wants to avoid getting on the throne or being matched with a soulmate, even though she can read soulmates and she learns that she's the king's soulmate, and that's always a fun challenge. To then say, okay, how do we take a character whose primary want is a void and make them make choices that are active, that make things happen, and how do we find the right situations to put them in, that force them to face whatever flaw they need to overcome so that they confront it badly again and again until they finally have to confront it the right way? And it's such a tricky balance I wind up finding.
Speaker 2:I find that I recommend a lot of the same tools to authors for different books, even wildly different books. So one of my favorites is Cheryl Klein's Mystery Plot Maps. My favorite is Cheryl Klein's Mystery Plot Maps. I actually don't know if it's in. Cheryl Klein is an incredible editor and also the author of the book the Magic Words, which is a phenomenal tool for authors. I don't know if this has actually made it into her book or not, but it definitely still exists on the internet. On her very old blog she describes how she works with her authors to map out mysteries and really carefully put what new information is learned at each beat, what information is disproven, what lies are out there, what's been closed, and I wind up giving that to my authors for almost every type of book, because it doesn't need to be a whodunit for it to be really, really helpful, to really carefully place, like how you see, those moments of discovery and self understanding. I find it's really useful even just for characters who are trying to learn to understand themselves, like their gender, their power in this magical world, whatever it is, gender, their power in this magical world, whatever it is. Save the Cat is the canonical handbook for plotting and it is for a reason I give it to authors all the time and sometimes we'll sit there and this is my specific little math brain. We'll be like this should only be 10%. Look at Save the Cat.
Speaker 2:Okay, now I want to think about advice for just sort of maintaining your sanity and I think, okay, yes, the advice I would give authors for maintaining your sanity is write the next book. You can't control anything in this industry except writing a good book and careers are long and they're winding and it's really, really easy to get very, very focused on success in one specific way that you simply can't control and that your publisher can't control and that nobody can control. But again and again I've seen authors who felt like that didn't go the way I needed it to and now everything is ruined and they pick up and they find a new way to keep moving. Sometimes it means changing genres, sometimes it means trying a new agent Like. Sometimes you have to radically change your approach and sometimes the book that was like the book of your heart maybe isn't the one that succeeds. But careers are long. This is an industry you have. You're like. You have friends who will continue to support you through it and just write the next book.
Speaker 1:That is sort of what I want to get tattooed on my forehead. I say that to people constantly because I've been in this industry almost 25 years now and you have to have a new project going, because the time between finishing your manuscript, getting your agent on board, pitching, waiting, pitching again, blah, blah, blah, like months and months and months go by. Sometimes years go by, and you have to be well and truly into the next thing. You can't wait, because that's time. You don't get back. I just had this conversation with somebody who I've been mentoring through this process and he was struggling with the idea of just like but wait, I'm not done with this and I you're never going to be done, even once. Even if it somehow is published and on the shelf, you're still going to have feelings about what you could have done with it.
Speaker 2:It's never really done and you're so remoting like absolutely forever.
Speaker 1:So it's okay to jump into the next thing. You're not compromising your ability to make this other thing work. These are two disparate projects. Just go into the next one, because that's where you need to be focused while you're in this waiting place. Yeah, I think you have to, that's just publishing.
Speaker 2:And what you can control is your craft and writing the best book that you can write, and writing a book that you love, and then the other part of it. I'm going to get mercenary and business-like once again. You need to have a diverse portfolio. You don't know what's going to pop or not, so keep producing.
Speaker 1:Also very good advice Don't be afraid to try different genres, right, I mean? And there's so much out there, there's so many different ways that you can go with the core of a story. I think it's just fun to explore and see what kind of clicks yeah, this is all good. And Save the Cat. I love that book and I'm with you. I'm like, oh no, this is more than 10%. I got to do something about this. This is a problem, right, and I'm pretty sure, like my math is probably not that accurate, but I get obsessed with the numbers also. It's so funny, it's a great one. So that leads to the big question that writers everywhere are sitting on the edge of their chair waiting to hear, after they've learned, how wonderful you are and PS you are. I fall in love with you. Don't take that in an awkward, weird way. Absolutely not. What kind of books are you looking for right now? To round out your list? What's on your hot sheet?
Speaker 2:I feel like we seeded this really well early in the plot of this interview and it's going to feel like a very exciting and well-built to reveal. I'm looking for middle grade specifically. I told you how hard it is right now, but I really want high concept commercial. With the asterisk of everything that I said, commercial can still be above middle grade with really great writing and something to say. It has to have that incredible high concept hook. It just has to. Especially at this point in time. It's so hard to make a splash in the market. You really need it to be very special. But I would love, like a middle grade fantasy series as unique and lyrical as Jessica Townsend's Nevermore. I would love. That's not hard. I didn't promise you an easy answer. I just promised you an answer.
Speaker 1:I love her. It's like thinking I'm going to have Leslie contact her and then I'm like, and I'm out.
Speaker 2:But you know what? You maybe aren't the best at evaluating your own work in comparison to others. That's just a thought. I love that series Jupiter North. I adore that series Jupiter North. I love it so much and it's my thing that I recommend to people who love Harry Potter but maybe don't want to give money to certain perspectives. I'm always like this is it. It has everything you love.
Speaker 1:I liked it so much better than Harry Potter. I've never been a huge fan of Harry Potter I don't know something about it, even way back when it first came out. It just never quite worked for me, but never more. Oh, my goodness, I just loved love, love, love. That voice is so unique and funny and smart and all those things where you're just so in Great series.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just like such a unique, fun, interesting world that you want to be in. It has it just hits all the beats. Like as I was reading the first book I was going through and I was like, check, magic, school check. Like this friend who does this, check, this type of like everything you want to have happen, it happens. I love it, it's magical.
Speaker 2:I love middle grade horror for like small spaces. That's another series that I got in and then I just like read straight through the whole series and couldn't pull myself out of it. I love that it's genuinely scary and I love that it has real heart to it as well. And I'm really always looking for middle grade contemporary with kind of a light, bright tone that deals with issues that are in the headlines. So like from the desk of Zoe Washington, incredible story about a girl balancing her hobbies, her family and her friends and sort of coming to understand what's wrong with the carceral system and the racism that's inherent in it.
Speaker 2:Or front desk, which weaves together school and family dynamics and also really difficult immigration experiences. Desk is not mandatory in the title, but maybe those authors are onto something. I don't know, but I'm always looking for that. I'd especially love to see that with unions in some way. I feel like it's such a conversation of the moment right now and that kids can probably relate quite a lot to banding together with a lot of other kids in order to fight for your rights, and I'm like put it in a book for me y'all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are. I mean, that's a good list for you. It's very diverse each topic you mentioned and I love that. I think that you know anyone listening. There's a good chance that that hits one of their marks and they're like scribbling down your information right now to have their agent contact you and I do. I feel like that definitely. It is like we plotted this exactly right.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:The big reveal is that middle grade is here to stay, and if you're a writer out there and you're hitting these beats, this is you know. Don't despair.
Speaker 2:Don't despair. Yes, we do still want it badly. And also, you know you always have to remember in publishing that what we're acquiring now is going to come out in two or three years Like hopefully we'll have saved the market by then.
Speaker 1:Everything's going to be better. No, kidding that gap Boy. People have opinions on that gap who are outside of publishing. When you say, oh yeah, they'll be out in two years, and they're kind of like I don't even know how to, I don't even think about two years as a timeframe. That just doesn't. Anyway, that's another topic for another time. So, rachel, thank you so so much for being here. We are so grateful for all of your wonderful insights and I know that our listeners are going to be thrilled to hear this episode and, like Lisa said, they're going to be frantically jotting down notes the whole time.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for having me. This has been fun, and thank you for letting me rail against capitalism. Hey, you know what we're here for it.
Speaker 1:We are totally here for it anytime and listeners, remember, you can find out more about Rachel by visiting our podcast notes and the blog at writerswithwrinklesnet. And we will see you again in two weeks, which is August 19th. So until then, happy reading, writing and listening.
