Navigating the Publishing World: Insights from Agent and Author Ann Rose

In this episode of Writers With Wrinkles, Beth and Lisa welcome literary agent and author Ann Rose to discuss the state of the publishing industry, what makes a debut novel stand out, and how to balance writing for the heart and the market.

Guest Bio:

Ann Rose is a literary agent at Tobias Literary Agency and an author of young adult novels under the pen name A.M. Rose. With a passion for storytelling, she champions books with strong voices and unique concepts. Ann's latest book, The Seemingly Impossible Love Life of Amanda Dean, is set to release on September 17th.

Key Discussion Points:

• Publishing Market Changes: Ann discusses how shifts in how Barnes & Noble stocks books have impacted the middle grade and YA markets.
• Oversaturation in Publishing: The importance of distinguishing a debut novel in a crowded market and the role of reading debut works in your genre.
• Horror Genre’s Rise: Ann highlights the growing popularity of horror as a genre, particularly for its ability to address complex issues in a non-didactic way.
• Balancing Heart and Market: Ann shares insights on writing from the heart while ensuring your story stands out in the current market.
• What Agents Look For: Ann explains what catches her eye in submissions, including strong voice, innovative concepts, and stories that offer a fresh take on familiar tropes.

Conclusion:

Ann Rose provides actionable advice for aspiring authors on how to navigate the competitive publishing landscape, emphasizing the importance of a unique voice and understanding market trends.

Mentioned Links:

• Ann Rose’s book, The Seemingly Impossible Love Life of Amanda Dean, Releases September 17th (link placeholder).
• The Tobias Literary Agency: www.thetobiasagency.com.

Chapters

• 0:00 Author Insights and Market Trends
• 7:05 Navigating the Publishing Market
• 14:47 Plotting and Standing Out in Publishing

Transcript

Beth McMullen: 0:31

Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen and I'm Lisa Schmidt, and we're the co-hosts of Writers with Wrinkles. This is Season 3, episode 33, and today we are excited to welcome author and literary agent Anne Rose to the show. Anne is an agent with the Tobias Literary Agency and a typical Taurus loyal but stubborn, which means being an author is perfect for her. While asking the private group chat for ideas on what to include in this bio, anne was reminded that some of her greatest qualities are her awesome best friends from high school, a fact she couldn't argue with. She loves dark chocolate, sarcasm, her family, tacos and her cats, obviously not in that order. Anne also writes young adult novels under the pen name AM Rose. So welcome Anne from your bio. I love you already.

Ann Rose: 1:21

Thank you, thank you. I think writing bios are one of the hardest things ever.

Beth McMullen: 1:26

I had somebody. I can't remember where I was, but somebody had read the bio in one of my books and wanted to talk to me about my parakeet, which I have in the bio. But unfortunately the parakeet went to parakeet heaven like four years ago or five years ago and I was like I don't have the parakeet anymore.

Ann Rose: 1:47

It was a very awkward moment I used to have that I was a trampoline enthusiast in my bio and so I wanted to talk to me about that. I was like I was just making a terrible joke. I don't even. I have a trampoline but I don't ever jump on it, so I don't sorry. You know what's so funny is that I have?

Lisa Schmid: 2:07

these are like true confessions. People are going to be looking up our bios and screaming liar, liar. I have sneaky hamster. We used to have a hamster named Simon that one time escaped and we had to like open up the closet and dig through everything and find him. Well, simon's long gone. He's in little hamster heaven like spinning wheels up there.

Lisa Schmid: 2:30

I don't know yes, yes, hanging out and I just I've never changed my bio because I like the you know it's a sneaky hamsters in it and so I'm sure someday somebody is going to call me out on it. Now they will.

Beth McMullen: 2:42

You are. And then you have to keep a straight face and either can perpetuate the lie indefinitely or confess that little hamster guy no longer around, and if it's kids, they, they get upset.

Lisa Schmid: 2:55

So you gotta be careful, I'll never fess up, I'll go steal photos off the internet, it'll be that weird A hamster will live forever, forever, exactly.

Beth McMullen: 3:09

He's like superhero hamster. Anyway, anne, you have a new book coming, very exciting, we are very excited for this. It is called the Seemingly Impossible Love Life of Amanda Dean. It is coming September 17th. Links to all of this will be in our podcast notes and on our website. So tell us about the book. We're putting you in the hot seat.

Ann Rose: 3:30

I know we were just talking about this before. Obviously we started recording or whatever. But like it's as an agent, I'm like I can spit out some facts on some client books. But like when you start asking me about my own, I'm like yeah, there's words in it, it's cool, like maybe you should read it, Like it's all good.

Beth McMullen: 3:50

Like a boot camp for authors, where we just are trained to do our elevator pitch Right, because it's really hard, it is a really and it's a skill that we all should have. So we could just, you know, pull it out and give it to whoever asks. But yeah, I hear you on that, not an easy thing.

Ann Rose: 4:10

No, no. Well, I do call it like the Schitt's Creek of romance, so it's very queer forward and that is not like an issue in the book at all. So I really kind of love that. It's really a story about Amanda Dean and her very messy love life. So it's the day of her wedding and everything that could possibly go wrong is going wrong, and so she's just convinced that today is just the beginning of the end of just another disastrous relationship. So should she run off and never see what could be, or does she stick it out and see if this really is the love of her life? So you don't know who she's going to end up with until you get to the end of the book, which is kind of like the little thing about this romance. It's a little different.

Beth McMullen: 4:57

I love that and I love the cover. The cover is just, it's so. I love the brightness of it. It's very captivating. So it's the kind of book that you're going to see on the shelf and pick it up because it just looks like it's going to be fun.

Ann Rose: 5:09

My cover artist is Susanna Gentelli, I think is how you pronounce her last name. I'm not sure if that's proper or not. She's Italian. She is incredible and if you look her up and look at it, her artwork is stunning, and I could just probably gush about her all day. She does these really great feminist pieces that like really make you think, and so when she was chosen to do my cover, I was like, okay, this is going to be, this is going to be so fun. So I have like a real piece of art from a really awesome artist which is so cool.

Beth McMullen: 5:46

That is great. That is great. It makes a difference and you do feel like as the author. Of course, your publisher is picking who's going to do the cover and if they might ask you for input, they may or may not take it. So you feel like you won the lottery when you get a good one.

Ann Rose: 5:57

Yeah, I mean they did ask me for input and they asked me, for you know, what my ideas were, and I got to choose from a couple different ones, and so I was really happy that we got to work with Susanna.

Beth McMullen: 6:08

Perfect, perfect. Well, congratulations on that, and we are going to be excited to read that when it hits the shelves, september 17th.

Ann Rose: 6:15

Yes, thank you. All right, let's get to the first question.

Lisa Schmid: 6:19

So we do keep hearing that middle grade is having a rough time of it right now, but I remember last year. I remember like YA was the big sore loser kind of everyone was like oh my God, it's. You know, ya is dying. So with that in mind, what do you think is happening in the marketplace? What changes are happening and what genres do you think will be the next star performer?

Ann Rose: 6:43

All right. Well, let's start with the first question, which is like what's happening, right? So I think middle grade is suffering the most because of a lot of the changes that our biggest seller of books besides Amazon, unfortunately is Barnes Noble's, and Barnes Noble's changed the way that they started stocking shelves, and so that effectively changed the way middle grade was being bought, right? So I always like to talk about how a publisher's audience, or publisher's customer, is not the book reader. A publisher's customer is actually the bookstore, right, and so depending on how that bookstore operates is how they're going to sell their novels to them, which brings in a good conversation about NA and how that's going to take place. But we could go on and on and on and on about that forever. But so Barnes Noble's changed the way that they started buying books, and so now publishers have to reformulate the way that they're selling books to Barnes Noble's. So that is more or less what happened and why we saw that Now, when it comes down to, they're having a rough time.

Ann Rose: 7:50

Ya was having a rough time. I think a lot of this comes back to oversaturation, and we hear about that a lot in our industry. Right, the market is oversaturated. The market is oversaturated, but I think the problem again with that is that it's not going to ever be undersaturated, right Like there's no way that we're going to all of a sudden have less books being published, especially when you have the opportunity on places like Amazon to be like hey, I wrote this thing today, I'm just going to go ahead and publish it and see what happens.

Ann Rose: 8:21

So I think it's a matter of having I don't remember what it was the last time I saw, but millions of books a year being published on Amazon, and so it's just how do we stand out in the crowd? Now is really what it comes down to. So publishers are being much more picky about what they're choosing, because they do have to stand out in that crowded market. So then to hit the third part of that question, which is what do I think is coming up next? Right, I think is what the worst? I think we're going to see a push in horror. I really do.

Beth McMullen: 8:55

Horror feels hot right now. Everywhere you turn you see conversations about it, People who are agents who are either looking for it, publishers who are emphasizing it in their catalog, people who are writing it. I mean, I kind of love it as a reader. I could never do it as a writer. I don't have those chops, but it's funny that it's rising. It feels like it's rising fast right now.

Ann Rose: 9:20

I think it has to do with the fact that you can tackle a lot of issues in horror without it being didactic, right. So it's almost like our dystopian of, like the early 2000s, but it's horror now, right, so we can tackle some of those deeper issues political, social Tackle some of those deeper issues political, social, economic, all the things but doing it on in a way that just feels like it's not really.

Beth McMullen: 9:47

Yeah, there's some good. A middle grade, especially, has had some really good. You don't think about middle grade necessarily being the place for horror, but there's a lot of really good stuff out there. So that's fun, super fun. Okay. So many authors and there are going to be a lot of people out there nodding their head when they hear this question Many authors have had the experience of being told that an agent loves their work, loves their story, their writing is fabulous, but then they turn them down. So what is the decision-making process when you are deciding to say yes or no to a particular author?

Ann Rose: 10:25

Well, I think a more broad answer to that question about why are good books being turned down has to come out. It comes back to that thing we said before, which was the oversaturation in the market and books needing to stand out right. So what I like to tell especially debut authors is that if you're looking to debut in a specific category, you should be reading books not just by anyone in that category, but by debuts in that category, because those are the books that are going to show you exactly what it needs to do to stand out in the market. A publisher is going to be looking for a way to make you and your novel break through the noise, right. And so you know, if you're writing horror and you keep reading Stephen King, like that's not going to help you out any right, like he can do whatever the heck he wants to do, but if you start reading the debuts in the horror category, for example, then you'll start seeing like a pattern Okay, what are they doing? What are we working with here? So that's one reason that things will get turned down is that, while it could be great, it just doesn't have what we call that book one feeling, especially if it's a debut. I read a lot of great books. I'm like, well, this would be a great book too, right, but it's not book one. So that is something that you have to be mindful of in overall. Now, maybe it is your book too, maybe you're looking for a new agent, this and that. So I mean there's lots of obviously variables For me personally.

Ann Rose: 11:57

I look for voice, of course. I think that's really important Concept is really really stand out to me if it's just a stellar concept. But I also like to know who I'm working with. So I am definitely someone who is going to be watching what you're saying on social media, like what are you posting? Who are you as a person? Do you have more than one project? What kind of other things are you working on? All of those things? Because I am a serial monogamist. Most of my clients have been with me since the very beginning and we are excellent and I love them all, and so I'm looking for long-term relationships here and fighting through until we get to the, the, the goal, and then keep rising from there. So I think all of that's really, really important. If you're just like, oh, I just wrote this one book, I'm one and done, I'm out Like I'm not sure I'm the perfect agent for that person, so that's just how I like to do it.

Beth McMullen: 12:55

I like that advice to go out and read the debuts so that you're really you're, you're in the trenches with these, the book that you're trying to create, you're getting these models something to follow. It's a really good idea because you're right, if you're reading say, you're writing horror, which we were just talking about, and you're reading Stephen King who, yes, can do write the phone book and it would still be a bestseller if anybody remembers the phone book. But yeah, I mean to find out what is what is catching people's attention right now. I mean, and it's all there for the taking, you just have to get the books. It's a great, great way to approach it. I like that a lot.

Ann Rose: 13:36

That's my hot tip of the day.

Beth McMullen: 13:38

No, it seriously is. I'm highlighting that in my notes.

Lisa Schmid: 13:41

Excellent. That's one of the best pieces of advice I think I've heard in a long time. I mean, that is really, you know, because and we're always preaching, you know go out and read and read and read, which is so important. And I know that they've narrowed the window. Before it was kind of like the last five years for your comps and then it became like the last couple years, but what you're saying about reading debuts really resonates. I mean, that is truly what people are looking for right now. So that is great advice and I'm going to start quoting that everywhere.

Ann Rose: 14:15

I only asked for 10%. No, I'm just kidding.

Lisa Schmid: 14:19

You need to ask for more. Well, that leads us quickly into the next question, which is how best can aspiring authors balance writing from the heart and writing for the market?

Ann Rose: 14:36

Right? This is a really great question too, because I think that at the end of the day you have to do, if traditional publishing is your goal, you have to consider both right. So when I set out to write the Seemingly Impossible Love Life of Amanda Dean, I actually wasn't really writing it for the market at all. I just woke up one morning. I had this idea about this girl. I knew her name was Amanda all. I just woke up one morning I had this idea about this girl. I knew her name was Amanda Dean.

Ann Rose: 15:01

I just knew it and I did something I never did before and I plotted out her entire novel and I knew exactly what her story was and for anyone who doesn't realize it, it's not chronological. We are flashing back and forth through her life, through her many relationships, you know, as we get to the time she gets down the altar. But I knew exactly what those moments were, and so I had like this whole it's on scratch paper, it's a mess, but it made sense to me and like I had the timeline and all the dates and everything Right. So that was the book of my heart, but also, like, I think, in the back of my mind, because I do work in publishing. I also thought, well, like you know, how do I make it different, right? And the difference is that you don't know who she's going to end up with. Like a traditional romance, right. It's almost like a little bit of a mystery when it comes down to it. So it's. It's in a way a mashup, but not I don't know.

Ann Rose: 15:51

So eventually, ava, my amazing, agent was was like so, anne, what are you working on? I was like, oh, I'm doing this and this, and then I'm just writing this thing for fun. And she's like, oh, what's that? Send it to me. And so I ended up sending it to her and that's how that got picked up. But I think that's the advice, right, like so write the story of your heart. But don't forget that if traditional publishing is the goal, to think about how you can make that stand out in the current market, right. So don't look at it and be like, oh, horror is hot right now, I need to write a horror right now. Right, oh, romanticism is hot right now. I need to write a romanticism right now. Write the book of your heart, but then think about how you make that book unique and different in its own genre so it can stand out above the others that it would sit on the shelf with.

Lisa Schmid: 16:41

Oh, my God, your advice is so, so good. While you were talking, I was. I have a book I'm finishing up right now and I was immediately thinking about it going. Okay, am I doing enough to make it stand out? You know, I was just. My little brain started churning and I think you saw my eyes roll back in my head.

Ann Rose: 17:07

You had to think of, like when you're a writer, right. So I think that's one of the benefits of being a writer and an agent, right, is that I have that ability to not just see a plot and understand it and, like, try to help help an author get it to the next level, because I've been there in the trenches myself, but I can see it. I get to see it from both angles, so I get to help authors with their work, but I also get to see a great way that how we can pitch it and sell it, and so I think that I think it works really well.

Beth McMullen: 17:34

Yeah, that's really also really good advice, and you just gave me hope that one day I'm going to wake up and be able to plot. What an exciting thing to have on potentially my horizon, that someday I might be able to make a plot, stick with it, rather than getting to page two and being like this no longer works, throw it away.

Ann Rose: 17:55

Okay, I'm going to warn you that my my plotting right Was. It was just, it was a very brief outline. It was like this is what's. This is the scene that's happening in chapter one. This is what's going to happen in chapter two. This is like here are the dates, and so it's like it was very rough, but it worked.

Beth McMullen: 18:11

Still I could. I aspire to any sort of plotting. So this, this makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, like hopeful. I feel hopeful now.

Ann Rose: 18:20

You can do it.

Beth McMullen: 18:22

I can do it, I can do it, I can do it, I can, I can. I believe in myself. So what makes your eyes light up? What do you get excited about when you are scanning submissions? What are the things that you're like? Oh yes, this is what I want to see.

Ann Rose: 18:37

Okay. So I kind of already touched upon this a little bit, which was that you know I love a good voice, right, and I love a stellar concept, but I always love something that's going to catch me off guard. So just something a little bit different or wacky, or you're just like what is that? I kind of gravitate towards some of those things. Also, as I like evaluate, like what my list looks like. A lot of my list is very feminist, so that's something that I'm always looking for is women or girls, stories about girls who find their power and that doesn't have to mean a superpower, right Like that just means like finding their own voice in their world, and I just love championing books like that.

Ann Rose: 19:20

So I love things that play with tropes and in new and fresh and unusual ways. So, just surprise me is really I know that's, I know it's cliche, but at the same rate, like a lot of the times, I'm like wait a minute, what Like? Okay, I actually recently emailed one of my colleagues. I was like am I bonkers for thinking that this book sounds amazing? And they're like no, that does sound really good. I was like I need to read this. Like like right now.

Beth McMullen: 19:50

So I, yeah, I mean that the idea that you're fresh takes on things, I mean all the ideas I feel like have been written. So what's your fresh take? What angle are you coming at that makes it new and different and exciting.

Ann Rose: 20:03

What is?

Beth McMullen: 20:03

the trope.

Ann Rose: 20:04

What is the thing? And then how do you put a fresh twist on it?

Beth McMullen: 20:09

Yeah, yeah, that's good. I mean, you know what these are. These are doable things. These are actionable things that you're talking about, that our listeners can write down and go off and do to help them get from point A to point B, and if traditional publishing is what they are aspiring to, all of these things are going to help you on your journey. This is exactly the kind of stuff that we hope to get from guests. So this is great. This is great. We are very excited. I am too, yes, and you do, and I even have my own little you know my own little aspirational plotting stuff now. So, wow, so this wraps up our time. We do not want to keep you here all day because you have, you know, agenting and writing to do, so that's quite a bit of stuff on your plate. So thank you for being here and sharing all of this experience and wisdom with us. We are grateful.

Ann Rose: 21:06

And we know that our listeners will be too Well. I am so excited to have been here. Thank you, this was so fun. I could honestly talk to y'all all day long if you wanted, so this has been excellent. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate you.

Beth McMullen: 21:17

Wonderful and listeners, remember you can find out more about Anne by visiting our podcast notes and the blog at Writers With Wrinkles. We'll have the link to her new book, which is again coming September 17th. So be on the lookout for that and we will see you again next episode, which is September 16th, where Lisa and I will answer your burning publishing related questions. So until then, happy reading, writing and listening.