Shooting The Shit About People of Publishing
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Literary agents Carly Waters and CeCe Lyra break down key takeaways from the recent People of Publishing Conference, hosted by AALA. They an
Key takeaways
- The conference opening ceremony intentionally featured an all-female lineup of CEOs from major publishers like Abrams, Scholastic, and Sourcebooks, marking a shift from last year's male-dominated panel.
- YA fiction sales are down 21%, largely attributed to the absence of Fourth Wing, while adult fiction is projected for record-breaking growth in 2026.
Main topics
- People of Publishing Conference insights
- Publishing industry demographics & leadership
Notable quotes
"The age of revamping old IP is dying. People want innovation."
Conclusion
The episode offers authors and industry professionals a realistic look at
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:00) you Welcome to another episode of Shooting the Shit with literary agents Carly Waters and Cece Lira, where we dissect publishing gossip, discuss book industry trends, and the overall state of the book business. If you've ever wanted to grab a coffee with two literary agents, grab your mug and pull up a chair. Speaker 3 (0:25) Good morning, Cece. How are you? Good morning. Speaker 2 (0:28) I Speaker 3 (0:29) am Speaker 2 (0:29) tired Speaker 3 (0:30) and happy. How are you? All the things. I'm good. I am also maybe, I don't know if I'm tired and happy. I'm like a little frenetic energy. I cleaned my office. Anybody watching on YouTube? I'm like, it's looking a little sparse back here. I'm not Speaker 2 (0:42) moving. I just was like, I need to kind of Speaker 3 (0:44) migrate. my book collection over the weeks if you guys watch me on youtube this pile goes like up up up up up anyway and then i have another area where i have proper bookshelves so anyway i did the migration of the workbooks and all of the personal reading to the other space and now i have like double lined bookshelves you know what i mean like you have like a stack of books and now i have like in front of that stack a second row i need to do another cleanse i think i've talked about about this before but often at Christmas time I will do a book swap with friends where I will like package up all my books and send them home with my friends so I think I need to do another Christmas book swap I brought a bunch of books to my pickleball group so that they can have all my lovely client books but yeah I'm as you know I'm a big I'm a big person who needs to like spread all the bookish love. And yeah, I'm hopping on a plane later today. So I'm like, I'm makeup free. I did my hair, but you know, I'm makeup free. So we're just, you know, frenetic energy. Speaker 2 (1:40) You do not look makeup free. You look, you look like you have makeup on. I put lipstick on. That's how good looking you look. Just saying. Just saying, Carly. Speaker 3 (1:49) Yeah, and we got to see each other in person last week, which was so nice. We went to an imprint launch event and Cece and I went together. We got dinner after in person and it was really nice to see your face. It Speaker 2 (2:02) was so great to see you. Yeah, it was fun. We met at FIDEI because that's where the party was and it was fun. It was for a new imprint. I shared a little bit on my stories. I know you did too. I feel like publishing mixers. You can always take on so many shapes, you know, and formats and you never really know what to expect. And it's all great. Like all the options available are amazing. And one of the fun things about publishing mixers, conferences, et cetera, is when you see someone and then you look at their, either their name tag or whatever it is, and you figure out, oh, you are the face that I have emailed with. you know, or you recognize someone from Zoom and that's fun. It's fun. It's really nice to do in-person things, I think. There's something the pandemic taught me is that, yes, I'm an introvert. Yes, I love being by myself. I love being at home, that these things are still true. But, you know, occasionally, occasionally getting out of the house and seeing human beings and having that in-person connection is really special. Speaker 3 (2:59) Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. And I always make a point to attend as many as I humanly can. And that's why we were able to do that together. So that was really fun. So our plan for today is to talk about the conference that you were at this week. I wasn't able to go because obviously, as I said, I'm hopping out on my own flight tonight. But you went to the People of Publishing Conference and we're going to give everybody a rundown of the event. We talked about it last year. Both of us were there. It's the conference that the AALA puts on. It is the Association of American Literature. literary agents, and they have really tried to build out this larger publishing conference that's obviously very specific to literary agents, but also where the industry is at at large and kind of bring in some big names to kind of do panels. And I know last year when I went, it was really interesting and I had such a lovely time. And because it's in New York, you get so many. New York based editors, people in publishing, marketing, etc. there. So Cece, I want you to give me the whole rundown since I missed it. I had some FOMO and I need you to tell me how it went. Speaker 2 (4:01) No need to have FOMO. I will tell you guys all about it, you and our listeners. So I will hold up for anyone watching on YouTube, the little brochure that they gave out this year's motto, mantra, I don't know what to call it, is growing together, which is the best, the best. Regina, who's the president of the ALA. She is a brilliant literary agent obviously but if she wanted to she could also just be a speaker like a public speaker like she's the best public speaker. She gave such wonderful speeches throughout the whole thing and at the end she tied it with the growing together mantra and that was really sweet. Anyway so I'm gonna hold up also my little my little lanyard with my little name. It's so fun. I also left the event wearing this which I should not do because it's not safe. Speaker 3 (4:43) When we left the event last week, I was like, Cece, take your name tag off. The guy in the elevator was like, hey, Carly. And I was like, okay, time for the name tag to be removed. Speaker 2 (4:52) I always forget. Exactly. Because of the guys in the elevators. And this guy was actually a very lovely person. He was lovely. But sometimes they are not lovely. So you absolutely have to remember to do that. But yeah, so I will share something personal with our listeners that I've actually never shared before. But, you know, there's context. In life, we always have privileges and we also have struggles, all of us, every single human out there. I have many, many wonderful privileges that I'm so fortunate and grateful for. One of the struggles I deal with is chronic illness. And I did have a flare up on the morning, actually the night before the conference. And that made it so that I was not able to attend the first few sessions in the morning because I just was not my best self and I arrived a little bit late. But my wonderful assistant Eve, shout out to Eve, took notes of the sessions I missed. So that was wonderful. So I'll still be able to give you guys notes on that too. And of course, the ones that I did attend. But yeah, I want to be honest about that. I was not there for all of them. So shout out, mega shout out to Eve for like the best notes, the best notes, you guys. I Speaker 1 (5:57) love Speaker 2 (5:57) people who are good note Speaker 1 (5:58) takers. But Speaker 2 (5:59) yeah, this is a little brochure. It's fun. People can look through it on YouTube. And yeah, I think I'll start with the first obvious thing, Speaker 1 (6:08) which Speaker 2 (6:09) is last year, Carly, when you and I went, the opening ceremony was all the CEOs. Remember this? And I even talked about it on the show. We recorded live together from New York because you were here. We did, Speaker 3 (6:19) yeah. Speaker 2 (6:19) So... we talked about the fact that it was all men up on stage. Yes, we did. In a female-dominated industry. And this year, and I'm pretty sure this was intentional. I do not know. But I feel like this was intentional. The opening ceremony was how she leads, and it was all women up on stage. Speaker 3 (6:37) And Speaker 2 (6:37) that was really, really nice. So we had President and CEO of Abrams. We had the Executive Vice President and President of Scholastic. We had obviously the... president and CEO of Sourcebooks, and we had Regina moderate. So it was all women. I'm going to open up to the little page in the brochure that shows this. And that was quite nice. It was quite nice to see that line up. A nice Speaker 3 (6:59) change from last year. Absolutely. Speaker 2 (7:02) Yeah, for sure. For sure. And you know, to be fair, the opening ceremony last year was great too. Like it was a fun conversation, but it is nice to see, you know, because most of the editors, most of the people working are women. So the people on top. For the big five are obviously not women. So that's nice. Speaker 3 (7:18) Yeah. Was Speaker 2 (7:19) there any notes that Eve took that were pertinent for that one? Not for the opening ceremony. I believe Eve was volunteering for the opening ceremony. But I heard from friends that it was inspirational. And I also heard that everyone got a challenge, which was to smile at a stranger. To see a stranger across the room, smile at them. And well, because the point is the invitation, right? Like the point is to make friends. So I thought that was really nice too. Yeah, but I'm going to talk about the sessions for which I do have notes and that I did attend. Okay, so first there was one called Trendspotting. Speaker 3 (7:54) Reading Speaker 2 (7:55) consumer behavior to understand what's next in books. Speaker 3 (7:58) Yeah. And this was Kristen McLean, who does all of the kind of insights on Sarkana, which is what is now formally known as BookScan. And I've attended some of her virtual events, and she's very smart. So yeah, let us know Speaker 2 (8:12) what Kristen McLean said. Did you love her virtual events? Because I have a feeling that you and her are like, you know, you guys go fast, fast, fast. Yes, I do. Yeah. Like, how much information can Speaker 3 (8:21) you get me in an hour? 220 slides. Let's go. Speaker 2 (8:25) Let's do it. Let's do it. And, you know, it was advertised as fast-paced. Yes, okay. That's exactly what I say before Speaker 3 (8:32) I talk. Speaker 2 (8:33) Yes, good. Good. That's good. I feel like that, you know, you guys are delivering what the people want. Yeah, so like the whole point of this was to identify what they're seeing in the marketplace when it comes to like trends, when it comes to, you know, how people want to discover books, buy books, etc. So a few highlights for you guys. Apparently, the age of revamping old IP. is dying. People want innovation. Consumers want novelty. This is surprising to me because I keep seeing IP, but I will be very happy if this is true. We should actually sort things. We should sort things I hear of like, am I happy about this or not? I am happy about this one. So yay. Yay. Let's see how many happy versus unhappy anecdotes we have to share. Something else that was highlighted quite a bit is the fact that, you know, books are a very stable market. We talk a lot about instability in the book industry because we feel every up and down. And also it is our job to, you know, report and discuss all the changes and disruptions. Exactly. But compared to other industries, quite a stable market. And that's something that I've never thought about. But then it actually makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And also takes so long to move the ship, Speaker 3 (9:44) right? Like I talk about that in publishing all the time, right? It's like when you want to make a change, whether it was things like, you know, DEI or whether it's things like, you know, a specific market trends, like it takes so long to make changes because it takes so long to, you know, hire the right people, acquire the book, produce the book, print the book, sell the book in. And then the book has to find readers and then the readers have to go talk about the book. So it is like such a long, long system. Speaker 2 (10:11) Yeah, absolutely. So then another note I have for that is that in terms of print book sales, mostly flat, 0 % change from last year. But apparently YA is down 21%. However, the good news, I'm using air quotes here, is that people just attribute that to the fact that Fourth Wing was last year. Speaker 3 (10:32) Right. Speaker 2 (10:34) And they put that in the YA category? They did, apparently. Speaker 3 (10:38) And that's surprising to me, right? I'm like, yeah. And there is a fourth wing book that just came out this week. So maybe that'll help buoy things. But yeah, that's interesting. Speaker 2 (10:46) Maybe that'll help change things. Exactly. And apparently like adult fiction is really, like people are very excited about the performance of adult fiction. We are up, you know, seeing growing sales, potentially record breaking. Hopefully 2026 will be a record breaking year. This will be very good news if that happens. Adult nonfiction, on the other hand, this is an unhappy one, struggling, which I'm not really surprised. We've heard this before because of how everybody knows the reasons, right? Like there's a ton of podcasts. I guess we're to blame in part. We are not to blame. We are lovely. I feel like we must be net neutral or net positive. Speaker 3 (11:22) Like we talk about books so much and yet the information you get from us, you can't get from books, guys. Come on. Speaker 2 (11:29) Here's my thought on that. Like I get that adult fiction, adult nonfiction, excuse me, is volatile right now because there's market share loss, right? Like I get that. To short form news, even like listening to the news. We said podcasts, like I understand the challenge. At the same time, and maybe it's just a me thing. Maybe I'm like an outlier. We all know there are things in the world that if I were the dictator of taste would not exist. Sports, sports would not exist. Sorry, listeners, you would not have your basketball, your soccer. Like if my taste ruled the world, there would be no volleyball or whatever. Not because I'm mean, because I wouldn't, I don't care about it. Actually, I don't care. It doesn't exist in your