…ft Ed Wilson
With 18 years of experience in the industry, Ed brings a shrewd but frank perspective on a variety of important topics in trad publishing–along with some thoughts on American football, and the shininess of Scott’s teeth. Oh, and we think you’ll love his “petty hill” segment at the end!
Show Notes
- Book advance sizes, and what they mean for your career
- Leverage, and managing publishing relationships
- Whether publishers really can “stall” an author’s career
- Crucial contract clauses for the modern author
- The importance of literary agent relationships
- Editors getting insider book deals
- Football comparisons
- Bookscan inaccuracy
- And more!
Links
Johnson & Alcock Literary Agency
Transcripts (by Sunyi Dean)
Sunyi
Hey, welcome to this week’s Publishing Rodeo. If you are a regular listener, we’ve probably had a gaffe of about a month where we put episodes out, and that’s just due to an editing backlog that’s built up. So I’m not sure exactly when this one comes out in the rota, but we are back in recording doing things. And with us today is Ed Wilson, a literary agent, one of the very few that we’ve had on here. Although we’ve interviewed about five of his clients, not intentionally, just the UK circle is quite small, I think. I really noticed this at the Stranger North event, that everyone attending all the authors, that either a Harry client, an Ed Wilson client, or an Alex Cochrane client, or Juliet Moussian. So it’s a small circle in the UK. But Yeah. There’s a range of issues I think we were going to cover, but first of all, we’ll start off and let you introduce yourself, if that’s okay, and how you got into agenting and so on.
Ed Wilson
Well, I’m not sure if I’m the only person who’s actually emailing I’ll tell you to demand they come on the podcast, but I felt like once you’d reach to-Oh, no, we get that a lot. This is it. You’re a victim of your own success. I felt like once you’ve reached a critical of my clients that you’d spoken to. I don’t think any of them have taken my name in vain, but I just I think I deserve a right to reply, even if they haven’t. But no, so my name is my name is Ed. I’m a literary agent at Johnson & Allcock. I have to do a potted history of myself. I’m one of the directors and I’m one of the co-owners of the agency here. We’re an old agency. We’ve been going since the 1950s. So I look after lots of estates that have been around for a long, long time. So writers like Dick Francis, William Trevor, Beryl Bainbridge, Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Cummin. So a lot of literary great. So that’s half of what I do. The other half are authors who are alive, which is wonderful. And science fiction and fantasy, horror have always been a big focus.
Ed Wilson
I do literary stuff. I do crime and thriller. I do weird things. I like weird books. I have the poet, occasionally like a playwright or a graphic novelist to slip through. But my current best known authors are Ajay Barker, award-winning, the man with the Best Hair in Publishing. I look after Caimh McDonnel, who writes as CK McDonnel, who is Irish and one of the funiest men you’ll ever meet. Of the people who’ve been on the podcast, Alex Darwin, Mark Stay as well, but also a crime writer called Robert Thorogood, who created Death in Paradise and is, and again, is just delightfully charming.
Sunyi
That’s one of my comps for a pitch.
Ed Wilson
Is it? What? Death in Paradise?
Sunyi
Yeah, no one knows about it yet. It’s a sci-fi thing I’ve written a pitch for. One of my comps is Death in Paradise meets Black Mirror. Everyone uses Black Mirror as a comp. But yeah, anyway.
Ed Wilson
Death in Paradise meets Black Mirror. God, like Death in Hades. I like that. But as you can tell, I’ve got quite broad taste. And the thing that attracts me, I like working with interesting creative people, and I like to follow them wherever they go. So a lot of my writers write in different genres. A lot of my writers come up with mad ideas. Some of them are mad and brilliant and work. Some of them are mad and brilliant and don’t work. And I just I enjoy the journey. I’ve been very lucky that my list is underpinned by by backlist, which is something that younger agents, of which I don’t think I count anymore, but younger agents don’t have that. I’ve got a backlist so I can maybe take a few more risks. So that’s me.
Sunyi
Do you want to go first, Scott? Done.
Ed Wilson
Is that over? The podcast is finished now.
Sunyi
I was letting Scott go first. He always tries to let me go first. So one of the things that we were talking about, I think you brought up a bunch of different topics I thought were interesting. And one of them was, I guess, the subject of author egos. And I was just curious, you do listen to the podcast. My agent does not. I think he’s a bit- Of course he does.
Ed Wilson
He just doesn’t admit it.
Sunyi
Oh, Oh, you reckon? Okay. I’m not going to call him on that. But yeah, I was wondering if there was a perspective that you felt was missing, I guess, or anything. I know this is a broad question. Anything you hear and you thought, oh, no, they’ve got that really wrong or they’ve missed a particular aspect of it.
Ed Wilson
So within the podcast, anything you’ve got wrong? Yeah. That would be quite a punchy opening gambit, wouldn’t you? Just to like, I have a list. I have a spreadsheet of all of the things that you’ve been incorrect about. No, look, I I think, broadly speaking, the mission statement of the podcast to demystify publishing, I’m completely behind. There’s a lot of stuff that for legal reasons, for the bits of paper that authors have signed, you cannot put out into the public domain. But I think we can talk more broadly about the shape of publishing, the things that work and the things that don’t. I don’t know that there’s anything that you’ve specifically got wrong. The problem with publishing is that everybody has their own ax to grind. They have their own perspective, and they have their own knowledge, and everybody has to argue from the particular. Very few people have the overview. I mean, God knows, Tom Weldon, CEO of PRH, he probably has a better overview than most, but he’s not going to tell you. From my perspective, I think most of what you’re trying to achieve is important, and I hope that aspiring writers listen to this and feel a bit more educated.
Ed Wilson
So I’m not going to take you down. Not Not initially.
Scott
You could try.
Sunyi
Scott’s rarring for the fight.
Scott
We’ll go down swinging. No, unfortunately, I quite like it already. So We don’t get any real fights.
Ed Wilson
There’s time, Scott. There’s plenty of time.
Scott
Damn you for being charming. Yeah, I mean, so one thing you said, I just want to call out as being a big positive from the author side, right? Following authors wherever they go. That’s, I think, every author’s dream, right? Is to write whatever they want and have their agent partner with them. But Sunyi, I want to talk about the debut advance stuff. I want to talk about the author pay, et cetera. But maybe first, do you want to dive into the… Well, yeah. Okay, let’s just go into that. Okay, Ed. So if I’m not mistaken, and you clarified a little bit before we went on air. But you mentioned something in your email to Sunyi about big debut advances and how big debut advances are not always the right move for an author and their career. Would you like to clarify that and give us your stance, and then we’ll dig in and argue a little bit?
Ed Wilson
Well, look, it’s a structural So as an agent, I’ve got multiple authors. Now, this may come as a shock to some of my writers. Sadly, I do represent more than one person. So you look at the way that it’s possible for me to make my business function. So I get my commission on multiple advances. Now, if one advance is huge, then I get my chunk is bigger, and that’s a good thing. But I have multiple opportunities. So if one of those books doesn’t work, my eggs aren’t in that in that basket solely. For an author, your book is your thing. It’s the only thing that you’ve got functioning at that time. So while it’s good to get remunerated, I’m never going to say that an author should turn down a lot of money, but I think that it’s not always the right thing for that money to create an imbalance for them to be overpaid by a publisher. And quite often I see, particularly a younger writer who has a lot of money thrown at them, and that causes as much damage as the obvious benefit that being rich will do. Now, from an agent’s perspective, and particularly there are some agents who don’t invest in their writers for the long term, the fact that an author may get completely thrown out of kilter by having a huge amount of money, that doesn’t matter to them because they’ve got lots of other authors who they can follow and lots of other revenue streams, whereas you have a writer who can be completely cast adrift.
Ed Wilson
Name another industry where you’re expecting to get your biggest paycheck on day one. Yeah, that is odd. If you can imagine that in any other industry, to an extent, I’m sure the music industry is all over the place, but even then there’s a sense that you would build up to it. So I would much rather my authors get paid well, but they have an achievable advance that they can earn out so that they get paid more the next time rather than starting big and potentially working down.
Sunyi
Okay, I I’ve got two questions. The first is, what is achievable? And the second is, for me, maybe because I’m not young and I think about my kids and I think about money in terms of surety, if God came down from heaven, said, Hi, hello, I’m real. Here’s irrefutable proof. And obviously, the first thing God would do is come and talk to me about book advances. Anyway, you’re going to get offered a seven-figure book deal. If you sign it, the book will bomb and you’ll never publish Trad again. Or you can sign a midlist deal and you might have a career. I would take the seven-figure deal because I don’t give a flying shit. If you give me a million quid and you don’t sell the book, that’s your fucking problem as a publisher. I’m just going to go and invest it. So for me, it’s hard to I hear what you’re saying about the career stuff, and I think it probably depends. If you’re choosing between, say, 200K and 120, it’s really different. But if it’s 40K and 300K, for me, there’s not It’s not as much contest, but I don’t know. Anyway, I’m interested in what you hear, what you think on achievable advance.
Ed Wilson
Sorry, Scott is actually vibrating. He’s so excited to say something. I don’t know what it’s going to be.
Scott
You go first.
Ed Wilson
You go first. No, no, no. But I can see you’re quivering with excitement. Come on, hit me.
Scott
Totally agree. So how many midlist authors ever get seven figures? So assuming it is a seven figure versus even low six figure, right? How many low six figure first advances ever get to seven figures in their career? How many midlist ever get to even probably mid-six figures in their career in terms of advanced money or just total money earned? So I think that’s a very good point, Sonia. But before I go-Yeah, go ahead.
Ed Wilson
I think that has to be the aim. I can’t give you a specific percentage of my list, you’ve graduated and got up. But certainly that is the structure that I think is sustainable. You’re building something sustainable for an author. If the trajectory is the other way, it’s not just about the money, it’s also about the mental well-being of that writer. So it’s very well to say, I take a million quid and then I’m happy for the book to completely bomb, because my career is going to be fine after that, and I’ve bought myself a house and whatever. But you as a writer, your creative self is going to be completely fine by that. So am I allowed to say that?
Sunyi
Oh, yeah, we’ve spent a time.
Ed Wilson
And I think, and any creative individual who says, I’m going to take all the money, I’m going to watch my creative endeavor fail, and I’m going to be just fine by that is lying. You can’t do that.
Sunyi
No, it would be hard, but I feel like failure is just as likely or not more likely on a lower advance. And I think for me, I would look at it as like, well, if the I look bombs, I can always self-publish. There are no barriers to publishing anymore.
Ed Wilson
It’s about visible failure as well. I think that’s part of it is because the industry is obsessed with screaming about these six-figure deals, these seven-figure deals, it means that you’re visibly failing. There’s an example from the 2000s, an author called Gautam Mekani, who was one of Andrew Wiley’s early million dollar sales. And that book, London Stanley, did relatively little. Now, I don’t know what that writer does now because that writer is no longer part of it. I feel like they published something relatively recently, but much smaller. Now, if you take that as a single example, how many of those do we not know about? How many people will write a book, it fails, and then they just don’t want to do it again? How many people is the industry losing because the publishing has given them an irresponsible amount of money and they’re not bothered to make them a success and support them when they’re not.
Sunyi
I hear two issues there, which is I do think that there’s an issue with publishers giving out money in writing very silly checks and then just not supporting the book. And I don’t ever understand why they do that. It’s a game. But I guess from the author side, for me, it always comes down to any book can fail. But my main concern beyond the art is making sure that I have enough money to support essentially my youngest, who is probably going to be in assisted living for his life, which is quite expensive. And so I think my goals, and that may be very specific to me, are, have I done the one thing that I can do to make money that will help him not be confined to a really horrible state institution But yeah, I do think that there’s, I guess for me, a separate issue with why are big checks written for books sometimes? I think it Keshin or Discord is talking about, why do they ever give seven figures to debuts? Can they actually earn in that. Yeah.
Ed Wilson
Because it’s a risk. And usually there’s been a pissing contest between publishers to try and show who can do it. And I think that’s part of the game. And the part of the game that agents play is to try and encourage that thing. Now, of those, how many of them actually end up with a proper brand author being established? Somebody who’s going to consistently sell at the level to sustain that advance? Very, very few. And this is part of my… Publishing has no accountability. So you look at every single six, seven-figure deal that’s announced. How often do people… I mean, the publishers, obviously, they have their PnLs and they know, Jesus, look at that. Look at the unearned advance on that one. Does the rest of the industry go back and go, Right, okay, how many good writers have written really good books and that we’ve basically blown out of the water? I think there is a responsibility to look after writers when they’re debuts. Now, look after them financially. And I think it’s very important that Writers should be paid a proper wage, a proper advance, but sometimes it becomes irresponsible. Every agent is going to be screaming, Shut up, Wilson.
Ed Wilson
We want as much money as possible. But sometimes I go, I just… Once I get to know my writers, I know the ones who really don’t need that. I can remember really early, I sold a sci-fi book for a good chunk of money, and I said to the author, Look, the one thing, please don’t quit your job. This is a good amount of money. This is not going to change your life forever. Don’t quit your job. It’s all going to be fine. We’re going to work out, and we want to get you to the point where you can just live off your writing. He quit his job straight away. The first book did not perform how he went to, and he’d basically blown his life up. And there was no… I was there saying, Come on, I’m trying to support you, trying to show you how to do this. Nobody at the publisher, had any contact with him at all. When the book didn’t do very well, nobody was there going, Okay, we need to help this writer deal with the success that we promised him that has not been delivered. But nobody did. It falls on the agent.
Ed Wilson
The agent is the only person who picks up the pieces. And a lot of agents don’t bother. And that’s part of my concern.
Sunyi
So there’s that agent, I won’t name him. He’s quite famous, but he’s known for having an approach where he says that if the client earns out their advance, he thinks he’s not negotiated high enough. I take it. You’re not on that camp. Yeah.
Ed Wilson
I mean, the same. I’m going to say that. Is it the same agent who said that if a publisher makes money out of a book, he hasn’t done his job properly? I don’t think he said any of these things, but it’s So- Sorry, Scott’s quivering again.
Scott
Come on, Scott. I think we’re talking about three different things, right? Yeah. And on two out of those three things, I agree with you, Ed. So one is a systemic view of publishing as an industry and the insanity that is handing a fuck ton of money to unproven books, to unproven authors, just to chase a trend. And We could all name at least a dozen books just in the last few years that were exactly this shit, right?
Ed Wilson
In the last few weeks, I would say. Yeah, I was going to say.
Scott
So I’m completely with you. The industry is very lopsided, and it’s that way, in my opinion. Sorry, editors who I want to pay me a lot of money in the future, but it is that way, in my opinion, because the power is concentrated in a very small pool of people. And they’re all competing with each other for these books, and they all have the same aim. But the decisions come down to a very small number of people when it comes to writing these checks. And so it happens frequently with what I would call poor due diligence. The second thing that you talked about, I would call career planning. And the point that I think you’re making that could be put more succinctly is. No, no, no, I’m sorry. I’m a I’m trying to summarize. Yeah. I mean, taking discussion into summary is always going to be more succinct, right?
Ed Wilson
And you get to edit it as well. So you can just cut me out and just keep your summary. God, you see this? This is Stalinist. Jesus, what have I come on?
Scott
Sonye edits everything, and she is not afraid of making me look dumb either. So you’re in good company. Just kidding. Sonye’s awesome, and she makes me look so much better than I really am.
Ed Wilson
Look how he backtracks. Look how he backtracks.
Scott
Yeah, bow to the queen. But what we’re really talking about is career planning, and succinctly put, publishers are not your friend from a career perspective. Authors are gig workers. You are an Uber driver to them. And the minute that you are not the the best Uber available, you are gone. You are just done. So I completely agree with you in terms of career planning. If you don’t get an amount of money that sets you up for however, whatever amount of time you feel comfortable building your author career or something else, don’t quit your job. It’s not a stable industry. But that takes me to the third thing where I disagree with at least the tone of what’s been discussed. And that is because everyone we’ve talked to, either on air or off air, has given me, at least, the subjective opinion that subsequent deals are not based on PnL. They are not based on sales relative to Hype, sales relative to the contract given before. They are based purely on sales. And on previous sales and or the editor’s opinion of whether this next thing is is hot and whether it goes to auction, there are obviously other variables.
Scott
But in terms of building on a previous contract for future contracts. As far as I know, other than in that one house, it’s not going to be based on, okay, did you make our money back? Especially other publishers, if If you’re taking something wide for the next contract, they don’t give a fuck if you made the money back for the other publisher. They just care if you sold 100,000 books or 500,000 books and whether they can make that work in their scheme for the next contract. And I have yet to see a circumstance or hear of a circumstance where taking more money actually gave you worse chances of getting more sales on a book or a contract. As a general rule, it seems that publishers are putting more effort. And it’s not going to be 100 % because shit falls through the cracks and shit bombs. But publishers put more effort, and therefore your probability is higher of success the more money you get because that publisher has put that money into you. They do have a PnL. They’re tracking that. And at larger numbers, you can’t just make that disappear. You can’t fudge that.
Scott
Whereas a contract like mine, it doesn’t matter. It’s an afterthought on a PnL.
Sunyi
I don’t know if I can keep this, but I do have a friend that a couple of years… I think we sold her books about the same time. And she actually turned down a bigger deal because the book went to auction, turned down a bigger deal to work with a particular editor who then left three months later. And it’s like, well- That story repeats a lot over the industry. Yeah. It’s important. And then that person is just gone from the industry and you’re an orphan and your book’s getting shunted around back and forth and nobody seems to really know what’s going on. And I just think…
Ed Wilson
We see that a lot. I see your point, Scott. But the problem with that is that what that does incentivises authors to move around a lot. And I believe that a degree of loyalty should be rewarded. So The publisher will always use the PnL of previous books to justify the advance level. To be honest, they will always use it to justify paying as little as possible. I always fight against that. I think my point about the megabucks deals is it’s particularly with debuts. It’s a debut disease ease this idea that you just throw money, throw money at somebody, and that that’s not always the best thing for that author. Now, more money equals better, more money equals the publisher has to work harder to recoup. I can’t argue with that. But I’m talking about the authors because the thing is, as an agent, I care about the authors. I care about my authors deeply. They’re not just a machine where I push a button and the book comes out. They’re human beings that I’m invested in, emotionally, as well as financially, experientially, whatever. So if I look at them, and I have advised my clients to take underbidders deals, not because of a specific editor, but because the vision is better and I see a path to a sustainable career.
Ed Wilson
So I think further to your career, if you want to play that game and hop from publisher to publisher, say, Right, who’s going to pay me the most? That probably is going to work, but very few authors get to that point or are in that position to do it. Like I said, the part of the problem is that publishing always looks forward. Nobody ever goes back and has a look and says, Look, how did all of these books pan out? What percentage of them have even washed their face? How many of these authors are still in the industry? I I love to do. I don’t have time. Maybe someday it’ll be my PhD thesis publishing, Publishing Famous by Edward Wilson.
Scott
And I do agree with you, Ed. And especially, I don’t think you’re talking about a circumstance where it’s a life-changing amount of money that somebody’s turning down. I do think- We’re in the UK.
Ed Wilson
America has a life-changing sense of money.
Scott
Yeah. I do think there are plenty of instances where it does make sense to take slightly less money to get into the publishing house or into business with the editor who has the better vision and better fit, et cetera.
Ed Wilson
But the thing that goes wrong is never the thing you think is going to go wrong. And that’s the thing about publishing. It’s like the random nature of it. The editor leaves or something else, or the publisher gets bought up, or there’s an Icelandic ash cloud or a pandemic. There’s always something. The thing that goes wrong is never the thing that you see coming down the track. We try and predict that. Yeah. Yeah. That’s exactly. Who knows? God knows what’s going to go wrong. Something’s going to go wrong. And I said it to all my clients, even if you have the perfect trajectory, you write a brilliant book, you win an unpublished writer’s prize, you get the agent of your dreams, you get the book deal of your dream. At some point, something’s going to go wrong.
Sunyi
You hear that, Richard?
Ed Wilson
So you just have to be prepared.
Sunyi
It’s all right. He doesn’t listen very much.
Scott
No, we’ll have to tell him in the chat that he’s I’m doomed for some reason. Yeah. One thing I do wish happened a little more on the agent side going to sub is deep editing Iter research and sharing that research. And I think some agents do that more than others. But looking at a particular book where you think that fits in the market and then, okay, what editors have made a lot of money for authors with this book? I know that data is hard to track.
Ed Wilson
It’s impossible to prove because if a book is a success, you will find anybody who came within five miles of that book is just like, well, I was in the room when it was all clear. I mean, that was mine. The second a book has died, nobody is there. That launch party is just an empty room. The author is like, hang on, where is everybody? Why is Nobody here. So everybody will take credit for a success, but nobody will own up. Very few. There are a couple of notable exceptions where an editor will say, I published that and I published that wrong. But those people tend not to get up to the top echelons of publishing. What I’ll do in my process, I will always bring together a submission list, and I will share that with the author. Some authors are not interested, and that’s totally fine. I respect that. Some authors just go down the rabbit hole. They are social media stalking the bejesus out of those editors, and they’re finding out about it. And sometimes they’ll come back to me and go, Look, I think this person might not be the right one because of X, Y, and Z.
Ed Wilson
And you know what? I like having that conversation. I’m not expecting it, but I like that. Challenge me with the decisions that I’m making because it’s your career. I want my authors to be informed, and I want them to be empowered, and to have a proper conversation with me about what it is I’m doing. There’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t have to operate in darkness. It’s not some shadowy shadowy agent cabal, where it’s like, no, you must ask no questions. I know who Sonia’s agent is. I don’t know who Nils is, Scott. But it doesn’t have to be like that. My authors, they can phone me up and ask me any question they want. Sometimes they don’t want to hear the answers, but I’ll tell them the answers. And I think part of it is about building that relationship. It’s a really fucking weird job because you are professionally and emotionally linked to somebody. At any given time, your author could run off with somebody else, like the insecurity part of it. And this is why agents have mental health problems just as much as writers and editors do, because it is. There is something very unsettling about it.
Ed Wilson
Well, look. Sorry, Scott is gesticulating wildly at me. Look, some agents are reptiles, but maybe they don’t. Most of So to clarify- Most of us are human beings. I’m a human being, Scott, if that is your real name.
Scott
It is. Scott’s my real name. Drake is not. To clarify, My inaudible gestures in the background are not intended to besmirch agents. I just think that, well, maybe agents don’t share their mental health issues as much as authors, but so many authors are deeply, deeply disturbed.
Ed Wilson
We’re all stressed. Everybody’s juggling. I feel like everybody… The problem is it’s become a one-up ship. It’s just like, I’m stressed. I’m burnt out. No, no, no. That’s nothing. I’m even more… It’s not a competition. Everybody’s struggling. Everyone’s had a shit couple of years, and they’re trying to keep things going. And I think it’s really important just to be open about that. Tell your authors, be like, Guys, I’m going to have to be a little bit off the radar for the next couple of weeks because I’ve got some stuff going on. That community Communication? I don’t know. And I think many people within the industry see that as a sign of weakness. And I personally don’t. And that’s why I work for myself, and I don’t work for a large corporate agency.
Scott
I do think that agents agents and editors probably would be very surprised. I will go so far as to suggest agents and editors should form some secret alter ego, some online identity as a writer, and get into these secret discords that float around our industry. And holy…
Ed Wilson
You think we don’t?
Scott
Come on. Yeah.
Ed Wilson
Wake up, Scott.
Scott
I have suspected- Wake up, Scott. I have suspected we had a mole for a while. But, yeah, you might be surprised. But also, I feel the need to clarify as well that my agent is Matt Bialer, and he is one of the best humans on this Earth, and I love him to death. So my inaudible gestures were also not meant to besmirch him.
Ed Wilson
Sonia is going to be cutting that No, he’s a great guy.
Scott
And he’s wildly successful. The time he takes with me is basically charity.
Ed Wilson
I think there are loads and loads of agents who take it seriously, and I think that’s part of it. So often I’ll go into a competition for a particularly exciting author, and there’ll be a bunch of us who are all after it. And usually I can tell who they are, the people you’ve mentioned. And to be honest, obviously, I I want them, and I’m going to fight really hard. But if that writer chooses somebody else who I think is good, then I’m like, You know what? That’s fine. If that writer chooses somebody who I don’t think is good, then I feel like I could have fought harder. I don’t know what it is that I could have said. Sometimes writers pick the wrong agent, and they make a mistake, and then two years later, I meet them at a party, and I go, Should have come with Teddy Boy. So I feel like that’s okay. I feel like that’s okay because you can’t represent every author. And I think that’s something that perhaps when I was younger or when agents are younger, they want to sign every single writer, and that is completely unsustainable. Sometimes you have to accept that a writer can go with somebody else, and that is okay, because that’s a good agent who is going to look after their career.
Sunyi
We touched briefly on authors being given a large amount of money and then going completely off the rails. We’ve seen that happen a few times recently. I guess a very notable example would be Kate Corraine, who got a shed load of money for her book. I just wondered if you had thoughts on how the author ego informs that happening? I know that’s a very broad question, but I guess- The author ego.
Ed Wilson
Look, there’s a sliding scale. I So if you can imagine the axis, you’ve got how good a writer this person is, and then you’ve got the level of ego. And I think that you find people who have not achieved anything, have not written anything, but have already become like that persona. And sometimes they can bluster their way through. They fake it till they make it. And I think that’s it. I don’t want to be part of that journey because that scares the crap out of me. I think sometimes you want a writer who is really really good, but doesn’t know it because then a good agent can help them to believe in themselves and to believe in the writer that they become. And then you see their career go up. So along the way, I think most human beings, by the time they’ve written a book, I mean, unless you’re some child prodigy, by the time a writer has written a book, they have fundamentally worked out who they are. And some people are dicks. That’s a fact of humanity. Now, And some of those people who I don’t want to hang out with are writers.
Ed Wilson
And I think that you have to take a fundamental view. Do I want to work with somebody? It doesn’t matter. They’re going to make me money? Yeah, they are. Do I want to be associated with them? Hell, no. I would much rather have somebody who doesn’t have the confidence but does have the talent because I can help them and I can help them to believe in themselves. And sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. So I don’t think this idea that the writer’s inevitably become monsters when they find success. I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think that’s true. I think they were always monsters. Yeah, just in secret before. Yeah, just in secret. And there are writers who have no ego at all right at the start of their career, and they can sell a million books, and they will still have no ego because they’re just fundamentally decent human beings. Now, it’s really hard to work out which is which, but I think an agent just gets a sense. You get a sense early on whether the person you’re dealing with is going to be the former or the latter.
Sunyi
I think age might have a bit to do with it because I think if I’d gotten a big deal in my 20s, I would have been fucking insufferable and probably gone insane. But just curious, you don’t have-I don’t think you would, though, because I think you are a fundamentally decent human being.
Ed Wilson
Famous last words. And I think there would have been enough people around you. Part of it is about the support. Part of it is about the support network. Do you have people around you who call you out, who bring you down to grout? Do you have people who you trust? And this is part of the problem. Your agent should be part of your team. And when you see somebody who the first time they achieve success, they’ve started off with a smaller agent, the first time they achieve anything like success, they immediately bug her off to one of the big corporates. That’s not good because those people are playing a different game. Stick with the hometown, stick with the hometown agent. I mean, that’s what I think. I believe in loads. I think I want to represent clients all the way through. I’ve probably lost, I think I’ve lost three clients in the whatever, 18 years I’ve been an agent.
Sunyi
You ever turned anyone down?
Ed Wilson
Three clients have left me. Oh, yeah, loads. I can’t tell you about that. No, they’ve been too successful. But I’ve lost… Of the three clients, I think I cared about one of them. Two of them, it was the right call. But one of them really got to me. But I saw my boss, Andrew Hughes, an amazing man. He was Beryl Bainbridge’s agent. He was Dick Francis’s agent. William Trevor left and then came back because he’d made a mistake. An incredible man, he represented people cradle to grave. And that’s the way we run our agency, because there should never be any question. That relationship needs to be rock solid. And giving Providing a point of solidity for writers is quite rare because you don’t get the same editor all the way through your career, because editors have to jump around, because publishers don’t like to promote editors. They don’t like to pay them more. So if you want to get ahead, you have to jump from publisher to publisher. So where is the point of solidity? Sure, it has to be at home with a partner, with a family, whatever. But also your agent can be that point of solidity.
Ed Wilson
That’s what I tried to do. God, that sounded quite worthy, didn’t it? You need to, Scott, be rude to me.
Scott
We need to have some- No, I do. So unlike probably most people listening to this podcast, though, that’s maybe an offensive generalization, I follow sports quite closely, American sports. And And I do think about sports contracts. I don’t know if it works the same in soccer or football.
Ed Wilson
Which sport are you talking? I’m a big NFL fan.
Scott
So are you really… Okay, so NFL is a little different.
Ed Wilson
I’m a Chicago Bears fan, so I’m excited. We’re finally going to have a decent… We finally have some players who can play. Okay, Sonia’s just nodded that. That’s okay.
Scott
She was born in the US, so she…
Sunyi
Yeah, I’ve hated football for a long time.
Scott
Yeah, some sports heritage there. I’m sorry about your Chicago Bear’s fandom. They’re going to be bad for a really long time because Caleb Williams is not terrible.
Ed Wilson
They just down. He said, he’s a generational talent, and you will eat your words, Scott Dreyfus. You will eat your words.
Scott
I watched him play in college, and he’s terrible. Anyway.
Ed Wilson
I’ve watched Rex Grossman. I have watched Mitch Trubisky. I will take Caleb Williams any day. Yeah, that’s true. Trubisky, fucking stuck. You don’t know how deep this bear has gone.
Scott
But Justin Fields was well, I mean, his decision making wasn’t 100.
Ed Wilson
We broke him. We’re not allowed to nice things, but then Caleb is good enough.
Scott
Yeah, we’ll see. I mean, I’m a 49ers fan, and I had to live with my team selling their future for a third overall pick that they then traded immediately for nothing. But anyway, I’m thinking particularly about NBA contracts and how sports teams are incentivized to… And NFL falls into this, but they don’t develop and keep as much, maybe as NBA teams do. They’re incentivized to develop their players that they draft because they have specific incentives granted by the league to keep those players long term over other teams that would like to poach them. Publishing tries somewhat to replicate that, but they do it by punishing the players or the authors with non-competes, with right of first refusal. And I think, going back to this theme that you’ve been hitting on a few times of systemic issues in the publishing industry, I would love to see publishing contracts, whether it comes from the agent or the publisher first. I would love to see contracts that pay authors fairly, but do have some kicker instead of, oh, we get to see this book first and we get to stall your career if we want to. I would love to see a clause that says something like…
Scott
It’s called Bird rights in the NBA. I would love to see something that says, for your next contract, we reserve the right to pay 25 % more than your next highest bidder. And what that does functionally is guarantees that the publisher that secures your first deal, say it’s from début onward, they have the ability to retain you no matter what. So they know that they can keep your services over another publisher and their investments will be well-served, even if they have to pay a little bit over what another publisher would. And they probably would anyway, because that’s how auctions work. But also what this does is, at least in the NBA, is it leads to many, many, many of these good players just extending with their team ahead of auctions. And so they never even go to auctions, at least for their first few contracts, because they know that their team can outbid any other team. And they try to play nice. They try to keep each other happy because both sides know that they’re stuck with each other. Whereas what happens now in publishing is you get a three-book deal, usually a three-book deal right now.
Scott
You’re probably underpaid unless you hit the hype train Exactly right. And after that three-book deal, the chances are you’re fucked.
Ed Wilson
That is a very depressing worldview you have, Scott. I feel like it’s… No, I can see. Okay, so allow me to shred your analogy. The thing about sports is it’s got a very… There’s a narrow window. Young players come in, you get drafted in their lifespan. So that means it’s much more concentrated. The beauty of publishing is anybody at any age can write a book. If you look at the writers I’ve signed in the last six months, none of them are in their 20s, I think. I’ve got a wonderful food writer. I don’t know how old she is. I haven’t asked. It doesn’t matter. But she’s definitely north of 70. The points of entry are all the way through life and all the way through your career, whereas sport is much more focused on youth than coming through. Yeah, sure. The idea that a publisher can stall your career. I mean, that’s bullshit. I’m sorry. The wording in option clauses, sure, they try and put in all this stuff about being able to match offers. You just cut it out. Most of it is anti-competitive. Uk law is different to US, but you can’t prevent somebody from leaving.
Scott
Do you cut it out of your contract?
Ed Wilson
Of course you do.
Scott
You don’t have any non-competence or right of first refusals in your agency contract?
Ed Wilson
The non-competence clause says you can’t write the same book twice. That’s a pretty straightforward thing. Usually in a three-book deal, you’re not allowed to resell what comes next until the third book has been published or at least delivered. Beyond that, the publisher has the right to see it first, and I think that is correct. They have a right to see it first. They usually have a 30-day period where they can come to you and go, We want this. We want to keep it going. Once that’s gone, you’re off. If the publisher doesn’t want it or you don’t want to, you can simply stall to do it. I don’t I don’t know about restraint of trade, but there’s no way a publisher can actually stop you from moving an author. There’s no way.
Scott
There’s no mechanism for that.
Ed Wilson
Midcontract, they can, obviously, because you’re under contract. Once that contract comes to an end, once you deliver the last book on the contract, at that point, you may have to tread water for a little bit, but it’s going to be 30 days, 60 days, maybe 90 days. Most of the time, once that period has lapped, then you can do what you like.
Sunyi
Can’t they stall an accepting delivery? Because I feel like that’s happened to a few people I know where the actual acceptance has just dragged on for a couple of years, at least.
Scott
Yes.
Ed Wilson
Yeah, but you see this again, you have to have wording that makes sure that they have a fixed time where they accept. And if they don’t accept, then they have to tell you why they’re not. And they have to deliver. They need to give you in a certain number of words why it is that they’re not accepting. You then have a period of time where you can revise the manuscript and resubmit it. You’ve just got to be… It’s a contract.
Sunyi
You need a good agent, basically.
Ed Wilson
Yeah. If you’re not defining the terms in your contract properly, then, yeah, sure, you’ll get tied up and not. Most of the time, publishers will drag things out, but But if they don’t want to continue with the writer or if they’re not going to offer enough money, then you just have to work out how to trigger the right points, and then off you go.
Scott
So where it gets heinous, and I love to hear that you’ve solved for this in your contract, but many author contracts that we’ve seen are not that well put together. And this is from very large agencies, and agencies that presumably have their shit together. For example, you say, great, you can’t publish anything during a contract. Well, say that contract has been delayed often by the publisher and not by the author. And many of these non-competes and/or right of first refusal, which are aimed at basically the same thing, have a clause in there that allows the publisher to look at exclusively up until 30 days after you give it to them or 30 days after they published the last work that they had contracted for in the last contract. So you could be tied up for years. And it’s not uncommon for many authors, especially in the debut stage, and especially if they want to write in multiple genres. So take me, for example, I published an epic fantasy. I want to write historic fantasy. I want to write historic fiction, et cetera. If my contract says for any work of fiction that my publisher has a right of first refusal and non-competent through the end of that contract being published, I then and beholden to them.
Scott
And it may not hold up in court, but I don’t want to go to court. Well, maybe I do.
Ed Wilson
But most people don’t. Slopy drafting, Scott. It’s slopy drafting. I agree. So you define it. So if I’ve got a writer who’s writing Epic Fantasy under the name Scott Drakeford, Then his option clause says, You have the first refusal over the next work of epic fantasy written by Scott under the name Scott Drakeford. Yes. Very, very simple. There’s no reason not to have that. It protects the publisher. I’m not trying to pull a fast one on publishers. I think they should have a right to do it. If Scott Drakeford decides he wants to go and write some lured erotica under a different name, why should the publisher be able to prevent them from doing that? There’s no reason to. So it’s all about being specific.
Scott
Yeah. Functionally, I don’t think they can, even with a bad contract. And you are absolutely correct. It is all about being specific in these contracts. However, my point is that those contracts are out there right now. They’re being signed by authors right now. And it’s something that a lot of agents, I think maybe even especially agents that have been in the game for a long time, they haven’t run up against issues on a lot of these things for years and years and years, because a lot of authors just write what they write and they stay in their lane and they stay their publisher when it goes well and great. But it is something that I think authors should be paying more attention to in this day and age, where it seems like contracts and publisher relationships are a little bit more volatile Yeah, I agree with that.
Ed Wilson
I think you should always make sure that the contract, the contractual terms are relevant to what you’re doing. I don’t think the publishers are trying to tie up writers. It’s very rare that they do. And Most of the time, if an author has done well, the publisher will want to reward them, and it makes sense for them to continue controlling that person’s publication because they’re going to be able to make more money out of the backlist, and it all works together. The danger then is if somebody has an ulterior motive to try and move them, and you do see this from time to time. What is in the best interest of the writer often staying with that publisher, getting control of their backlist, getting their royalties from the same person, everything pushing in one direction. Moving around for the sake of it. To go back to your sports analogy, part of the problem now is that you have large corporate agencies that do the NBA contracts, that do NFL contracts, that do massive actors’ film deals. And then they have to apply the same rationale to that, to someone’s £10,000 advance. They’re not the same thing.
Ed Wilson
That’s why we, we’re not a small agency. We’re medium-sized, I would say. That’s why we focus on books, and we’re really good at it. We know books because the context for our deals are other deals we’ve done for writers for their books. We’re not taking precedence from Ryan Reynolds’s latest film and trying to apply that to somebody who’s doing a poetry collection with Corkinette. That’s mad.
Scott
Shout out WME.
Ed Wilson
I’m not going to badmouth anybody. I’m not going to badmouth anybody. I love some people who work WME. No, I’m not here to settle scores, Scott. That’s not what I’m about. But I personally think that a big corporate agency is always going to have a slightly different game in mind. And if you’re a writer starting out, go with a book person. Stick with a book person. Book people know that. Somebody reads. I inherited an author who’d been represented by one of the big multi-talent groups. And he confessed that he didn’t think his agent had ever read one of his books. I was like, that’s depressing. The very least I can do is read your bloody book. I might not like it. And I’ll tell you I don’t like it if that’s the case. But I’m going to read it.
Scott
Yeah. And one of the things that Sunyi and I have talked about a lot on and off here is that publishing success is almost entirely determined by the publisher, right? And by what they do. Obviously, there’s a bar of quality, there’s a bar of of applicability to audiences, whatever. But that publisher efforts, by and large, determine the sales outcome, at least, of any given book. And so given that that’s the fact and given that an author brand is almost always built by a publisher in trad, not the same for indie, obviously. I do think there is a lot of cause for publishers to want to maintain some grip on that And I think, honestly, I think more should be done. And I think authors would like for more to be done, to retain them at the same publishing house. I just think it has to start from the beginning and probably starts with bigger deals that are acted upon.
Ed Wilson
Yeah, I can see that. And I think that, again, this goes back to my PhD about great publishing failures. I would be really interested to know what happened and what the variables are, whether it is an editor who disappears at a critical moment during the publishing process, whether it is a takeover, whether there’s some disruption at the agency, a competing work. There were so many… I mean, this is part of it. It’s the random nature of publishing. But that’s not just publishing. That’s creative industries. If you want a sure thing, go and be an accountant. That’s fine. That way, you work hard, you pass your exams, you go up, you follow up at career path. That’s not what publishing is. There is a randomness that makes it so exciting and why people want to do it. And the thing I say, I do a lot of talks. Like I said, I’m very passionate about demystifying. None of this stuff needs to be secret. People should understand how the industry works. But there’s no other creative endeavor where the expectation is to professionalize it. So if you play the piano, you’re not expecting to get a record deal with Decker.
Ed Wilson
You’re not expecting to play Carnegie Hall. If you’re a painter, you’re not expecting to get signed by the Saatchi gallery and to have international exhibitions. Why is the only bar for success in publishing to be published? Some people write and they just love writing. They’re really good at it. They do it for themselves, for their family, whatever. That should be enough. And I think that the idea that the only way that you can succeed as a writer is to sell a million copies and get a number one best seller. Yeah, obviously, that is an indication of success. But there are people who don’t do that who can be satisfied by being a writer. And I think the publishing should respect that. Sometimes you can be an unpublished writer and be happy with what you’re doing and be good at what you’re doing, and that’s enough.
Sunyi
So I mean…
Ed Wilson
I think I’ve just blown Scott’s mind.
Sunyi
Oh, sorry. I think he’s highlighting our shared document.
Ed Wilson
Oh, no. You two are having a secret chat. I can’t believe it.
Scott
Secret chats within secret chats within secret chats. You’re ganging…
Ed Wilson
Oh, my God, you’re ganging up on me.
Sunyi
We’ll try not to keep you all evening, but I did want to go back and say, we talked a bit before the recording started where you were saying you had this idea of advances being capped, and I wondered if you felt like going into that. When we were talking about how much should publishers pay for a book, what is achievable?
Ed Wilson
Oh, it wouldn’t work. It’s a lovely idea. It’s a lovely idea. Like the idea of having a salary a recap for a debut deal, like a rookie wage scale they have in the NFL. But the only way you could do that is also by having a minimum wage. And I was discussing this with one of my crime writers, and she said, you can only do that if you have a minimum wage. Do you know what? If there was a to do that that was competitive and everyone would agree with, that would be amazing. The idea that you basically, you lose the bottom, the idea that writers can be destitute. I think that’s it. Maybe this is part of the whatever the universal There’s a theory that everybody should have like a universal basic income. Why shouldn’t you apply that to writing? That if somebody, again, you’d have to find a way that they could qualify so that they’re good enough. I’m doing inverted They’re good enough to qualify. But I don’t know. I don’t know. Part of me feels that I look at the imbalance and I think we don’t have to do it this way.
Scott
Yeah. Wga. Wga for the Screenwriters Guild does effectively this, right? They have a minimum hourly wage that people can pay screenwriters, I think, right? They have a minimum amount. I don’t know that they have caps, though.
Ed Wilson
No. Well, you probably got. And like I said, it’s probably not enforceable, but I think that it’s screenwriting is slightly different because a novel can take a different… It’s much easier to quantify what an hour means in screenwriting time. Well, part of the problem is that writers aren’t unionized. There is no WGA for novelists. I think over here, I think people who are publishing can sign up to the NUJ, so the Journalists Union, but there isn’t really a writer. The Society of Authors tries and represents that and does some lobbying, and they’re effectively in that space.
Sunyi
Yeah, the Society of Authors are about it.
Ed Wilson
I’m not I don’t think it’s going to work, but I just I would love the idea that you somehow you remove the possibility that people can get really shot on and that if somebody wants to be a writer, that they would have the ability to at least expect a quality of life.
Scott
Amen.
Sunyi
Very quickly, and then I’ll ask you our Petty Hill question. So what do you think is the best strategy for an author of any tenure to score a livable deal? That’s actually Scott’s question that I’ve stolen.
Ed Wilson
I think you need to have an agent that understands your needs rather than understanding their own ability, their desire to hit targets. I think you need to have somebody that you can have an open conversation with and explain, This is my life, this is the shape of my life, This is what I need to be able to do this. And if you can’t get me that, then I’m not going to be able to do this. I’m going to have to go and find something else. And I think that openness. I’m sorry, I’m going to cast dispersions about your great nation. Americans are much better at talking about money than Brits are. We’re very bad at talking about money. This idea that you would have an open conversation with somebody about how much you earn is nonsense, whereas it’s something my American friends will do quite happily. So I think you need to understand what your needs are, understand how that intersects, like real life intersects with your creative life. You need to find the Goldilocks zone within that, where you’re being paid enough that you can actually do the things you want to do, but there isn’t If you get to the upper echelons, then that’s a wonderful thing.
Ed Wilson
But there’s not an expectation. I think you should be able to live first, and then you should be able to write what you want to when you want to. And if that leads to great success, then that’s wonderful. But if it doesn’t, it doesn’t mean you’re a failure. You can be happy writing books that you’re proud of that are not commercially successful. And I don’t think anyone in the industry ever says that.
Sunyi
No, that’s totally fair. Do you have anything else, Scott? Otherwise, I will…
Scott
I mean, he’s just described the poet, right?
Ed Wilson
Hey, come on. Do you know what? Okay, I’m going to tell you about poets. I’m going to tell you about Jenny Joseph. Jenny Joseph, she was about 4’8. She wrote a poem called Warning. It starts, When I’m an old woman, I will wear purple. She lived off that poem. So you can do it. So we had a poem. It’s wonderful. She used to communicate entirely by fax.
Scott
In what era was this?
Ed Wilson
She died. I mean, Jenny didn’t die that long ago, by like, 2016. This is a recent thing. And she was absolutely brilliant. So I’m not going to cast aspersions about poets. But I think, I think, like, creativity is a weird It’s a good thing. People have different motivations and different reasons they go into it. The idea that, the idea… And one of the premises, I mean, of the podcast is that getting the big bucks is the only success, and I just don’t agree with that. I mean, I need I need people to get paid in order to have a functioning business myself. But I don’t think that’s the only thing. I’ve got authors who don’t make lots of money but are really, really happy.
Sunyi
I don’t think it’s the only path, but I do think it increases your chances. And I think, particularly for Scott and I, for different reasons, we are very money motivated. Me, because I don’t want to go back to being on the doll. It’s much better to have an income. And Scott, because you want to take over the world or something. So I think for us, particularly, it is a factor.
Ed Wilson
Because teeth like those don’t come for free.
Scott
Funny story, I had braces twice in my life, so they don’t come with my genetics either.
Ed Wilson
You worked hard. You worked hard for those two.
Scott
My parents paid for it. Anyway, so I agree with you, Ed. I think there, obviously, it’s an art. There is a lot to be said for treating it as an art. However, I think our discussions on the podcast are specifically aimed at trad publishing and making a living in trad publishing, even if it’s not getting rich, which I think everybody who wants Well, not everybody who wants. Everybody who’s producing something that’s worthy of making a lot of money should make that money, right, is what I will say on that. But I think making a living, if you get to that bar of quality, that bar of sellability that you mentioned, I think is something that we as an industry should shoot for and that we’re trying to advocate for. Yeah, one thing I’ll mention on that because I think we’re probably pushing time, is just that the industry does make money. The number of publishers who lose money is quite small compared to most other industries. The recent numbers I’ve seen, I haven’t followed numbers all the way back, but the most recent report I saw in Publishers Marketplace basically reported a 10 % profit margin across the board with the big publishers, with the big five parent companies.
Scott
What that tells me, if it’s 10 % across the board, That tells me that not only, obviously, does every publishing house work approximately the same, but that also tells me that they’re gaming those numbers. And the other thing that tells me that they’re gaming those numbers is that when Simon & Schuster wanted to sell first to to PRH and then to KKR, they magically boosted their profit percentage to 30 %, which is very attractive in most industries. And so that tells me that they’re doing some accounting fuckery on the back-end to get their numbers to 10% so that they’re not paying as much in taxes, which, fair, that’s the way the world works. But the industry makes money-We’re into conspiracy theories now. I That’s not conspiracy theories. That’s just how corporations work. They try to maximize the amount of money they make while minimizing the amount of taxes they pay. But the point is the industry makes money. Each of these companies, especially these parent companies, are multibillion dollar companies. I actually should go back and look. But if I’m not mistaken, they’re making several billions, at least each, per year. And they’re operating at a profit percentage that’s somewhere between 10 and 30 %.
Scott
So it’s not an industry that’s strapped for cash. I’m sure the executives have private planes. It’s not an industry that’s incapable of establishing something like this minimum bar payment and being a little bit more sensible when it comes to author careers.
Ed Wilson
Yeah, I totally agree with that. I agree with that. We see time and time again, publisher announces record profits, publisher announces job cuts, and you’re just like, How do I understand? And there’s usually a very nice statement that says, We’re looking at the path ahead, and we’re realizing there’s tough times ahead, and we’re going to streamline those. Now, the tough times never seem to come. They just want to get rid of a few people in the back of it. It’s never the executive salaries that get… Very rarely do the people at the top of the publisher get sacked. It’s always going to be, Right, you’re going to share an assistant now. And you’re like, Oh, hang on. It’s like, Oh, so we’re going to slim down production. We’re I’m going to put one publicist going across three imprints instead of across two. And I think that’s deeply unfair. But I mean, your criticism is essentially one of capitalism. And sadly, although the power and reach of this podcast is vast, I think taking down the fundamental tense of capitalism is beyond even your reach.
Scott
Just step one, Ed. Step one. It’s early days.
Ed Wilson
We’re going to keep with those. We can achieve anything if we try. We’re not going to hold hands sing. I like this.
Scott
We’re still in our 30s. We’re good.
Sunyi
Before your spouse gets mad at you for staying too long, this is the part of the podcast where I get to ask guests, what is either the pettiest grievance you’re willing to share, the pettiest hill you’re willing to die on?
Ed Wilson
Now, you see, I had a conversation with Alex Darwin about this earlier. I have three hills that I’m prepared to die on. I’m not sure. I don’t know whether I I think one of them I definitely shouldn’t say. Two of them, I’m willing to give you the option of which you’d like. One of them is BookScan, which I think is bullshit. We hate it, too. The idea, it’s It’s skewed towards the successful. I look at BookScan numbers for anybody above the very, very top author, and we’re looking at 50, 60 % of coverage. And they don’t care about that. They don’t care because they use it. And you have bonuses based on BookScan. You have publishers doing their numbers based on BookScan. You’re saying, Gross it up, gross it up. It’s nonsense. Every time I do a proper forensic look and I compare the gross to what’s on book scan, I’m flabbergasted by how shit the coverage is. Anyway, book scan is one of them. And the other one is people in publishing writing books, which I’m just getting bored of now. I’m getting bored. I spend my entire time going up and down the country talking to Ed, talking to writers, going publishing is not a closed loop.
Ed Wilson
We’re looking for new writers. It’s The dog agrees. The dog agrees. I am delighted. I think it’s brilliant. I think it’s brilliant that publishing is full of creative people. And I think that if you want to write a book, then that’s a wonderful thing. If you want to get some experience in publishing and then go off and be an author, that’s great. What I don’t want is the publishing spending its resources on other people who work in publishing because it’s so inward-looking. And it makes me crazy. Every time I’ve gone and given a talk and said, Send us your books, we’re looking for new blood, the bookseller has four pages of editor writes a book and gets paid £150,000. It’s a really bad look because what happens is you have lots of editorial assistance who should be learning how to be editors, are actually secretly sitting at their desk writing their novel.
Sunyi
It’s funny. I nearly asked you about that in the conversation, and I couldn’t figure out a way of getting into it. I wasn’t sure you’d be willing to discuss it. But yeah, we I will say the authors notice, at least the authors I know, we notice when editors sell books to editors for absurd amounts of money, and it’s not a good look.
Ed Wilson
It’s not a good look. And that’s not to say I’m not denigrating the talent of any of these people. And I’m not that some of the people, people I would consider to be my friends who can do both. And you know what? If it’s cross-genre, if you’re an agent who specializes in X and you’ve written some books that are a totally different there’s no overlap at all, then you can say there’s enough separation. But when you have somebody who is functioning within a specific area of publishing and writes a book in that area, you’re always going to get the advantage. You’re already on the inside. And I just… Do your job. Just do your job. Don’t do the next person. Don’t be the poacher and the gamekeeper. The expectation that you get paid for both simultaneously Seriously. In what other industry would that happen? Are you going to be the Grand Prix driver, but you’re also going to be the car? That’s not going to work. You have to… You choose the one thing you’re at and do that. Focus on that.
Sunyi
So I’m adding this in as a additional bit to the podcast just because we forgot to give Ed a chance to plug himself and ended up going into discussion that had to be off record. But if you want to find Ed, you can look for him at his website, www. Johnsonandallcock. Co. Uk, or you can find him on Twitter @LiteraryWhore, all one word. Yes, it is spelled in that way. And I’ll put links into the show notes for anyone who’s looking for him. Anyway, thank you again for listening to Publishing Rodio.
Publishing Rodeo Podcast 