Transcript for episode 52 with brent taylor

Mary Kole (00:00:23):

Welcome to Brent Taylor from Triada. I embarrassed myself anyway. So Brent, we were just talking off-camera, well on camera, but off-recording that you are a fan of my book. That’s not why I’m saying this. You have primarily been doing children’s books in your career and now you are branching out. So just catch us up to speed about your career trajectory.

Brent Taylor (00:00:53):

Yes, I would love to. So I have been an agent for 10 years now and I joined Triada as an 18-year-old summer intern. It was the summer of 2014 and I got along with the president of our agency so well that he hired me that fall to start building my own list as an agent. So I sold my very first book when I was 19 years old.

Mary Kole (00:01:14)

Wow!

Brent Taylor (00:01:16)

Yeah! And I didn’t go to college, just being a literary agent was my college experience, which in hindsight, I’m really grateful for because this is a career that takes years and years to establish. So I feel lucky that I got to spend those years establishing myself when I was young. When I first became an agent, I was really passionate about children’s books and young adult, I think naturally because I was 18, 19 years old. But as the years have gone on, I’ve just become personally more interested in adult fiction as well.

(00:02:05):

And then that has kind of coincided with the market. The children’s and young adult market has contracted and the adult market really is booming. So I not only am working with a lot of adult fiction debuts, but I also have a lot of children’s and YA writers that now want to expand into adult fiction. I don’t mean to be doom and gloom though about children’s and YA because I do still love it. Those books still hold a very special place in my heart. It’s just that for now, it’s a very soft market. So I do continue to look for those books and love those categories and I don’t think anyone in the industry is quite giving up on them by any means.

Mary Kole (00:02:57):

I was definitely going to ask because this mirrors your experience as sort of a microcosm for some of the things that we’re seeing, which is a very soft middle grade unfortunately, and the trend of young adult authors having their adult debuts and you’re saying, oh my YA people are now we’re sort of selling them into a different category. What would you attribute that to? I mean middle grade, we can talk about the Barnes and Noble decision that’s still blowing like an Arctic wind through editorial considerations as they build their list. But I’m curious to see what else you’re seeing as a contributing factor perhaps.

Brent Taylor (00:03:44):

I love that question because I totally have a theory about that. I think it all comes back to YA. I think that in the golden age of YA, so like Twilight, Hunger Games, that was when we saw young adult authors were kind of infusing genre fiction with fresh brand new perspectives. And it was in young adult where we were seeing really modern genre fiction because I feel like when I was a teenager, if I went into Barnes and Noble, I didn’t want to go to the adult section because for example, the mysteries, it was my grandpa’s mysteries that he would want to read. Thrillers were the same way. Romance, the romance section was Harlequin romance that my grandma would want to read. And I do feel like that young adult golden age kind of raised this new generation of genre fiction writers just because now if you go into Barnes and Noble into the thriller section, you have Lucy Foley that is a very modern thriller that teenagers want to read. So I think in every single genre, including fantasy, including horror … because of the golden age of YA, we have adult genre fiction that now is super modern and appeals to teenagers and 20 year olds.

Mary Kole (00:05:20):

And when you say appeals to teenagers, when you say modern genre fiction, thriller, all of this, what I take that to mean, and please correct me if I’m wrong, I don’t want to put words in your mouth, it’s pacey, it is dialogue-driven because one of the hallmarks of YA, which attracts, let’s be honest, a lot of adult readers. So we have teenagers reading adult, but it also blows back the other way very much. It’s because we have sort of for better or for worse, YA is written with teenage attention spans in mind and it is faster paced, higher concept, which I am going to be asking you about. I prepared you for this, but it has all of these hallmarks of maybe the shortened attention span, shorter chapters, we have a lot of kind of tension beats throughout. Is that kind of the stuff that you would characterize as more modern?

Brent Taylor (00:06:27):

Yes, I definitely think so. Yeah.

Mary Kole (00:06:31):

Okay. So you mentioned in your Manuscript Wishlist dystopian, which is something that has kind of come back around wearing slightly different skin. Now I was right there with you, the golden age of Divergent and Hunger Games were these big cultural moments. Do you still feel like that is kind of the thrust, this kind of chosen one against the system? Or do you see maybe the cultural focus, the thematic focus going a different way?

Brent Taylor (00:07:09):

I don’t think it’s necessarily the chosen one trope that will appeal to today’s audiences. I think it would be to get readers excited and to get publishers excited. I think it would be a dystopian project that is blended with something else. So Shatter Me, that series continues to sell phenomenally well. And I think it’s because of the romance. I think it’s because that series blends dystopian with this amazing slow burn romance. And I think other dystopian projects that would have success would do some type of genre blending. So maybe dystopian fiction but it has a murder mystery in it or something along those lines. Yeah.

Mary Kole (00:08:03):

I’m seeing a lot of genre mashups as well. And this does get to my question about high concept. So is it almost a prerequisite that we pile things on or layer things and what does high concept mean to you?

Brent Taylor (00:08:22):

To me, high concept really means a strong concept that I’ve never seen before. That’s kind of one of the most difficult things I think about publishing a book is that you want people to see the ways in which your story has never been done before, like what makes it different. But you simultaneously have to communicate who the audience is and “fans of this book would love my book.” So you have to strike a very nice balance of being, you have to be like the other books that are bestsellers and award winners and working, but then you also have to be fresh and different. So I think a high concept book does strike that balance and really just the reader walks away feeling like “I’ve never encountered a concept like this before.” And I don’t think genre mashup is a requirement for that, but I think genre mashup is one of the ways that you can achieve that.

Mary Kole (00:09:35):

So I’m thinking of a book I read over I think the summer, What the River Knows. So it’s a historical, but there’s also a mystery about what happened to the main character’s parents. And I think there’s also a romantic element and a supernatural element. There is a magical worldbuilding where she can sort of listen to the magical signatures of objects, which leads her to go to Egypt at a time when young women were not made for that kind of daring-do to sort of track down what happened to her parents, unravel this mystery. So it just seems like for better for worse, we have these various elements that you’re never kind of bored because when the thread might cool down on the mystery aspect, it heats up on the romance aspect. And there’s always kind of this propulsive, that’s kind of the blurb favorite, it’s a propulsive debut, everything is propulsive, but there really is a lot that you could always be doing and it’s very heavily plotted.

Brent Taylor (00:10:52):

Yes, you are totally right.

Mary Kole (00:10:56):

I did notice a preference for romance and you were just saying maybe a dystopian for the current market has a romantic element. That’s definitely something that has come to YA as well, which maybe is not ideal for some people who have been reading kind of coming of age stories. And to them YA is still very much a coming of age type of category. Would you say romance is, I am never going to say a hard and fast requirement. Right. I appreciate you kind of softening that genre mashups are not necessarily a requirement, but would you say romance is an ingredient that we’re just seeing more and more and more of given the huge rise in romance and romantic comedy?

Brent Taylor (00:11:46):

Yes, you are totally right. It is a major ingredient. I think the readers really want it. I really grew up loving coming of age, young adult fiction. I loved A.S. King. She is one of my favorite authors. One of my favorite novels is The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd. I love that book to death. I love those stories so much, but it’s sad. I just don’t see a market for those stories today. I have occasionally signed on coming of age projects and I just can’t sell them to publishers to save my life. So I do think a romantic element really helps. At the same time, it can’t be forced. I don’t recommend an author adding in a romance to their book to make it more sellable because then it’s not going to come alive for the reader and the romance is going to feel very flat.

(00:12:57):

So I always tell authors to not stress out about the market and working with authors, whatever job you have in publishing, you’re encountering authors and their hopes and dreams. And so many of them are, I want to be a New York Times bestseller, I want a Netflix adaptation of my book. All of these things which I support, I support wholeheartedly. But those things are often outside of our control even as agents and editors and marketers. So I always tell an author that your North Star should be your craft. You should be a thousand percent dedicated to telling your stories in the most artistically excellent way possible because when you do that, that’s how you end up with a manuscript that is amazing, that is compulsively readable, that lights editors and agents up. So yeah, I hope that’s helpful advice.

Mary Kole (00:14:02):

It is, and I completely agree with you that anything that’s tacked on for, I mean we all would love to land on the list. We all would love to be such an excellent producer for the publisher that we ride off into the sunset and make tons of books, which isn’t a guarantee in today’s landscape anymore unfortunately. I do think that there’s something I really want to pull out of what you said, which is almost that a book that is high concept or a book that is marketable has to be specific. Nothing anyone’s ever read before, which is a really high bar and I think is going to freak some people out, but also universal and recognizable enough where it fits on the shelf somewhere, it has comps that are viable. I often, I think that there’s a tension of what is my North Star, what is my craft, what is the story that I want to tell? Is it unique but is it also universal? And that’s something I just interviewed Gloria Chao for the podcast, which I’m going to release soon and was a really interesting conversation. But that’s one thing that she has identified in her work that the more you kind of lean in to yourself as a writer, as long as you can also make that universal, that’s kind of the needle that we’re trying to thread.

Brent Taylor (00:15:36):

Yes, I love that.

Mary Kole (00:15:39):

Perfect. So we’ll leave YA in just a second. And I have a question about romance that I’d love to ask you, but is there room for any younger YA, because it seems like we’re only getting more romance-driven, older, almost leaning into new adult, which has come back from the dead as a very viable category now. Is there room for those younger readers? Because that’s something I hear a lot on the school and library side. What about the 14 year olds?

Brent Taylor (00:16:09):

Yes, I agree with you. I do think that as middle grade has gone through this really challenging period, I do think that publishers have started to think about reinventing middle grade a little bit to appeal to those 13 year olds and those 14 year olds because there are 13 year olds and 14 year olds who feel that they’re too old for Percy Jackson, but they don’t necessarily want to read the level of heat that’s in Sarah J Maas. So I absolutely, I’m seeing readers looking for those types of books and I’m seeing editors and publishers wanting those as well. Really a book that appeals to 13 and 14 year olds, I would say when I was a kid, the book that I loved that is similar to this is Flipped (the author was a previous podcast guest!), which I loved it so much when I was in middle school because it was such an amazing romance, but it was also just the emotions felt very middle grade and they felt very true to a 13-year-old or to a 14-year-old. So kind of a more modern take on Flipped, I would say would do very well in this market.

Mary Kole (00:17:29):

It’s good to hear that in your conversations with editors, you’re really kind of seeing some of these things bear out because I feel like in children’s publishing specifically, it can be a chicken or the egg thing. It’s like “boys don’t read” … well, do they not read because we have overwhelmingly published children’s fiction for girls? Look at the covers. A self-respecting 13, 14-year-old boy wouldn’t be caught dead in the middle grade and young adult section, right? They’re going to go for Stephen King, they’re going to go for whatever fantasy, sci-fi. But is that because publishers have decided that or is that because readers have decided that? Because sometimes it seems like there’s a big disconnect since bookstores are the customers of publishers rather than having a more direct line to those readers.

Brent Taylor (00:18:25):

I think it’s a problem. I think I would blame it on the publishers. I do think that the publishers, I mean they are not always as innovative as they should be. They are not always as forward thinking as they should be. And I mean it’s undeniable that boys would totally read and buy a lot more books if publishers really put those books out there for them. But because there is not an appetite currently from retailers, the publishers will not do it. So I do think it would take retailers kind of articulating that to publishers in a more explicit way. You never know. Hopefully we just have some random breakout book that is super successful for boy readers and that would kind of really lead the way forward. But yeah, I totally agree with your take.

Mary Kole (00:19:25):

So we do have a couple of questions that have cropped up surrounding this and one is what is the age for main characters in books for these 13, 14 year olds? Because another piece of publishing wisdom is that kids like to read up. So are we talking about 12, 13 year olds or because when I was an agent, 14, 15-year-old main characters were in the valley between the gray area and everybody said absolutely don’t do it. Has that changed at all?

Brent Taylor (00:19:58):

Yeah, I think that editors and publishers are now looking specifically for that 13 and 14-year-old protagonist. I think that type of book, I do see the main character being 13 and 14. I think that when you go down to 12, it’s kind of more solidly middle grade. And I do think that when you go to 15, it’s more solidly YA. So I think that market, your sweet spot really is 13 to 14.

Mary Kole (00:20:31):

From the gray area to the sweet spot. You heard it here first. We’ve seen things like the guys read anthology, publishers try sometimes. Which brings me to a question. How do you challenge publishers?

Brent Taylor (00:20:49):

Yeah, I mean I try to be very opinionated when I’m talking to editors. So for example, I really love dearly literary fiction, but I also love commercial fiction. So I’m the type of reader who has an appreciation for both. And as I’ve spoken with editors, they are sometimes saying to me, we can still buy middle grade, but it has to be super commercial. And I always say to them, what is going to happen? Is the Newbury metal going to go to Percy Jackson? I really feel like at an acquisitions meeting, these publishers really do need to be thinking about, yeah, we have this commercial series that is going to be perfect for those Percy Jackson fans. But yes, let’s take a chance on this literary fiction middle grade novel because it is a Newbury contender, we do need to publish books that are going to be award contenders. And whenever I say that to editors, they’re kind of like, yeah, I agree with you, but sadly the powers that be are really focused on the market and making as much money as possible.

Mary Kole (00:22:06):

Yeah, I have definitely had some of those conversations with peers and in my head where it’s like, and I know you don’t really do a lot with picture books, but as an example, a lot of agents they say no rhyming picture books and there are reasons for this. A lot of people that’s their first effort. It’s maybe not the most marketable or well done effort and it harkens back to yesteryear. However, if you look at publishers lists, rhyming picture books comprise—so for Writing Irresistible Picture Books, I just really did a deep dive on about 150 recently published books and about a third, a quarter to a third of them were rhyming. So they have those slots on their lists, but there seem to be these real or imagined hurdles to actually placing something that might be “just” an award contender for publishers because they’re looking at their P and Ls and they’re saying, well, I just don’t know how many copies I can move of this or the world can move of this right now and we need maybe a more sure thing.

Brent Taylor (00:23:21):

Yes, completely.

Mary Kole (00:23:24):

So how do you query a book that isn’t necessarily high concept?

Brent Taylor (00:23:29):

Yeah, I think for me, I would want to see the stakes really come across in a big way, even if they are more emotional stakes. So my query letter advice is to just answer four basic questions. So who is your character? What do they want? What is standing in the way of them getting what they want and what’s going to happen if they don’t get what they want? And I think by answering those four questions, you are able to articulate the stakes, whether it’s a super commercial project or whether it’s a more quiet project.

Mary Kole (00:24:14):

That is so smart and wonderful because I really do feel like high concept is maybe thought of as high stakes, but you can have high emotional stakes. I think no matter what you’re doing, it has to matter. It has to matter to the character and therefore it’s going to matter to the reader even if it is “my best friend suddenly doesn’t want to be friends with me anymore.” And I’m thinking of when I was 13 in middle school, my best friend as of the second grade came up to me one day and this didn’t end up sticking and I’ve forgiven her, but she was like, I really want to try to be more popular so we can’t be friends anymore, which tells you everything you need to know about my social standing in middle school.

(00:25:10):

But it was devastating. It was like all of a sudden the ground beneath your feet is no longer the same ground that it was five minutes ago. And if you do a good job thinking through the ramifications and thinking through how it lands with that character, you can make stakes and you should make stakes out of, that’s not to say melodrama, I feel like melodrama is high emotion that isn’t logically or emotionally motivated and it can kind of turn yucky and kick readers out of the story. But if you make the events of your story matter, I feel like too few people are talking about, well, how do we apply stakes? How do we generate stakes?

Brent Taylor (00:25:58):

Yes, you’re totally right.

Mary Kole (00:26:02):

That’s why I brought you on because you agree, you agree with my points. Sticking to queries for a second and slush pile, what draws you to request a full but then results in rejection? And let’s just get out of the way and say every project is different. The reasons might be different, but if there was a pattern?

Brent Taylor (00:26:25):

Yeah, I do think that often, when I request a full manuscript, I tend to be enamored with the concept when I’m reading queries and I request something, it’s like, oh, I love that concept. I would buy that book if I was at Barnes and Noble. And then I mean I’ll kind of glance at the pages a little bit to get a sense of the writing. I want to feel like the writing is dynamic and at the level that you would see in a published book. And so when I ultimately reject the manuscript, it tends to be because the concept was strong, but the read was not as strong for me. I think pacing, I’m noticing that pacing is a big thing as well. Sometimes you’re 50 pages into a manuscript and you’re not even at the inciting incident yet and it’s just really slow going. And I feel like if I’m bored by page 50, editors are going to be bored by page 50 as well. So I think that’s a very common reason for me passing.

Mary Kole (00:27:44):

Pacing and maybe hand in hand with that, not enough attention paid to stakes. Because if stakes are high, I’m not saying you can get away with slow pacing or an info dump in your first five chapters, but pacing and stakes do tend to be coupled at least in mine.

Brent Taylor (00:28:03):

Yes, I agree. And I think my other observation is that I think that in today’s age, with our culture kind of having instant gratification with everything, I find that writers are increasingly writing to be published and they’re writing for publication, which I understand you want to share your work with others, but I do wonder if in the days of E.B. White and Charlotte’s Web and that era, I wonder if without this digital world, if writers were really more willing to spend years and years writing their manuscript and telling their story in the most artistically excellent way possible. And I do think that writers would be better served if they really took their time and focused more on developing their craft because publishing is not going to disappear, readers are not going to disappear. They will be there for you when your book is ready. But yeah, I’m noticing writers, it does feel like they churn out that draft and then are kind of querying right away. And I really recommend taking your time.

Mary Kole (00:29:26):

So my husband is a chef and he has noticed something similar and I call it the American Idol effect. You see that person who has an excellent audition and maybe they’re a natural prodigy, but what you don’t see is the 10 years before the audition of practice, practice, practice and learning and growing your craft, you see somebody get up on stage and blow the audience away. But what all went into that? And my husband, people are now coming into a kitchen on an externship or whatever and expecting to be called chef because they watched The Bear. But it really is this very intensive kind of crucible that people go through to get the privilege to call themselves a chef. And so I just feel like that is such a fantastic point. So I do have a couple questions that I’m holding. I see you, when is the manuscript done then? If we need to take more time, we need to grow into our craft, we need to fully let something come to fruition. When is it done? That’s a question a lot of writers have.

Brent Taylor (00:30:40):

Yeah, I mean I am not a writer, so I definitely, I say all of this with humility and I don’t know necessarily what will work for all writers, but to give my advice … I do think that as a writer, I don’t think you should be showing too many people your project until you feel that you’ve done everything possible to get it in really strong shape. Sometimes I talk with writers and they’ll say to me, oh, I know that I need to really kind of fix the cliffhanger plot and all of that, but I want to show this to you and I don’t like that. I’m like, I think you should be doing everything possible to make it as strong as possible before showing it to anyone. So I think the first step is you as the author, you should fix everything that you are able to identify in the manuscript that needs fixing or development. And then after that I think that’s when you show it to critique partners and your writing group. I think critique partners, writing groups, all of that is so amazing. I love working with authors that have a strong critique group because it really comes across in their projects and I think after you’ve run it through some beta readers or critique groups and when you’re getting feedback that’s relatively minor, I think at that point that’s a signal that you’re ready to go.

Mary Kole (00:32:24):

So not impatience, not I’m sick of it, not I wanted to be published yesterday so I could be on some 30 under 30 list, but once the baby is fully cooked.

Brent Taylor (00:32:39):

Yes.

Mary Kole (00:32:41):

Perfect. One question about queries. What is the outlook for series and how do we convey in a query that we have a planned series?

Brent Taylor (00:32:52):

Yes, the outlook for series is very strong, I would say in every genre and from middle grade to YA to adult. I think every market is really excited about series. I would just indicate in your query what your vision for the series is. So some authors will say this book will work as a standalone but can be turned into a series. Some authors will say, this is the first book in a series that ends with a cliffhanger. And that’s kind of a good signal to me that if we do sell this, it must be a series. A publisher has to share that vision. I’m also noticing, especially in the adult romance market, you will say something like this romance is a standalone, but I have ideas for interconnected standalones set in the same world. So that’s another way to put it. But when I am going on submission with a project to editors, I do speak with the author about their vision for future books because we do like to present the publisher with as much information as possible. So if it’s a series, I like to include a brief description of where this story is going in book two and book three, or if it’s a romance, an indication of which character we’re going to follow in the next book, if it’s the main character’s little sister or hairdresser or something like that. So I think it’s helpful to present that information at the querying stage.

Mary Kole (00:34:48):

And that’s a very common play in romance because the characters got their happy ever after. So it’s not like we’re going to follow the same pair again, but maybe there’s a side character that we want to spotlight in the same world. So that’s really good information. How does somebody find critique partners? Because I know that that other than joining Thriving Writers, which is my writing community, where are people finding these people?

Brent Taylor (00:35:23):

Yes, I definitely don’t feel like an authority just because I have not written myself, my clients that I talk to, I think their critique partners tends to be in person actually. So I would really recommend kind of exploring your local community. Maybe your local independent bookstore has a writing group or maybe the library has a writing group. I think that in today’s digital age, local community is kind of overlooked. So I would say that if you are struggling to find a local community, I would absolutely recommend the online spaces. And then vice versa. If you’re struggling with the online spaces, I would try the local communities.

Mary Kole (00:36:18):

Yeah, we have somebody chiming in to say they found their critique group through SmoochPit mentorship. So there are these kind of scaffoldings and frameworks that can yield unexpected results.

Brent Taylor (00:36:30):

Yes, completely.

Mary Kole (00:36:32):

So I lied, there’s another question about querying and submission to agents. When you are looking for comps for your work, what element is most important: genre, style, bestselling status? What makes a good comp?

Brent Taylor (00:36:53):

I would say genre and style over bestselling status just because the big bestsellers, everyone is using those as their comp titles. I do think that you come across as setting your book apart and making it feel like it’s different from everything else out there when you do use more creative comp titles. But I’ve always been perplexed with publishing that there’s so much emphasis on comp titles, specifically a book. And as a reader and as an agent, I’ve always loved comp authors the most. I just want you to tell me, oh, my book is for fans of Jenny Han. My book is for fans of Sarah Dessen. I want to hear about the authors. That kind of gives me a bigger picture of your career as a whole.

Mary Kole (00:37:52):

Interesting. So I have tons of questions for that, but I will try to focus myself. Let’s jump over to romance because Sarah Dessen and Jenny Han, those are signature, see? We’re getting a transition out of this. So to what do you attribute just the stratospheric rise of interest in romance? Is it the pandemic sort of allowed us to really hone in on our private reading and figure out what makes us tick? And a lot of that is romantic relationships. What gives?

Brent Taylor (00:38:38):

I wish that I knew. I really don’t know. I mean, I will say that I am enjoying the romance boom because I’ve really discovered that I just love romance and I’m such a romance reader. I think I would attribute it possibly to the dating world being so awful that people are looking for escapism. That would be my theory. But yeah, there’s such a huge appetite for it. And I do think, ever since I was a teenager, I always really paid attention to traditional publishing. And I will completely admit to, I was a snob who would say I would never read a self-published book. And I have since done a complete reversal and I’ve really learned, and I think that the self-publishing space really innovated in a way that traditional publishing did not. Specifically romance. So romance readers are your Kindle readers, Kindle Unlimited readers and self-pub authors really did an amazing job putting the stories out there that the traditional publishers were not putting out. I feel like the traditional publishers were just putting out that same type of romance that this mass market romance that was selling in the seventies is what they were putting out. And it’s the self-pub readers, it’s the self-pub community that was like, we want dark romance. We want all of these sub genres. And I think that kind of golden age of romance that happened on the self-pub side has now trickled over to traditional publishing.

Mary Kole (00:40:34):

This is a great segue to talk about hybrid career models, which I will ask you about, but to your point, I feel like what a lot of people don’t think about is we live in highly curated, self-curated environments. Every time I open up Instagram, it’s completely different than what your Instagram is, your TikTok feed, whatever. And I feel like indie romance especially capitalized on that by giving readers exactly what they were looking for. So it’s a mob romance with forced proximity tropes, one bed, whatever. And I feel like people really voted with their Kindle Unlimited, KU borrows with their dollars into these very many kind of keywords and categories that just took off like wildfire.

Brent Taylor (00:41:32):

Yes.

Mary Kole (00:41:34):

Yeah. So you have actually innovated or led the subrights department at your agency. So we’re getting back to indie in a moment, but tell me a little bit more about that.

Brent Taylor (00:41:49):

Yeah, so when I joined the agency, the agencies had been open for a while but had primarily done a lot of highly American nonfiction that didn’t have a big international appeal. So when I joined the agency is when we started doing commercial fiction. So we all of a sudden had more of a desire to build out kind of a stronger subrights department, and I had a ton of fun doing the foreign rights for the entire agency. I sold everything you can imagine. So I sold gardening books to China, but I sold sports romance to Turkey, so everything in between and I loved it, but it became so much administrative work that I was just completely worn out, burnt out. So I actually gave that position up to one of my colleagues so that I could focus on my domestic list. But I remain super passionate about subrights and I just think it’s so fun to expand an author’s audience by getting them into different markets and formats and territories.

Mary Kole (00:43:05):

So I love that because one of the publishing myths is that seven or eight out of 10 books don’t earn out and start earning royalties. And so it’s like, well, we got to eat if we’re an author and how else can we diversify our careers? And foreign rights is definitely one of them. We can film option, but getting something actually made is very, very difficult. But an option can pay the mortgage for a month or two. So in terms of diversifying your author’s careers, you are starting to pick up print rights from self-published authors for projects that are already out there in digital editions, maybe through print on demand. And publishers now are more receptive. For example, Bloom Books. That’s the business model of that Sourcebooks imprint. So tell me a little bit more about that sea change that you’re seeing that makes it possible for somebody to have an indie career over here and also move into the trad space.

Brent Taylor (00:44:19):

Yes, I am having so much fun working with authors on those projects and I do love that publishers are now starting to evolve. I think Bloom was one of the first publishers that was willing to give authors that kind of out of the box business model. And I think the other publishers really realized that, yeah, we’re losing money by not having ebook, but if we only have print rights but we sell a million copies, that’s still a lot of money. And compared to your average debut that yes, they have all of the rights, they have ebook, but then you’re only selling a hundred eBooks, where’s the money in that? I mean, I would rather take the print only situation and sell a million copies. So it’s been amazing that Bloom has kind of inspired the other publishers to be more flexible. And I am starting to see not every Big Five is willing to do this, but more of them are willing to do it.

(00:45:27):

With that being said, when you’re working with an author that wants to do hybrid, it’s really, I would compare it to working on graphic novels. So whenever I work on graphic novels or whenever I’m working with an author who wants to be hybrid, there’s no standard and everything we do is really tailored to them and what they want. I feel like with prose books, the publishers, they know the process. It’s like you do your developmental edits, then you do your copy edits, then it gets sent off to production. With things like graphic novels, you’re kind of talking with the creator to figure out what works for them, what process works for them. Because some creators may do thumbnails and pencils and then inks and then some creators may say, that’s not my process. I go straight to pencils. So whenever I’m working with a self pub author, we do talk about do you want to keep your ebook rights and then sell the print rights or do you want to sell everything? And there are some hybrid authors that are willing to give up their ebook rights because sometimes they just don’t want to handle the business side of things anymore and they don’t want to deal with all of that. So it does require a lot of strategy before we start submitting to publishers.

Mary Kole (00:46:59):

So I have a question here, and it is kind of specific to the writer’s experience, but I want to maybe see if I can broaden it. So they have published a YA contemporary romance with magical realism previously. They’re asking, is that still kind of looked down upon? They say, do publishers still see self-published authors with the same stigma (unwanted), or are they more open to representing previously self-published books? So I think that’s a resounding yes. And if anything, what the romance girlies on Kindle have proven is that they know how to build their readership. So if people have responded favorably, if there are readers that’s seen as a big asset actually by publishers because that’s what publishers are trying to do for every book that they release. They’re trying to build a readership, they’re trying to have kind of a known quantity in terms of the authors that they sign. Where it gets a little complicated is this person wants to write a same-world sequel to a previously self-published, which we do see sometimes, but the traditional wisdom has been that there may be less enthusiasm for publishers for something where unless you’ve sold a hundred thousand copies on your own, they wouldn’t maybe take the whole series. Has that changed?

Brent Taylor (00:48:32):

No, you’re completely right. I think that my answer at first was going to be that 10 years ago I was one of those people who would say, if you self-publish a book, you’re not considered a debut. It is a little bit of a ding against you. Unless you self-publish the one book that sold a billion copies, then that’s different. Nowadays, if you have self-published something previously myself and also the editors that I know, we do not hold that against you whatsoever. And if you’re showing that there’s a market for your writing and that people enjoy it, then it’s great. Where you lost me a little bit is the part where this new book is an in-world sequel. So that’s the issue where publishers would feel like they need something brand new to lead with. So I would recommend having a project that is unrelated to the self-published debut to lead with traditional publishing.

Mary Kole (00:49:46):

Yeah, sometimes making that jump is easy and a no-brainer. Sometimes making that jump is complicated if you are looking to build upon a self-publishing foundation with a traditional partner. Do you have an over under on a turnaround for the middle grade market?

Brent Taylor (00:50:07):

Do you think in terms of timeline or?

Mary Kole (00:50:10):

Probably.

Brent Taylor (00:50:11):

Yeah, I’m not sure. I mean, I think hopefully within the next few years. I think part of it is that when kids were out of school for COVID, that really impacted reading levels and reading ability and I think it’s just going to take a few years of kids being back in school to build that back up. So my fingers are crossed that in 2026-27, I hope we see amazing middle grade sales.

Mary Kole (00:50:39):

Set your calendars. We’re going to email Brent and see if 2026-27 is better for middle grade. So you have a lot of conversations with editors. Is there anything else that you’re kind of seeing in your future forecasting that might be interesting to know?

Brent Taylor (00:51:01):

Yeah, I think horror is going to continue to flourish, which I’m excited about because I’ve always been a fan of horror and I think horror genre mashups especially are going to be popular. I’m starting to see editors talk about horror romance. I’ve not yet heard of a horror romance YA. So that is definitely on my wishlist. But yeah, so I’m hearing talk about that.

Mary Kole (00:51:34):

Is it body horror? Is it more satirical horror? I notice you have Grady Hendricks on your manuscript wishlist. What flavor other than romantic horror, which we will cross our fingers for … what flavor?

Brent Taylor (00:51:48):

I mean I love all flavors of horror. I think when I talk to editors though, I do get the sense that there are fewer editors who love body horror. I think editors tend to like psychological horror, things like that. So for me personally, I’m open to everything.

Mary Kole (00:52:11):

And let’s go back to children’s books for a second. Chapter books, I don’t know if they’re kind of an area of yours, but that is another case where the lists tend to already be full of long running series, so it’s pretty hard to get in there. Is that something you’re seeing?

Brent Taylor (00:52:31):

Yeah, I do think that that’s the case. I mean, my entire career I’ve heard that chapter books are nearly impossible and I have witnessed that to be true. But there’s always the random series that actually does break out. Dory Fantasmagory actually did break out. So I mean I encourage writers, if you’re passionate about it, go for it. But do manage realistic expectations. I do think it’s interesting when graphic novels started to boom, I and others did think that graphic novel chapter books would become a huge thing. And really the same thing happened in that market as well where there were a few series that totally blew up, but overall the vast majority of chapter book graphic novels just did not take off and did not sell that well. It’s fascinating that that happened in graphic novels as well.

Mary Kole (00:53:36):

Do a category mashup but not like that is basically the advice here. Yes, I do feel like graphic novel readers are a specific breed of readers. So maybe pulling it back into the prose-only format could have been a hindrance.

As you are waiting for a response from an agent. Or if you are agented and you are waiting on responses to a submission to publishers, how do you keep from absolutely losing your ever loving mind?

Brent Taylor (00:54:14):

Yes, I say do not let yourself be bored. I think you have to jump straight away into the next project. I mean, one of the ways in which I feel very lucky is that I don’t have time to be losing my mind when I’ve submitted a project because the moment I submit something, I have a thousand other things that I have to go do. And so that kind of takes my mind off of it. And so my advice is you as the author immediately jump into your next book and work on that or whatever it is. If you want to read a lot in a specific genre to do research for your next project, spend your time that way. Or if you want to kind of invest back into your writing community and critique other author’s works, I would say whatever you can do to keep yourself busy but not busy in the sense of like, I’m going to binge 30 different series on Netflix. Busy in the sense of really enrich, enrich your craft, enrich your writing and your reading life.

Mary Kole (00:55:26):

Because there are many things that are outside of your control. And when you go on submission that truism is never tested more. For whatever reason it might happen, it might not happen. But your craft, your sense of artistic integrity that you were talking about, your market knowledge, your comp research … read widely and see if there are any new authors that you might find that you could be in alignment with. All of those things are within your control. Sure. Binging Netflix feels good. And you could say you’re participating in the cultural zeitgeist doing that, but it’s not necessarily productive in the way that you might want to be because you have your eye on the longest distance of your career and your self development.

Brent Taylor (00:56:20):

Yes, completely.

Mary Kole (00:56:22):

Is there anything else that you want people to know about you as an agent? I think that you kind of entering agenting at 18 is an incredible story and it really sounds like you found your life’s work. Are you going to be in a hover scooter at Frankfurt at 85 years old?

Brent Taylor (00:56:46):

I hope not because I hope to only go to Frankfurt when absolutely necessary. I’ve served my years at Frankfurt.

Mary Kole (00:56:58):

The first Frankfurt is a privilege. You’re pinching yourself. You’re like, I am flying all over the world doing book deals. The second Frankfurt and on is a nightmare.

Brent Taylor (00:57:09):

Yes, yes.

Mary Kole (00:57:11):

We love to hate it. Publishing has such limited perks that you really have to kind of enjoy them while you get them and then you’re just tired afterward for two months.

Brent Taylor (00:57:22):

Yeah. I love being a creative and business partner to my clients and I just commend all of the authors that are here and a part of your community for being dedicated to their craft and to wanting to improve their craft. And I would also say to just not give up on your dreams. Whether you’re trying to work in publishing or whether you’re trying to launch your career as an author, it is such a difficult business to break into. And the only thing that I can say is to just not give up on it. And when you’ve had a bad day, the best thing to do is to come back the next day and to keep going. And I think those are the authors that have that ability, those are the ones that are successful.

Mary Kole (00:58:17):

Everybody on shelves didn’t quit, maybe despite many, many obstacles, you are seeing the people who persevered and if you quit, it’ll never happen. Right? That is one thing that we can guarantee.

Brent Taylor (00:58:32):

Yes, completely.

Mary Kole (00:58:34):

Brett, where can people find you? Is manuscript wishlist the best source?

Brent Taylor (00:58:40):

I think the best source is my website, which I try to keep pretty updated. So my site is btaylorbooks.com, but you could also find me on the agency’s website, which is triadaus.com. And then for the last five years I’ve been social media free and have been really enjoying it. But I recently started up again on Blue Sky, so you can also find me @btaylorbooks on Blue Sky.

Mary Kole (00:59:12):

Okay. Brett Taylor from Triada US. Thank you so much for gracing us with your presence and talk and it has been a huge pleasure.

Brent Taylor (00:59:23):

Thank you so much for having me. And I just want to say to all the writers here also that I was telling Mary that I am a huge fan of her book Writing Irresistible Kidlit. And even if you are writing adult fiction or new adult or something else, there is so much to learn from that book. So if you haven’t yet had a chance to read it, I highly recommend taking that opportunity as soon as you can.

Mary Kole (00:59:54):

I bribed him to say that. No, I’m just kidding. Thank you. Thank you so much. Truly, truly a pleasure. Thank you for your time. And you may be hearing from my people in your inbox.

Brent Taylor (01:00:07):

I hope so. Thank you. And I wish you all well.