Carly Watters
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Carly: [00:00:00] A book that i sold actually blew up on tiktok in 2021 which is the seven husbands of evelyn hugo which is now sold like over five and a half million copies and been translated into 40 languages.
Carly: idea of the overnight success, right. It's like these people write books for years and years and years. Right. And it's like, we never know in the book business, what is going to be the book that's going to connect with people or, you know, totally send somebody to the stratosphere. Like we just don't know.
Carly: And that's kind of the fun and the alchemy of the business.
Today, we're thrilled to have Carly Waters on the show. This woman is a standout innovator in the literary world. Carly has been a [00:01:00] guiding force for authors, navigating book deals, and advocating for their incredible successes. So let's jump in. Join us for the conversation with Carly, whose dedication and insights are inspiring an entire new generation of writers and readers.
Claire: right. Welcome to the show. Carly who's Carly introduce us to the audience.
Carly: Hello, everybody. My name is Carly Waters. I have worked in book publishing since 2009 and it's just the best business. I love working with authors. I love working with creatives. I love seeing where the written word is taking us.
Carly: And obviously that will build on our conversation we're having today. And my job is to be a literary agent. And so that means I am an author's advocate. Authors hire me to help negotiate their book deals. And basically I'm like a talent manager, a talent agent, if you kind of want to think of it in Hollywood speak.
Carly: But I'm helping them manage their career, everything from helping them with the [00:02:00] manuscripts to negotiating the book deals, to sitting in on marketing and publicity meetings. And it's pretty much the best job. I love it.
Claire: And you work for yourself which, I mean, you're saying, yes, you work with a lot of people would you say you work for yourself in this industry?
Claire: Yeah, it's an interesting question.
Carly: So the way that literary agencies work and function, and I can't say all of them, but most of them, is that individual agents work at a larger agency. So there's an agency that I work for, it's PS Literary Agency based in Toronto in the GTA. And I have been with them since 2010, but the way that the industry functions is that most of us are independent contractors, which makes me self employed.
Carly: And so that's kind of the, the interesting piece of it. So I also do lots of teaching. I teach writers all about the business of publishing and how to get published. And I also I'm a co host of a podcast called the shit no one tells you about writing, which we've incorporated into a business. So I basically have three businesses going on right [00:03:00] now.
Claire: So you're. You're pretty bored. Yeah. Yeah. Every day is yeah. Pretty work. Okay. I'm going to just Say it out loud, because I think when people hear, well, first of all, I have my background, I have an English literature degree, right? So we're like, Oh, and what will you do with that other than teach? And it's funny because here we are now, that was a common like question before the rise of, you know, with tech, with artificial intelligence.
Claire: And we've talked a lot about how much is changing, but the question I really want to kick off. Aren't you worried about the future of books and writing when I can just close my eyes and tell a computer to write me a blog post on how to start a podcast and it might write it better than me? Yeah,
Carly: it's, I mean, it's an amazing question and something I've been thinking about a lot this week, just this week and this month, you know, in, in 2024, we've heard so much about tech layoffs and [00:04:00] media layoffs.
Carly: And there's just constantly like this rotation in the content creation world of like, what's new, what's better, how fast can I read this? How fast can I consume this? And yet the book business is a multi billion dollar business that has been around since the invention of the Gutenberg printing press, and it returns profits every year.
Carly: You know, and so there, while a lot of people like to think that tech's coming for us or everybody's spending their leisure time on TikTok or Netflix or, you know, any other ways that they want to spend their leisure time, the book business is still booming. And I think when every kind of new generation comes along, we're always like, Oh no, is this new generation going to like books?
Carly: And then something like, you know, BookTok blows up, which is on TikTok. There's this huge book community. And in 2021, they grew the market by 20 million dollars by like growing the pie of the book business by like all these Gen Z's on TikTok growing the actual pie of the book business. And so I just like [00:05:00] laugh because I'm like, it is just a throwaway comment, of course.
Carly: But like when you get into the economics of the book business and you're like, people actually do want to. You know, read long form content. And how do you think all those shows end up on Netflix? They're adapted from books. That's where they come from.
Claire: Thank you, Shakespeare. Well, I can say I'm part of two book clubs still to this day because I think it's, it's more than books.
Claire: It's community, it's storytelling. It connects us. Are you noticing though, there is, it's harder to get published because of the noise, because you, there's such a high level. Of publishing that could happen and when I say publishing content writing, it's, it's on steroids because we can get so much more out there now.
Carly: Yeah, yeah. No, I think it is a good question. I think about that in two buckets, which is fiction versus nonfiction, right? Because with fiction, a novel is a novel. It has a beginning, middle, and end. It's approximately 80, 000 words. People who read novels gravitate towards novels. There's book clubs for a reason.
Carly: There's that piece, which is [00:06:00] the entertainment piece, right? We turn to books to entertain us mostly on the fiction side. On the nonfiction side is where I think there's a bit more of a question mark, which kind of gets what you're saying about, like, there's just so many blog posts and podcasts and everything that we can listen to to fill that.
Carly: That need in us in terms of seeking information or guidance or self help. Oh, there's a lot of things that can fill that need. And so I think of the nonfiction space. I think about this a lot more nonfiction meaning, you know, business books or pop science, pop psychology health, you know, anything in that space.
Carly: that's what I have a big question mark around is because I always ask clients or potential clients, why does this need to be a book? You know, why can't this be a blog? Why can't this be a podcast series? Why does it need to be a book? And there's a reason that things become books. And the publishing industry loves to rely on individuals in the nonfiction space with really big platforms because they know that, hey, so and so has an email subscriber list of 2 million.
Carly: Yeah, let's get them a book deal. And then they can send it through their email funnel and, you know, move lots of copies. You know, publishing really likes that, right? Because that takes some of the [00:07:00] stress off of them. And they know that they can kind of partner with these authors with large platforms.
Carly: The harder piece is nonfiction authors with no platform. And they can really be wanting to write a really great book. I cannot sell something from somebody who doesn't really, on the nonfiction side, again, I don't want any novelists coming for me, but on the nonfiction side, I really can't sell books from people that don't have, like, at least 10,000 followers, 20,000 followers, 30,000 followers, because publishers are going to want that social proof.
Carly: They need to know that social currency, that like what you're writing about, what you're blogging about, what you're TikTok ing about has an audience. And that audience will ideally want to pay for it. And because books these days cost about 30.
Claire: Yeah, and I think, and that's the thing is in the marketing world, and I know this is your world as well, and any world that we're selling something, it's the distribution that comes with it.
Claire: And I think for listeners that, you know, they might, I love the question, why does it have to be a book? And I think there's lots of mediums out there that people digest based on personality, [00:08:00] time restraints, interests, you know, I'm a medium girl. Love medium because it says in two minutes, I'll be done this article.
Claire: And I'm like, I can squeeze that in and I'm not trying to go through the pages, but for writers and for people that are hoping maybe to go along this, this path. And we see the disruption in tech. And I always come back to this because I'm wondering what advice can we give to these writers, these artists to really hone in?
Claire: What are the important things that they should be honing in during this time? What's the gap?
Carly: Yeah you know, it's really interesting because I think there's kind of two pieces that I think about right now which is really great writers are going to be needed more than ever for a couple reasons.
Carly: Number one is the storytelling. Right? Because if you think about what makes a good TikTok, what makes a good Reel, what makes a good YouTube, what makes a good Substack, like whatever you're consuming in terms of as you're talking about all these medium we can consume It's all about the storytelling.
Carly: It's like the delivery of the method. Like we're going to need so [00:09:00] many writers to be writing scripts for all these podcast series. And there is going to be an influx of content because it's easier than ever to make content. But we need human beings to help craft the storytelling piece of it.
Carly: And that is where I think, again, there's a huge opportunity. there. And then also in terms of like the AI piece, right? Like, we know that there is going to be lots of devices and software out there that can presumably quote, unquote, do the job of humans, but humans know when they're not talking to other humans.
Carly: And I know that the technology, even by the time this is done. Episode comes out is constantly evolving and we're going to date ourselves quickly, right? By trying to, we are
Claire: real though, just for the listeners, this is Carly, this is Claire, and we are in real human form today. Today.
Carly: Yes. Today. Um, Yeah, so that piece is really interesting to me to think about, like, The humans that are going to be needed on the ground to be doing these jobs.
Carly: And I was reading, I have a subscription to New York times. So I read the paper, I have a Sunday subscription. So I get like the big, big issue every Sunday. And I was reading an article about [00:10:00] AI in the health space and how every hospital of every major network is hiring an AI specialist to help, you know, pull all of this information and data and software together.
Carly: But who do you think is going to have to write these reports? And, you know, create the content that has to be fed into these machines. It's like, that's human beings that are going to have to do all this writing. So I actually think because of the amount of content that is going to be able to be consumed, the need for writers, not just for books, but also just really great writers is really going to be huge, huge value.
Claire: Which is such an optimistic, exciting thing to think about because I think everyone, it's so natural to go into a fear based thinking when something new is coming. So as soon as something, you know, we talk about this new internet, right? Web3, everyone, the blockchain, we're thinking, oh my gosh, it's so fearful.
Claire: It's whether it's ethical implications or it's going to take away jobs. It's really interesting. You're saying, you know, with. There's so much more content, we're going to require more [00:11:00] talent to actually go through and be packaging or, you know, creating the content. What are some of the biggest dangers then that you see in the publishing, like where do you think it's like the dangers, but also where do you think it's going to evolve to?
Carly: Yeah, I mean, for us, the big thing is copyright law and legislation. Like, as you know, like, we're just not even close to having copyright law catch up with where it needs to be. And so in book publishing, it's all about copyright law, right? The, the word publish means to make public, right? And that the idea is that, you know, what I sell in terms of book deals is licensing deals, right?
Carly: So it's like, it's all copyright law. And we're just not there in terms of the legislation and the guardrails in order to protect Authors from any eventuality. So what I think about is a couple things as a literary agent who is protecting authors and future authors, I think about number one, what are we licensing to this publisher to this multi million dollar, if not billion dollar, you know, business and in this industry, what are they going to do with your content?
Carly: And we want to have [00:12:00] guardrails when we're licensing content to large media companies about what can you do with this. And so that is something I'm always thinking about. Are you using this to build language learning models? Are you selling this to Google to build their next, you know, AI platform? Those are the things that I worry about, the eventualities of what's happening with this content and not having parameters in place and legislation to lean on copyright protections to get into these author contracts.
Carly: I worry about that.
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Claire: It's interesting preparing for this episode. I was like, you know what? I'm gonna have some fun and see what Carly thinks. So I, I took, so Claude is a long form AI you can put it in a book and you can get a summarize. So I used a whole bunch of different Gemini, Claude Chat, TBT, and a couple other platforms.
Claire: What I did was I took essentially three books that I liked. I took a, you know, Atomic Habits, James Clear. I took Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert. And I took, I forget the third one. It was an ADHD. I think I actually have it. Oh yeah. It's the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adult ADHD. So funny, I actually had it right here, but I was like, okay, let's see if I can, it's kind of like making the perfect boyfriend.
Claire: You're like, if I could combine all of my exes or whatever, like all these people and put into [00:14:00] one to be perfect. And then I thought, you know, I wonder if I can do this. With a book, let's take James Clear, Atomic Habits, Elizabeth Gilbert's A Big Magic, and then approach Mary Salanto, the author of this book, from her approach and rewrite a blog post or something, just an article, something that's specifically on a topic to help with productivity with the lens of Having the persona and the gentleness of Elizabeth Gilbert, but the atomic habit thinking and productivity hacks with the lens of an ADHD er.
Claire: It was really good. what are your thoughts on that? Because as we're moving, what starts to happen when, how, when you start to take, you know, if I can do that, And obviously I didn't publish it, didn't go anywhere. I was curious for this episode, I was playing around.
Claire: I thought, okay, let's see what this looks like. Are you [00:15:00] worried about this happening where, Oh, and throw in a fourth lens. I want the story to be storytelling to be told in Pixar style. And then it did that. Whereas there's so many layers of prompting, we call it. Descriptions that can you, we're going to get so good at this.
Claire: How are we going to be able to tell it is truly the author's writing?
Carly: Yeah, yeah. Well, that is where the legislation, the copyright law is going, right? Because they're going to say, are you allowed to copyright it because you're the one that made those prompts and nobody else could have chosen those seven prompts and you're copywriting the way that you prompted it to get the outcome that you wanted?
Carly: Like, that's kind of where the thinking is right now. Again, we're still far away from being there, but the idea is going to be, how could you say that it's yours? And how are we going to adapt for this future of deciding like who owns what? And at what point does it become yours [00:16:00] in the tinkering?
Claire: I agree. And that's the thing. That's where it, I mean, I don't think we're going to solve it in this episode, but it is something that when you're working with clients and when you're talking to other people in the industry, what are the precautions that you do suggest? What if, you know, if I got some ideas by typing into Gemini or chat GPT and it's shot out some ideas for my book, how do you suggest them to be using it as a co pilot or a second brain?
Claire: What are. Yeah. So at this
Carly: point, the way that publishing contracts work is that you have to sign within the larger contract. A warranties and indemnities clause that says you are the creator of that work. And so if you go back a question, and if we can't answer that you own that, then you actually can't sign that publishing contract.
Carly: So you'd be hamstringing yourself to be using any of those co pilots to create your work. Because in the eventuality that you get this book deal and somebody wants to buy your book, like how incredible is that? And then it turns out, Oh, I actually can't even sign this book deal because I can't prove that this is [00:17:00] mine.
Carly: So I actually, our agency and you know, my standpoint is do not be using any copilots to creatively create your work and your ideas because you can't prove. And you can't say that that is yours if you're using co pilot. So that's the position right now because, you know, if you want a book deal, you want somebody to pay you for your ideas.
Carly: You have to prove that those are yours.
Claire: Have we seen in the industry, have you actually seen that it's been flagged that someone has, you know, AI generated content that was pushed through? Again, it comes down to the honor system, but we recognize that it's the noise is getting so much. More than how do you regulate it even at this level,
Carly: it's hard because it's basically like like a self opt in, right?
Carly: You know, I'm trying to say, like, there's no larger body and in the trade publishing, right? That's doing scholarly vetting. Like, there would be for other, you know, You know such as like academic presses, right? Or something where it's like an academic paper you know, there are no fact checkers.
Carly: most big nonfiction authors [00:18:00] are actually hiring their own fact checkers. And that's why I think maybe like 10 years ago, it hasn't been as much lately. I haven't heard any big cases, at least, but there was some authors getting in trouble for plagiarizing themselves. Right. Cause it was like, oh, they write it here and then they put it here.
Carly: And I forget there was an author who got in trouble cause they were just kept plagiarizing themselves. And so there's, so that, like, we saw a lot of that in the past. The thing is, as I said, like, it's a self opted meaning you have to say that this is your work and we're all adults here and the repercussion is legal, legal repercussions, right?
Carly: Like you have to forfeit your advance and your book gets canceled. Do you know what I mean? So it's like, we have to be adults here.
Claire: And I agree. And I think that it comes down to the onus and eventually there will be certain, filters that will go through that will recognize it. What are some of the skills that you really encourage?
Claire: So it's interesting because what I like, and I love marketing. Marketing is so powerful. This is like such a big part of it. The storytelling is what gets you noticed. The distribution is essentially gets [00:19:00] you pushed through and, you know, have the opportunity. Let's say someone's listening and, you know, immediately they're thinking, okay, my dream is to create something, to write something, and they're listening to you and they're so inspired.
Claire: But then immediately, I don't want to paint all writers with a brush, but a lot of them is like, I don't want social media. I don't want to have this huge channel. I want to write a story. I'm, you know, they are of a temperament. That's not looking to be on this. So there's that almost that juxtaposition of like, okay, you have to have this big distribution channel.
Claire: But you just want to write and tell stories and great stories to inspire people. So what do you tell them?
Carly: Yeah. I mean, that's the biggest question of my career, honestly, right? Like because a lot of authors do have this idea of like how they imagine their career to go. And it's very much that like storied author and they're like brown leather chair, reading their books, drinking their like scotch, you know, like that it honestly not everybody has that vision, but like that dream [00:20:00] of.
Carly: I think a lot of people have the dream of being a financially independent creative really like across the board, right? And with writers, it's like this idea that they can be financially free just by writing books, right? That's the dream. They just want to be a career writer. But in today's day and age, we know that in order to be a career author, you have to be financially independent.
Carly: Teaching or creating content or also being an influencer or having a paid sub stack, right? Like that's how you build a career. And this is why authors have to become more entrepreneurial than ever, right? Like there's the term you can add printer to anything, right? But like author printer, right? Where it's like, you have to be thinking about how are you going to kind of monetize these other buckets or get another job, right?
Carly: With any creative, there's always that ebb and flow and release cyclical nature of like, Cash flow and income and with books, you know, it's like, you're only as good as your last book in terms of like the pay that you're getting in terms of the royalty statements and things like that. So yeah, I mean, I, I've always been very pro get out there, promote your work.
Carly: You know, this book has your name on it. You're the one that, you know, has the most to gain and the most to lose by its [00:21:00] success. And so I'm very pro get out there and talk about your work.
Claire: Yeah. you have to know, is this a lifestyle thing? You just want to say that you wrote a book or do you want this to be a career?
Claire: How often do you see in the industry now that someone writes a book that, you know, the JK Rowling story, how many at JK Rowling being the author of one of my favorite books, Harry Potter. If you haven't heard of it, I'm going to try not to get into too much Quidditch matching here. How many stories of that, you know, overnight, well, That's, that's a huge lie.
Claire: The 10 the 10 year overnight success, but of the distribution and, you know, all the attention coming after the creation of the book, or do you see that anymore? Yeah,
Carly: I mean, it's really, it's always kind of on slightly different scales, but the book talk kind of how I was talking about and and the kind of.
Carly: 20 I think it was about 20 2021 and a second year of the pandemic when booktalk really [00:22:00] blew up and they were totally taking books that were what we call backlist meaning frontlist meaning the books that came out this year backlist meaning books from previous years to taking like really celebrating these backlist title so books that aren't fresh.
Carly: And celebrating that and putting them back on the New York Times bestseller list, meaning they're selling tens of thousands of copies. Right. And so there, there totally are like Colleen Hoover was an example where, you know, she self published at first and, you know, obviously had a moderate amount of success.
Carly: Yeah. And then she got picked up by a big five, what we call the big five publishers. One of the largest ones, Simon Schuster. started publishing her and then she blew up on booktalk which is again the the book world of tiktok. A book that i sold actually blew up on tiktok in 2021 which is the seven husbands of evelyn hugo which is now sold like over five and a half million copies and been translated into 40 languages.
Carly: So, you know,
Carly: the idea of the overnight success, right. It's like these people write books for years and years and years. Right. And it's like, we never know in the book business, what is going [00:23:00] to be the book that's going to connect with people or, you know, totally send somebody to the stratosphere. Like we just don't know.
Carly: And that's kind of the fun and the alchemy of the business.
Claire: And, and you know, it's interesting when you're saying that immediately, of course, my ADHD brain jumps to, I remember the remember when, and it's still going on, but you could sign up to move to Mars, leave. Well, the Mars bars, chocolate bar skyrocketed and I find those things really cool and it's kind of that, you know, that bringing back.
Claire: You know, the backlist is this idea is that this is actually really cool because we now have a platform that kind of brings back. Old music, old books, things that are great that are bringing. So that's a really, really cool thing that I love the optimism that you approach with this, because, you know, I come in thinking, Oh my gosh, Carly, aren't you freaking out with what's happening in this world as we, but when you look closer [00:24:00] and someone on the outside, I'm super naive and you just kind of see the, the high level and the talk and the fear based thinking.
Claire: Sometimes we don't know what is really happening in the publishing world, and you hear that we're going to switch lenses a bit because like you said, you know, before we end the episode, I want to talk a little bit about your podcast. You are the host of a podcast that has now really taken off.
Claire: Can you tell us a little bit about the listeners so they can follow and learn from you as you're growing? Well, it's growing. But I want to hear more about it.
Carly: Absolutely. Yeah. So our podcast is called the shit. No one tells you about writing the author. Bianca Murray started it in 2020. And then later on in 2020, she was like, I think I need some co hosts, you know, some more industry perspective because she was hosting a lot of author interviews.
Carly: And then she had me on the show as a guest to talk about the publishing industry. And then from there. I joined as a co host and there's another literary agent who is our co host as well. So there's [00:25:00] the three of us. So it's Cece, Lyra, Bianca Murray, and myself, Carly Waters. And basically what we do in the front half of the episode is people voluntarily send in their query letters, which is essentially their cover letter trying to get their book published.
Carly: So we critique their query letters and their first five pages. And so we have done this every week for three years. There's lots, hundreds of hours of back content. But basically giving real advice on like how best to pitch their book and really how to make sure their first five pages are as strong as possible.
Carly: Yeah. And so our podcast we hit 3 million downloads this month. Actually, we just recorded our celebratory episode and we have a sub stack where we share extra advice from authors and we also do bonus Q and a's and, you know, some bonus video for all of our subscribers. So you can find us over on sub stack as well.
Carly: So, yeah, it's just really fun. You know, I felt like. I've always, as a literary agent, you know, one of my job in the business is one of privilege and power, right? Because I get to kind of select who I work with and help them [00:26:00] get book deals. And so I've always really just wanted to give back and really just help empower authors through information and education to make sure that they can make the best decisions for them as business people and just make sure that they're setting themselves up for success.
Carly: So. I'm also, we also teach a course once a year called like our Deep Dive Workshop, and it's a 10 week course. So we're actually just finishing up this year's course. So yeah, we, we have a really awesome community and everybody lets us know like when they get an agent or they get a book deal. And it's just a really fun, vibrant community.
Carly: So you can follow us on Instagram as well. Yeah, so that's our, that's our show.
Claire: Carly, it's awesome that you, the platform and the style. So anyone that's hoping, and this is a conversation I have a lot with people, how do you start a podcast? The most powerful style, and I absolutely love this, is showing credibility.
Claire: You know, you live and breathe it quietly, you know, sitting, going through manuscripts and manuscripts and, and no one knows the genius and the work and all the things that are [00:27:00] coming behind. I think it's so powerful that in real time, people are getting to see that. And that is such a powerful and inspiring way to build an audience.
Claire: So that's awesome. Cause that is probably one of the hardest things because you can't just like make it up as you go. You're really doing the work and, and you're changing people's lives. So that's awesome. I love it. Thank
Carly: you. We love it too.
Claire: Thanks, Carly, so much for coming. Join us. I know you're super busy just to end the episode.
Claire: Is there one piece of advice for anyone that's aspiring to be in the storytelling space? You know, one day it might be publishing a book, but you know, what are some of the things that they can do today to start building, you know, their muscles of, You know, creativity, storytelling. So that eventually if it's a book, it is, if it's a, a podcast series, whatever it is, you said more than ever, we're going to need great storytellers.
Claire: So could this individual start [00:28:00] doing today?
Carly: Yeah. I mean, the most classic example that we always tell writers is just get your butt in your chair, right? It's like, Nobody has more to gain from this than you. And if you want it bad enough, it's like, you just got to put in the work, you know?
Carly: But other than that, other than just obviously making time and carving out time and making sure you actually do it is really, you know, I think the advice that I always come back to, which there's a film director, Ava DuVernay and her, this quote that she has is always, when you're in your lane, there's no traffic, and I always come back to this quote because I think it's.
Carly: Can be used in so many contexts, but I always think with creatives because we're always like we're in our little car and we're just like driving along. We're like looking over in that lane, looking over in that line. Do we need to change lanes? You know what I mean? And it's like, when you just think like when I, when you're in your lane, there's no traffic, this idea that it doesn't matter what other people are doing.
Carly: It doesn't matter whether deals people are getting or success they're having, like you choose the pace of your lane. And you just have to look forward and keep chugging along in your lane because when you're in your lane, there's no traffic.
Claire: love that. I'm going to throw that up on my [00:29:00] board today because that's my go to.
Claire: It's true. we can't help, but always looking around what's going on and are we staying up with competitors and whatnot? That's awesome. Stay in your lane. There's no traffic. I love it. Carly, it's been such a pleasure. You are such an inspiration and such a piece of optimism for the world of publishing and writing and creativity.
Claire: Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Claire.
