Publishing Is Changing Fast! Literary Agent Vicki Weber on What's Working Now

Beth McMullen: Hi friends. I'm Beth McMullen.

Lisa Schmid: I'm Lisa Schmid.

Beth McMullen: We're the co-hosts of Writers with Wrinkles.

This is season five, episode 10, and today we're excited to welcome Vicki Weber to the show. is a literary agent, bestselling children's book, author and founder of at-Home, author With years of experience in both traditional and self-publishing, she helps writers craft publish and market successful books turning creative dreams into reality. So welcome Vicki. We are very excited to get you on the show. We've been trying for a while and now we've succeeded. So we're all like, you know, this is a big moment for

Vicky Weber: Well, thank you for having me. I know I'm hard to pin down sometimes my calendar's nuts.

Beth McMullen: That is okay. We enjoy the chase and now we've got you We have been kind of obsessing over your substack over the last however long. For anybody who's listening who is not subscribed, please go and do that right away. I will put the link in the podcast notes so you can easily do it, Lisa and I literally got on the phone the other day to talk about your.

There was a post about middle grade, had some, you know, references to lengths of books and how Harry Potter went from being first book, 75,000 words, last book, 250,000 words or something. And the idea of authors being uneditable at a certain fame level, so tell us how this post came to be.

But tell us a little bit about how. How you even came to write that.

Vicky Weber: I wrote a post that was about like the state of publishing because we had just gotten the news that Roaring Brook had shut down, and several weeks ago we learned that dial books for young readers. Was closed and a few weeks before that, Simon and Schuster had let a bunch of editors go, at least one on every single imprint team, if not more.

And so I was kind of in this moment where the conversations I was having with like my colleagues and like with other authors, I was just like, I mean a little bit defeated, but when. When life hands me lemons, I'm like, watch me. I will make this lemonade. And I am just, I've always been a firm believer in, there's a simple way to explain something and knowledge is power and you can do such great things if you just know and understand what's going on.

And so I wrote this post saying. What's happening in the industry and what I think this means. And it opened up so many great conversations that I wanted to dig deeper because people were asking me questions about, well, how did the kid lit market even get to this place in the first place? How did we get to this point where there's so much reorganization and places are closing?

And so everything I shared in that middle grade post is all stuff I had been sharing. In person. 'Cause I do a lot of conferences. I've been talking about it for at least a year. But I didn't wanna put it online because I was trying to figure out a way to not panic everybody. And one of the things I said at the start of the post was, everybody's already panicked, so here we go.

But I, I really think that that's what it boils down to is, is I feel like if you can understand what's happening, you can start to identify like, what's working in my manuscript, or what opportunities can I take advantage of? Or how can I pivot? How can I learn? What can I do differently? So I just really wanted to contribute to some of those conversations.

Because what I didn't wanna see out of all of this news is writers just stop writing because they decide, decided this isn't gonna work, this isn't gonna sell.

Lisa Schmid: Can you. In a nutshell, give us the Harry Potter theory as to why we got to this point, because that's something I found really interesting and I felt like it nailed, I it nailed it.

Vicky Weber: Well, so I will say that it wasn't, it wasn't my theory. I, I mean I did explain it online, but gotta give credit where credit is due. It was, an editor at a Big five imprint. And it was on a meeting where we were asking questions about middle grade and the state of middle grade and what are you acquiring?

And she said that Harry Potter was a big contributor to the downfall of middle grade. And she explained, pretty much what I did in the article. It's just that Harry Potter came out. And it was a little on the long side for middle grade at the time. But it was a fantasy, you know, and it was so successful that other publishers tried replicating that success.

The problem is that each book got longer and longer and longer, and the characters got older. So what started as middle grade ended up at ya and yeah, it was over 250 words or 250,000 words long by that last book. And that's an actual term in the industry.

When an, when an author becomes uneditable, it just means that they start ignoring. They're editors, because they can afford to, they're bringing in the big books and can kind of do what they want. And so that's one big reason why when an author tries to comp a big name book or a big name author or something like that, immediately an agent's like, okay.

They can do whatever they want, but they can make up the rules. I can't replicate that. Or if it's a one hit wonder book, well no one knows why that book popped off, so how am I going to get this one to pop off? So there's lots of, of that that goes into play, but it really just comes down to time passing and publishers trying to replicate that success.

Middle grade kept progressively getting longer and longer and more mature. And eventually we hit a point where kids couldn't read them because paired with declining, literacy scores and, reading ability, we just had a bunch of books that kids could not read. 

So I'm only speaking to the publishing side of the issue. There's so many other factors at play, but it's just something that's been compounding for years and years and years, and so we're starting to now see the effect of that and the impact of all of it.

Beth McMullen: We had a guest on a couple weeks ago, Amy Troop Blood, who works in a children's library in a school and. She was echoing what you were saying about the books that the kids can't read and they open it up and they look at page one and there's words there, they don't understand and they quietly close the cover and put it back on the shelf. But she was also pairing that with the explosion of graphic novels, which you also ference in your article and how that is really kind of meeting these kids where they are. If you look at the declining literacy, the books that are just too big and complicated and above their reading level. It's, yeah, it's fa you, you wish that the, the publishers would go and hang out in the children's section of the library once in a while.

Vicky Weber: I think the hard thing too is a lot of the people calling the shots at a publishing house are not always people with experience on the publishing side. You know, like the CEOs and things like that, that are carving out budgets and things like that, are not always. You know, the, the people who have been there in the trenches.

So, you know, editors really try their best to push books through and do everything that they can, but even they have limitations on what they can acquire, how they can acquire it. I just had an editor the other day say that she loves and wants more, like picture book, eco fiction, like picture book.

Picture books about sustainability and stuff like that. But she said, I'll tell you right now, they're so hard to get past acquisitions and here's why. And we dug into all of that. So just because an editor wants something doesn't always mean that it makes it to that next step. I think that's probably the worst part about us gatekeepers.

Because as an agent, I can only provide the opportunity. I can't make a publisher buy, I can't make an editor. Want something. My goal is to try. I'm, I'm gonna try real hard. But if I could just may wave the magic wand and make it happen, my life would be a lot easier.

Beth McMullen: I feel

Vicky Weber: Mm-hmm.

Beth McMullen: a frequent misconception among brand new authors too. They think that if. The editor loves the book. It's a done deal. They don't realize all of the acquisition steps that are happening in the background. It's usually a big shock to find out that your editor, your potential editor, loving this book is just the beginning of the process.

Vicky Weber: Yeah.

A lot of authors don't realize how. When you're on submission, it's pretty similar to querying too, like the responses that you're getting and the, oh, it's not for us, or, I love this, but it's a pass. And it's like, but why? You know, it's, it's just in the pressure cooker.

Lisa Schmid: That's the perfect, perfect description of acquisitions, and then everybody who goes to acquisitions feels like they're in a pressure cooker. just intense like feeling. You wake up every morning just wondering, you know, what's gonna happen. But this is a good segue into, why you are in the hot seat today at writers with wrinkles, dah, dah, dah. What is happening in publishing right now?

Vicky Weber: What isn't happening in publishing?

Lisa Schmid: too much, Vicki. It's too much.

Vicky Weber: I guess, yeah. What isn't happening? I, I, well, okay, so if I were to sum it up, I would say that what's happening in publishing is everybody's making educated guesses, like everybody's throwing spaghetti at the wall. That's pretty much it in a nutshell. We have all of the, like big business owners, like the, the people that are the top of the top of the top who are only looking at things on paper.

And so they're making decisions that will improve, like the financial viability of the publishing house. And it doesn't maybe matter to them as much or, or it does, but not enough. What that means for like, the workload for an editor, an acquiring editor, or things of that nature. The domino effect is very rarely a factor for, for some of the things at the top.

All of the acquiring editors and their teams are trying to figure out, okay, well how do we find the stuff that's the least risky so that our jobs are secure and how do we, you know, there are just so many angles to consider with a book, and I think that that's why right now, um. We're seeing a big push for commercial fiction.

So literary fiction is the stuff that has a lot more, artistry to, it tends to be more character driven. More quiet tends to be award winners. Commercial fiction is for mass appeal and it's for the joy of reading and the fun of reading. And so commercial fiction tends to sell at a much, much higher.

Rate on the reader side, on the consumer side compared to literary fiction. So that's why we're seeing such a huge push for commercial fiction across genres is because they want the sales that come with it. And so they're trying to figure out, okay, well what hasn't been done before? Or what can we, you know, how, how do we figure out what blend will work, what people want, but then also how do we get it past, all of the red tape.

Beth McMullen: It feels like shifting sand,

Vicky Weber: Mm-hmm.

Beth McMullen: and I think for the new authors who are just starting to query and go on submission, what does all of this mean to them?

Vicky Weber: I actually just before we jumped on here, um, published another Substack article. Um, and I highly recommend that you dive into that because my number one tip for authors who are querying agents, is to write another book. Write another book because too often I see authors assume that the process is write a book, query agents, get an agent, go on submission, sell the book, write another book.

The process is much more of a squiggle. But every manuscript that you write, you'll not only get better, you'll learn more about, you know, what type of author career you wanna have. Your craft will be better, you'll get faster, you'll get better at, taking and leaving feedback, and giving feedback.

Uh, but you'll also open a door with more agents. Um. A lot of authors think, well, if this isn't the book that gets me an agent, it's never gonna see the light of day. Well, that's not true. There's lots of ways that books sell to publishers that are not just that nice, neat, straight line I mentioned. And so it's not a bad thing to have multiple books in your portfolio.

In fact, when I, so I've been in the query trenches twice as a writer. I parted ways with my first agent, not this past March, but the one before. So just over a year ago. And when I did, I pulled out my whole portfolio, everything that I write. And the first thing I did is I panicked because I was like, I'm trash.

Why did she rep me? This all is terrible. What am I doing? So fun facts. It is not just you. We all do it to ourselves. The next thing I did after the panicking and the rewriting was done, was I prepped query packages for every single manuscript that I had that I felt was submission ready. There were some things that I'm like, I see the potential here, but you, sir, are under baked.

so anything that I felt was, this is my best, this is, this is, you know, an agent will hopefully like this. That's what I pulled out and that's what I prepped a query package for. And then I built my list of agents that I wanted to submit to, and I tried to read between the lines so I wasn't just like, oh.

They accept picture books. Here is a picture book. Oh, they accept horror. Here is a, you know, I tried to look at, okay, well, but, but what type, what stands out to them beyond the genre? What are they drawn to? And sometimes how I figured that out was, what did they say they want the next of? If they say, I want the next eyes that kiss in the corners.

Well, eyes that kiss in the corners is a very literary, picture book. Character driven. There's little plot, but it has an emotional story arc. It's rooted in culture and self-esteem. And you can see the emotional transformation of that main character. It uses, lyricism, metaphor alliteration.

So what do I have that's as close to that as possible without, obviously. No copying, don't copy people. What do I have that's like the most close to that in essence, or would give that same feeling? That's what I sent that agent. 

I was really looking at. How do I pique their interest? How do I get them to sit up straighter in their chair? How do I stand out from the thousands of other submissions? And I really think most authors can do that by a, having really good quality, but b, reading between the lines. So that's what I did.

I had my first offer of representation within 24 hours of querying the second time around, which was the complete opposite of querying the first time around. It took like years the first time around. And by the end of that week I had three offers of representation and all three offers were on different manuscripts.

Beth McMullen: That's like a home run.

Vicky Weber: And so I was, you know, very much in a fortunate position. You know, I was able to have those conversations and pick who was best for me. But I really think that some of that comes down to. I see a lot of query letters and so I'm like, how do I make mine feel like me? How do I make mine not get lost in the shuffle?

How do I pick a manuscript that this agent will be excited about? And so it's not always about quantity. Really it's about quality. 'cause there's, the volume is insane on the agent side right now. I would not say that. For the most part, the quality has gone up. Just the volume.

Beth McMullen: I like that idea of paying attention to what is not obviously stated, where you're looking for that little kernel that's gonna somehow give you, a justification for querying that particular agent, that intangible almost, that does require more legwork on the, the part of the querying author. But wow, what a bonus. If you can make that connection, because like you said, the volume's insane, so you're, you've gotta find a way to kind of elevate yourself.

Vicky Weber: And even if. Like, okay, so I'm gonna use a bad example, but like one thing people know about me is that I have a, a degree in music education, big music person, so I do get a lot of music based manuscripts for that exact reason, and so I can't take them all on, unfortunately. However, if it connected with me really, really well, 

If I liked that writer, I wanna see more of your work. I wanna see what else you can do. And so you can't self reject, you can't be like, oh, well they just sold something like this, so maybe they wouldn't be interested in mine. You gotta go with your gut and you have to put yourself out there.

And if it's a no from that agent, think of it as a, not now. Not now or, or a, not me. And neither of those is a never or you know, a no for everybody.

Lisa Schmid: You know, one of the things, and I've mentioned this before, is I see people and I, I, I wanna see your take on this and some good advice authors. The. Are out there queering I see writers so often say, my dream agent passed on me, my dream agent. And it's just, I just wanna say, stop saying your dream agent.

Your dream agent is the, is the agent who signs you. And I feel like it narrows people's vision of what. They're looking for from an agent or what their expectations are, or whatever the case may be. It always, it troubles me when people say, my dream agent, because then they get so knocked down they just lose focus.

Or they're too, they've got the blinders on.

Vicky Weber: I think it's a little bit like having a crush.

Lisa Schmid: Yeah.

Vicky Weber: Okay. Truthfully, maybe this is another post in the making or something, but like querying and going on submission is way too much like dating. Like it is way too much like dating. Right down to the rejection. It's not me. It's you. It's not you. It's me. My gosh.

I'm saying it the wrong way around. I'm gonna gonna crush some dreams over here. Um. But I think that that's what it comes down to is like, just because you know, you like the idea of somebody, you know you've got your little professional crush on them, does that necessarily mean that they will be the best.

Agent for you, or the best fit for your project, maybe, but also maybe not. And so you really wanna focus on who's the best fit for my goals? Who do I feel like will have my back and, and advocate for me? And, you know, an agent is a fiduciary, like who? Are you going to trust with your intellectual property because that's what you're doing?

So yeah, at, at the beginning it, it can be easy to be like sending to everybody and everybody and anybody, you wanna give that opportunity because you might not know some of these agents very well until you get the opportunity to talk to them. You might be pleasantly surprised or. You might learn, oh, this person I thought was a dream agent actually isn't,

oh, actually just yesterday somebody said, I would love to query you, but you know, I wish you repped thrillers. I re thrillers. It says it all over the internet, who is saying, I don't rep thrillers and I need to have a conversation with them. So sometimes what you see online or what you see in passing, like things change, things shift, and so.

Don't put all your eggs in one basket and don't self reject. You know, keep an open mind, and just keep doing, keep doing the best you can with the cards you're dealt.

Lisa Schmid: so moving on, speaking. Of shifting. Shifting, what do you think self-publishing is doing in the current state of traditional publishing? Because is all changing and it is changing fast, just, I can, you may, I wish, could see your face right now.

Vicky Weber: I don't.

Lisa Schmid: is the benefit for, for our listeners, she just made a grumpy face.

Vicky Weber: okay, well first of all, I will say that I have a lot of hybrid authors. And I have some self-published authors who've done very well in the traditional side. I have some authors that write in multiple genres. I've some that write in one genre, like I've got a pretty healthy mix across the board and I've been self-published myself.

And I've had self-published titles picked up on, trad. The issue is that by the time readers see trends of any kind, we are two to three years past that on the agent side. So all the time I'll have people say, oh, the only thing selling right now is romantic. Well, maybe on the reader's side, but those books were bought like two years ago, if not longer.

Right. So it's the same thing with self-publishing. it had a really, really big boom where traditional publishers were picking things up left and right, and they are still like that. We're not done with that. But it's getting tougher and tougher. Like the sales figures need to be much higher than they were even 

a year ago. I don't think anybody should go into self-publishing with the assumption or hope that they will get picked up by a traditional publisher.

It's a lot of work and both routes have pros and cons. And we don't know how the industry is going to transform over the years. So if you're going to choose to self-publish, do it because you wanna do it. You know, do it because it feels right and because it's a fit for, for that book or for your career long term.

Don't do it because you think you should. Don't do it because somebody else said that you should. Or because you think. It'll be the ultimate end goal to trad, because what if it's not, are you gonna be happy with it if it's not? Books are kind of like babies.

You can't put 'em back. Once they're out there, you've birthed them into the world and here they are, they don't go back.

Beth McMullen: That is actually a really good way of thinking about it. There are a lot of similarities between books and

Vicky Weber: Dating and childbirth and.

Beth McMullen: like we're just co covering all the life steps here. In the lifecycle of the book, we, we hear a lot on this show about, well, we have a lot of authors who have some experience in traditional publishing.

So say they've published one or two books. Some of them, of course become massive bestsellers and they're off to, you know, happy land. Most people end up with some sort of, of sales track albatross hanging around their neck. And we've heard people who live in a fantasy world of saying, no, no, sales don't matter.

It doesn't matter if my book failed, I'm fine. And then we have people who are like, I'm never publishing again because I had a bad sales track. I mean, is there anything realistically that an author can do about bad track?

Vicky Weber: Um, yes and no. I, I think, well, first of all, I think it depends on how bad. You know, because there's always factors outside of our control. Some authors who don't have success in one area will just switch to a pen name. And they'll try out a different genre or a different spin. And that doesn't always have to be because of a bad sales.

Record. Like I have one author, Victoria Hawthorne, who mostly wrote historical suspense and before horror was trending the way it is now, that's where she wanted to pivot, was into psychological horror. And so, that ended up being a pen name situation. So you can pivot in that way. You can also look at, okay, well how can I improve the sales that I have?

but it takes a lot of consistency to, to get those book sales. It kind of building a little community. And there's lots of things that you can do with that. One of my favorite ways, and anybody can do this. Is write a short story or a novella, something short, and give it away for free to build your email list.

You get this free story, for joining my email list. You can use something like story origin or book funnel or other platforms like that, to then do newsletter swaps. You can run very, very cheap Facebook ads to a free book. I did that for 30 days, a dollar a day, so I spent $30 and I think I got like 500 email subscribers out of that.

That gave me a base to then do newsletter swaps with other authors who work in my genre. I can grow them and they can grow me, and if you do that consistently over time, things will grow. So I think it just comes down to. What are your goals? Do you wanna stay in this writing space? Maybe yes, maybe no.

And how much work are you willing to put in? Because if you're not willing to put in the work, do you have the budget to have somebody else come in and help you? And not everybody is cut out to be like dancing on TikTok, and that is akay. So you're much better off finding marketing strategies that you enjoy.

Maybe writing a substack or doing a podcast or something. Then trying to force a puzzle piece to fit that just won't fit. You're just gonna exhaust yourself and it's not going, it's not gonna go anywhere, and you're not gonna enjoy doing it. So find what you like and, you know, be really intentional with showing up in whatever that space is.

Lisa Schmid: Have you had any of your authors ever get, a pass because of their sales track or, picked up? 

Vicky Weber: I don't think I've had anybody passed over because of their sales track. At least not. Not where the editor said that to me, unless it was sub rights. So something like, you know, an audio book. If I was pitching audio rights, they might say, oh, the print sales aren't high enough for us to make an offer on audio.

That I have happened all the time, but I don't think I've had anybody not, explicitly at least offer on a book because of a poor. Sales track record. I also think that the right agent and the right author, when you're pitching yourself, always find a way to spin things to the positive, right? Because if you come in and say, well, I only have 5,000 sales.

Well, no, you have 5,000 sales. Like say, you know, I got 5,000 sales in this amount of time, or, i've got 5,000 sales and this is just the beginning, you know? If the number is smaller, either leave it out or pivot to something else that's exciting about what you've done or what you hope to do. Half the time I sit down with a writer and I ask, what cool things have you done?

And they can't tell me. Then I ask a bunch of questions and they're like, oh yeah, I have done this, like, insanely impressive thing. Oh, I do have a degree in. Something, or I've done presentations or I know this random famous person, or it's always the most random stuff. But nobody knows that unless you talk about it.

So find a way to, to be positive. Don't self reject. I'm gonna say that like a hundred times on this.

Beth McMullen: I like the idea that you can, some of it's within your control. Because I think you feel, if you have gone through this and the sales have not reached expectations, and suddenly you're like, but I didn't, it wasn't my fault. It was like some extenuating circumstance or marketing budget or whatever. It, it does feel empowering to, to take back some of responsibility for those things.

Like there are things that you can do yourself as the individual author to impact. not this book but your future, which I think is actually a really good way of, of kind of pivoting your point of view on it so that it feels more like something you can influence.

Vicky Weber: Yeah, and just because you don't have something now doesn't mean you won't. So with my agent, she reps me for, picture books and adult fiction. And the adult fiction I write is, you know, horror and psychological thriller and stuff. So those audiences do not align in any way, shape or form.

So I have to write my adult fiction under a pen name, which means I'm building that audience from scratch. I can't tap into. My existing audience at all, without making people mad or very concerned,

Lisa Schmid: Traumatized.

Vicky Weber: So I need to be looking at, okay, well what did I do to build my past audience and now how do I tweak it to speak to this different group of people that want X, Y, Z?

How do I find the right people? Because if you. Feel like a used car salesman. You're not marketing right? It's icky. It doesn't feel good and it doesn't work. If instead you think about who is the person that will love this so much that it won't just be that one touch point, like they will buy it as a gift for their friends or they will leave a review or they will talk about it online.

Or you know, they'll submit it for opportunities or they'll email me back saying what a difference it made, or whatever it is, right? You wanna get in front of the people that create a domino effect, and the only way you're gonna do that is if it's the right person, not just anyone. If I hand one of my books to the first person that walks by my house, they're, most of them would be like, this is cool.

Thanks. That's where the conversation ends, and that doesn't get you any momentum. So it's qua, it's quality over quantity. Don't throw money at the problem. Really focus on who are my people? Where do they spend time? How do I find them? And then what marketing strategies, you know, feel right to me to reach them consistently.

What am I comfortable sharing? What am I comfortable talking about? And just really build that up, which takes time.

Lisa Schmid: This has shifted from a, what is happening in the publishing world to a full on masterclass in marketing,

Vicky Weber: You know what though, like marketing is becoming more important than ever before in getting, a publication deal. And so, with my adult fiction, that'll be going on submission with my agent soon. One of the things we talked about. I don't have anything published under that pen name yet, so I'm building my email list.

And so one of the things in my query letter is my email subscribers are at X amount and growing. , And here are some of the things I'm doing to grow it. You do not have to have a published book to grow an audience. You don't. You just need people to talk to.

Lisa Schmid: No, amazing

Vicky Weber: authority on talking too much.

Lisa Schmid: I'm so glad we chased you down because this is some of the best information that we're hearing today and I'm, you know, I hope everyone's listening now. I can't, I think when I saw your website, you do marketing, right? Like this is part of the services you offer. Is that correct or am I

Vicky Weber: I at home Author is a coaching and consulting company, so I teach people you can take the teacher out of the classroom, but you can't take the teacher outta me.

Lisa Schmid: You're a good teacher. Like both Beth and I were like leaning forward and we were silently communicating to each other. It was like I could already hear like the questions we were gonna be asking each other as soon as we got off air.

Vicky Weber: See, that's always my hope though, is like, you know, my hope is that when you're engaging with, you know, my articles or the threads or whatever with me online, I want people to feel inspired and encouraged. I want. To get the creative gears turning because there is more than one path to success, and anything worth doing is worth doing well.

But, you know, there's so many right answers out there, and so you do have to be true to who you are and, and what's, what's exciting to you. And a lot of that comes down to like, well. What do you know? What conversations are you having? What new thing can you learn today? I'm constantly learning. I'm constantly trying new things.

I literally just messaged an agent the other day and said, okay, I'm about to do something crazy. And she's like, when are you not doing something crazy? And I'm like, fair. But I think it's a good idea because X, Y, Z, go with your gut. You never know until you try as long as you are. You know, professional, kind yourself.

And as self-aware, as humanly possible, you just gotta keep trying stuff, you know?

Lisa Schmid: I, I love the concept of kind of laying the groundwork before you're even published, before you even have. Have an agent is setting yourself up for success. You know, for me, setting myself up for success. All the years ago when I first started was having a website. I was like, okay. And just for the record, it was a really bad website.

We don't wanna go there. 'cause it was very, I just

Vicky Weber: Fix or it didn't happen.

Lisa Schmid: I thought, okay, I need a website. But now it's like there's so many other avenues that people can do. Just like listening to you. My head was like, exploding. I'm like, we could do this, we could do that.

There's a bunch of different ways you can set yourself up for success, not just in. The marketing aspect, but when you're going out and looking for your agent is digging deeper and, finding those people that are going to be your dream agent, ahead of time instead of just, throwing everything out to the wind, both in marketing and querying.

'cause that's, that was my strategy, so.

Vicky Weber: most people's strategy.

Lisa Schmid: that was me as I was listening to you, I was like, God, she's really got it going on.

Vicky Weber: Okay. But it was my strategy the first time around. I was just like sending out the stuff and that's why when I pulled it all out again, I was like, what did I do? I actually sent this to people. Like how did they not, I don't know. How do they not think? Lesser of me? They don't, of course, but you know, anxiety loves to, loves to be a bug in the ear.

Lisa Schmid: just for the record, I had a rejection in 10 minutes, 

Vicky Weber: I've done those two, although, usually it's for like one time I got a manuscript that was 3 million words long. That one was a pretty fast rejection.

Beth McMullen: How did, how does, how does that even, how does, I don't even know, 3 million words. How does that even happen?

Vicky Weber: And that was before AI too. So like I'm pretty certain that person just like used talk to text and just said a bunch of stuff or something,

Beth McMullen: that's

Vicky Weber: know.

Beth McMullen: bold to send that to somebody.

Vicky Weber: Yeah.

Beth McMullen: impressed. Not in a good way. That's terrifying.

Vicky Weber: Yeah. Or like if there's something like extremely creepy or or weird or insulting, like I've gotten query letters that are a single sentence long that say, just read the FBO manuscript. Not doing it. Nope, that's, that's an auto re auto reject. Or once I got a query, a hundred percent in French and I don't speak French.

I've never spoken French. The manuscript wasn't French, and so I passed. It was just like, I dunno what this says. I'm so sorry.

Beth McMullen: Oh boy, that's a little bit terrifying.

Vicky Weber: Mm-hmm. So I don't know. I like to share that just in the sense of you're probably not the worst query out there.

Beth McMullen: Yeah. Seriously. Words to live by. Like that's a really, that's a pretty high bar. Don't, don't meet that bar.

Vicky Weber: Yeah, don't send stuff in French when people don't speak French.

Beth McMullen: So the last thing we wanna ask you as the your agent hat is what's on the top of your manuscript wishlist? What are you looking for?

Vicky Weber: I am really dying to find, like some adult psychological horror or like something horror tinged that's commercial, like a, like a horror tinged suspense or a horror tinged thriller. Something like spooky, eerie, creepy, that has some social commentary,

Beth McMullen: Well,

Vicky Weber: on like.

Beth McMullen: given me the Bugeyes 'cause I literally. Wrote one of these that I'm actually revising. So if, if, again, if audience, you could see Lisa's face. She's like sending me, she's sending me lasers. 'cause I'm like, killing myself over this one. I've written a lot of books and I swear to God every single time you're like, my confidence is shot.

I don't know. I don't like this. Ah. Anyway, that's

Vicky Weber: just invite me back and then No, I'm kidding.

Beth McMullen: Seriously, I

Vicky Weber: I have run into the fortunate issue that I had a lot of it on my list, and then I sold it all. And so now all my contacts are like, what you got, Vicki? And my authors are like, I'm writing as fast as I can. So I'm really eager to find some more, like in that space, I, I wouldn't even say that it's contained to like, oh, it has to be a horror, it has to be a thriller.

Like it could be a horror romance or it could be, like a horror tinged, speculative fantasy or something. Just something in that like eerie, creepy, spooky place that's really psychological. And has something to say about, you know, feminism or feminine rage. You know, the patriarchy.

Beth McMullen: Seriously, now you're just describing this book. It's crazy.

Lisa Schmid: Do you wanna take a moment and pitch?

Beth McMullen: No, I

Lisa Schmid: No, I'm kidding.

Beth McMullen: It's not ready.

Lisa Schmid: Oh my God, it's so funny.

Beth McMullen: This is good 'cause as a reader, I love that stuff. Like, that's where my, I go to for reading. 'cause like at this point in our universe, I am seeking escapism.

Vicky Weber: Mm-hmm.

Beth McMullen: be out of reality because I don't like this timeline.

Vicky Weber: Mm-hmm.

Beth McMullen: So I'm like really the I, I love all these mashups because it just takes stuff in kind of a fresh direction, which for reading just makes me happy.

Vicky Weber: I love Darcy Coates. But one of my favorite writers for like, perspective shifts is Jenny Blackhurst. She does a lot of like, oh my goodness. I, I thought I knew what was happening.

So she does a really good job of like, you think you know what's happening, and then we perspective shift and we go, oh no, this is what's going on all along. And then she perspective switches back and you're like, everything I know is a lie. And then she keeps doing it to you like over and over and over again, and you don't really know what's.

What until the end. So she's one. I just really like, love for the, like mind bending this. I love how John Mars blends genres a lot. Yeah, like I think there's so, oh, RI Sagers another one that does a really good job of that. And Allison Saft, I think does some really beautiful like romantic fantasy with undertones.

Kate, Alice Marshall, does a lot in both ya and adult, that's really kind of in that space. And so I think there's a lot more unexplored areas in those spaces,

Beth McMullen: Yeah, it's fun. I'm, I'm like, it's what keeps me reading. Anyway, we could keep you here all day, honestly. We really could. But we, we, we do have to let you get back to your life and all your, your agenting and writing and the many things that you do. So thank you so much for giving us this hour.

This has been really, really fun. Such a good conversation. So thank you for joining us.

Vicky Weber: Thank you for having me.

Beth McMullen: And listeners remember, you can find out more about Vicki and that amazing substack that we keep referencing by visiting our podcast notes and the blog@writerswithwrinkles.net. And Lisa and I will be back next time with an Ask Beth and Lisa episode.

So if you have questions, thoughts, feelings, prayers, whatever, please send them our way and we will talk about them on the next show. And until then, happy reading, writing, and listening.