Table of Contents
👋 Intro
🎧 Interview
🎥 Video
📰 Biography
📜 Transcript
Introduction
How do you know if your query letter and first pages are ready to be sent out to agents?
If you’ve been in the query trenches and you just can’t seem to break out. You’re going to love this episode.
Paula is a senior agent and director of storytelling and content for Talcott notch, literary. She’s the USA today, bestselling author of the Mercy Carr series, her newest installation in this series, The Wedding Plot debuts in July of 2022.
Paula has also written three popular books on writing Plot. Perfect. The writer’s guide to beginnings and writing with quiet hands.
We talk about all these books AND MORE in this interview!
Paula is going to share what makes query letters and first pages ready to go resources on how to get you their information about careerauthors.com and what she’s looking for in the authors she represents.
So is your manuscript ready for an agent’s critical eye? Let’s see if Paula can help us go from querying to agented.
Interview
🎧Listen on Apple Podcast
🎧 Listen on Spotify
🎧 Other Listening Options
🎧 Or Listen Below!
Topics
- How Paula became a writer
- What she’s looking for as a literary agent
- How to pitch your book/story to agents
Video
Biography
PAULA MUNIER is Senior Agent and Director of Storytelling and Content for Talcott Notch Literary and the USA TODAY bestselling author of the Mercy Carr mysteries. A Borrowing of Bones, the first in the series, was nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award and named the Dogwise Book of the Year. Blind Search also won a Dogwise Award. The Hiding Place appeared on both Lesa Holstine and Dru Ann Love’s Best of 2021 Lists. THE WEDDING PLOT debuts in July 2022. Paula credits the hero dogs of Mission K9 Rescue, her own rescue dogs, and a deep love of New England as her series’ major influences. Paula has also written three popular books on writing: Plot Perfect, The Writer’s Guide to Beginnings, and Writing with Quiet Hands, as well as Happier Every Day and the memoir Fixing Freddie. She lives in New England with her family and Bear the Newfoundland-retriever rescue, Bliss the Great Pyrenees-Australian cattle dog rescue, pandemic puppy Blondie, a Malinois rescue (much like Elvis in her books), and Ursula The Cat, a rescue torbie tabby who does not think much of the dogs.
Transcript
[00:00:00]
Paula Munier: It’s like if you’re learning to drive and when you start out driving, you know, everything’s conscious, like you consciously have to look in the rear view mirror and then constantly have to look for the turn signals and nothing is automatic. You’re driving as a writer. You’re driving you pass your driver’s test . You wrote a novel, but that doesn’t mean you’re ready for the Indy 500
How do you know if your query letter and first pages are ready to be sent out to agents? Hey everyone. If you’ve been in the query trenches and you just can’t seem to break out. You’re going to love this episode.
I’m David , a writer with a messy first draft, wondering how to make it shine. So it’s ready for submission.
During season two of this podcast, I’m asking agents, editors and authors, how they suggest writers go from the end on a first draft to signing a publishing deal. In today’s episode, we hear from literary agent and author, Paula Munier.
Paula is a senior agent and director of storytelling and content for Talcott notch, literary. She’s the USA today, bestselling author of the Mercy Carr series, her newest [00:01:00] installation in this series, The Wedding Plot debuts in July of 2022.
Paula has also written three popular books on writing Plot. Perfect. The writer’s guide to beginnings and writing with quiet hands.
All of which we talk about in today’s episode. Paula is going to share what makes query letters and first pages ready to go resources on how to get you their information about career authors.com and what she’s looking for in the authors. She represents. So is your manuscript ready for an agent’s critical eye. Let’s see if Paula can help us go from querying to agented.
David Gwyn: Paula, welcome to the Writerly lifestyle podcast. I’m so happy to have you, you’re an author and agent a former acquisitions editor. I mean, is there anything in the publishing industry you can’t do?
Paula Munier: Well, I’ve never been a bookseller.
David Gwyn: Okay.
Paula Munier: I’ve sat at the table and enjoyed it. And I do want to say thank you so much for having me on. It’s always fun to talk about publishing.
David Gwyn: I’m excited to have you on, like I said, you know, you have so much [00:02:00] experience and, and you bring so much to the table from kind of like really every angle, which I think is so much fun to talk to somebody who’s got such a variety of backgrounds. So how did you get started in the publishing industry?
Paula Munier: Well, I started off as a reporter. And I did talk to an alternative weekly newspapers and magazines out in California when I was young and I really enjoyed it. And eventually I got. A job working for a magazine that also had a book division. And so I was the main editor on the production side. I also did writing of course, but I was a managing editor and I got into the production of books.
And from there, I was able to wrangle a job at a book publishing company. I remember my first meeting, it was prima publishing, which is now part of crown
David Gwyn: Okay.
Paula Munier: house. And. I sat there at that meeting. And I’d been to a million editorial meetings before, but this one was special because I realized that they were going to pay me to sit around and talk about books.
[00:03:00] And to me really meant books. I mean, I had great respect for reporters. I was a Watergate generation, you know, I. Woodward in Bernstein and all that. And I’d love being reported, but books were really the thing to me cause I was such a bookworm and always have been since I was a kid. So I was very excited get a job in publishing, which was with prima and prima did.
It was the first company to do strategy guides for video games.
David Gwyn: Oh,
Paula Munier: Yes. And we did computer books and we also did cookbooks and self-help and mind, body, spirit. We did all kinds of stuff. And so I really got, got a broad introduction to acquisitions there and I got to go into acquisitions. I was a managing editor.
I started off as managing editor, but by the time I left, I was doing production and acquisitions.
David Gwyn: Interesting. And so when along that trajectory cause I know you’re a writer as well. So went along that trajectory. Did you become an author? Like what, what did that look? What did that process look like?
Paula Munier: Well, I always wanted to be a writer, right. And I wanted to write novels. Right. Don’t we, all, everybody wants to write in that world. [00:04:00] Everybody wants to be a screenwriter. Nobody.
David Gwyn: Mm.
Paula Munier: I took a lot of screenwriting classes, which were very good for me because I always thought of writing as kind of wordplay, right.
And articles and interviews, as opposed to dramatizing scenes and you all the screenwriting classes with my screenwriting friends taught me how to dramatize and how to write scenes. And that was great for me. And so I wrote a novel which never got published, but it did get me my first agent. And it ultimately led to my first.
Novel getting published, which wasn’t, wasn’t really what you call a novel these days. Okay.
So back in the day before there was no adult, there was, you know, there were, it was like sweet valley high and the babysitters club, these sort of short they’d be considered novellas now. Because I didn’t really have, they had kids books and then they.
I don’t know. Cause there was no young adult, like there is now. And so one of the editors who passed on that first novel, I wrote called me a [00:05:00] year later. This is so how publishing works. Call me, you know, we really, I really liked the way you wrote about teenagers because at the beginning of the book, this novel, it was an adult novel, but the.
Main characters were teenagers at the very beginning of the book she says, and I’m, I’m working for this company now that does these, these
you know, franchise series for publishers. And they’re all about teenagers where you write a book about teenager for me. And I said, sure. So that’s how I learned to write a novel was I got the.
Contracts, ultimately writing for a series that long defunct. Although the book is still out, which is so weird. But it was a funny little book about a girl American girl who goes to Ireland and meets Mr. Right and finds a Gaelic treasure. And, you know, it’s sort of classic, you know, teenage stuff. So, but it was a lot of fun and it got me published, but what happened. The months that book came out my first novel.
Well, my first fiction, I don’t [00:06:00] call it a novel is kind of glamorizing it, but by first fiction to be published, I took the job at prima and I became an acquisitions editor. And so then I didn’t write any fiction for a long time because I was too busy being a midwife. That’s how I think of acquisitions.
You have
David Gwyn: Yeah.
Paula Munier: two lots of books as opposed to being the mother of, of one. So, and I loved it. I loved every minute of it. I did a lot of nonfiction in that time. But I didn’t write much fiction or at least I never finished
So, so fast forward, many years before I finally finished my first mystery novel, what happened was I got this job with writer’s digest and they asked me to write a book about plot, right.
So I wrote this book club plot. Perfect. I can show it to you here, Plot perfect. All about how to plot your novel. And after that, I thought, you know, you’ve always been wanting to be a mystery writer your whole life, you know, [00:07:00] since Nancy drew it’s Okay.
But I never thought I could plot well enough, right.
To write a mystery, which is complicated plot wise. And then I thought, you know, you wrote a book about plot, shame on you. If you can’t write. So I sat down and that became the mercy car series. So I finally,
David Gwyn: awesome.
Paula Munier: I did a lot of stuff in between and loved it all.
David Gwyn: Oh, that’s so funny. Oh, that’s so, it’s so funny. I love asking that question of writers. Especially ones that have had some background in the industry, because it’s always feels like that. It’s always feels like this, like winding road from, from one thing to the next. So that’s really fun. I mean, is that so that the mercy car mystery series, is that something that you always knew was going to be a series or does that kind of after the first book, it just felt like, because I know you’ve got a new one out in July.
Paula Munier: Yes. Yes. This is the first word of borrowing of bones. And I’ll tell you how it happened. I can’t even take credit for being that ambitious. I decided I wanted to run a mystery, [00:08:00] but I had been hired by writer’s digest because pot perfect. Had done well to write this book called the largest guide to beginnings. And which is based on the first 10 pages bootcamp that I do along with my associates at Talcott notch, literary, where I’m an agent I day. Right. And it’s a very popular bootcamp that tells you how to make your first pages sing, because if they don’t sing, nobody reads any further. And that’s the end of the book for you as far as your agent is concerned and the reader to ultimately.
So I was writing this book and they, well, they asked me to write. And I had just written two other books on writing and I said, I can’t read another book, but then I, a number of things happened. I said, Okay.
Okay.
I will. But then when I started to write it, I thought, what can I say that hasn’t been said, what can I do?
And I thought, well, what I will do is I will write an opening chapter to a novel that I. As an exercise for people and I can show them, here’s how you edit it. Here’s how you punch it up. Here’s how you do, you know, [00:09:00] read for X, Y, and Z. I could use it as a sample exercise throughout the book to show a number of tips and techniques, but I couldn’t do that with anybody else.
I had lots of other great openings, the famous openings that we all know and love. Right. And I talk about those, but I needed a whole chapter that I could show. paces. So I wrote this book, I wrote this chapter rather just opening chapter and I just threw in everything I love because I had been thinking about writing a mystery since I wrote plot.
Perfect. I had just done this fundraiser for mission K9 rescue, which is a wonderful organization. And what it does is it takes working dogs from the military and what happened. The army does a pretty good job. Pretty good job of making sure that those dogs who serve as bomb, sniffing dogs and guard dogs, and all these great things that they do for our country when they retire the army usually makes sure they go to a good home. There are defense contractor, dog. Who often suffer terrible fates and ended up in [00:10:00] and, and, and so what mission can rescue does is find these dogs take care of them and find them forever helps. And I, I was so wonderful, so wonderful. And I had done the freezer and I met the dogs and the handlers sort of fell in love.
And so that was on my little mind. Right. So I won’t, I wrote this opening story. Female veteran who’s home from Afghanistan. She’s got this bomb, sniffing dog. They both lost their man in their mission and they stumbled across a body in the woods of Vermont. And that was the opening. So I wrote this chapter because I love Vermont.
I love dogs. We have several rescues themselves. I grew up in the military. My dad was an officer. And so I have a soft spot right. For the military. And I always wondered, you know, what if. You know, if west Westport and accepting women, I’m sure I would’ve had to go but more to early. So I dodged that bullet, but I always wondered [00:11:00] what would it be like?
Right. So it was my way of exploring that, but it was just, just a chapter just to fun chapter. I wrote for the purposes of the writers guide to beginnings. And my agent said to me, always listen to your agent and that book borrowing the bones, the first book in the series.
David Gwyn: Yeah. And so from there you just, I mean, you fell in love with the character. Was it something like the market spoke to you and you were like, we’re going to keep rolling with this? Like what, where did it come when you were like, okay, now I need, I need a full series for this.
Paula Munier: Well, you know, I always tell my clients and anyone who wants to sell their work, that what publishing wants is the same.
So just like insert bestseller here only different. And your job is to articulate that difference and make it clear in the story and in your pitch when you pitch it. And my job as an agent is to be able to articulate that difference when I pitched stories to publishers. So I knew that I had to give my agent that the same, but different. [00:12:00] And I also tell clients, you should know who you want to be when you grow up as a. Who do you want? You know, which writers careers do you admire? Who’s worked with admire and then ask yourself, how did they get there? Right. that you can like any other business, you, you want role models.
Right? And I knew that if I was going to write a mystery, I was going to write one like Julia, Spencer Fleming, Who I, to wonderful his and her mysteries set in upstate New York and, or say Ellie Griffis or, you know, people like that. But basically Joyce, Spencer is my hero. She’s my hero. So I want to join a book like that.
Cause that’s a kind of my favorite kind of book to read. It’s a favorite kind of mystery to read. Right. So I thought, okay, I want to be just like Julia, Spencer, Fleming. That’s just like insert bestseller here. Right? Totally different.
David Gwyn: Yeah.
Paula Munier: How can I make my books different? And I had just, you know, gone to [00:13:00] this fundraiser, we’ve rescued a couple of dogs, you know we are really dog people and I thought I’d written a dog memoir B before called fixing Freddy that came out in 2010. I, I liked to write about dogs. So I thought, okay, I’ll be joyous, Spencer Fleming with dogs. That’s what I do.
David Gwyn: That’s awesome.
Paula Munier: And so all of you, if you are aspiring, why does you need to think that way? Right. The same place. And I was very pleased when The first book came out and library journal, which is a very important resource for mystery writers because they buy a lot of mysteries and a lot of patrons of libraries like mysteries, they had, they had a review of the book and they said, you know, a lot of people will say this book reminds them of Margaret Mitsushima.
Who also writes fabulous canine mysteries. She says, but what it really reminded me of was Julius, Spencer Fleming with dog.
David Gwyn: The nailed it.
Paula Munier: That’s what I set out to do. So all of us have to ask ourselves that question [00:14:00] because you can’t get what you go, where you go, and if you don’t know where you want to go, right. So ask your. Where do I want, who do I want to be when I grew up as a writer and how do I get there? And so that’s what I did and it’s worked lovely.
And of course, I get to write about the things I love, you know, new England and dogs and mysteries and home vets home from war.
David Gwyn: Hmm. Wow. What a, what an amazing kind of like another one of those roundabout ways to, to get anywhere, right? Yeah. It seems like you have to take it and publishing.
Paula Munier: I don’t know if that’s publishing.
or if it’s me, but I of straight line.
David Gwyn: Yeah. That’s okay. Hey, you got, you got there, right? That’s the point you, I mean, you nailed your, you nailed your comp there and your, and where you were headed. That’s amazing. So I always like to ask, because you, you, I mean, you said you always listened to your agent. So I like to ask authors who I have on to, to give their agent a shout out and just share a little bit about why they love working with.
Paula Munier: Okay. Well, my agent and this Gina Panettieri of Talcott notch, literary, she’s the founder [00:15:00] of the agency that I work for. I met her when I was an acquisitions editor and I did a lot of deals with. And she represented fixing Freddy, the memoir. I told you about that. I wrote about this very, very bad beagle. And so I already knew her really well.
I’d worked with her and as an acquisitions editor and when I. I left publishing, I basically, you know, I was a middle-aged editor who got laid off. Right. So one of the millions of middle-aged editors who get laid off in publishing and I was, didn’t know what to do with myself. And I thought, okay, well, I’ll just go back to writing.
I thought, well, I’ll go back to writing. I’ll think about it. But I was mostly at home feeling sorry for myself. And apparently I wrote a very pathetic blog about. I had a dog, my favorite dog of all time, who’s dying and it was snowing the press. I didn’t know what to do. And I was, I was too old to you know, get another job.
So I thought, okay, what am I going to do with my life? And I wrote this blog and Gina called me and [00:16:00] said, Oh, my God, you need something to do. She invited Why did me to join her agency And so That’s how I became an agent. So she was my plus I became an agent with her agency, which was great because, you know, we work so well together. We know each other so well, and I didn’t think I could be an agent because I had been on the editorial side, not the sales side.
And I didn’t think I was capable of selling anybody, anything, you know? And she said, oh no. And it’s just like being an editor. When you go to pitch pub board, you’re just paying. The editors you used to be, and it’s true, you know, so I actually learned how to do that, but but no, it’s all up to Gina. My whole career is down to Gina, my
David Gwyn: man.
Paula Munier: and my career as a novelist.
So
David Gwyn: That’s amazing. So, so what are you working on now? I know you have the, the wedding plot comes out in July, right? And so are you working on another part of the series or you’re not even thinking about it yet.
Paula Munier: Yes. Yes. Well, it was, yeah. So, you know, [00:17:00] early days yet in terms of announcements, but, but I’m plotting more.
David Gwyn: Nice. And do you want to, will you share, share a little bit about the wedding plot and what it’s about?
Paula Munier: Sure, sure. So the wedding plot takes place. There’s one weekend in June, every year where the wild orchids known as lady showy, lady slippers, bloom in Vermont. They’re very rare. And they bloom at this place called Escobar. And it’s, they’re really quite beautiful. And, you know, like I said, they’re not that many left, so it’s very exciting that they, that they bloom every year at this one time.
And so my editor had told me that the past couple of books had taken place. I think on the edge of fall and winter and the edge of spring, I tend to like to. At about transition periods and in nature in new England, the transitions between seasons are very, you know, severe and dangerous. So I that’s when I usually place them.
[00:18:00] So he told me no more snow, cause we’d had a lot of snow and ice and some going on in the, the book before. So I said, okay, I’ll write, I’ll set this one in June during showy lady season. And of course, June and Vermont. You know, and so Mercy’s grandmother is getting married at this very fancy, fancy destination wedding place, which, which I, based on a couple of places, but one, especially in Vermont, that’s been named the most luxurious boutique hotel in the world more than one by four.
So very Swank place very exclusive place. So I thought she’d get married there. Cause that was fun. And then of course everything goes wrong
David Gwyn: Yeah.
Paula Munier: weddings can be murder.
David Gwyn: Nice. What a fun tagline for it. Right. So I want, I want to shift gears a little bit, cause we talked a little bit so far about your non-fiction titles. And I want to ask a specific question about them and see, see if you can answer it for me. The people who I tend to tend to gravitate towards me and who follow this podcast [00:19:00] and who I interact with are generally speaking on agented writers who are on their third or fourth manuscript.
So they’ve gone through the query process and haven’t been able to land an agent they’re really doubling down on the manuscript that they’re on because. You know, they saw the flaws in their early work. And, and so my, my question is for them, for that type of writer that one that’s like, you know, seasoned, but hasn’t been able to get over the hump yet.
What, what of your non-fiction titles of one or two that, that really would be best for that particular type of writer?
Paula Munier: Okay.
So I wrote each book for a reason, the first book plot I wrote because my editor wanted me to, because plot books sell. Okay. So that was his reason, but it was also good for me because plot, I had always considered plot my weakness.
David Gwyn: Okay.
Paula Munier: it really made me take a deep dive on plot. So if you’re having trouble plotting and you’ve heard from people, you submitted the work to that, the plot, the problem. plot. [00:20:00] Perfect. Then after I had an agent for about a year, I realized that there were a lot of writers, just like the writers. You’re talking about writers, who it’s not their first rodeo, they’ve written a lot, but they just can’t find a way to break through. And I realized that, you know, as, as a new agent, new agents use, typically have a lot of debut clients because, you know, we lose out more experienced writers because they are, you know, they go to more experienced agents.
So when you’re a brand new agent, you end up with a lot of debut writers. I thought to myself, you know, I was seeing these certain patterns among these writers who were this close to getting published this close, but they weren’t getting published. And it was usually because they were doing something basic that was unacceptable for a red flag to an editor.
And so after a year of being an agent, I sat down and I wrote this. Writing with quiet hands, which oddly enough, is my least successful writing book, but my personal favorite,
David Gwyn: How Interesting.
Paula Munier: Yeah.
because it’s [00:21:00] about those sort of finer techniques. Right. And, and so it’s called how to shape your writing, to resonate with readers.
And, and that’s what I really tried to do in this book. So often it’s it’s point of view. I believe that things keep more good writers from getting published than anything else. Point of view. Which you really can’t fool around with point of view, you gotta play it safe, and narrative thrust, the story just doesn’t move. It. Doesn’t pull you along. Right. So those are the two things I talk about in this book, because I think those are two of the most common reasons why people don’t get published and that they should take a really hard look at that point of view. And I tell my clients, they get one risk a book. So if their risk is going to be point of view, they’re going to take on a risky point of view.
That’s it? You can’t have that plus present tense, plus, six points of view, plus, you know, all these things, you say one risk of book because it’s, it’s your first rodeo. .
It’s like if you’re learning [00:22:00] to drive and when you start out driving, you know, everything’s conscious, like you consciously have to look in the rear view mirror and then constantly have to look for the turn signals and nothing is automatic. You’re driving as a writer You’re driving you pass your driver’s test . You wrote a novel, but that doesn’t mean you’re ready for the Indy 500 so my ties, your risks, one big risk and amortize the rest. And then I wrote the last book, the writer’s guide to beginnings, because if you querying and you’ve been querying, there are two, two things about querying one.
If you’re querying and nobody bites and nobody asks for your material, your query doesn’t work and you need to start with a better query. Okay. If people are requesting your work and not offering you representation, you’re beginning doesn’t work I didn’t read any, any further along. And I do all these pages bootcamps, and I can tell you that people really resist starting [00:23:00] off strongly they’ll say, oh, but on page 50 is too late, too late. It doesn’t take us long to say no. And what. And editor and reader is looking for, is that feeling you get, when you buy your favorite writer and hard cover, whoever that writer is, the one shell out hardcover bucks for, and you pour yourself a glass of wine or a glass of whiskey or a glass of tea or whatever it is. And you open that book, your favorite writer, and you read the opening lines and part of you just goes. Because, you know, you’re in for a good ride. It’s right there in the opening lines. That’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for that. We’re in good hands.
David Gwyn: That makes a lot of sense., that does feel like the make or break moment is those, those first couple of pages is really where, I mean, it is it’s the, it is the make or break moment in a lot of ways for a lot of writers. And it does seem like that the people that I talk to and interact with, like, they’re like, I got a couple [00:24:00] of requests, but not enough, you know, they’re, they’re, they’re just really trying to get over that hump.
So those are great recommendation. I personally will be making some up cause that’s where I feel like I am too. So that’s, that’s great. Thank you so much. For, for that,
Okay. Let’s take a quick pause here. For many of you who have been in the query trenches, you know, how important the query letter and first 10 pages are learning how to effectively pitch your books can feel difficult at times. But there’s good and bad news. The good news. There’s a lot of information out there. The bad news. There’s a lot of information out there.
What advice should you take? I asked Paula to be on the podcast because she’s been in so many seats at the table. As a former acquisitions editor an agent and an author, she’s qualified to tell you how to pitch your book. So, whether you’re using Paula’s resources, like I will be.
Or someone else’s. Remember to always make sure you know, the background and qualifications of the person before buying their resource.
I want to make a quick plug for the five minute writer. This is a new series I’m doing to help you save time. It’s a free weekly [00:25:00] newsletter providing five minutes summaries of a longer article podcasts, videos, courses, or books. It’s designed to give you the highlights without the fluff, so you can gain the knowledge without wasting time.
So you can get back to writing. Be sure to sign up and join the more than 100 writers who have trusted writerly lifestyle with their publishing futures. Plus you get the first edition right now. It’s linked below. So, what is Paula looking for in her clients? How can you impress her and other top agents?
We go there next, where she shares some amazing information about how to prepare yourself to become an author.
David Gwyn: I want to talk about you as an agent. What are you looking for right now?
Paula Munier: Well right now, I have a, you know, I have a full compliment of writers now because I’ve been an agent now for 10 years.
David Gwyn: Yeah.
Paula Munier: I’ve.
David Gwyn: Congratulations.
Paula Munier: Thank you. It’s great fun to be an agent because the only thing more exciting than getting a contract yourself is getting a contract for a debut author. It’s so much fun to make that call and then [00:26:00] writers grow a career.
So that answers one of your questions, which is I am looking for writers who are in this for the long haul, because it’s a long haul business, one book wonders, you know, unless you’re, I don’t know, JD Salinger, Barbara or somebody, you know, they don’t, they don’t really make the grade. We want writers who are going to continue to write.
And a lot of writers don’t continue to write. They get spooked or they get tired or where they get anxious or, you know, whatever they go on to do other things. And so I really want writers who committed to writing, who can’t help themselves. They have to write. So that’s first of all, and also want writers who are paying attention to the marketplace and writers that I think can make the transition from writer to author.
David Gwyn: What does that look like to you? Like, what are you, what are you thinking about when you, when you say that?
Paula Munier: Well, you know, the writing is one thing. I mean, that’s hard enough. Okay. But write a good story. That’s that’s, you know, it’s that simple. You want to get published? What a wonderful story that [00:27:00] shows something they haven’t seen before. It’s that simple and that difficult. But then once you get a contract, you have to learn to be an author.
You have to learn to, you know, do all the things an author needs to do, which is the business side and the promotion side. And a lot of.
David Gwyn: Yeah.
Paula Munier: They have this ivory tower image of the writer squirreled away in a Paris Garrett somewhere but that’s not how the world works, especially now.
So I’m looking for people who can survive that transition and we’ll commit to that because it’s become obligatory that you promote and, do the things you have to do to be a good author as well as a good writer.
David Gwyn: Oh, that’s so cool. I haven’t heard that yet. That’s, that’s such an interesting distinction to think about. And for, I imagine a lot of people who are listening right now to think of. What that might look like for them specifically? Because I do think, and, and in, in that kind of same vein, I’ve been talking to a fair number of writers and a lot of them are saying that they’re like that.
I think they had that false idea that the publisher would do all of the marketing for them and they would just [00:28:00] sit back and hang out. And a lot of them are like, they, they land a lot of the marketing for themselves and have. And it’s almost, I think of it almost like I’m like an entrepreneur more than, than anything.
You’re thinking about yourself as a brand or a business and like, how do you sell yourself and your next product or past products, or however you think about it. I think that’s a really cool way for people to start thinking about being an author, having that shift from writer to author.
That’s really cool.
Paula Munier: it’s, it’s a, it’s a very important distinction and it’s, and it’s a transition you have to make, you know, in the old days you couldn’t promote your work really. I mean, there was really no way to do it. Right, You’re the publisher did it all. And if you were on the same list with Stephen King’s new book, guess who got the money? Well,
David Gwyn: right.
Paula Munier: you know, that’s the good news is that now you are no longer reliant on the publisher for promotion. The bad news is that you are expected to partner with the publisher and do a lot of that promotion yourself, and it would behoove you [00:29:00] to do it.
David Gwyn: Yeah. So, so speaking of career writers, I want to talk a little bit about career authors, which is your, like a website that you’re a partner with. And, and I want to, I’m curious a little about where that came from and how that got started.
Paula Munier: Well, my dear friend, Hank filigree, Ryan came to me one day and said, we’re going to do this website. Want to do it? I’m like, sure. But was that really that simple? Because you know, there are, there are a couple people in the world. And if they ask me to do something, they, my answer is always yes. You know, my mother, my children, most of the time, my husband, not always most of the time and Hank Phillipi, Ryan and Hallie Effron there, if they asked me to do that, I will do it.
So no questions asked, so it turned out to be a great, so because you know, we’re all very committed to helping writers get published and we bring a lot of different experience to the site, a lot of different kinds of [00:30:00] expertise and plus they’re all great people. My fellow.
David Gwyn: Yeah. That’s that’s awesome. And, and so you just wrapped up a writer’s retreat a few weeks ago. I mean, how did that go?
Paula Munier: Oh, it was so much fun. So it was at MIT’s Endicott house, which is very lovely dye, you know, amazing food. And it was may. So everything is booming. We’ve done them before. Again, Hank, this is all you no in the winter, which is cool and cozy and to catch. 19th century mansion that somebody in doubt, I guess, Endicott, I dunno anyway, but beautiful, beautiful grounds.
And, and so we’d done it in January when it was Nice
but in may, it’s spectacular with the gardens. And we had, we were able to do a lot of it outside and we all gave presentations and read our attendees work. And we just had a wonderful time. And I think it was a great experience for all of us. [00:31:00]
David Gwyn: Yeah, that’s awesome. Is there, is there something people should be on the lookout for coming up? Is there anything on the radar for, for career authors yet, or not quite yet?
Paula Munier: Well, we planned to do again next year. Of course. So that’ll be fun. But meanwhile, you know, I think just this week or last week, I don’t know what day it is, but whatever day it is, career authors, we did at, you know, top, top takeaways from the MIT writers retreat. So you can look any, you go to queer authors.com and.
All kinds of wonderful free information, you know, and resources. So.
David Gwyn: Yeah, it’s amazing. I was in awe about how much information is out there for writers and really like practical information, which I, I could really appreciate. And so if you’re listening right now, I will absolutely be linking career authors website.
And so you can find this stuff there. Cause I think it’s a really valuable resource for writers. Thank you for putting that together and helping you put that together.
so I want to shift gears a little bit and I want to ask you a [00:32:00] hypothetical question, which is if you had a magic wand and you could fix one part of the publishing industry, what do you think you would fix?
Paula Munier: Just one. Okay. We love, but publishing is so analog. Okay. I mean, it’s, I used to say that until, until Amazon publishing hadn’t changed. Hardly at all since Gutenberg, I mean, really, you know, says that, you know, there really hadn’t changed because, it was done the same way and, and it’s a very slim margin business.
It’s just, it’s a tricky business. It’s a consignment. Which makes it very hard to make any money publishing. So people have these get rich quick ideas. It doesn’t really happen. I mean, if it does, it’s lightning in a bottle, it’s like winning the lottery, you know, it’s just a rare thing. Like anything in the arts, right.
it’s an art form. It’s also a business. So it’s, it’s difficult. [00:33:00] And so I’m not sure what I would fix. I mean, lately of course the pandemic changed everything. It made everything even more difficult because, you know,
David Gwyn: Yeah,
Paula Munier: because nobody’s around, you know, and it made, it was very hard for debut authors who came out in 2020 and 2021.
The truth is that book sales were up and are up. And that’s because so many people rediscovered their love of reading during the pandemic, which is wonderful. But what they’re reading is backlist, which are all the books published before by their favorite writers, right.
They’re not reading frontlets, which is the new, new books that are coming out.
And we didn’t have the normal, systems in place to promote those new books. Now we have some, we have more digital stuff and an online book events and that kind of thing, but we didn’t have any at the beginning of the pandemic and nobody knew how long it would last. And, and publishing is ultimately a retail.
And so referred like all retail businesses. But I think if I could fix one [00:34:00] thing, I would fix the consignment business. I would say it’s no longer consignment business because I think that just makes it so difficult. So for example, if you had a boutique and you decided, okay, look, bell bottoms are the rage.
I’m going to buy a bunch of bell bottoms from. If you didn’t sell the bell-bottoms, you would be stuck with the bell bottoms and they’d be in the back. Right.
They’d be in, you know, marked down right now. And now granted, this is from the publisher’s point of view, not so much the booksellers, but booksellers have enough problems.
God knows, but you know, I sympathize with them too, but you know, if you are a bookseller and you order 20 copies of so-and-so’s new. And nobody buys it. You can send them for full cash credit, which makes it very difficult because you can do it for up to a year or more later. [00:35:00] So how do you know how many books have actually what we call sold through?
Yes. The books sold to the bookstore, but you don’t know how many sold through to the reader to the consumer until a year later. Right? So it makes it very. I would also tell people, you know, not to expect everything for free, people don’t pay for music. And there, there goes the royalties to the song writers and the musicians.
So people don’t, this is just irritates me no end, because I have people all the time, come to me and I’ll be giving a presentation or something and I’ll see them taking pictures of my slides. And then I stopped them and I say, excuse me, those are copies. That material is copyrighted. It’s in my books, you can buy my books for a whopping 1799.
You know, you can buy the books even cheaper if they’re the ebook, right. And they say, well, That’s not fair. I said, really, because I’m an agent and my job as an agent is to protect your copyright. You want me to represent you? Which means you [00:36:00] want me to sell your book to a publisher who copyrights it so that whenever that book is sold, you get.
You’re not paying, you don’t want to pay for my copyrighted material. I’ll make you a deal. You honor my copyright and I’ll honor yours. So this, I mean, I worry that pretty soon, nobody’s going to be able to make a living because nobody’s going to copyright anything, you know, or people are just going to steal everything.
So I think we need to honor copyright and, and not just in all the arts, not just, not just in you know, in publishing, I used to yell at my team. Yeah, And say no, free music. Well, I’ll give you the money,
David Gwyn: great.
Paula Munier: . Because it’s important that you know, that we’ll be able to, to make money from our work,
it bookstores, and I think if you’re a writer it’s really important to do this because the first thing I was just going to ask you is, oh, do you belong to your genre associates? You know, any other writers who, who would [00:37:00] support your book and give you a blur?
Do you know your local bookstore owner? Do they know that you love books and we’ll be happy to sponsor and host your first book signing? And a lot of items say no, and I’m like, really that’s important. You need to be part of the community because the first people who are going to buy your books, besides your mother, writing community, your friends,
David Gwyn: Yeah, no, that’s great. That’s, that’s good advice for writers too. And I think, you know, I feel like a lot of this has been dispelling that idea of, like you said, like the right in the ivory tower and like drop it down on the police system and call it a day. It’s really not like that anymore. It really is a part being part of a community.
Paula Munier: Yeah. Yeah. And it’s more and more true now,, I think it’s more and more true in certainly during the pandemic when we couldn’t go anywhere, it’s really, what’s helped us. I mean, Podcasts like this one . I mean, you are doing your part to give writers a community, and that’s so important because [00:38:00] the writing community is what really gets things done. It’s where you meet your friends for life. You’ll meet your agent, you’ll meet your editor.
You’ll meet people who will blurb your books and agree. Cohost you signings for you when your stories come out. So this is why it’s important for you to support your fellow writers, and then they will support you. Generally speaking, the writing community is a very pay it forward.
David Gwyn: I found that to be true and, and more so even in the last couple of years, I feel like a lot of people went online to find community. And instead of. You know, just looking for any community. They, they really invested in the writing community. I’ve seen that a lot in the, in the last couple of years and it’s been really exciting and really fun to be a part of that.
So I’m glad that that’s, that’s on, that’s on agent’s radars too. It’s like thinking about how that translates into success in a book, right. It’s like, you know, how, how invested are you in the community? That’s super cool.
So if there [00:39:00] was, yeah, I mentioned who normally listens to my podcast and who engages with me are those, those kinds of writers who are hoping that this, you know, third or fourth manuscript is the one that gets them the agent and gets them into the traditional publishing.
So if there was one thing that you’d want. That listener to take away from this conversation to like walk away and think about what do you think that one thing would be.
Paula Munier: Never give up, never surrender. That’s it? My father, the Colonel used to say, and I think that’s really true. You know, people ask me like when I teach a workshop or something and everybody reads their work and you know, everybody’s listening to everybody else’s work and wondering who’s the best. And there’s always somebody who comes up to me and says, so who’s going to get published first. And I always say, I have no idea. ’cause I don’t because often, the most talented person in the room never finishes, never burns out, goes on to other things, you know, for whatever reason gives up.
David Gwyn: [00:40:00] Yeah.
Paula Munier: there’s that guy in the corner whose level of craft is way low. And you think, Oh you got a long road and yet never gives up.
And the next thing. He is the one who gets published. I was actually in a writers group where that happened. And I can’t tell you how upset some of the writers were, but because he never gave up and he listened and he went home and he worked and he edited and he revised. And that’s really what it’s persistence and more than talent, honestly I do think that writing is kind of like singing. Now. My daughter is an opera singer and she has an ear for me. You know, and I think there’s an ear for writing. If you don’t have that, I think it would be very difficult to become a good writer. Just like, it’d be difficult to become a good opera singer.
If you were tone deaf that’s, most people can figure it out. And it’s a question of practice. I think people give practice short shrift. I think you need that million words or that 10,000 hours or whatever you want to call it. You need that. [00:41:00] And you need good advice. You need to be able to figure out how to take your work to the next level, because there’s really no school for this.
You can get an MFA, won’t, teach you to write commercials. You know, it just won’t, you know a lot of chemical programs don’t even recognize commercial fiction, Right.
So if your goal was to write commercial fiction, you have to figure it out yourself. You have to buy books, you have to go to signings, you have to join writers groups, you have to take classes, you have to do whatever you can to take yourself to that next.
David Gwyn: Such great advice for people to finish up here and take away with them. I think it’s such a valuable thing for them so I, Paul, I could talk to you all day. This has been an absolute joy, but I do want to ask my last question, which is where can people find you or do you want people to look you up?
Paula Munier: Well PaulaMunier. Com and of course career authors.com. And my agency is Talcott literary, which is top notch.net. And I’m [00:42:00] around, I’m on Twitter, I’m at a Paula because there’s a Paula Munier in somewhere in France who beat me
David Gwyn: Happens to everybody, right.
Paula Munier: divulge my middle old because it’s too awful at Twitter and Facebook. Instagram. I’m all around.
David Gwyn: I’ll link to all that stuff so that you have easy access to Paula and be sure to reach out if you’re, if you’re listening to this and you know, reach out and let her know you, you heard her and you, you appreciate her taking the time to chat with me because I mean, she’s doing this out of the goodness of her heart.
This was an absolute blast. I hope you learned something. Paula, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for making the time.
Paula Munier: You bet. Thank you so much.
David Gwyn: Of course.
So, if you’re hoping to land an agent, focus on your pitch and your first 10 pages, and like Paula says never give up and never surrender. If you learned anything from this episode and you found it insightful, be sure to share with your writing group or critique partners. Paula shares so much practical information for writers and gives us some great resource recommendations.
I hope [00:43:00] you learned something because I certainly did. Finally, here’s a taste of what we’ve already heard on the podcast and what’s still to come. On this season of the writerly lifestyle interview series.
Annie Lisenby: do be bold. Put your work out there. And if you believe in it, put it out there, but also do be prepared for the rejection.
Jessica Payne: Well, I actually asked her what’s one thing I could do better as an author after we finished, make me disappear. And she’s like, you could consider plotting a little bit because I am like such a pantser. And I can see her point.
Paulette Perhach: There are a thousand ways that someone might not accept your piece that has literally nothing to do with the quality. And just knowing, like, there are a ton of good writers. It’s not, you it’s that, we’re all in here doing it together. And sometimes it’s someone else’s turn and sometimes it’s your turn and that can be really hard.
Zulie Rane: I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I always thought I would be a fiction writer a novelist. I still remember, I don’t know how old I was, maybe like seven or eight [00:44:00] opening the book, looking at the back cover and realizing books.
Don’t just to, they don’t spring into being fully formed. Somebody writes them. It’s somebody’s job to create those. And I was like, oh, amazing. That could be me.
Ericka Baldwin: Because we grow your book can grow. And because we learn almost every day. And if we, if we task ourselves to learn something new, right, then we can always apply and continue to apply to the same manuscript.
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