Hello and welcome to the Story Grid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better

writer. I'm your host Tim Graal and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story

that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He has over 25 years experience as an editor. He is the

creator of Story Grid. He is the author of the book Story

Grid. And he is helping me figure out all of this writing stuff and all of this publishing

stuff as I dive into the world of writing fiction. This is the second part in the publishing

one-on-one series that we are doing, helping you navigate the world of publishing. This was a

really fascinating show for me to learn from Sean how it works on the agent and publisher side.

He gives stories of how agents work inside of publishing and how editors work inside of publishing

as well and walks you through how a deal is actually made

behind the scenes. It's really fascinating. If you're interested at all in the traditional

publishing world, you're going to love it. So let's jump in and get started. So Sean, last

episode, we talked through basically both of our backgrounds in publishing and started diving into,

well, the initial question of, you know, Indy Pub versus traditionally published. And as kind of a follow-up to

that, I would love to hear how you've seen the industry change over the last 25 years.

I think there's a lot of assumptions made about publishing what they do for you, what they

don't do for you, marketing, you know, all that kind of stuff.

And so as I was preparing for this episode, I was thinking, like, I would just like to hear about

what you think are the fundamental shifts that have happened, you know, because 25 years ago,

there was no Kindle, there wasn't much of an internet, you know, and now, you know, a lot has

changed on the buyer's side, which I'm sure is affected the publisher side. So we'll just

love to hear you talk a little bit about the biggest kind of meaningful shifts you've seen

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