Shooting The Shit About Expectations in Agent Author Relationships and Who Gets To Go On Book Tour
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra
4.8 • 842 Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
In this week’s episode of Shooting the Shit, Carly and CeCe dive into a viral story about ChatGPT allegedly derailing a $50M deal and unpack what it means for writers relying on AI—warning that outsourcing your thinking can cost you your creative power. They tackle a common query dilemma (can you comp a book you don’t even like?), break down why small manuscript tweaks won’t fix deeper story issues, and remind writers to stop chasing the “right answer” and start trusting their own voice. Carly and CeCe also talk about tough industry realities—from agents parting ways with clients to the truth about book tours (who gets them and why most don’t)—offering a candid look at how publishing really works behind the scenes.
Note: CeCe Lyra is a literary agent at Wendy Sherman Associates. If you’d like to query CeCe, please refer to the submission guidelines at www.wsherman.com. Carly Watters is a literary agent at P.S. Literary Agency, but her work on this podcast is not affiliated with the agency, and the views expressed by Carly on this podcast are solely that of her as a podcast co-host ​and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of P.S. Literary Agency.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have you been sitting on the fence about signing up for the Bateser-read a matchup, |
| 0:04.5 | or have you signed up before but haven't yet found your writing soulmates? |
| 0:08.6 | The next matchup is the last one for the summer, so don't snooze on it. |
| 0:13.1 | Get matched up with those writing in a similar genre and or time zone so they can critique your work as you critique theirs. |
| 0:22.5 | Your manuscript doesn't have to be complete to sign up for those 3,000 word evaluation. This particular matchup will be open to |
| 0:28.4 | registrations from now until the 1st of June with the matchup emails going out on the 2nd of June. |
| 0:35.3 | For more information and to register, go to Bianca Moray.com |
| 0:39.5 | and go to the beta reader matchup page. Welcome to another episode of Shooting the Shit with |
| 0:47.3 | Literary Agents Carly Waters and Cece Leera, where we dissect publishing gossip, discuss book |
| 0:53.2 | industry trends and the overall state of the book |
| 0:55.6 | business. If you've ever wanted to grab a coffee with two literary agents, grab your mug |
| 1:00.1 | and pull up a chair. |
| 1:08.5 | Hi everybody. Welcome to shooting the shit. Cici and I were about to go on a rant without hitting record. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's not just do the whole show before we hit record. Because sometimes we, you know, chat about what we're going to chat about. So I made a stop and freeze and pause. And so hi. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, that was good. That was good. You know I was about to go off on the thing we're talking about. So how has your week been? I always feel like when we have our off week, I don't know, there's just like more news. I don't know. What do you think? Is there more news or is it just that we |
| 1:45.4 | haven't chatted about it? I also have the same feeling. I'm just wondering whether it's like a bias. |
| 1:50.9 | Yeah, I, week's been good. Lots of, lots of calls and check-ins and fires to put out and I always feel |
| 1:59.2 | a little overstimulated when, I mean, it's 1 p.m. |
| 2:02.6 | And I've had, I don't even know how many calls today. |
| 2:07.2 | So I'm a little loopy. |
| 2:08.5 | If people are listening to me and they're like, huh, C.C. Loopy, C.C. is looping. |
| 2:12.2 | How about you? You have a good week so far? |
| 2:14.3 | Yeah. I mean, it's been very steady you know working on some contracts doing some spring |
| 2:19.5 | submissions i have a lot of books coming out like client books spring and summer wrapped up a contract |
... |
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