Shooting the Shit About What Agents Do All Day
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra
4.8 • 842 Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What do literary agents actually do all day—and what does that mean for you as a writer? This episode pulls back the curtain on the reality: constant code-switching, shifting priorities, and a job driven by urgency, relationships, and gut instinct. In this week’s episode of Shooting the Shit…Carly and CeCe break down why publishing is as much about human connection and timing as it is about great writing—and why “dream agents” only matter if they’re obsessed with your book. They also tackle a big question: what happens if you’ve had an agent before? Spoiler: it’s not a dealbreaker—but how you frame it matters.
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 |
| 0:55.2 | of the book business. If you've ever wanted to grab a coffee with two literary agents, |
| 0:59.4 | grab your mug and pull up a chair. |
| 1:09.0 | Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode with Carly and Cici. If you were watching us on YouTube, |
| 1:14.3 | you can see that Cici is not in her home office today. Cici, tell us where you are. I'm not in my |
| 1:19.5 | home office. I am, well, maybe you guys can see the background if you're on YouTube. I'm in New York. |
| 1:25.1 | There's Central Park behind me. I mean, kind of a tiny glimpse of Central |
| 1:28.4 | Park behind me, but it counts. And Carly and I are shooting this on a Monday, which is not our |
| 1:33.8 | typical day. Usually we record on Wednesdays. And so our week has barely begun because it's |
| 1:40.5 | 10 a.m. And so it'll be fun to chat up chat next week to be like how was the week. |
| 1:45.0 | How about you, Carly? Where are you headed? I know you're traveling, right? I'm traveling this week. So today I'm home. It's Monday. Tomorrow I'm going to Toronto have Mize Cleo Dang launch tomorrow night. But I'm just kind of just staying one night and then I'll be back at my desk for Thursday Friday. So, you know, one of those |
| 2:01.1 | weeks kind of on the go, which is, which is fun. But I kind of, I'm going to throw this out there. I mean, I haven't prepared Cece for this. I actually kind of like recording on a Monday. I don't know, there's something like a nice way to start the week just like talk, even though nothing's happened yet, I don't know, like they're pros and cons, right? |
| 2:17.2 | Because when we record midweek, news has broken, you know, |
... |
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