Shooting the Shit About What Carly and CeCe Want To Fix In The Publishing Industry and (of course!) Heated Rivalry
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra
4.8 • 842 Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this week’s episode, Carly and CeCe chat a little bit about everything from unreliable memories and heated hockey romance TV shows to what they’d actually change if they had a magic wand over the publishing industry. They dive into big, bold industry wishes—higher pay across publishing, transparency around marketing budgets, no taxes on books, better royalties, fact-checking nonfiction, escrow accounts for advances, and more competition among publishers. It’s candid, nerdy, opinionated, and exactly the kind of behind-the-scenes publishing talk writers love.
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 | Hi there. We've got a lot. We're really excited to tell you about, but I'm going to make this real |
| 0:04.9 | quick so you can get to the episode. The deep dive is coming up at the end of January. The lineup of |
| 0:10.9 | speakers is incredible and the range of topics is mind-blowing. You do not want to miss out on the last |
| 0:17.3 | deep dive ever. Then the beta reader matchup is open once again |
| 0:21.3 | with the matchups going out early in February. |
| 0:23.9 | Sign up to kick your creative year off with a bang. |
| 0:27.2 | Lastly, there's an amazing writer's workbook available |
| 0:30.0 | which will make the perfect gift for you |
| 0:32.3 | or the writer in your life. |
| 0:34.4 | Head to our website, The Shit About Writing, to find out more. |
| 0:44.6 | Hi there and welcome to our show. The Shit No One Tells You About Writing. I'm best-selling |
| 0:51.1 | author Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Cece Leera of Wendy Sherman Associates and Carly Waters of PS Literary. |
| 1:00.2 | Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of shooting the shit. We are so glad to have you. I think it's been like approximately six months since we've been doing this. We have not been keeping track of this, mostly because we are not very organized. So we are having a lot of fun with this, but we have |
| 1:16.6 | a Google Doc, let's just say, we have a Google Doc that we update, we share some notes, |
| 1:20.6 | we know approximately what we're going to talk about, we add in some questions from you guys, |
| 1:23.9 | we add in the substacks, and yeah, that's about as organized as we are. |
| 1:28.5 | And all the organization that does exist is largely Carly. |
| 1:33.4 | I need to give a shout out to you, Carly, because it's, I feel like no one's going to be |
| 1:38.5 | shocked by the fact that the segment in which it's just Carly and me and Bianca isn't |
| 1:42.5 | here is the least organized segment. |
| 1:44.8 | Because we don't have general B.E. Exactly. Keeping us in line. And yeah, I feel like also that's |
| 1:54.0 | part of the nature of the show. It's not a structured show. It's a show where we shoot the shit, |
... |
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