Shooting the Shit About Your Deepest and Darkest Book Money Questions: PART ONE
The Shit No One Tells You About Writing
Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra
4.8 • 842 Ratings
🗓️ 22 December 2025
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Money. Advances. Royalties. Envy. Agenting. In this no-holds-barred part one episode, Carly and CeCe crack open the money conversations writers are told not to have—and answer your most anonymous, anxiety-inducing questions about the business of publishing. From six-figure deal myths and what “earning out” actually means, to whether writing can be a job, how agents think about money, and why publishing is basically institutionalized gambling, nothing is off-limits. Honest, data-driven, funny, and deeply validating—this is the episode that pulls the financial curtain all the way back. Stay tuned for part two…coming soon.
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
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 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. |
| 0:40.0 | Welcome to another episode of Shooting the Shit with literary agents, Carly Waters, and |
| 0:45.4 | Cici Lira, where we dissect publishing gossip, discuss book industry trends, and the overall |
| 0:50.9 | state of the book business. If you've ever wanted to grab a coffee with two literary agents, |
| 0:55.5 | grab your mug and pull up a chair. |
| 1:04.4 | Hi, everybody. |
| 1:05.4 | I've really been looking forward to this episode. |
| 1:07.2 | This is one that I've kind of been cooking up for a while, |
| 1:09.5 | and Cici was gracious enough to run with this one with me. I think we're going to have a lot of interesting conversations about money because I think it is one of those things that underpins so much of what we talk about in the framing and we always talk about how this is a business and you guys came up with some really great questions about the business within its context and how you feel about it as writers. So I think we're going to have some really interesting conversations. We actually got so many questions. We're going to do this as a part one and a part two. It is going to be broken up though in terms of weeks because so part one as you guys are listening to it is kind of like are shooting the shit. And then the week after that is a bonus episode. And then part |
| 1:44.8 | two is going to come after the bonus episode. So just so you know, part two is coming. If you are |
| 1:50.7 | listening to this on the day that it comes out, we love you. Thank you. And then stay tuned for the |
| 1:55.0 | part two in a couple weeks. Yeah, but we have so much to talk about. We got a lot of questions. |
| 1:59.0 | And thank you guys for following along |
... |
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