Shooting the Shit About Your Response to Last Week's Episode and What Can Be Copyrighted

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing

Bianca Marais, Carly Watters and CeCe Lyra

Books, Fiction, Education, Arts, How To

4.8 • 842 Ratings

🗓️ 23 March 2026

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Publishing isn’t broken… or is it?

This week, Carly and CeCe unpack the explosive reaction to last episode—burnout, disillusionment, and the uncomfortable truths no one wants to say out loud. Plus: a stat that proves a tiny group of readers is carrying the entire industry (yikes). They also call out London Book Fair myths, Instagram fatigue, and why long-form thinking is making a comeback.

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.

For the newsletter lovers who enjoy Carly’s off-duty takes on books,

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi everyone, I'm going to keep this short because I know how busy you are.
0:04.3	I just wanted to let you know that the next beta reader matchup is almost upon us.
0:09.2	Submit your 3,000 words by 12 p.m. Eastern Time on the 1st of April
0:14.4	and you will get your beta reader matchup emails on the 2nd of April.
0:19.8	For more information and to register, go to Bianca
0:23.0	Moray.com. Welcome to another episode of Shooting the Shit with literary agents, Carly Waters,
0:31.3	and Cece Learra, where we dissect publishing gossip, discuss book industry trends and the
0:36.6	overall state of the book business.
0:38.5	If you've ever wanted to grab a coffee with two literary agents, grab your mug and pull up a chair.
0:50.4	Hi, Cece. How are you doing today? Good. Busy and good. How about you? Busy and good, too? Yeah, I'm in the middle of an offer, so I was just like throwing things together for this call, working on that. You know, just day in the life of an agent, life of a showgirl, as Taylor Swift would say. So we're just, we're plugging along. I don't know how long this episode's going to be today because both of us have to get back to work. So we will do our very best to jam as much as we can. We will. And it's nice to have a break and chat. Like, it's nice to have this. Even though, again, whether it's an offer, whether it's a contract, whether it's organizing calls with interested parties, whatever it is that we're doing, it's nice to be like, okay, 45 minute break to chat. Yes, yes, exactly. And, you know, one of the things I love about doing this is it keeps me up on publishing news because I'm always like, what do I need to know to chat about with CC or update the audience? I enjoy that part of it. I enjoy talking to you since we don't work together anymore and i get to see you on a
1:44.4	weekly basis which is good yeah that's fun yeah okay things that are going on so we announced the
1:51.0	calgary conference so you guys all know where to see us when words collide dot org you can grab your
1:57.0	tickets we'll be in calgary august 13th toth. And we're very excited to see you guys in
2:02.3	person. So we hope that we will meet you in person and see you there. It'll be so much fun.
2:07.6	Like it's our first conference, the three of us together. Like so excited. First of many, I hope.
2:12.9	Yeah, exactly. And the organizers think that they have the tech abilities to record it as a live podcast.
2:18.6	So we'll be able to kind of share it later with everybody. So yeah, fingers crossed, all the tech wizards and tech ghosts support us that day. Because we thought at the start of this call, we were going to have some tech ghosts. But CC battled the tech ghost and came back and all as well. I always offer the tech ghost a cookie.
2:33.5	Like if I give you a cookie, will you stop haunting me?
2:36.1	Like, come on, tech ghost.
2:37.8	Anyway.
2:38.2	Yeah. and all as well. I always offer the tech ghost a cookie. Like if I give you a cookie,
2:34.8	will you stop haunting me? Like, come on, tech ghost. Anyway. Yes. Okay, I have an update
	...

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