An interview with my literary agent: Seth Fishman!🎣

[@urigatt6815]

Love this! Thank you for the opportunity Mr. Goblin!

[@deadlightlabyrinth]

Only 10m in, and I'm pretty sure this is the type of content I could listen to as much as you decide to post. Thanks all for the conversation. ❤

[@pcvsk8]

Great interview, thanks for the opportunity to talk directly to Seth! My question would be: how much do trends influence agents/publishers when considering a book/author?

[@sethfishman5599]

I thought we covered that! Did we not? Trends don’t influence me at all, except negatively if I’m bored of too many of the same type. Publishers do play trend games tho but remember by the time you’re published it’s been a year or two since the thing you wrote went on sub.

[@jonevansauthor]

Every time I hear the trend for something is dying out, especially if it's vampires, werewolves, westerns or romance I just laugh. Sure. Humans are going to stop enjoying romance any time soon. Maybe zombies will stop happening. Find a decade since zombies became widely known that there weren't zombie films and books that did well and good luck to you. Now tropes - tropes are really useful to know about. Do you want to do fast zombies or slow? Does anyone like slow zombies? I don't know a single person who recommends seeing an apparent 'trend' and saying to yourself, 'Oh, I should write LitRPG because it's a trend.' Instead, 'I like this type of book, and there's clearly a market for it, and I'd enjoy writing LitRPG, I'll read some of it to confirm that and understand the tropes that readers enjoy about the genre and what I enjoy about the genre and what I don't and they don't, then I'll write my book to the a market that I know exists, and want to write in.' Write to market, not to trend basically. Successful books were always written to market - the trick is, choosing from your interests and ideas, the idea that will suit the market, that you do want to write.... deliberately. If it sold, it clearly was written to a market that exists but that doesn't always mean the author had any earthly idea how big the market was for it, or even what the actual tropes were. Sometimes they just write a book that fulfils all the cosy mystery tropes, publish it, and all the cosy mystery readers love it because it has an appropriate cover, obeys the genre tropes, and does everything they want. As a counterpoint - it's possible to write to so called 'trends' but I would never suggest anyone do it because the only people I've known who do it are the types who are hyper focused, self disciplined, hard workers who write fast, and great at actually writing whatever trend you want - it's no good spotting a werewolf fireman trend, and then writing a vampire ambulance driver book, or having the werewolf fireman not obey some tropes that the 'trending' books have all used. That's a whole level of skill in itself and few people can write to demands like that - most of us write in the genres we truly love and the tropes we love. Plus... if it were really a trend, it would by nature have a finite lifespan. Which means you can only tag along a new trend and get books out within that timespan if you are a quick writer - which generally means you've done it before, are very focused, write 3,000+words a day, publish a book of month or some combination of all that. None of which is necessary to do well nor is it something to beat yourself up about if you can't do any one of those.

[@bramvandenheuvel4049]

Thanks! My first questions is this: what stage in your writing is the first time you can contact an agent? - After you finished your first draft? - After you finished your second draft? - After you finished your book as good as you can get it without a professional editor? - After you finished your book with a professional editor (or editors)?

[@sethfishman5599]

@@bramvandenheuvel4049 third one. Try not to pay for an editor.

[@kelleyeasterling]

I was going to ask the same thing!

[@AnyaBlackk]

I am not an editor or an agent, but I do a lot of research on this as an aspiring author. You start querying once you feel your book is as best and as finished as you can make it. You don't need an editor to go over it, unless you really want to, you can have as many rounds of drafting as you wish, or feel you need. But never query with a first draft, or unfinished/unpolished book. Agents don't expect to get a book ready for the presses, but they also expect it to be finished, polished and without any glaring plot holes/typos etc.

[@astevenswrites]

This was gold. Thanks for hosting this, Daniel, and thanks for sharing all your knowledge, Seth! I've decided to self-pub myself, but there was still a lot of valuable advice here!

[@JC-qp8hj]

He represents P. Djeli Clark?? Holyyyy that's amazing. Clark is an incredible author and I can't even imagine how it must feel to be working with the same literary agent as him. AND DUNGEON CRAWLER CARL???

[@kaikalter]

First of all, it's amazing that you're even doing this and allowing us to ask question. I do have a few. As someone from a non-English speaking country I was wondering what Seth's advice or overall words are on any attempt by a non-native English speaker to get traditionally published in English. As I write in both Dutch and English, but I do find that my English prose ends up being better, resulting in an overall better manuscript. However at the moment I feel like it wouldn't be very wise to try and look for ways to get published in English. Secondly, there is no system of Agents in the Netherlands (not to the extent there are in English countries at least.) What would Seth's advice be for approaching publishers themselves directly?

[@thomasboulousisviolin]

I am the same, writing in English and in my first language as well. I prefer my English prose.

[@kaikalter]

​@thomasboulousisviolin I personally think my English writing is a little better because English as a language has a lot of synonyms for words and a lot more choice for making sentences and description. Though with some trouble I have found some balance in writing Dutch prose, but I do also find that I do better writing Dutch prose written against the example of an English text I wrote.

[@crediblesalamander8056]

i've got the same problem (the netherlands as well). i really have no idea how we're supposed to approach this.

[@kaikalter]

​​@crediblesalamander8056 It's not necessarily that Dutch publishing itself isn’t good, for what it's doing, it does a good job. But Dutch publishers don't necessarily do Fantasy well, particularly domestically written Fantasy. And I feel like even if I could release a fantasy book in Dutch it is sort of doomed to remain on the dutch market (unless it could do well as a translation on either the French or German markets), so having it be published in English would have my preference.

[@jakiedark]

That is a really good question and I hope they tackle it. I am Dutch as well but haven’t looked into Dutch agents myself. But as I am writing in English also, the thoughts did cross my mind who I can even approach.

[@MyEuropeanDream]

Daniel - thank you for having a literary agent on to interview. In all the bookish content I have seen there's very little from the perspective of ltierary agents. As someone from Eastern Europe who writes fiction mostly set in my region (sometimes its fantasy, others spec fiction), I struggle with the idea of getting a literary agent for going trad in the US, in part because of the knowledge gap on part of agents who might not know how to sell a book like The Witcher (as one example), and publishing houses who may look at the book and say "well it sold in Poland but how can we really know the setting/this book will sell to an American audience?" How wasthe experience of working with Liu Cixin, an author who was already very well known in China for over a decade, to a US publishing industry that doesn't (on the outside) recognize non-US authors as much as in the UK or Europe where you see rows upon rows of foreign books published into English?

[@sethfishman5599]

Love the question, sadly too complex for a reply here, tho I’ll say that things aren’t as bad as you think over here. We care for translation tons. The issue is often a specific publishers’ list.

[@Sunlit_Reading]

15 mins in and I actually squealed when he said he represents Strange Planet and Sarah Anderson. Daniel you have such a cool agent!

[@MrBubiBalboa]

Great conversation. For anyone interested in this side of the book world I want to shout out the Publishing Rodeo podcast that covers the same topics and is a fantastic companion show to this series. The current episode with author Chuck Tingle is an instant classic. They have a lot of Fantasy authors on the show. I'm sure they would love to have either one of you on as well.

[@thebrothersgwynne]

More of this! So incredibly helpful for anyone wanting to break into the publishing world. Cheers Daniel. Ed

[@ReeceG231]

Damn I wish this discussion was 3 hours long! Everytime he apologized for going on a tangent I kinda wished he'd gone on for even longer on these topics 😭. This is a treasure trove of info.

[@SuperMegaCoffeeGuru]

Thank you to you all for this and the time it took to do it! This is a wonderful idea!

[@lordphinix3]

I'm not at a point in my writing that I'm quite ready to approach agents, but I'm getting closer by the day and look forward to hearing everything you and Seth can tell me in the meantime.

[@billyalarie929]

This guy represents a LOT of really big names, holy shit.

[@CarbunkleWorld]

Me causally watching the video when my Campfire project shows up at 1:45

[@bross92]

This was FASCINATING, I'm always interested in how the sausage gets made so please infinitely more of these

[@alasdairmacarthur5910]

Great interview, thanks. Q for Seth; How do you see the popularity in Spec-fic genres changing in the short/long-term?

[@sethfishman5599]

Lots of self pub feeding in. LitRPG is the new hot thing? But progressive is the more probable sustainable for trad pub. Personally hybrid authors are key.

[@Kikilang60]

Thanks, this is why your channel is so worth watching.

[@Kikilang60]

Dam** I have to go.

[@shawnlanphear3588]

Very insightful interview by two passionate people. I enjoy your interview content and I think you should continue it, perhaps maybe start a second channel to host only interview stuff kinda like Grand line review did with his channel dude in a room

[@Jdp547]

He has 1

[@jakiedark]

I would like both of you actually to delve deeper into writer agent relationship. When the agents say’s yes, how to start the relationship and what to expect as a writer from your agent. What is their role, what should you do yourself and from this also delve into red and green flags. And how can a writer ensure they get the most out of it and make it long lasting. I am also curious what weighs more heavily in accepting a manuscript, either story structure/characters or writing style? If one of the two is middling and the other is great, is it more valuable to have excellent writing or a great story structure.

[@LoScrittoreDivergente]

Thank you Daniel for this interview and thank you Seth for your availability. I'd like to ask a question that I'm afraid is not of general interest, but it can't hurt to try: the English market doesn't translate novels unless they've already been (very) successful abroad. So, as I have always been convinced that what I write has a certain potential for the English market, much more than for the Italian one (I'm an Italian living in Spain), I decided to remove the obstacle and translate my novels. Unfortunately, that's only the first obstacle... If it is difficult for an American to find an agent, let alone a foreigner living abroad, I ask myself: am I "condemned" to self-publishing? Or is there a way to find an agent from abroad?

[@DarkNomad347]

Your videos showing the process side of things are always such a boon to the community, so great work once again Daniel! I am currently cowriting Book 1 of a series with the goal of before bringing it to an agent, at least outlining several books in the series, if not nailing down the exact length and such before hand. I feel this work upfront will help the whole be more cohesive, and showcase the potential of the project as a whole. My questions for Seth would be: How much does that preparedness with the future of the story in mind help him as an agent? And as a coauthor, can he lend any advice or just general knowledge on how my partner and I could expect to be handled when it comes to the business side of things? And again thank you to both of you for setting this up!

[@jonevansauthor]

As a coauthor with a lot of friends who've had multiple co-authored relationships one thing I can tell you is every writing relationship is different. Sometimes you've got two peers of equal experience. Sometimes one is a highly established writer with dozens of book and the other is getting mentored. Sometimes they trade chapters back and forth like Terry Pratchett and his student, Gaiman (kidding, but the story of how they had to write Good Omens is amazing and I wish they'd had Google Docs as we'd probably have had several more books from both of them). Sometimes one does the first draft and the other edits. There's also lots of financial deals and arrangements all of which work for those people - you might split royalties unevenly say 70/30 depending on amount of work or who originated the ideas or did the first draft or whose the one mentoring who. As long as you're both happy that's all that matters, but make sure you have contracts that sort that out as early as possible. If nothing else, if either of you meet an unfortunate situation, the estate management is easier on those left behind and there's no doubt to be had. My co-author and I negotiated with a company for some rights and were happy to do so. We'd probably look for different deals in the future but what we didn't do was give away excess rights - for instance we didn't give away foreign language rights. Every part of your rights is a separate slice of a pie of rights e.g. hardback, paperback, special editions, audio, each language etc etc. As Seth mentioned publishers love to get all the rights you'll sign over, at a bargain basement price. Even if they're lovely people, they're still in business trying to make as much money as possible from your rights and you should be too, which is why it's important to have lawyers and agents for some rights and listen to their advice and watch their free advice like this. Getting your rights back if you sign a bad deal is not always easy. As for longer series, writing in series is extremely useful as a way of generating revenue. Readers who buy into The Wheel of Time are in for thirteen books. By the time they've read book three, they're probably going to read the lot. Not to mention, in genres like epic fantasy, we're actively looking for genuinely epic stories and in romance they're looking for a widow falling in love with a werewolf firemen, and the next book they read is going to be your book about another widow falling in love with a werewolf fireman in the same town and the same engine team. It basically works in most genres. If you have an outline for your series, I've found it extremely helpful. It can also be helpful if you are thinking about say, five books, to know if there's a way to end at book 3 and have it make sense and be a complete series. If books one and two sell very well and you can keep telling a good story, then are you up for books 3-5 or 3-20 like Dresden? It's worth thinking about potential off ramps, or more involved stories you can tell and it's much easier for foreshadow something that will happen in book 3 if you know more about what you want to happen in book 3. There are lots of great indie author spaces you should get into where you can hear people who are far better at it all than I am talking about it. I hope you both have a lot of success with your co authoring project - it sounds like it's going well so far.

[@DarkNomad347]

@@jonevansauthor Thank you so much for the reply! I appreciate you taking the time to reach out and offer your thoughts on my questions. It leaves me in awe that I get to live in a day and age where communication with the creative community is as easy as it ever has been. As for our situation, we are both unpublished, with a lot of our work being small or unfinished. We both agree this is the farthest we have gone on such a big project, but are working every day to bring our all to this and focus on our strengths but not ignoring our weaknesses. It might take longer than we would like to get it done, but no other writing project we have ever worked on, together or separate has felt so in our grasp.

[@NaritaZaraki]

Great interview! My brain is too cooked for a proper question/comment right now 😵‍💫 so I humbly make an offering for the tempestuous algorithm.

[@markmahowald7866]

As you listed off his projects, I realize your agent seems to specialize in things that I personally specifically like

[@michaelbodell7740]

That is a really, really, really impressive set of people to represent. I own and have read well more than 30 books of his authors, plus regularly read things like xkcd, but yet until this video I hadn't clocked who Seth Fishman was.

[@LunaLight4]

Hi, great respect for taking the time to answer all of us! My question is how to know when to give up querying. I've had 30-35 beta readers who all agreed it was publication-worthy, or on the level of quality of current trad published books. I've also worked with two professional editors with big names and decades of experience. One edited my manuscript (and encouraged me to seek an agent), the other edited my query letter when I started to think that was the reason for no agent responses. Despite all this positive feedback and professional help, over a hundred agents have refused me or failed to reply. I've made sure my genre and even tropes fit those agents, and that they were currently looking for new clients. So, when/how to know when to give up?

[@jonevansauthor]

I would hate to think you put in that level of effort and gave up. I don't think there's a valid answer to when you 'should' give up on querying but I'll leave that to Seth. I do think that if you've got 35 beta readers who like it, you should be exploring publishing it as an indie. If you look up his list of clients, you'll see that's exactly what Shirtaloon - and Daniel Greene - did (and it sounds like several of the others). It works extremely well. The indie community is hugely supportive. You might have great reasons for wanting to go trad, but giving up because you haven't found someone when you could publish yourself seems like it would only cause you to be upset.

[@sethfishman5599]

It’s not giving up. It’s recognizing that there are lots of reasons books don’t get published and this is a moment to view the first as a crafting opportunity and put it in a drawer. You are a stronger writer. The new one will be even better. No need to pay editors too, especially if you have even 3 beta readers who you trust.

[@LunaLight4]

@@sethfishman5599 thanks for the reply! I should have mentioned this was not my first book. I've finished three already, but never tried to publish them because I took them as practice novels, and believed I could do better. This one I'm certain is high enough quality to belong alongside other trad published novels. I might go down the indie path, but I wanted to avoid having to do everything myself marketing-wise. The editor I worked with was to elevate the prose and fix small issues which might have been caused by the fact that English is not my native language. She was a big name in the industry, now working as a freelance editor in her retirement, so when she assured me this was a worthy novel I believed her. In the end I am discouraged not from writing but from querying. I completely understand that agents must use automatic responses, and I understand why it takes weeks (months?) to get a response. But, after 100+ queries I'm just done, and that goes for both this book and any other I might write.

[@LunaLight4]

​@@jonevansauthorthanks for the lovely words of encouragement! I'm considering going indie but it's a scary endeavor.

[@cynicalnoloc5122]

Thanks man; as a dude that always wanted to write and one day publish a book, you made my day

[@starwarssyl1177]

This was so interesting! Would love to see more!

[@TinieMassive]

Really productive video, super insightful, thanks guys!

[@jimbrown5387]

Thank you for this video. This is half-full of great info.

[@arthurfleck9457]

great interview! my question has to do with seth talking about how publishers not exploiting audiobooks fully. he didnt really get into any details but i would love to hear them!

[@GanchoGod]

I thought your hair looked lovely when I noticed it being longer at the start of the video :) Don't hide it!

[@salvosscullstreet267]

Great interview, and great tangents! Thanks!

[@Hakujin_0]

More Seth please!

[@cameronkinsella6981]

This was such a good video, Daniel. As someone in the editing trenches on my final draft, my question is: Assuming a debut manuscript has a good story the aspiring author is confident in structurally, how polished does it need to be on a technical level before it's sent out to query? Obviously editors will be involved in the process later (assuming you go trad) and it's not a good idea to submit it as a wall of ugly text, but I feel like I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum. Obsessing about every paragraph, comma, and little pedantic detail. Sometimes I wonder if it's unnecessary and I should trust that it's good enough and the story works, that I shouldn't run the risk of making the prose too technical, cold, and clinical. But other times I worry that; "If agents can tell whether or not I'm a good writer on the first page based on prose quality alone, and my prose isn't 8/10 minimum across the board, therefore agents will reject my manuscript because they have SO MANY submissions to choose from." What's Seth's take on how unpublished author's should approach this editing conundrum with regards to querying?

[@Notanotherbooktuber]

Love this content and the oppenness you have surrounding your publishing journey, Daniel. Seth, I would be interested in hearing more about the sustainability of being a career literary agent and getting started. What qualifications did you have (or not have but dove in anyways) when you first began acquiring books to sell. How did you gain experience and connections? Did you begin at another agency and then branch off? What advice would you give to someone who would like to make the shift from editing small literary magazines to agenting. While there are some similarities, I know it’s a different world, but agenting is my long-term goal, whether being an assistant or an associate or a lead.

[@lethentucker]

Happy birthday my dude!

[@ryanaustin1576]

This was sooo helpful! Thank you!

[@hawkname1234]

This was really great!

[@edsnark3781]

Great interview, very helpful! My question would be : I have numerous literary projects that I'm working on at once, when reaching out to try and get my work published, would you recommend singular separate pitches for each completed work or would a pitch with multiple works increase the odds of being published? Thank you.

[@BelowTheFray]

Traditional publishers blowing on a bullet trying to get it to move. What a great metaphor!

[@SwagDragon1]

With the increased cost in both binding and paper in the industry, it seems like smaller debut word counts are becoming more and more prevalent for books. Pre-pandemic, 140k words for an epic fantasy debut didn’t seem crazy. Now common sentiment is that anything over 120k words is seemingly a death sentence in the query trenches. Can Seth speak to how often word count comes into the equation when a query gets pulled out of the slush pile, and if it matters more now than before?

[@sethfishman5599]

This is a great q and will take a longer answer. Kindles allow for longer books. Self pub for longer books. Audio buying habits thru credits for longer books. Print, less so. They don’t want to charge too much. It’s a thing.

[@antonioandrade459]

Hi, Mr. Seth, how are you? My name is Antônio, I'm a fantasy writer from Brazil. With the first two novels from my trilogy already published here in Portuguese, I was wondering how I could go about to get them published in the US. Although I am fairly confident on my english skills, I fear translating it myself wouldn't be ideal (imposter syndrome?). What do you think I should do? Translate it myself and find a lit. agent? Help :)

[@branmuffin164]

Question: What should you do if your book is way too long for a debut (250K+ words)? Split it in two? Put it in a drawer / give up on trad? For me, I don't think it's possible to cut 100K words and still have it be the story I want to tell, so I am trying to figure out what all my options are.

[@sethfishman5599]

this is a pretty complicated answer because there can be many correct ones. for selfpub, longer is fine. It increases the value of the audio, as well. Trad pub does have issues with longer books simply because of the cost to produce the books, but there are exceptions. That said, many people can cut 100k words from their work. Or split into two. Some can't. So that's a different thing.

[@branmuffin164]

@@sethfishman5599 Thanks so much for the response and for making this video with Daniel! I really enjoyed the discussion and hope we get to see more like it!

[@spinnerling]

Question for future interviews! What are some red flags when looking for an agent? What are some red flags agents look for in applicants? Same with green flags.

[@sethfishman5599]

don't go with any looking for exclusive looks. or people wanting to take your money.

[@mergansermagazine]

Awesome to see this

[@reidszimmerman]

Wow this is such a a really good video

[@summerhanfordauthor]

Thank you both for a great interview. My question is about presales. I heard they used to work well on The All Mighty Zon because you got credit for all presales on release day, so a big algorithm bump. Now they count in real time. You already have a ranking before a book goes live. So, to presale or not to presale? (Also, is that a thing that an agent negotiates?) Thanks!

[@sethfishman5599]

if you have a launch date, then presales count toward week 1 sales, no matter what the ranking says.

[@summerhanfordauthor]

@sethfishman5599 I didn't know that. Thank you, that's very helpful. Do agents negotiate anything to do with presale or is that entirely the publishers prerogative?

[@sethfishman5599]

All and more. It is YOUR job. The agent is an extension of you. And it’s the publisher. But publishers aren’t necessarily the best at something.

[@CheyenneSedai]

I know about the industry quite a bit from the author side because I keep up with a lot (and Print Run) but I am interested in it on the agent side as well. How would you even go about finding an internship there? I'm interested in bringing an agency to a country that doesn't really have that, but I also know that the first advice they give you as an author is 'if you're signing with a new agent, make sure they have a good mentor' so how do I go about finding that person as someone who is interested in maybe agenting?

[@chickentenders531]

Question: What advice do you have for playing the long game as a developing young writer in creating epic length SF/Fantasy novels while simultaneously refining your craft of writing?

[@sethfishman5599]

Cliche but: read what’s working, read the classics, find a writer group you trust, write write write and don’t be discouraged.

[@chickentenders531]

@@sethfishman5599 Makes sense. Thanks a lot for responding!

[@SHR0UD-e]

Great video cheers. If an author self published a trilogy that didn’t sell at all, would that negatively affect a new book if I were to look for an agent? Even if it’s a banger?

[@sethfishman5599]

nope. even if it were a dud.

[@seamountain5]

The gobos appreciate your insights

[@AndyBestHP]

One of the hardest things to hear during submissions is the 'not good enough' angle and all the material on standards in the literary/prose/originality sense. The reason is that at the same time you are encountering it, and I mean in general, in advice, on agency sites, in their blogs etc., they are all putting out books in your genre that do not get anywhere near those standards. There are reasons for this, the industry jumps on built-in audiences, for example. I would just prefer honesty. After a big run of being in subs space and paying attention to 'the biz', the only conclusion that fit was that open submissions is where agents go to cosplay having values. I should clarify that I'm doing relatively well there, that run ended up getting three full manuscript requests, one of which has been passed upwards for a (pending) final decision. But if I could turn back time i would spend the two years indie publishing the book, going hard at it, and having people read it. Then maybe build off that for a run at trad. And to be fair Seth does talk about this in the vid.

[@AndyBestHP]

I should add that for that indie route, Daniel's interview with Evan Winter is especially good.

[@nazimelmardi]

Probably the greatest idea of yours in the year.

[@sLePpInG]

What about international authors that write in english? What differences that it has? Would you take on a foreign client?

[@urigatt6815]

My question: Thoughts on representing authors from outside the US? Some countries don't have a single author who has an american agent (but they definitely hunger for it) Is that something that interests you? Does it interest other agents?

[@leonardadams5633]

I've been getting into reading and writing short stories recently. If I wanted to publish a short story collection, would I approach an agent with the collection as a whole or with each individual story?

[@sethfishman5599]

The whole. But I’d focus on getting those stories in magazines or online locations first.

[@AsiniusNaso]

Question: it seems like a lot of the ‘alternate’ routes for getting a literary agent are becoming rarer (conventions and twitter pitches for example) are we all condemned to the query letter trenches? Are there other ways of finding a lit agent you recommend? Appreciate this talk, thanks!

[@sethfishman5599]

Honestly I feel like it’s way more accessible. 10 years ago there was only print querying.

[@bbh6212]

Question: How can you tell if a book is good enough for querying?

[@sethfishman5599]

You can’t, sadly. Lots of books are drawer books and that’s ok. But it’s ready to send when there aren’t issues you have with it. And it’s been read by beta or friends.

[@bbh6212]

@sethfishman5599 Thank you for the response.

[@Luka2023-]

A week without fantasy news is a week without… wait a minute. Sorry wrong video

[@andrewwright64]

Question for Seth: What’s the market like for adult many world/portal fantasy?

[@ziloe]

I noticed he didn't mention that publishers won't touch any submissions that already have ISBN numbers (pending sales), which has me wonder if things have changed, or if it was just something he overlooked when sharing his thoughts

[@sethfishman5599]

They will. They do. I’ve sold them. They just take over the isbn. It’s totally ok to self publish, and sometimes it helps.

[@ziloe]

@sethfishman5599 Ah, okay! Interesting. So, is this a modern update, to accomodate the current publishing landscape? Maybe it was a product of looking down on Indie, that's since eased up in intervening years? I always worried that with a lack of any real marketing behind me, self publishing would be like throwing my book into the void 😅

[@hauntedmasc]

Long hair solidarity mate! The early awkward phases are the worst, but you'll get there. And honestly, I think it would look really nice on you.

[@alexklotz3980]

Can't wait for Joel McHale to play this guy in the movie version of your life.

[@Kreamcroque]

Did anyone found the link Seth mentioned about the blerp. I can't find it!

[@zachbirch1545]

My question is: is living overseas a barrier to getting published? I’m American but looking for opportunities to live around the world

[@efrenenverde]

So he's an Agent Literally???

[@kredonystus7768]

Hi Seth, Is it more on the author's not producing it end or publishers not wanting it end that fantasy is so lacking focus or specificity? The novels I want in fantasy are an Oceans 11 heist or a Hateful Eight bottle. While fantasy kinda has that it always has all this extra stuff that takes away from the genre focus like Lies of Locke Lamora and Mistborn 1 are sold as heist novels but they are really fantasy novels with a heist in them.

[@Glokta4]

Strange Planet and XKCD, when will we see a Daniel Greene webcomic? I'm sure Seth can find you an illustrator.

[@shawnlanphear3588]

Interview part 2 👀

[@AndrewSlice219]

What is an easier/better pitch? A stand-alone or a series?

[@sethfishman5599]

Write what you want to write. Don’t plan based on this.

[@LoganJSchinbeckler]

Assuming I have absolutely no following (I don't even have twitter or facebook and I've never shared my writing), is there a way to get an agents attention (that isn't creepy) apart from just wirting a good query letter?

[@Nasser851000]

The Goblin Host must have many Secret Agents 😎

[@samreilly6602]

Does he happen to live under the grand line by any chance…

[@malbanakwaly2765]

Maybe a more general question: I'm from germany and i assume a significant chunk of your audience is not from the US. Is the advice given at all applicable to other countries in the "western" cultural sphere? What similarities stand out across different markets, what glaring differences are there? Question is not germany-specific, am asking for other countries as well for my european buddies :) Of course I'm aware that publishing in german, over here in germany will have unique challenges and benefits the english publishing space does not have, just like every other non-english country, but specifically the sff space seems to interact more between languages than literary fiction does. I mostly consume content in english cause german media and specifically youtube offers way less for my tastes, which creates this weird thing where i know way better how the US functions compared to my home country. If your agent doesn't have the expertise for a question like that, just skip it :)

[@yourmajestyswill]

How do you feel about co-authors? 👀

[@roos3222]

What’s the cat’s name, Seth?

[@sethfishman5599]

Betty and Holly.

[@ga4667]

The goblin hoard get an agent!

[@zyxel2]

Tilly Walden :(

[@dontdoit6986]

Could male written epic fantasy balanced with a heavy romantic arc stand a chance in this market? Thanks.

[@sethfishman5599]

Yes! Already happening. Romance has been here forever. It’s not a competition, tho I can see how it might seem that way. It’s just about readers and what they like.

[@watcherofthewest8597]

Not if your a straight white male

[@per-c8229]

I'm not in the industry but as a reader I would love to read it, As much as I search for hard sci-fi written by fem presenting people I also look for romance written by male presenting ones =) just avoid "breasting boobily" territory I think you'll be fine

[@colarola7223]

"Because I've read it 10 times, all the way through." You've read The Wheel Time in its entirety 10 times? Really Daniel? Really? 🤔😄

[@theskepticai3653]

Seth, Can I called you "Smith"? Agent smith.

[@watcherofthewest8597]

1619 project is pure hustorical destruction. Woke publishing sucks... And its why thry are dying.

[@Notanotherbooktuber]

Love this content and the oppenness you have surrounding your publishing journey, Daniel. Seth, I would be interested in hearing more about the sustainability of being a career literary agent and getting started. What qualifications did you have (or not have but dove in anyways) when you first began acquiring books to sell. How did you gain experience and connections? Did you begin at another agency and then branch off? What advice would you give to someone who would like to make the shift from editing small literary magazines to agenting. While there are some similarities, I know it’s a different world, but agenting is my long-term goal, whether being an assistant or an associate or a lead.

[@sethfishman5599]

this is a bit too big a query for here. i have some advantages, being able to crash on my aunt's couch in nyc while finding a job for 3 months, but once you're in and going for it... Well, agents work hard but have bigger rewards? Editors have to leave companies to get promotions (often) and there's a ceiling to their salaries and success. An agent can literally have their first client become [insert big name author] and you're in great shape. That said, it is HARD to get a list spun up. It takes about 5 years, to where money flows in enough from clients to sustain -- if you're building your list and have 'normal' successes. Still, best job in the world. Just gotta hustle and be willing to trust your gut.