Pub Talk with Jane Novak

Pub Talk is an interview series where we chat to some of Australia’s most experienced and influential people in publishing and the arts.

You’ve been working in publishing for over 25 years. Can you tell us a bit about your journey through the industry to where you are today?

My parents were booksellers in Mudgee, country New South Wales, and I started working in their bookshop when I was about 13. After high school I moved to Sydney to do the obligatory arts degree and began working for a couple of independent booksellers—Shearers and Ariel. I began working behind the counter, receiving and returning stock but eventually, I was promoted to buying. My first introduction to the publishing industry was via these meetings with publishers’ sales representatives. I learned how to select the books that were right for the bookstore, how publishers marketed books and the impact that publicity could have on sales. It was at this point that I began to really take notice of how the industry functioned as a whole.

I started in-house at Pan Macmillan in about 1996–97 as a publicist, and I spent 12 to 13 years there. I was working on everything from kids’ books through to military history and fiction, non-fiction. That was really good for me because, like a lot of people my age who were interested in books, I was a bit of a literary snob. Working with genre fiction writers gave me a real appreciation for the craft and I credit publisher Cate Paterson for that lesson. As a publicist, you’re dealing with almost every aspect of the publishing house (publishers, editors, marketing, sales people), and then every aspect outside the publishing house: booksellers, media, festivals, so you get a real bird’s-eye view of how the whole industry works.

Every publisher has their own culture and their own way of doing things, and an agent’s job is to be across it all so they can explain that to a client.

I spent another seven years working for Text Publishing and then I just got a bit tired! I didn’t want to leave the industry, but I didn’t know where to go next. I knew I was done with being a publicist but I didn’t feel that publishing or editing was right for me; it wasn’t in my skill set. Incredibly I found myself in the lucky position of taking over Barbara Mobbs’ agency. Barbara is nothing short of an industry legend and had been an agent for 51 years. I’m still pinching myself that she considered me a worthy successor. When I began agenting I realised that, despite having previously worked very closely with authors, I’d never looked at the industry from their point of view before. This sounds like a really obvious thing to do but when you’re working for a publisher, as much as you’re an advocate for the authors, your first responsibility is to that business. I realised very quickly that even authors who’d been published multiple times really didn’t know very much about how the inside of a publishing house worked. They didn’t know what publishers and editors did all day, and many of them had a romantic view of publishers swanning into work with a danish and a latte, curling up on a couch to read for the day. When I explain to clients that publishers have to do all of their reading on their own time—on the bus, at night and on weekends—they’re quite shocked. I hadn’t understood what an opaque business it is from the outside; it’s hard to explain all the moving parts of a publishing house and what everybody is involved in every day. So I encourage clients to ask as many questions as they can—many won’t, for example, have any idea what a product department does, which is a pretty vital part of any publishing house.

I can imagine even just the names of people’s jobs can be quite opaque, like a ‘publisher’ means different things in different companies, depending on how big the company is. And some places have a commissioning editor, and some places have a managing editor, and some places have neither.

Yeah, every publisher has their own culture and their own way of doing things. And some are very good communicators, while others tend to hold back on information until the last minute. There’s no right or wrong way—it’s just the way it is, and an agent’s job is to be across it all so they can explain that to a client. The number-one question from all writers is generally about time: ‘Why does it take so long? Why haven’t they read it yet? Why haven’t they got back to me? Why don’t they know when the book is going to come out?’

It’s impossible for writers to see all the different decisions that get made on a micro and macro level every day on how to schedule and position a book in the market so I try and encourage the view that publishing is a team sport, and the author is a player on the same team. We’re all on the same team, we’re all working together with a common goal, which is to sell as many books as possible and the author is just one part of that.

How do you, as an agent, match up a writer and a publisher? Say if a writer has a couple of different bids for a manuscript, or a few different options, is it a matter of knowing their different cultures and the different structures to then say to a writer, dollar amounts aside, whether it’s a good fit?

Yes, definitely. I do think very hard about the temperament and personality of the client when I’m thinking about who is going to be a good editor and manager of that project in-house. And so, wherever possible, I facilitate meetings—because there’s only so much you can do over phone, email and Zoom; you need to be sitting across from someone to get the cut of their jib, as it were.

That makes an enormous difference, particularly if the material is sensitive and very personal, such as memoir. If there’s very painful subject matter, it’s incredibly important that the author meet with the person who they’re going to be working with closely on what’s going to be a very difficult process. And sometimes I have encouraged a client to think about taking less money upfront—because, after all, an advance is just a bet against sales—because they feel more comfortable with one editor over another. Because to my way of thinking, if you get that right, if you get that alchemy right between the author and publisher to begin with, then the book has a very good chance of succeeding, and the money will come later in royalties.

That’s really interesting—that your role isn’t just about landing them the most money as possible.

No, I want my clients to have sustainable careers. And particularly for a debut writer, I don’t want clients to have a large unearned advance hanging over them, because we all know that even with the most passionate and enthusiastic publisher throwing the kitchen sink at a book, sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s very sad when that happens, but you don’t also want the hangover of an unearned advance in the mix, too. You want everyone to feel good about the hard work that they’ve put in.

What does ensuring your clients have sustainable careers look like? What sort of work does an agent do with authors outside of negotiating and securing contracts?

Well, there’s only so much an agent can do in terms of managing what happens externally. I mean, certainly you can keep an open dialogue with a publisher about what’s happening with sales, talking about maybe repositioning an author’s work or what they should do next if one thing hasn’t worked. I’m always looking for different opportunities for writers to express themselves or perhaps show a different side to what they’ve done in the past, so that they can show all of their talents because writers are amazing and they can pivot if they need to. But to be honest I also think a lot of it is pastoral care, it’s just being on the other end of the phone, or on email when an author is having a crisis of confidence. And I know agents all over the country have done a lot of that in the last two years because it’s been such a terrible time. Launching debut novels in a pandemic is heartbreaking, and there’s been so many amazing books that haven’t found the audience that they deserve.

A lot of agenting is pastoral care, it’s just being on the other end of the phone, or on email when an author is having a crisis of confidence.

What would a typical day, or week, or month, or whatever unit of time is easiest to quantify—what would that look like for you?

I knew you were going to ask me that—there’s no way to answer it! The truth is that I will start every week with a long list of things I want to get done, that I want to achieve—manuscripts I want to read, admin that I need to do, follow up with publishers, checking in with writers to see where they might be with a manuscript, particularly if they’re getting close to deadline… But then of course all number of things will happen during the day that I won’t have anticipated. You don’t really know what’s coming down the pipeline. I think any agent would say that they don’t really know how their day is going to pan out.

What are the main reasons a writer needs an agent, as opposed to trying to go it alone?

Well, I don’t necessarily think that all writers need agents. It very much depends on what the author’s comfortable with. An agent will certainly make sure that your work is seen by a publisher. Unless you have some kind of inside contact you will just end up on a slush pile and you’ll be read when you’re read. But that doesn’t mean that you won’t get a publishing deal. For example, Graeme Simsion’s The Rosie Project was submitted to the slush pile at various publishers. He didn’t have an agent and as far as I’m aware still doesn’t. It’s all about what you’re comfortable with.

But I think a lot of writers appreciate not just having someone who can put their work in front of a large number of publishers, but also, once the deal has been done, having someone who can explain how things work, and having someone who’s like a buffer between them and their publisher or editor, so that if something arises—say they don’t like the cover—they don’t have to be the one to have that difficult conversation. The agent can ask the hard questions and also explain things to them. But there are lots of authors who are happy to do that for themselves.

How do you usually find new clients? Do you seek out people who look promising, or do they come to you?

Generally, the authors come to you. Sometimes it just happens organically, where you might be somewhere and you strike up a conversation with somebody. But a lot of people come to me via existing clients. On my website it says I’m closed to submissions, but people still find me. And that’s fine, I read everything that comes into me, unless I know automatically that it’s not right for me.

And when you say ‘submissions’, does that generally take the form of a pitch or a synopsis, or a full manuscript?

All of the above. It could just be an exploratory email just saying, ‘I’m writing a book about blah, is that in your wheelhouse, would you be interested?’ Or it could be a synopsis, or it could be a full manuscript. I would never take on anyone that I hadn’t read, so I would always want to see as much material as possible. And then the other really important issue is whether or not I have got space for them on the list. So it really depends on what kind of writer they are, and what genre they’re working in, and whether or not I feel I’ve got the time to devote to them. So I’ll only take someone if I think I can help, and if they’re not going to compete with somebody who’s already on my list.

Does an agent provide editorial feedback or any kind of early notes on a manuscript?

I do, if it’s someone that I think has got potential but their work isn’t quite ready. A lot of the time I will say, ‘Look, I think this manuscript shows promise, but these are things I think you need to do before it would be ready to submit to a publisher.’ And those writers will either go away and do that work or they won’t.

When they do, it’s enormously gratifying, particularly if they’ve taken the ideas that you’ve given them and have really spent a long time thinking about the notes and working on it. I mean, I’m not an editor—that’s not my skill set—but I am a reader, a voracious reader. And so I can do that broad-brushstrokes kind of stuff, where I can say, ‘I really like this character, but I just didn’t really believe that they would behave this way because…’ Or I might say, ‘It’s a really good story, but it takes too long to get going, I was really bored for the first 50 pages.’ Or with non-fiction, I might say, ‘I think you need to flip the two halves of this book around, because the first half doesn’t make any sense until you get to the end.’ Or, ‘This chapter is just boring!’

I think it is more important than ever now to get the manuscript or the proposal as good as you can get it, so that it has the best possible chance.

I think it is more important than ever now, because editors and publishers are so time poor, for writers to work for as long as it takes to get the manuscript or the proposal as good as you can get it so that if and when it gets to an acquisitions meeting it has the best possible chance. You want to do as much work as you can before an editor or publisher reads. Firstly, because you can only read something for the first time once and secondly, so there is less work for them to do which automatically makes the project more attractive.

You represent writers at all different stages of their career—are there different functions that you provide for an emerging writer compared to someone more established?

I don’t see a huge difference in what I do for a new client as for someone already published a number of times. The conversation is sort of the same. Obviously with debut writers there is a lot more general explanation needed on how things work but sometimes I have new clients coming to me saying, ‘Look, I’ve never had an agent, and I’ve been going along perfectly well, I thought, until now—but at this point, I can see that I need to change the way I’ve been doing things, and I think I need some help with that.’ But in both scenarios a lot of the work is about being clear about what’s possible and managing expectations.