she continues to edit a few of her longtime authors such as kristen hanna mary kay andrews augustin burrows, sarah addison, allen sally hepworth greer hendricks and sarah paganin she is currently president and publisher of the saint martin's publishing group. monica odom founded her agency in 2019 after working in publishing for nearly a decade. including roles as an agent at liza dawson associates and bradford literary agency. she earned her ms. in publishing from nyu and has a ba in english from montclair state. she was also schooled and bookselling at her local indie watchung booksellers, which happened to be my local indie for any years and i just learned that she was actually married there. namaste monica monica is also a member of the association of american literary agents where she serves on the board and the dei committee. she is president of the dei nonprofit literary agents of change and it's dedicated to the holistic and intentional expansion of intersectional diversity equity inclusivity and justice in the publishing industry. anjali singh is an agent raisha pandey literary. harlem-based boutique literary agency before becoming an agent she worked as literary scout and translator and as an editor at vintage books houghton mifflin harcourt simon & schuster and as editorial director at other press she's best known for having championed mahjong satrapis perceptibles after stumbling across it on a visit to paris. she has always been drawn to the thrill of discovering new writers and among. novelists whose career she helped launch our chimamanda now god say adichie. samantha hunt and southern haddad her current client list includes the author's bridget m davis susana aloha now, he's ahmed which debut radian fugitives was recently shortlisted for the penn faulkner award. she also represents several graphic novelists in the adult and children's book spaces. to the summer field is the publisher of amazon publishing and brilliance publishing. she launched amazon original stories the short content imprint of amazon publishing which releases short stories and collections from many of the world's top authors and celebrities including margaret atwood and koontz. therefore said chimamanda adichie and mindy kaley julia announced a new imprint with mindy and amazon studios earlier this year before joining amazon publishing. she was an executive at today executive editor there and that of content and managing editor at nbc news digital. she's received a peabody and was named a finalist for the pulitzer prize. i'd like to thank jennifer monica anjali and julia in advance for considering the issues. we are about to discuss. many of which have enormous implications for our future so our first question we know the pandemic has been a struggle adversely affecting people's mental health. i'm like each of you to speak to your own experience what you're seeing among colleagues and what it portends for the future. we'll start with angela. um, well that's a really big question. i guess my own experience and i think it sort of mirrors. everyone's was just really leaning and leaning into work for those kind of almost two years. i was just in front of my laptop all the time also because we launched a side business which was a lecture management business and we represented a couple of key anti-racist educators leila saad and tiffany jewels. so we were very in-demand but what i also really enjoyed about that was it kept me in conversation with people academic spaces and people in corporate spaces and kind of really gives me a lens and to kind of things outside of publishing which i very much appreciate but i definitely felt very grateful that i like my job so much because it's it didn't being in conversation with these folks. let me kind of tune the rest of the world out. and feel like i was yeah doing things that i really really cared about but i you know, i think expensive neglecting my family for sure and then, you know more recently. i think i've been able to take some more necessary breaks and tried to get away from zoom and away from my screen and take some vacations and really regroup, but i have a tremendous amount of freedom in terms of how i structure my work life and home life and that was part of why i wanted to work as an agent and kind of not feel beholden to corporation. so that's my two cents. thank you. thank you anjali, monica. definitely echoing anjali's last statement there and you know the freedom to create your own schedule is also the freedom to create your own schedule and you know when lockdown happened in 2020. i was already working from home as a literary agent. so what was interesting is was kind of waiting a couple months for everyone else to like get there like at home setup started. i was also pregnant throughout 2020 with my first baby and you know. the nice part is i wasn't forced to put on pants and go anywhere and throughout that whole time but you know, i did miss the editor lunches and stuff like that. but yeah, i threw myself into my work in 2020. um, i sold the most books of any year in 2020, you know, and i'm still just waiting from the multiple publish, but and then in 2021, obviously i was like trying to come back from attorney leave and 2021 was a mess, you know, and i it felt like i was doing a lot of problem solving in 2021 as literary agent as like a bridge naturally right between authors and publishers. and yeah, i feel like a lot of people were hoping for and we're getting like grace in flexibility and time. you know and pushing out delivery dates was definitely a thing and then pub dates having to be pushed out was a thing. so everyone kind of just trying to stay grounded within like the immense collect of trauma. we were having but also trying to you know. recognize our humans trying to do this work, right? so i have that's all to say i feel like there's been a little bit more humanity that has come forth in the last couple years. i'm hoping it sticks around. but we shall see. that's that's interesting about humanity and people being attentive to others because again, we know that people have been struggling jennifer. what about your own experience? jennifer you're muted. when we first wouldn't thank you when we first went into lockdown and and everything was so uncertain what it felt like was living through a war. we we've lived through a war and we're living through a war and look around and see what does that do to people when you live through a war together. i think it forges stronger bonds among people for sure. i also think that we have to look around and see so some terrible things came out of this pandemic, but some really good things came out of it too. and i do that. i do want to echo what a few other people said, which i think there is a lot more sense of looking out for one another. i think there's a lot more sense of checking in because we don't take it for granted. i think that when we were able to get a little bit more work life balance because as monica said the freedom to make your own schedule, i think we made sure we didn't take that for granted either things didn't become so automatic like automatic 15 hour week commute go into the office seem somebody. sit at your desk go to lunch go home. now when we see people we're grateful that we see them now when we see someone on zoom or google hangouts, we take a moment. i think to check in because we're not taking anything for granted and i think living through a war does that to people you don't take things for granted. right. thank you, jennifer, julia. thanks. well, i mean looking back now. i think i can see some silver linings so many of our team members do creative work which can really benefit from the privacy and concentration. you can find when working from home or in a mostly empty office, which is where i'm at right now and my editors tell me all the time that being left alone with their manuscripts and submissions has really empowered them to raise the bar on the quality of their books. um, and so i i do think there is that silver lining i'll admit i also have enjoyed cutting my commute and you know, it's given me extra time with my family and i've discovered i do my best thinking wearing elastic waisted pants. um i do and and you know, i think we really miss the casual hallway conversations about projects or even weekend plans, especially with new employees who started since the pandemic. i think the hardest part is onboarding new people who don't have that short history or that and it can have a real real trouble kind of integrating and figuring out where they fit and how things really work. we do have a really strong online chat culture. and so the team is always pinging each other and trying to capture that casual conversation spark. i think at this point for me what i'm trying to be really deliberate about is managing communication flow and helping disparate teams connect the dots. i think there's a lot of fomo as we're missing the kind of osmosis that happens when we're all together. and so i mean, that's the area that lately i've been sort of focusing on at this point, okay? well, that's that's good. i'm gonna to jump to another question. because i'm not much on the skeptic in the room about yeah the the office okay, so and it's clear to me that a lot of executives want everyone back in the office. okay, they say it helps with perspective promotes team building encourages learning or it could be they have 30 year leases. they don't want to get out of i mean it could be any of those but you have that and then you have a subset of staffers who have said they don't want to go back. and and i'm just i'm i myself am curious about this. how do we go from the office is a fine place to work to a categorical rejection by some of office life. i mean who's right here and and what is the future of work going to look like and i'll throw it back to jennifer? okay, i was gonna say no one. size fall and if there's one thing that we've learned in the pandemic is that either it's executives who want everyone back in the office, but then there's executives don't and then there's a more junior staffers who want to be in the office and more junior staffers who don't so everyone's response to this has been different and it's not really based on your rank within the company. i think that's why it's and i'm i can only speak for saint martin's publishing group. i can say that mcmillan has a pilot program that is still ongoing where we're gathering information. i do notice that when people get get as much choice as possible, they're incentivized to make it to make it work. so i think there's no one-size-fits all answer and i really don't think that it's the executives that want to come back in the junior staffers who don't because i've it be both ways. good point julia. i mean, what's your experience like at amazon? i mean i think you know a multiplicity of responses, you know based on on staff doesn't matter where they're they're seated in in the company. yeah, i mean, i think most of us can really understand the contradiction in our own daily lives. i mean the desire to connect and the and the comfort and the convenience of staying at home in those elastic ways to dance. but i mean, i will say like the thing i see that we're missing is we're just not having as much fun together and i think that does take a toll on the individual and team dynamic. so i'm really trying to focus on figuring out how to make room for those lighter moments and connections when when we're still at the point of of listening and figuring out what people are comfortable with and what what makes things work best for individuals. i mean, i do think that as jennifer said it really depends on the individual some of us have gotten really good at working from home many like it many don't some want a little bit of both and i think at amazon and at amazon publishing, we're really focusing on keeping our talented team and building them further and so we're really listening to what works for people. and figuring out kind of a flexible approach to people doing their best work. yeah, that that's interesting. so anjali and monica, you're both small business owners. okay, and so i'm wondering about about this this question for the two of you. anjali i i think it i think it actually it's the same answer right which is flexibility is actually something you can bring to there in a small business and in a large business and that there is no one size fits all approach. i feel like i'm one of the good things to come out of the pandemic was this recognition that people can be at home and actually be incredibly productive. i feel very stigmatized when i had young children and wanted flexibility in my work life and wanted to work from home because it was it flew against the corporate more as in the corporate culture, but there was no good reason that that wasn't going to be okay and i feel like you know, i think companies that are like successful work places really make space for different employees at different stages of their life and who need different things, right? so um in that period of my career, i wanted more flexibility, but i wasn't necess i always gonna need that same structure in different times and i feel like i mean, i feel like what yeah young people benefit from being around older mentors and from the office structure. but also there should be room for an individual's need for flexibility too. right and i feel like figuring out how to balance that. i know this question is going to come later so i'm gonna say more about this about sort of like bringing more bypuck into the community and like what does it mean if you're not working in new york and i feel like there's lots of great ways publishers gonna kind of approach thinking about it and i feel like flexibility and creativity like publishers do not need to be so set in their ways we have i mean when i started in the business we printed manuscripts that you had to go to the office you had to have a physical nation of now you can read a management pretty much anywhere and so why we're sort of sticking to this idea of like you have to be in a physical space. however, i do think figuring out a way to balance the mentorship that comes from being around employees with more experience and the camaraderie that comes from being around employees that are at the same level like that's kind of what what the balance that we should be striving for but the flexibility is for the answer in my mind. yeah. no, i think those are those are all those are all great points and before getting to monica i i kind of laugh when i read the president of airbnb's response. to office life and i think some of you probably familiar with it. i mean basically said nobody ever has to come back to the office and by the way, you know, if we were reimagining the world right now, okay if it never existed before would anybody ever conceive of building an office? i mean what purpose does it have monica over to you? yeah, that's a long lines of what i was gonna say is like this is not a new idea at the millennial, you know being a digital nomad was like the dream and you know, definitely a part of why i was like i want this freedom. i want to be able to work at a coffee shop or like, you know on my couch or like with a friend yesterday. i worked downstairs with my neighbor who also sits at our dining room table and works in finance. we were like, what are you doing? what are you doing? so that has been really interesting. and yes seeking out ways where it's like you're not with a colleague but you're with someone else. and i will also say you know, i think it's even like gen z's influence of like what's your dream job and the response is like i don't dream of labor and you know, it's like these ideas were there and the pandemic caused us all to to spell that idea of like what we could never try that. it's like well you had to try it. it was like it wasn't the end of the world and now it's like emerging of those two things has allowed for their to be like acceptance of like you're not, you know, some irresponsible like freelancer roaming the world if you're a digital nomad, it's like very normal. so i think those things are happening and you know, i think we will get to this but acknowledging kind of the inequality in expecting someone to work from home and expecting someone to work in the office and that it's both personal preference as far as like how how productive is someone in whatever environment and sometimes someone has a tribe both to find that out and have the flexibility to try that and be trusted that they will do that work that they will do the work and but you know, if someone's working from home, you'll assume they have the internet a computer a laptop, you know things but also, you know that person might be like, i don't want to work in my house like it's more comfortable for me to work or like i live with a bunch of people. i can't work in my house like you know, i actually rented an office space in a co-working building in 2021 for a year, and i decided not to re-up it because my son was not able to go to daycare. so like we you know because everything was shut down so i decided like i would leave the home. i can't he can't hear me. um, so but i will say that was just a reminder to me that like, i don't like to work in it. it's i used to be a member of the wing the co-working space. and obviously they had other. problems that have been just the pandemic that led me to cancel my membership, but that was that was a place where we were headed with the digital nomad thing and now co-working spaces have kind of like imploded. so yeah, i think it's making sure that people who allow people to figure out what's their best style. not paternalistically like hovering over them to like monitor and make sure like, they're hitting their you know, whatever they need to hit. so i think it might require a whole rethinking of like what is performance and you know, how much value is someone's time because labor is so you sell in your time? i could i on but i'm wrapping it up. you know, these are all these are all great points so you i mean a couple of things that you touched upon here are the notion of employees and kind of where they choose to work out of and i think you know, this is what publishers, you know, all of you are kind of have alluded to this they have to wrestle with when they're talking about the future work, what's hybrid gonna look like and can how do you allow everybody to be be set up for success? equally? um, i mean, do you do you offer to pay for your employees who are working from home to offer to pay for their internet? i mean, what's all that going going to look like and i think one one person in the in the chat actually raised a point, which i think has a lot of validity and all of you have kind of alluded to it as well as this notion of the phase. it depends on what phase of your career. okay that you're in that has enormous relevance in terms of what an office might mean to you and i guess you know my takeaway in all this is like all of us have this overall conceit of what an office looks like from having been in them and knowing what it used to look like. but at the office of the future look very very different. so so another thing that be you've alluded to is this notion of remote work. having the potential okay to help the industry. diversify its workforce in a meaningful way and so my question to to again, this is for all of you. do you think that's do you think that's happening? do you think it can happen our publishers effective at recruiting? beyond what i would describe as the historically lily white publishing courses and are there alternatives that publishers should explore to diversify staffing and monica. i'm going to start with you. i'm very curious to hear what the people in the publishing side have to say. it's like as a lot to unpack here. we can come back to you. i think that the first i mean the third the first thing that comes to mind for me when you're thinking about diversity is like by region, like, you know, i would love to have an agent who works in new orleans, you know who lives in you and like just this idea that like as agent specifically like we are gatekeepers like cultural gatekeepers like frontline cultural gatekeepers and the more diverse we are as agents and you know, the more diverse the projects will be that we submit to publishers. so i think we've been talking a lot about diversity when it comes to just like, you know, like race and stuff like that but like region which is tied to race. it's a great way to think about it and moving us out of like you have to work in new york. i do think you then need to think about the level of support that has to be reimagined. i was chatting with a very senior editor and she said something very funny and we were talking about the whole like, oh like just over here with your boss is saying like outside the door like that's really helpful and it is very important. and she said that's actually kind of lazy way to teach someone though, like of course like overhearing is but unless you're gonna be like, okay, let's talk about what you overheard on that call. so i think sometimes we're putting a lot of that and what i took from her is like we actually put a lot of value on the like things that get overheard, but like unless there's something that then gets followed up and like there's a moment to be like cool like all that stuff you overheard in the office this week. you have questions. do you understand what's happening? and so that has been an interesting thing that has been in my mind. it's like, how do you replace that in a way that feels organic not forced natural like do you instead of just letting an assistant kind of sit on the call and soak things in like let them in be involved that requires us all to kind of like create some breathing space in a meeting. so there's a lot of reimagining that needs to happen. there we go. right so jennifer that's at the same martin's publishing group. i mean, are you guys having conversations about using remote employees? i mean as a means to help diversify staffing there as that, is that something that has been discussed? absolutely, and you know we we firmly believe that having. to diversity me diversity among our projects which is good for business. so this is something that we're absolutely having conversations about and we have been the same words publishing group. we've been very successful in recruiting and employing people from all over the country and we've had a successful experience with that. it's it's come out. that's something great. that's come out of the pandemic and i would love to see it continue and i think it will because it's been successful. julia well amazon publishing seattle headquarters already separate some of us including me from the new york city centric publishing community and we have editors and tennessee, michigan, maine, california as well as new york, and i'd say it's been a great asset to our business most authors and readers are not new york-based and by having team members around the country. i think we have an opportunity to to speak to our customers breath of experience is better and i think publishing folks no longer assume that if you're in publishing that you are going to be in new york, and i do think that's a real benefit to attracting a broader more diverse base of talent. um, i will say it's been a lot easier for for you know, somebody who is a veteran in in their role them moving and working remote like that's kind of a no-brainer. i think the thing that we need to really work on developing a structure for is onboarding new talent remotely where there's less of that support system what kind of training and and visits to the office can we sort of make a system for in order to help support them in their success? yeah, i know rachel deal from publishers. weekly is listening to this conversation. i would just throw out to her. i would say i would love to see report down the road just about publishers and their their success at at diversifying at recruitment. okay from metro's outside of new york. i actually want to believe that that's happening anjali. what do you think? yeah, i want to i mean, i love monica's word reimagining right? i feel like there is a whole reimagining that needs to happen. um, yes, i think it is really wonderful to create more racial and regional diversity, but if people are gonna be working outside new york, i mean, it's already been an endemic problem in our industry a lack of mentorship, right? everyone's pretty stretched then and what monica was alluding to is a kind of passive membership, right like you do it and you learn it by overhearing and i feel like this is kind of type tags on to another question you have later on paul about like what should publishers do with these record prophets and i'm like, you know what they should put some infrastructure in place to actually support people. it's one thing to recruit them and it's another thing to actively mentor like, why don't we have someone who's actively like ahead of diversity who's recruiting but also creating some kind of internal mentorship programs. i like monica's, you know, like idea i've met you having organically but one of the pandemic after effects is just doing like everyone is burnt out and everyone has too much and editors that used to be responsive are not responsive because they can't keep up with what they're being asked to do, right? so i'd like to see instead of bonuses like that money being put into creating like we haven't gotten so corporate as an industry. but like where is the support for managers? where is the training? where is the support for younger staff? so i mean i feel like this is kind of like an old bone of mine, which is that we're bringing in a lot of young assistance of color, but are we really changing the systems and from a top-down way is actually going to give them the tools that they need. um, and and yeah just the tools and human kind of like the human mentorship, which is what it's going to take to get ahead in this industry because we know it's all about relationships, but also those of us are pretty senior and industry know a lot about how it works and i feel like i can do it because i'm in a small space trying to control my time, but it's much harder and environment when i feel like you get to be really good editor and then a manager and then you're already doing too much. and then how do you kind of add on something else? and i feel like maybe the solution is is rethinking some of these roles a little bit. you raise a lot of a lot of points that i want to unpack some of this so. so we talked about at the outset how all of us are doing a better job of checking in with our with our colleagues. but you know, none of us are trained as social psychiatrists. okay, and and many of us get promoted into positions of management, but we have no experience managing people. so anjali when you talk about infrastructure when you talk about tools when you talk about support, that is absolutely publishers need to have a laser focus on and then in terms of recruiting. i don't know my experienced publishing is that you know, i haven't seen them. they're not knocking out of the park when it comes to recruiting. i used to get in trouble when i used to try to do my own recruiting. i would post you know openings on on the internet and i would get you know. in a heaping lot of trouble. so so all these are our issues that you know need to be need to be dealt with but since since you did bring up this this notion of record profits we can spend a little time talking about that because it's true publishers did report record products this year last year the year before that. i mean, it's just like they're swimming and money and yet employees have said there's been no evidence of trickle down gains for them. so here's the question. should employees share more readily in these profits? how should these profits be utilized anjali you already spoke to this in part, so i'm going to give it over to to jennifer. i don't think it's true that. money and profits are not trickling down to employees. i don't i don't think that that is the case. i'm speaking for the saint martin's publishing group and i can say that. every employee in good standing received a bonus in at the end of 2021 every single one from the most junior newest employee all the way up. so that is on top of an already existing bonus program or a holiday bonus. it's on top of as an aside you need to have a comms initiative going to to get that out there in the world because i'm not sure i knew about that that anybody else knew that everybody else at saint martin's got a bonus was somebody else about that. martin says always been known as a really great place to work and this is in part. why? it's nice to hear. that's nice to hear jennifer. i don't i don't think there was a reason i mean there we're gonna write a press release about it. we just did it, you know. yeah, but i it's true. we can we could have that we could argue about that, but i think good news should be shared and i know that. when when prh? gave upon assist to employees for fifty shades. it wasn't a secret. it was it was trouble. this is not a secret. the fifty shades also came to mind. but jennifer i would just say and this is something that i comes up on our dei committees is i think it's great one that feels like oh it's not secret but it's not anonymous. we gave people money. i think if you were to make it public in something to celebrate in a way, it would encourage other publishers like kind of is like, all right, guys, you guys gonna meet us there. so it's almost like you're positive influence. it allows for it to proliferate instead of kind of just stay within your company. and so i think that's great but spread the word. spreading it now clearly yes, it's good. does anybody else wanna add anything to publishers and profits or should we should we move on? the need for like a collective voice, especially the younger folk who are resigning and you know stuff like that, but this is happening in other parts of the industry like booksellers and stuff like that more so but talks are happening for sure. i would i would say and you know. that is you know, just throughout the country and all industries, but yeah, we have to be thinking about that and you know my mind encouraging it, but you know preparing for union negotiations, you know what i mean, or a thinking way and maybe there won't need to be union negotiations, right but that's where the younger people are at. they are collectivizing so to say it's good. i'd love to hear that. so another thing that all of us have been reading about and paying attention to is. i mean john carp wrote about it in when he was addressing his this company about burnout. i mean are feeling fatigued. and so i'm wondering you know if if that's something that you've observed from colleagues if it's something that experienced, okay, and generally, how should should this be be handled? should it be handled, you know by companies should there be an effort a corporate effort to to address this? i will start with the julia. well, i i don't think public publishing is definitely not alone in feeling burnout and reporting this kind of thing, but i think across industries. i mean, it's just i think it's really important for leaders at all levels to act as role models in the space. i mean in order to avoid burnout we need to encourage people to take breaks take vacation time. take the time. they're given and help the team prioritize. i think when you know, don't play a martyr. i make it clear when you are unplugging and be a role model for that and that it's okay. um, i went on a vacation to costa rica for spring break and we were whitewater rafted into a resort and i literally was no electricity or wifi. that's how far i went to unplug and and make it clear that that was possible, but i think that when folks on all across all levels of leadership do that it shows that time away from work and balance is value to cross the board and i think on this issue of burnout, i found that really doubling down on career development plans and conversations has been really important. i think burnout often happens not just from workload, but when people don't see a path to their next step and they feel trapped and disenfranchised and i think this takes more than just good intense from an individual or a manager but having a mechanism for this at an organizational level and i mean as for the industry, it benefits all of us to develop and retain the best talent and it's a loss all of us when good people leave because they don't see growth opportunities. i see angela anjali nodding a lot here. so i'm going to throw it over to you. i don't know if i have anything to actually said it you said it really well, but i do think editors like there's all there's been like merging right and what people are going through like having to do double jobs, and i don't i again i'm like why these record profits being used to create more support systems and mechanisms for editors because i think of editors don't have the like um, yeah, they just don't have the time in the day to respond to authors and respond to agents. that's that's really a problem like that is kind of fraying the network and the relationships that kind of keep the business together. and also we do need to be having more fun. we all do i just a writer's conference in alaska was so fun. really we're gonna get to the fun. but first i'm gonna say one simple thing that we've done is there are company sponsored days off where we close down. they are mental health days. they're given by mcmillan and they say, okay we're closed this day this day this day throughout the calendar year and that way people like our company's close. there's not going to be any emailing or work required on that day and that has been just a very simple but i think very effective tool to combating burnout when we're all staring at screens. yeah, so really needs to be like champ, you know, trumpeting more. yes, it's true. i'm gonna work and say i i just left trade publishing and i want to go back and work and say martin's now based on everything jennifer saying to me, but i will just say jennifer. i think you and i are probably the elders in the room here. and so i loved it when when monica was talking about collectivizing and i think one of the problems historically with publishing. okay. julia said people have to take the time but historically in trade publishing the expectation was you would work from nine to five then he would go to a reception and then you would read at night. okay there there was no hemming that in and i think what is happening and i see this is a trend is that the younger generation okay, the collectivizing generation. they're actually putting mile markers down and they say you know what? i don't want to have to go home and read before hours. that means i'm working 16 hours a day. i mean has any does that make sense to anybody else? does anybody else on julia? i not i know that's true. and i feel like it's a kind of a conundrum because there is no way. you can pay someone to read 16 hours a day. but i've seen what that means is that those editorial jobs that end up becoming much or entry-level jobs end up becoming much more admin happy because the where the like boundaries are coming are coming around the sort of extras right and that the reading is the extra and i don't really know. i don't actually know the solution is there but i but like from anecdotally i've heard editor say i don't ask my assistant to do x y z editorial work and i was like, okay, but then they're missing out in this really valuable mentorship piece right because there's only enough time in the day for them to do the kind of day-to-day adminant. we support that you need but i don't have the solution. anything from you monica? i totally lost my train of thought please come back. oh wait. no, i do have something and so the word that i feel like has so one. the thing you always tell clients your first sign them is like publishing is historically glacial takes you forever like that just it is like the timeline is the way you do things and yet there's this like extreme sense of urgency with every email and every project and julia i loved your point about like help the team prioritize by setting your own boundaries so that the team can be like, all right, we were you know, and you know the more and more you treat everything with urgency the faster you're expected to work the faster everyone else around you is expected to work and the more they're expected to work and that's what's expected in order for you to get ahead and so like having us having a shared mindset about like what is actually urgent. like, of course, there are things that are actually urgent and almost coming to the table. well and i feel like as an agent you're like, i get with the publisher saying i get with the client is saying i'm telling you this is not urgent. it's not something i need to handle in the next hour. everything's going to be fine. so it's like having that big picture. sense like throughout the whole industry though, right like it's fine. but of course this thing needs to rush so there's a time to build on momentum and let momentum flow but one of my new clients like one in her signature is like i do not operate from a place of urgency and i encourage that which seems to work very good. i just took a post it and wrote what is urged on my computer. so that's gonna be my mindset going going. someone said to me in publishing early on they said lives are not at i think that's true. good point everybody. so i think each of you at some point has has said the word fun fun. so and i suppose you know people can make the argument that the pandemic has has put a cap on but a cap on industry fund. there's there's no more lunches of arraya no more drunken ubers no more lavish book parties, you know, no more events at all except on zoom where some of us wear pants and some of us don't but it embedded in that absence of fun publishers. haven't been spending as much and they've been making more money the bad news for. humans, is that the social fabric seems to be fraying a little bit. okay at the edges. and so i mean, this is a broad question, but like what will it take for the for the industry to kind of come back and and and and be? the former fund version of itself and or does that even matter? jennifer i don't think it will ever look the way it did in. fall of 2019 i don't think that they will there will be that level of travel or that level of that many parties or that many lunch dates when we found that it is just as effective to say to an agent. hey, do you have half an hour to meet on a google hangout rather than you know, travel hour, you know half an hour to midtown have lunch half hour back. i think it'll never look exactly the same but i think the good thing is the parts that we liked the best about it will find a way back this very special lunch that you might have with an author who's in town and who gets to meet a few members of the team. i think those things will come back, but just the everyday of it the everyday. it's tuesday night another party. that won't come back. i think that when it the social things in person things do come back they'll be very they'll be more rare and they'll be more special. yeah, it's funny when i look back on that on my former publishing life. it seems like did that even happen was that even real? anjali anything well, i'm not on the corporate side. i do hope that this isn't going to be an excuse for publishers to be like, no you can't have lunches anymore because it is so special important for young people having building those relationships and a zoom call really isn't the same as a lunch date, you know, and it's like it is the getting up from your desk the being in space being in another space right like yeah you're traveling but you're also thinking or reading or doing things in that space and that's the thing i missed the most when i was literally from i don't take my kids to school. i didn't have to stop working. i was like in front of my laptop from like nine to six and it's not it's really not right and i mean jennifer you probably are right. it's probably never gonna be at that same level, but i also hope that this you know paul you like you you posted as a special publishers. are they gonna like just take it all away now that they don't have to do it, but i think something really it is a really important part of how we yeah, how we relate to each other as an industry, but especially young people getting to build the relationships outside of the company. i think it's very important. can make another point too. i think that it's important that in terms of all the changes that have come from the pandemic. we tend to go into all or nothing thinking like it'll it'll be completely like it was in 2019, or it'll never be like it wasn't 2019. nobody will ever be back in the office or you know, young people will never get a chance and there's i think we have to think of things not in all or nothing terms. i think that we can now intelligently look pick and choose the things that are the most meaningful whether that's our schedule whether that's how often we socialize and i think that's the silver lining of the pandemic. we've we get to learn a lot we get to really take from it what we want and we can we can have a lot more agency over what's important to us and how we want to act within this new normal. yeah. that's that's a great point. and i think it does so the pandemic, you know for for all of us for you know introduced. things that that we like, you know, and and should possibly remain at all. so kind of put a spotlight on outdated ways of doing business, you know, so on a forward. basis julia. what do you want to get rid of? what do you want to keep from the pandemic? well, i'd say it took the pandemic to break me of my printing habit, and now that i've been forcibly trained not to print manuscripts and documents. i feel too guilty to go back. so i think that's one change that's gonna stick. i think i think one lesson in all of this has been that we've gotten smarter about what types of meetings maybe don't require being in person or maybe not even be structured as a meeting at all. i mean, i think jennifer is so right that you know, we're in this moment. we're listening. we're learning we're figuring out what works best and what drives the most value i definitely have found that things like updates or trainings or brief things like those don't need to be meetings anymore. that's not like that much value for people coming in and having that experience, but it's also become really clear that other types like, you know require a personal interaction conflict mediation performance coaching team building. so i think we're trying to be really deliberate and and plan person to person time that really adds value whether that's like corporate meeting style or whether that's social it's really about what helps us do our job the best and brings the most creativeity and fulfillment for teams. yeah, i had a theory that you should only have a meeting if in the absence of one someone was going to die. that was like my theory on meetings. because that's one framework jennifer. what do you got? is that is that a question of should you have meetings if i'm just like the pandemic? what was good? what was bad? what do you want to keep? what do you want to get rid of? i personally speaking for myself want to keep as much flexibility in my schedule as as possible. i honestly i don't miss commuting 15 hours a week. i do miss seeing some of my colleagues in person and i'll try to make that happen wherever i can i love to respect and honor other people's needs what they need to be the most effective at that job if that is being able to come in or if it's being able to be left alone it i think it really helps to look at everybody is an individual and to make the assumption and to trust your team and to trust that everybody wants to do a good job. i think sometimes when there are mandates that come down it's not trusting your team. nobody. nobody gets employed by a job by a company wanting to do a bad job. everyone wants to do a good job and our role as my role as a manager is to help people to to achieve that i mean everyone is a ball of growing some weaknesses and managers need to maximize people's strengths and minimize their weaknesses and i think individualizing people is what helps so this is going to be the lightning round where we're gonna go to questions from are viewing audience, but i love you know, my takeaways here time urgency trust. i mean you guys are are brilliant so directly to the first question and i think we want to try and keep our responses tight here panelists so we can get to all of them and let's see what the first question here is the pandemic seems to have forced the industry to reevaluate the value potential and online author platforms. firstly here panelists thoughts on how they're rethinking ebooks what tech solutions they want to see more of and/or what their pain points are for them in in this new digital world, julia. i had a little bit of trouble hearing you. as you said that would you mind repeating that question. i'm sorry. so basically the pandemic seems to force the industry to reevaluate the potential of ebooks and online author platforms. so and any thoughts on that, you know terms of you know, sure, if that's the case. i mean i would say earlier early in the pandemic. we were seeing you know a lot of people reading more on ebooks or in audio than they had previously because of just the convenience and not being able to go out to book stores, but i think it's all sort of balanced out. obviously, you know, obviously we're still struggling with supply chain issues and figuring out how to best bring print books to the market, you know environment with environmental considerations as well as labor shortages and all of that, but i don't know that there's been some reckoning on that front. i think it's know it's really about reader preference and about whatever format is working best for the reader and i think most publishers are fairly agnostic about format at this point. great. okay. going to jump to another question here. what does the panel think about the publishing industry adopting a hybrid model going forward for things like author readings during the pandemic zoom readings became more popular necessary and many publishers report that they have been able to reach wider audiences via use of technology. is this a byproduct of the pandemic that may prove valuable to the industry on a forward basis jennifer. yeah again, i think it's it's we have to individuate this. i think there are some cases when there will be when an author reading in person will be the best way to go about it another time when it when it can be over zoom. i think the nice thing about the pandemic is we've never would have known that that was possible without it, but i think it's opened up a lot more avenues for us. so i'm not sure that we should say we're now adopting this as a group. i think we have to look at it on a case-by-case basis and appreciate the fact that some new avenues have opened up. monica i know that you've had experience. working as a bookseller and actually working on events. how do you feel about this on a forward basis? yeah, i know my local bookstore just started doing in-person events again. i'm gonna see david sedaris next week very excited, but you know, i think it has created the ability to do digital events has created. the ability for like creative partnerships a client of mine mend a hearts had a book coming out about healing from racial trauma in the workplace and she partnered with an organization called the crew and it was bringing it was you know, very well targeted bringing those two platforms together. and of course there could have been a bookstore event or something like that, but the crew itself was an existing community platform. so it was basically like creating a book event within an existing community platform and with platforms like mighty networks and you know, there are a lot of just really nuanced communities and that we can partner with to create these digital events. and because i have felt like some bookstores have done it better than others, but it's been a little difficult i think and there's zoom fatigue and it's just so much of a book event is like in person like the vibe is like you feel so alive. and that's a bummer and to have it happen on zoom, but so much can happen on zoom. i will say what i don't love is it's like the real life book events like we don't do those anymore, and we're now just doing digital, but we're actually that's not really successful either. so we're really not going to do much and it's like ah, that's not the answer. so yeah, so i think it just like work events. the future will be hybrid. they'll be in person. they'll be they'll be virtual and i think that a lot of authors have actually realized that they can they can access, you know as many or more readers virtually and it's not as taxing because god knows, you know travel these days can be really disastrous with what's going on. so anjali this next question is for you, which is interesting to me. what about elevating literary culture in cities outside of new york? what this how do we do that? okay, i know anything about cities outside. no, i don't know i mean i just wanted to answer brief like the the hybrid thing. it was definitely the case for my authors that they got to do bookstore events in bookstores that their publisher never would have paid to send them to right like most authors. don't get any publisher support for a book tour like it is really the exception to the rules. so in that sense it the hybrid thing opened up more elevating literary culture outside of new york. that's a big and big question. i don't think i have a good answer to it. right right. i mean you talk about i mean, i i just think about my own experience and publishing. it's like you never talk. there are certain metros. you always talked about and there's a whole subset of other metros secondary church in metros that you don't talk about and yet there are readers everywhere embedded. yeah, and i think it's one of the things i really liked about. being an agent of being so hands-on. is that like, okay i publisher's gonna do a lot of they'll do national, right but like we agents are kind of helping to step in for a regional markets often and i find it really interesting like i've done outreach i've called. know npr in detroit and then like i haven't detroit author right? like it's there's so many spaces that we can sort of help fill in and there are all these spaces that the publishers are kind of ignoring. so i think the answer is it's up to all of us to to elevate literary culture in the cities outside of new york. the authors have the connections there, right and i tell everyone what i meet writers and mfa is like your job is to become part of a literary community wherever it is that you live volunteer your local literary festival start literary festival working your local bookstore people. don't think about bookstore just being part as being like when they want to be writers, and i'm like we think pictures are very important because there are and like they interact with the buyer that i support your local stop. it's pretty good right? no work in a bookstore. so everywhere on that note i am going to thank everybody for your participation today. i i do i do i have to read this this comment because it's just you know, and it it's regarding urgent versus important. someone has written. it's a book not a kidney on ice and i leave all of you with with that thought. we love books. we love publishing namaste and i will see each of you around a virtual room. i'm sure down the road. thanks very much. thank you. thank you. bye-bye. welcome to the us bookshelf. i'm christopher. kenneally host of v