AustLit
Amy Tannenbaum is a literary agent with over 15 years of book industry experience. She represents clients who write across a variety of genres including women’s fiction, contemporary romance, thriller and psychological suspense. She also selectively takes on established self-published authors and enjoys adding value to the creation, release, and promotion of their works.
(I: Interviewer. AT: Amy Tannenbaum)
I: Can you tell me a little bit about your career leading up to signing up Kylie as a client?
AT: Before I was a literary agent, I was an editor at Simon & Schuster in New York for many years. Towards the end of my time as an editor—this was back in 2012—Fifty Shades of Grey hit in a big way, and that moment happened to coincide with other self-published books, other digital-only books, hitting the bestsellers list. And publishers started looking at those books and determining which of these projects made sense to pursue, to try to acquire for their own lists and then give them more traditional distribution.
I did a lot of that as an editor and, you know, I had to approach these authors and before I negotiated the contract, they would ask me if they should get an agent, and then of course they would ask for a recommendation. And it’s not uncommon for editors to become agents at some point in their career, so of course the wheels in my mind started to turn, and I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to make the move over to the other side of the business. So that’s what happened. When I first became an agent back in 2013, I was mostly focusing on bestselling self-published books that I could represent and then sell to publishers, who were very much interested in acquiring those books.
And Kylie’s book was not self-published. Lick, of course, was published by Momentum, a digital-only branch at Macmillan, but it was romance, and it was digital only, and it was tapping into the same audience that was reading these other bestselling self-published books.
I: Do you think there’s anything distinctive about crafting a successful career in romance fiction, as opposed to the other genres that you work with?
AT: Probably the biggest thing I see in the romance genres is that authors have a very close relationship with their readers in a way that’s uncommon in other genres. They tend to make themselves more accessible than authors of other genre fiction. They’re very active on social media, and that plays a big part into their success and them being able to spread the word about their new books . There’s also a really tight knit community of romance authors; they tend to be more supportive of each other than authors in other genres.
I: And do you think that tight knit community tends to be nationally based? Or, because Kylie is an Australian author, when you talk about that community are you talking about her involvement in an international or American romance writers’ community?
AT: I would say it’s definitely international among English-speaking authors. And because so much of the interaction between authors and readers, and authors and authors takes place online, you know, the boundaries are now broken down. It’s so easy to connect with somebody who’s halfway across the world. Of course, there’s the time difference, but it’s easy enough for these authors to connect, so it’s happening I would say across Australia, the UK, and the United States.
I: So, when you read a romance manuscript, how do you think about suitable editors and publishers? What’s your strategy for acquiring romance authors? Is that distinctive to the one you use for acquiring other kinds of genre authors as well?
AT: The number one thing is that, of course, this is a business. You want to feel confident that the project will tap into a large audience, so the publisher will feel the same way and therefore acquire the project. I would say that’s true across all genres. Of course, for non-fiction projects, you know a level of a person’s notability in a certain field they’re specialising in, but generally in fiction it comes down more to how well the story is told. However, with self-published authors, for the first time ever, agents were able to represent new authors who had an established following. Or authors who hadn’t previously been traditionally published but had hundreds of thousands or even millions of readers before they ever teamed up with a traditional publisher because they were able to build up that audience while they were self-publishing.
For the first time, you’re essentially selling something that was market tested, which you never could do for a new author before. That had really only existed for authors who had been publishing for many years and had an extensive track record.
I: Kylie’s book is mostly talked about as a contemporary romance, but it’s also talked about as new adult. Have you ever hesitated about whether a novel should be pitched as romance, or are the genre or category markers still quite clear?
AT: I would say that even if something is categorised as new adult, it’s new adult romance. So, it’s still under the umbrella of romance, and new adult was invented many years ago but never took off, and then with the eruption of the self-publishing boom in 2012, that’s when it came into use. And that’s when publishers really started using that label, but it has since dissipated a bit.
Retailers didn’t really know what to do with that label. They weren’t sure if they were supposed to be shelving it in the adult section or a young adult section . I don’t know if they didn’t want to create a new adult section or they just didn’t have the shelf space to create a whole new separate section, but on the retail end of things, it never really took off. So now we’ve mainly reverted to labelling these books that were new adult just simply contemporary romance.
I: What do you think makes a great romance? I’m interested in how you might represent romance writers differently to the way that you would represent writers working on other genres, because of the criteria for evaluating the merit of the genre?
AT: From a commercial business perspective I would say that the differences, for me, are more about how the reader tends to read these books. They’re very voracious, more voracious than I’ve seen in any other genres. These readers will read a book, maybe two books a day, and for them it’s an escape; it’s entertainment. So, you want to create a product, a book, that delivers on what they’re looking for, which is happily ever after.
In other genres, the readers aren’t necessarily looking for a quick read. They’re possibly willing to invest a week or two weeks or even a few weeks in a book. They’ll sit down, they’ll read for a short period of time. It could be a slower, more thoughtful read, and that’s not to say that romance is fluff and there’s no literary merit—I certainly don’t think that’s the case. I think often that’s the label it’s given unfairly. I think a lot of these writers are enormously talented and there’s a lot to be learnt from these books, but these readers are consuming a lot of these books and so you don’t want to make it too much of a challenge for them to get through the story.
I: Were you a romance reader before you began working with the genre? How did you learn to recognise the signs that this book would work for the readers?
AT: We never read romances in school. I didn’t even really know it existed as a genre. In high school, actually, we were assigned Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I remember reading Rebecca in high school and being completely blown away and thinking this read is completely pulling me in . I’d never read anything like it. That was pretty much my one and only experience reading romance, and I didn’t even know it was romance. The teacher never labelled it that way, so I didn’t even know what I was reading. Then I went to college, I was an English major, and we never read any romance. And then I was interested in working in book publishing and it just so happened that my first job was at Harlequin. I’d never read a romance as far as I knew other than Rebecca before getting that job. But that was like my crash course and full exposure to the market, and I worked there for a year before working at Simon & Schuster, and it wasn’t until Simon & Schuster that I started reading these books.
And I think once I started working with these self-published authors and became an agent, that’s when I started thinking about the market and how the readers are reading. But even when I was at Harlequin, I was taken aback by what was in these books. I couldn’t believe that these things existed. My whole life I was walking by them in the library and old ladies were checking them out and I had no idea. But I don’t think I really thought about the behaviour of these readers until later on.
I: Can you describe for me your first encounter with Kylie Scott and with her novel Lick?
AT: She was recommended to me by one of my other clients at the time, Joanna Wylde. I don’t know if Kylie’s told you about how the two of them connected. Joanna is an American author; she recommended that I read Lick and I did and immediately offered her representation.
I: Kylie’s Stage Dive series was first signed, as you know, to the digital imprint Momentum. Can you tell me your memories about what led to its acquisition by the Macmillan group?
AT: It was a situation where Lick was selling enormously well, and so she was very much on the Macmillan radar internationally. The first step for me was to reach out to the Australian branch, letting them know that she was interested in continuing with Macmillan but wanted to have a US-based deal. And then me getting in contact with the US branch and then coordinating across the divisions to make it happen.
I: Were there any other publishers interested or was it pretty much straight through to Macmillan?
AT: There was another publisher who had an editor who, on her own to another publisher, had reached out to me to express interest in Kylie. But our desire was to stick with Macmillan if we could make it work, and since it did work with them, I never went out on submission to other publishers.
I: And in your view, what were the results of that change of publication model, from the digital-first to the more traditional publishing model?
AT: The biggest thing was that she was going to keep her digital distribution. Her editor was US-based, and she was getting different covers for the US market, versus what they were using in the UK and in Australia. It was a more global [and thoughtful] approach to her publishing and to each branch, thinking about what would work best for their market.
I: How important do you think Kylie’s nationality has been in her career thus far? Do you think of Lick as an Australian novel?
AT: That’s a very interesting question and the answer is no, because it takes place in the United States. And I don’t remember the original version even having any sort of Australian language or flavouring to it. It felt very American to me. Her books since then … of course she’s Australian so things will slip into her works that do feel Australian, but we’ll fix it. I shouldn’t say fix, but we Americanise it. So, yeah, that’s an interesting question but I don’t think of it as Australian.
I: Is there anything else that we need to understand or know about Kylie’s recent career or this book or working in the broader romance community?
AT: Well, although I don’t think of this book or any of her books to be ‘Australian,’ I do think it’s been beneficial for her to be Australian, in the sense that I think she’s getting a broader audience as a result of that. I do think that her Australian following is stronger than it is for US-based authors. And yet, US readers, I doubt they’re even aware she’s Australian. Or if they [are], they don’t care—they think of her as just a great contemporary romance author who they’re excited to read. So, I think in that respect she’s benefited from being in Australia, and publishers certainly don’t hold it against her that she’s in Australia at all.
This interview was undertaken as part of the Genre Worlds project. Genre Worlds is an ARC-funded research project undertaken by Professor Kim Wilkins, Professor David Carter, Associate Professor Beth Driscoll, and Professor Lisa Fletcher.
For more information on the project, go to the home page.