Literary trends and publishing predictions for 2024

[00:00:00] ELISABETH WEED: The debuts that are working they just feel really fresh in the voice. I think they can be a little weird. I always say a thimble full of weird. Like I'm not somebody who can go really kind of out there.

ANNE BOGEL: I could not have articulated a thimble full of weird.

Hey readers, I'm Anne Bogel and this is What Should I Read Next?. Welcome to the show that's dedicated to answering the question that plagues every reader, what should I read next? We don't get bossy on this show. What we will do here is give you the information you need to choose your next read.

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[00:03:04] Now for today's conversation. I'm so excited to introduce you to today's guest whose work you are likely familiar with even if you didn't realize it before today. I'm talking with literary agent Elisabeth Weed of the boutique literary agency, The Book Group, about today's literary landscape, what trends is she seeing, and what do they mean for readers and writers right now.

We talk TikTok, narrative voice, the exact right amount of weirdness in a novel, and we also make predictions for 2024 that I suspect you are really going to like. Elisabeth also shares her perspective on helping the right books find their way to the right readers. And she shares a few of the titles she's most excited about for late 2023 and early 2024.

I know how much you enjoy a good behind-the-scenes look at the factors shaping today's literary offerings, plus a few choice book recommendations on titles you might otherwise miss. This is a good one. Let's get to it.

[00:03:59] Elisabeth, welcome to the show.

ELISABETH: Thank you so much, Anne. I am just delighted to be here. I'm such a fan of yours, and I'm so appreciative for everything you do for books and for people that love books. So thank you for having me.

ANNE: Oh, that is so kind. I have been looking for a reason to get to talk to you on air for ages, and this is really the perfect topic. I'm so excited you could be here today. And we're recording this in a moment in time where you're getting over the flu. I was just telling you I'm no longer recording on Sudafed, so hopefully that'll be a little more coherent. But this is what it's like to podcast in the winter.

ELISABETH: Yes, when I'm no longer on any medication for the flu or bronchitis, but I do have laryngitis, and as I told you earlier, my kids keep telling me I sound like Marge Simpson, and I'm taking great offense to that. But I hope my voice holds out for our hour. I'll do my best.

[00:04:55] ANNE: Well, I do admire that your children are referencing the same pop culture icons that we did in my youth.

ELISABETH: Yes.

ANNE: Yeah, some things never change, apparently.

ELISABETH: That's right.

ANNE: Including razzing your parents. Okay, well, I hope they're bringing you tea while they're poking fun at you.

ELISABETH: They are. They're very sweet.

ANNE: I'm glad to hear that. Well, Elisabeth, we really thought that right here at the beginning of the year it would be such a good time to talk about what's happening in the publishing landscape. Specifically, we've never done an episode on publishing trends and publishing predictions, but I am always interested in hearing what you have to say about what you're seeing about the current landscape. And we thought that'd be so fun to do today.

But first, let's back up. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself? We just want to give the reader a glimpse of who you are professionally.

ELISABETH: Absolutely. So my name is Elisabeth Weed, and I am a partner at The Book Group, which is a boutique agency in New York City. Four of us founded it nine years ago.

[00:05:59] My colleagues, Julie Barer, Faye Bender, Brettne Bloom, and I were all assistants in the publishing world and would find each other after work and have drinks together and talk about how one day we would love to form an agency together.

So we formed about 10 years ago first by moving in together. We were really nervous because we were all really good friends and we didn't know what that would do, you know, becoming business partners would do to our friendship. So we moved into an office space together and sort of made sure that we really did want to get married. And we did.

So The Book Group was born. We've grown it. We're now 11 people at the agency. And it's just been really, really fun to see something that, you know, you built yourself have success.

[00:06:52] Before that, I had worked at various agencies along the way. I really love what I do. I love the work of agenting. I think you wear many hats as a literary agent. I think the most important one is obviously knowing the market and hopefully having good taste in what is working. But I also think, you know, there's a place to take chances.

I love working with my authors. I'm really blessed to have just, I think, the best clients in the business. You know, the way I sort of approach the relationship between agent and author is like we're a team, you know, and we're... I keep using the marriage example, but I'm like, any good relationship. Like we've got to really be able to talk and communicate and, you know, really think strategically about careers and next books and where we want to be.

[00:07:51] I also really love the publishing business. I mean, it is a social business. As I'm sure you know, a lot of books are sold over lunches, a lot of relationships are formed over lunches and drinks, and learning what editors are interested in and what makes them tick. So your literary agents are editors, we're matchmakers, we are champions, we're bad cops, sometimes we're therapists.

I'm just in awe of my authors who can produce the things that they produce and I'm just lucky to be along for the ride and get to read and champion them and think strategically and on the business side of things of how to better market and publicize their work. So that's me sort of in a nutshell and sort of what an agent does and what our agency does.

[00:08:52] ANNE: Oh, that's great. I'm laughing at the marriage analogy, but it does seem so apt because you are indeed emotionally, logistically, and legally bound to your clients in a lot of ways. And also I love to hear the heart behind it too.

We have a wide variety of listeners among us. So some of them are intimately familiar with the workings of The Book Group and some of them don't at all pay attention to who is agenting the books they love to read. But I'll tell everybody now that if you could browse the bookshelves at The Book Group office, you would recognize so many titles that you love and that we have talked about on What Should I Read Next? And we'll share your Instagram account in the show notes because you feature your work all the time.

Now, many people know the basics of what a literary agent does and you hinted at some of it, but I'd love to hear a few things you do on a typical Wednesday afternoon that many readers just don't realize are involved in agenting.

ELISABETH: Absolutely. I know. Sometimes when I tell people what I do, they say, "Oh, I want your job. You get to read all day." And I said, "I wish." I was trained at sort of an early age that that was just not something you did during the workday because there are so many other things to do, and reading was done in your evenings and on your weekends, which they are.

[00:10:07] I will say as I've gotten older, I do try and take every day about an hour and a half, what I call my quiet time where I take an hour and a half and I move away from my computer and I do read because otherwise it's just really hard to stay on top of it just on the weekends and in the evenings.

But I would say typically, you know, I try to connect with one or two authors a day. I'm a phone person. I love talking on the phone. I think you get more out of a phone conversation than email, you know, if I can.

And it can be anything from, for example, I was just talking to an author who she has a two-book deal and she just delivered her first book and she's batting around ideas for the second book. And we hopped on the phone and we talked a lot. She's a thriller writer.

I'm noticing a real trend towards not necessarily like super dark and super bleak. I'm noticing a trend toward, you know, lighter mysteries, I think voicier novels. And this is an author who really can pull that off. So I had suggested to her to really push into that voicier space, and she really liked that idea. And what was really cool about it is that she came back with... I can't tell you the idea yet because I don't want anyone else to take it.

ANNE: Of course not.

[00:11:29] ELISABETH: But it was such a good idea that I'm like, "You must write this book". After we get off this call, I'm going to call her editor and tell her what the idea is, and I know she'll be really excited about it. So that was just really cool. I love that creative piece of it.

But there's also I'll typically have a marketing and publicity call for a book that's coming out, you know, in eight months, and that's with the publisher of that book and their marketing and publicity team. And typically they'll send a plan for the book, you know, what their plans are when the book comes out and before the book, because there's a lot that goes into sort of setting up a book.

I think sometimes people forget you sell a book and then it's slated to get published at the very earliest, like a year later, because you want to get the book edited, copy edited. You want to get a cover for the book. Hopefully you're going to get a galley for a book, which is sort of a mocked-up version of the book, you know, ideally eight months before the book is out.

[00:12:27] And that's used as a marketing and publicity tool to get blurbs, to send to booksellers for the sales force at the publishing house to really chalk it up. I mean, it's used for all sorts of things. From there, you know, really thinking very clearly... you know, and it's not a cookie-cutter thing. Like every book has a different marketing and publicity plan.

One of my jobs is to push for more things on that marketing plan. There's a budget and you gotta just be, as an editor said to me, she's like, "One of your strongest things, Elisabeth, is you're not afraid to ask and then ask again when you don't get the answer you want." I said, "I know, I'm sorry, but I can't help myself because if you don't ask, you never, you know..." You always have to ask. That's sort of my rule of thumb.

And most times team at the publishing house is excited to work with you and they want the book to work. And so it really is a collaborative effort.

[00:13:27] Gosh, what else is there? I mean, there could be days where I'm in the office, I'm actually in my home office today where I have galleys in and I sit down with my assistant and we're like, Let's write handwritten letters to all... you know, we brainstorm, who do we want this to go to?

It could be authors for blurbs, it could be booksellers that we know really like this type of book, it can be media people. You know, your publisher is doing that. But I really do believe in the power of a handwritten note and that sort of hand-selling thing that happens in a bookstore, when you walk into a bookstore.

And it's a little bit of doing that early on because you never know what's going to pique someone's interest and then, you know, catch fire somehow, right? Somehow that person is writing for the New York Times and wants to review it, or that person is going to make it a lead title in their bookstore and really promote it, you know, whatever it is.

[00:14:25] So I do think those things, even though they're time-consuming, matter. I'm sure there are a lot of other little things, but I'm not going to bore you with going over contracts because that's my least favorite thing to do. Luckily, we have a legal team that does everything for us. So we don't actually have to do that ourselves. But that and, you know, chasing money. I have a wonderful assistant that chases money down for authors.

The other big thing we do is talk within The Book Group. We have an editorial meeting once a week, we try to do a marketing and publicity meeting every other week, which is really just to sort of compare notes on what's happening in the publishing and marketing landscape, because it is often changing, whereas, you know, some lever getting pulled and the marketing side last month might not actually work next month.

[00:15:19] The final thing I just want to mention, because I'm really proud of it, we started... and this was really for the younger... we have amazing younger... I mean, I'm just now turning 50, so I have a lot of younger colleagues now. But we started implementing a once a month where we bring in a guest speaker to come talk to the agency. And we kind of think of it as our like continuing education.

We had the head of marketing and publicity at Random House last month. And then last week, we had the fiction editor at the New Yorker come in and talk. Next month, we're gonna have somebody in the sales force at one of the publishing houses come in.

So, you know, I think a lot of it's just really having your finger on the pulse of what's working and also making those relationships and continue fostering those relationships.

ANNE: That's so interesting. And I'm sure we have so many listeners right now who are thinking, "Oh, I wish I could sit in on those meetings."

ELISABETH: I know, exactly. I know. It's like, can we open this up? No.

[00:16:22] ANNE: You just put that on Instagram. Elisabeth, you've been doing this for a long time. And I'd love to hear... knowing that you've seen a lot of trends come and go, the technology is evolved a lot, even over relatively brief period of time, what do you find interesting about the current literary landscape that we're all in?

ELISABETH: That's a very good question. I think there's been a lot of kind of doom and gloom about publishing. I think, you know, COVID was actually a boon for books. They were up. People were reading more because they didn't have a lot else going on.

And now that COVID is hopefully behind us, you know, I think that the sales are sort of flattened out across the board. I think there's a sense in the market that it's just harder and harder for, you know, a book that isn't going to get everything, you know, whatever that is, a book club pick of, you know, sort of all, you know, the red carpet rollout of publicity. It's really hard to make a book break out.

[00:17:27] I feel, and I've said this to the younger agents in our office, we can't control that, right? We just cannot control that. But what we can control is what we choose to take on. People are continuing to write really good stories. And that's really what we can control.

I'm seeing some phenomenal work come from my authors lately. These are things that are making, you know, their publisher or a new publisher really excited. I really think even though there's sort of been this downturn as of late, I think I am hearing from the people on the publishing side that at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

We've had dips before, we will have dips again, but we just have to keep doing what we're doing. I mean, not to give you a whole history of publishing, but I would say when I started out in publishing, there were very different levers that could move a book.

[00:18:32] I mean, I hate to say it, but it was sort of a pay-to-play situation where your publisher could decide, I'm going to pay for what was called co-op in a bookstore. This is like in Borders, which is no longer in Barnes & Noble, you know, in any of these big box stores. And then that book was going to... you basically paid to make sure your book had visibility.

That doesn't happen anymore. That's just really, really gone. So now visibility is really online. But I think there's something really exciting about TikTok. I think there's something really exciting about the fact that readers can decide this is the book that we are loving and, you know, make a change.

I think Instagram influencers who fall in love with a book and start talking about it, it's just a different way of going about it. So I think we just have to sort of roll with the changes. Again, I just believe at the end of the day, those good books will find their readers. and word of mouth is still a very powerful tool.

[00:19:35] ANNE: I love to believe that personally.

ELISABETH: Yes.

ANNE: That books find their audience. And I hope that part of what we do here is make it easier to put the right book in the hands of the right reader because that matches everything.

ELISABETH: Absolutely. I mean, that is why you're so successful. That is why you have such a huge following. And that is people want... they want to know what to read, and they can come to you and be guided. You're a trustworthy source. And so that's it. You're a perfect example of the ways in which these are positive things.

ANNE: Oh, well, thank you. That's very kind. I'd love to hear what trends you are seeing that are impacting the marketplace right now. And you mentioned a few. We were talking about that thriller that had the lighter and voicier approach.

ELISABETH: Well, yeah, right. And thrillers I just feel like... I mean, can we read another domestic thriller? I'm out there, right?

ANNE: Because we've been there. And before we talk about what we're seeing now, I'd love to put that in context a little bit and take a walk down memory lane. Are there trends that come to mind that you and your peers might've been like, "What are we going to do about this? Oh, no, this is the industry now," that have come and gone and people are still reading and it's all fine?

[00:20:46] I mean, obviously, I think a big one is... this isn't a trend exactly. But I know many of us remember when it was posited that the e-reader was going to kill print books. And we all know that hasn't happened. They're doing just fine. Are there any trends that have come and gone that we can look back nostalgically at today?

ELISABETH: Don't quote me on this because I'm just seeing it now, and I know I just gave a shout-out to TikTok. My books are not trending on TikTok. There was a time where we thought TikTok is just going to take over. I don't think it's going away, but I think it's plateaued.

I think if you look at the New York Times list, the paperback list, which was all TikTok authors for a good six months, maybe a year, maybe a year, I've lost track, it's not that anymore. So I do think that was a fear of, and I think probably the older generation was like, well, I give up because how can I compete with that?

[00:21:43] But I think things level out and I think audiences find, you know... listen, I am a fan because I am seeing young people read books that weren't reading. And I'm a big believer it does not matter what you read. I have a fight with my husband all the time because he's like, is she really... my daughter, Poppy, is she really reading...? What do you think? Is this trashy? I'm like, "She's reading. I do not care."

I mean, I grew up reading V.C. Andrews was like, you know, I still read and I will read high, I'll read low. So I just think reading is reading. I don't know if everyone will disagree with me on that, but that's my stance. So I'd be curious to see what happens with TikTok and if I'm correct there.

Listen, I think things change. I think there was Chick lit and then nobody wanted Chick lit. And now there's romcom, which is basically Chick lit with a different name. I think things just kind of reinvent themselves and bubble up to the surface. I think, you know, those domestic suspense was a big thing.

[00:22:47] I think it can still work, but I think there needs to be... I'm just saying, if you look at something like The Maid or my colleague, Faye, has this amazing book that's coming out in March called Listen for the Lie-

ANNE: Oh, I just read that.

ELISABETH: Oh, well, okay, that's an example. Voicy, right? She's an unlikable character, but she's funny and you're really rooting for her. So it's like the anti-hero kind of thing. And I think that is appealing, especially in a female character. I just signed somebody who does that brilliantly and it just kind of fell in love with it. So I think it's a little more fun and a little edgier, I think is appealing.

ANNE: Mm-hmm. And talking about micro trends, I keep picking up books about podcasting and podcasters, and that is one of them.

ELISABETH: That is a trend, right? Rebecca Makkai.

ANNE: Oh, I love that one.

ELISABETH: Yeah, it's great. I do too. And I do think, and I'm sure you've heard this from other people, but I do think the... I don't think dystopian futures are going to really work. I think we're living in a really tough time and I think people want escape. I think, you know, even if it's two dragons and romance, that's escape. I mean, I just think people want to be entertained.

[00:24:03] And I think if you look at the list, you're going to see that. And that doesn't mean it has to be light and fluffy, but I think at least... I can only speak on the fiction side because I'm dominantly fiction-based. But I think the sort of more somber, serious novels are a hard sell with everything going on in the world. You're going to read that in your newspaper and your nonfiction.

ANNE: Yeah, we're hearing that a lot from readers. I want to go back to TikTok for a moment, but it's not really TikTok. You mentioned that your books are not the ones that are really being talked about on TikTok. And it's worth pointing out that we can talk about trends and what the marketplace wants right now, but publishing is not a monolith.

It was just interesting to hear you say that this is obviously... we've all read about how TikTok has really impacted publishing the past couple of years, but that doesn't mean that you, as a reader, aren't going to be able to find books you love just because you're not necessarily feeling aligned with whatever you hear is really big right now overall with whatever, you know, populating all the bestseller lists.

[00:25:06] ELISABETH: Yeah, that is correct. Actually, I want to go back because I do want to mention a specific book of mine that did work on TikTok, and it's just a wonderful, wonderful story and just reminded me and humanity and how humanity is alive and well on TikTok.

I sold a book by a man named Lloyd Devereux Richards about 15 years ago. I sold it to an imprint at Amazon. The book did not sell well. It really didn't work at all, and the publisher did not want his second book. I tried to sell the second book to, you know, the big five and it was turned down.

Lloyd went back to writing, and you know, I kind of kept in touch with him here and there. And then he reached out to me last year about this time, actually, and his daughter Marguerite posted on TikTok a little video about her father, who is an incredible human being, who raised his kids and would go up to his attic in his Vermont house after they were in bed and work on his novels.

[00:26:15] And she said, "You know, this book actually didn't really work and I just want to give some love for this man." I'm doing a bit of a job as the TikTok did. It will make you cry. It went up to number one. I think it sold something like 80,000 copies within that month-

ANNE: What?

ELISABETH: We were able to get him onto the Today Show, which was amazing, with his daughter. And then we were able to sell his book, his follow-up book, William Morrow, to a publisher in the U.K. So that is a success story on TikTok that I was very lucky to play a small part in. As I said before, it made me remember that people out there are good and people wanted to support this guy. But then it wasn't just like, Let me support this guy, they also love the book. So it was a double win.

[00:27:09] ANNE: That is amazing. I'm so glad you shared that. And readers, I'm reminding you we will link all these titles we're talking about in our show notes at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com. You can check those out any time.

Elisabeth, I'd love to hear what other trends you're seeing in the marketplace right now. We just had your author, Ariel Lawhon, on and she and I talked about the very recent World War II novel trend and the current’s miniature wave appearance in fiction that would cover The Frozen River.

I mentioned that I thought that we were seeing more stories of friendship as being... like a real love story that's anchoring a lot of novels these days and a lot more older protagonists than we saw perhaps ten years ago. I'd love to hear, what from your role, you're seeing right now?

ELISABETH: I was actually going to say that exact thing is that we are seeing, and I think it's happening in Hollywood, too, probably not as much as we'd like it to, but older protagonists, I mean, I'm thinking about a book that I got my 80-year-old mother, The Thursday Night Murder Club.

ANNE: Yes, that's such a good example.

[00:28:09] ELISABETH: Really fun. I think The Frozen River is another example of an older protagonist. I think on the historical side, yes. I mean, I do think... I don't actually know... I'm curious from your listeners if they're sick of World War II. I do think there's sort of a diehard base of readers who just will... they'll just continue to read anything new in that space.

I think for me, I'm over it. I think I'm looking for different places. Something Ariel does so, so well, and has always done so well, is she always adds a mystery or a thriller subplot to it. So it sort of combines two of my favorite genres.

ANNE: We do hear from a lot of readers that they love historical fiction, but they have read enough World War II stories to last them the rest of their life. Unless you hand them a really good one. And then they just want to read a great book. Everybody wants a really good story. That's more important than the setting and time and place.

[00:29:09] ELISABETH: Right. Yeah. I think a strong woman in a historical setting will never get old. It's really exciting to see. And I think those work especially well. One thing that informed our cover discussion with The Frozen River was a book called Lessons in Chemistry, which if you haven't read, I think everybody's read, that was a cover that did not put an old-timey 1950s woman on the cover. And I know I have heard that the author didn't love the American cover of that.

But I would say putting a cover like that that did not scream historical fiction I think had a lot to do with its success. I mean, it's a great book, so I'm not saying it was just about the cover. That came into our conversation when we were looking at covers for The Frozen River.

Because I think there are people that don't read historical fiction, but I think there were... I have friends who were like, Oh, I don't read historical fiction, they all read Lessons in Chemistry. As they will put it, that's a historical fiction. And granted the 50s is not the 1780s, and I know you'll show The Frozen River, and you've done it before. I mean, that cover, that could be 1780, and it could be yesterday.

[00:30:21] So I do think packaging has a lot to do with that in terms of readers. I mean, I have a friend who says, "I don't do anything without electricity. I don't read anything without electricity." I'm like, "You're really missing out."

ANNE: That's interesting, what you said about packaging.

ELISABETH: Yeah. I think there was... in historical fiction, I mean, you know, how many covers with the back of a woman? How many... I can't see why. I can't do it. I can't. I'm done. And I think readers are done. I think readers are done. They just kind of all meld together.

ANNE: That's fair. I'd love to hear what you are seeing right now as far as debut novels are concerned.

ELISABETH: You know, I think this falls into kind of what I was saying about voice-driven. But I think, you know, the debuts that are working they just feel really fresh in the voice. I think they can be a little weird. I always say a thimble full of weird.

[00:31:19] Like, I'm not somebody who can go kind of, you know, really, really kind of out there. But I think books that, you know, play with form and play with a protagonist who maybe you haven't seen before I think is really appealing. I have two books that I'm going to go out with in some point in early 2024. And they both have protagonists that are just a little off-kilter. And I find them very refreshing because I haven't seen them before.

So I would say, I think to break out of the noise and to break out of, you know, what right now is... again, I really don't want to be doom and gloom about it but I do think because this last year has been a little harder, inflation has made everything more expensive, publishers are... they're just, you know, tightening their purse strings a little bit and just being a lot more thoughtful about what they're taking on.

[00:32:16] So I think whatever it is has to feel really fresh. And that's really hard to articulate more than that. I know it when I see it. And I'm sure you've heard people in the industry say that to you before. And I know it's probably an annoying answer, but you know it when you see it.

ANNE: I think we do know it when we see it. I have to say though, I could not have articulated a thimble full of weird. I'm going to remember that. Yes.

ELISABETH: I could probably think of some examples. Oh, I can. Two books that I read, this one had more than a thimble full of weird, but I loved it, Big Swiss.

ANNE: I haven't read that one, but it certainly had a premise that you wanted to talk about. It's very memorable.

ELISABETH: Correct.

ANNE: I can't tell you what a lot of titles I've only heard of once or about, but like Big Swiss stays with you, the premise.

ELISABETH: It does. I think a book that came out, gosh, it was a couple of years ago. Night Bitch was something that if I told you the pitch, you'd be like, I don't know. I didn't want to read it. It's about a woman who thinks she's turning into a dog, but it's actually about motherhood. And it's really well done. I think certainly younger readers are gravitating from that.

[00:33:24] ANNE: One of the books I really enjoyed this summer was Emily Habeck's Shark Heart about a newly married couple whose relationship is upended when the husband realizes three weeks in that he has a mutation, that means he will transform into a great white shark, and soon. So that really put me in mind of Night Bitch and... I don't know, I think both those books are more than a thimble full of weird. What do you think?

ELISABETH: I was going to say I think we need, like a Dixie cup of weird, I don't know, coffee cup. If the author can pull it off, and in all these examples they do, you go with it, you know? I mean it's like any good book you're in, right? If the author has done their job right, you believe and you're just along for the ride. And that is so cool when that happens.

ANNE: Something I find myself saying all the time to readers in search of a certain book or deciding if a book is for them is that timing is everything. How is that true in your work?

[00:34:21] ELISABETH: Timing is everything. Everything. Yes. From when you deliver a book and what month the publisher decides to publish it in. Could it be a month that, say, a book club needs a book sort of in that genre? And that makes it makes or breaks it.

ANNE: When you say a book club, do you mean like Jenna and Reese?

ELISABETH: Jenna, I mean Oprah.

ANNE: You don't mean like my mom's book club?

ELISABETH: No. Sorry. Thank you. I mean, Jenna, Reese, Oprah, GMA are not working quite at the level they were when they first started. I don't think I… just my general sense, but it's a little bit. One of my authors says it's like getting the lottery ticket because it just gives you that much more exposure, you know, television exposure and you just can't get otherwise.

I think, you know, timing in terms of going back to your question about trends, Julie Baer, my colleague, her author, Rumaan Alam, had written two books and then he wrote a book called Leave the World Behind. And it came out kind of right around COVID. Talk about perfect [storm?]. I mean, it was a great book but it also had perfect timing with COVID and feeling like that fear of like, are we at the end of the world, you know? And it got picked up by Jenna and it got all the accolades. And now the film, if you haven't seen it, run. Go watch on Netflix. It is so stressful and I also can't stop thinking about it. So I highly recommend it.

[00:35:57] I mean, there's so many examples of timing. Listen, if we all had a crystal ball, we would be able to plan every book perfectly. So, yes, timing does matter. And I think there is a certain amount that you can control, but you'll go crazy, I think, if you tried to, you know, control it all.

ANNE: I believe you.

ELISABETH: Yes.

ANNE: What titles are you especially excited about right now that are either already out or on the way?

ELISABETH: Well, I want to mention a book that has a thimble full of weird. Oh brilliant. It's called One Woman Show by Christine Coulson. Christine worked at the Met for about 25 years and one of her last jobs at the Met, Metropolitan Museum of Art was writing the wall labels for the museum's new British galleries.

[00:36:50] And during her time doing that, and it's a very strict 75-word label, like it has to be every single one, she kind of imagined could she write a novel in that form. And from that desire, she ended up writing this incredibly sly and stylish novel all told through museum wall labels about a 20th-century woman who's an object, an object in a museum who transforms herself over the course of her lifetime.

And I remember when she called me and told me, "This is the book I want to write," I thought, "Oh God, how am I going to sell that? Send it to me." And I read it and I was... this is the most genius thing I've ever read. I have no idea how we're going to do this but I'm going to try my hardest.

We had a lot of people who really wanted it which was great and Avid Reader Press published it in October and... First of all, it's a beautiful book. The author is kind of just an incredible design eye and the cover is great.

[00:37:54] It's a short read. You can read it in one sitting. I would recommend it for any of your art or design or literary readers out there. It's a really good holiday gift.

ANNE: Ooh. I love art world stories. I'm going to read that before this episode airs.

ELISABETH: So good. I have another really fun thriller by Leah Konen that's coming out in the new year called Keep Your Friends Close which is a ton of fun. I also have my author, Allison Winn Scotch, who has written such a fun rom-com. Allison is actually... I think she might be my longest-standing client. Not my oldest.

She has a terrific rom-com coming out which is about a woman who's a celebrity who gets canceled kind of early on in the book and has to run home to her hometown and like hide. And her kind of crush from childhood who's also home for reasons of his own who is a journalist.

[00:38:58] And when they're home she finds a love letter in her house from a boyfriend and her managers and agents are like, "Okay you're going to do a story, you're going to know who this guy is and this is going to make you America's sweetheart again." So they have to go on the road together and hijinks ensue. But it's really funny, it's really warm. And talk about a book that's fun and escapist. I would highly recommend that.

ANNE: Ooh that sounds right for right now. Elisabeth, can you leave us with a publishing prediction for 2024 and beyond?

ELISABETH: One of our junior agents just asked that of all of the partners at lunch and we were like, Uh, no. But I gotta laugh. I will say I think things are going to calm down. I think 23 was really tricky with publishing. We had the Random House S&S merger that did not happen. I think obviously things have had to shake out a little bit in 2023. I think there's going to be some smooth sailing in terms of just the business feeling a little less volatile. I'm hopeful.

[00:40:08] ANNE: That it's going to calm down. You know, I didn't know that was even on the menu but I like it. We'll go with that.

ELISABETH: I'm a positive person, Anne.

ANNE: I think you have to be in your line of work. And I'm so glad that you could bring your expertise and insights here to What Should I Read Next? today. Thank you so much for doing so and being so generous with your time and expertise. It's been a pleasure.

ELISABETH: Thank you so much, Anne. And hopefully I'll get to see you in real time very soon.

ANNE: Oh, I look forward to it.

[00:40:39] Hey readers, I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Elisabeth. Find Elisabeth and The Book Group on Instagram. We've got that link along with the fullest of titles we talked about at whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com.

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Thanks to the people who make this show happen. What Should I Read Next? is created each week by Will Bogel, Holly Wielkoszewski, and Studio D Podcast Production. Readers, that's it for this episode. Thanks so much for listening. And as Rainer Maria Rilke said, "Ah, how good it is to be among people who are reading." Happy reading, everyone.