You have to stay true to your taste

There’s been a real churn of anxiety within the publishing industry this spring. Book sales across most categories are much lower than publishers expected as consumers struggle financially; the romantasy trend isn’t waning but the most successful books are with independents rather than published by the Big Five; BookTok determines the bestsellers list (which is farther out of the control of publicity & marketing departments, or the money publishers allocate to ad spends.) Publishers are struggling to sell books to readers, and in turn, struggling to figure out what they should buy from agents for readers in 18 months to 2-3 years from now.¹

There are many ways to be a literary agent, but in terms of signing and sales, there are two ways to look at this job.