159. Being an Editor in Romance: An Interview with Esi Sogah from Kensington

Sarah Wendell:  Hello, and welcome to episode number 159 of the DBSA podcast.  I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, and with me today is Esi Sogah, senior editor at Kensington Publishing.  On my way out of the hotel at RWA this year, I rode the escalator with Esi, and she’s been working on romance for her entire career as an editor.  I thought she’d make a great podcast guest, and I hope you agree.  We talk about her Romance 101 conversion kit, which convinces people to love the genre as much as we do, and we talk about diversity in romance publishing among professionals within the industry and in the books being created, and a special bonus at the end:  what the musical Hamilton can teach the publishing industry.

I want to say a special thank you to Michelle Alerte or Alert – I hope I’m saying your name right.  She asked some of the questions that I asked Esi in this episode.

And a special housekeeping piece of information:  if you would like to sponsor the podcast or the podcast transcript in 2016, you can sponsor an episode, you can sponsor the whole month, you can sponsor two weeks or, heck, the whole year!  Please email me:  [email protected].  I would love to hear from you!

This podcast is brought to you by Signet Eclipse, publisher of Bonded by New York Times bestselling author Laura Wright, returning to the Triple C Ranch for more cowboys, romance, and danger.  On sale September 1st!

The podcast transcript this week was sponsored by Married Sex, a novel by Jesse Kornbluth.  When a husband convinces his wife to join him in a tryst with another woman, there are unintended consequences in this sharply observed, erotic tale about the challenges of modern marriage.  Now available in paperback and eBook formats wherever you buy books!

The music you’re listening to was provided by Sassy Outwater, and I will have information at the end of the podcast as to who this is and where you can buy it.

And now, on with the podcast!

[music]

Sarah:  So would you please introduce yourself and tell the lovely people at home who you are and what you do and how awesome you are on a scale of 1 to 10?

Esi Sogah:  Hello, everyone!  I am Esi Sogah.  I am a senior editor at Kensington Publishing.  I would say on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of awesomeness I’m, like, at least a 22.

Sarah:  Oh, gosh, you know what’s really sad?  I just realized I have been mispronouncing your name for, like, years now.

Esi:  Oh!  Really?

Sarah:  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  Oh, I’m so sorry.

Esi:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Dude, seriously, no, I feel really bad.

Esi:  No!  Lots of people do that, actually.  Lots of people go accent on the second syllable.

Sarah:  Well, it, it makes sense, right?  I mean –

Esi:  It’s probably not wrong.

Sarah:  No, but then, like, my name is Sarah, S-A-R-A-H, and the accent is on the first part –

Esi:  Right.

Sarah:  – and your last name has the same vowel/consonant pattern, and I should have –

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – followed the same pattern, but no.

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  No, no, no.

Esi:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  So names aside, you are an editor.

Esi:  I am.

Sarah:  For how long now?

Esi:  For ten years!

Sarah:  Dude!

Esi:  I know!  I –

Sarah:  Dude, that’s, like, Mesozoic era.

Esi:  And I’m still in romance.

Sarah:  That’s so great!  Thank you for doing that!

Esi:  No, I mean, I spread my wings a little bit since coming to Kensington and, you know, I dabble in a few other genres, but yeah, romance is, it’s where it’s at.

Sarah:  Have you always been in romance?

Esi:  I have, I have.  I started, my first official job in, in publishing, not, you know, internships, was at Avon Books.

Sarah:  Whoa!  So how long were you there?

Esi:  I stayed there for, like, seven and a half years, and then I went to Kensington, so yeah.  I was there through the eBook revolution.

Sarah:  Oh, nothing really changed.

Esi:  I was there when we used to, you know, send our copyedits on paper –

Sarah:  Dude!

Esi:  – with red pencil.

Sarah:  Things are way different now.

Esi:  Oh, yeah!  Absolutely.  Absolutely.  My office, like, one, you know, one or two entire bookshelves would just be stacks of manuscripts.

Sarah:  It’s a little different now.

Esi:  Totally different!  I have one filing cabinet.

Sarah:  Just one?  Just one!

Esi:  Just one.

Sarah:  Whoa!

Esi:  No!

Sarah:  Do you still sometimes print out manuscripts?

Esi:  I do still sometimes.  You know, the thing that happens editing on the computer is that I get really bogged down in little things, especially ‘cause I’m a big, like, grammar and punctuation nerd, so I will find myself sometimes, if I feel like I’m sort of losing the thread of the story for the semicolons, I will print it out, but I usually print double-sided now.  You know, I definitely, probably do the majority of my editing now on computer, but I was a late adopter to that whole thing.

Sarah:  So I have a question from a reader for you, actually.

Esi:  Oh!

Sarah:  A person whose name is Michelle Alerte – and I hope I pronounced that right – asked me on Twitter, because she is really curious about becoming an editor.

Esi:  Okay.

Sarah:  Sarah, I’m a huge fan of your podcast.  On one episode, being a book review editor was mentioned.  Any advice on breaking into it?  I’m an editor and writer for magazines and would love transition to fiction.  Getting paid to read books is a dream.

Now, she’s asking about being a book review editor, which is not the same as being a book editor, but I wanted to ask you, how did you get into book editing in romance?

Esi:  Yeah, so I am probably not a typical path to publishing story, only in that I didn’t know that publishing was all that I wanted to do, and I actually knew very little about it, and if not for my grad school advisor, I probably would not be in publishing.  But when I was in graduate school, I went to Penn State for grad school to get my Masters in English, and my advisor was like, you don’t want your Ph.D., and I was like, I don’t.  You’re right.  So –

Sarah:  I’ve been there.

Esi:  [Laughs] So, you know, I think I was taking a copyediting class at the time because, as I said, I’m a big grammar/punctuation nerd, so she suggested that I look into publishing, and she helped me get an internship at the, the Penn State University Press, and then when I was there, she also contacted me and told me about the Columbia Publishing Course.  And so I applied, I got into that, I did the Columbia Publishing Course, where I met many lovely people who are still in publishing, and at the time, I don’t know if they still do, but at the time, if you took the publishing course, you got an informational interview at HarperCollins.  So I went in for my informational, and it was, like, 9 a.m., I think, on a Wednesday morning, and I still, mind you, I still knew very little about publishing, and so they asked me what I liked to read, and I did say romance, and it turned out that someone had quit the day before, so I went in and interviewed the next day with the two editors who would end up being my bosses, and I started the following Monday.

Sarah:  That’s not typical.

Esi:  Yeah, exactly.  But it was one of those things, you know.  I was in my boss’s office for my interview, and she was like, which of our authors do you read?  And I looked at her shelf, and I was like, apparently all of them?  Which was the first time I even sort of put together that I’d mostly been reading Avon books in my growing up years, ‘cause that’s what my mother read, although she probably couldn’t have told you that, and I just, I got really lucky, right place, right time, and I think there’s no better way to learn about publishing or editing than through romance or another form of genre fiction, ‘cause you’ve just got to jump right in.  I think I got my first three authors my first week.

Sarah:  Dude, are you serious?

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Whoa!  That, that’s like you didn’t just dive in, you kind of cannonballed into the deep end!

Esi:  Basically, yeah.  I dove right in.

Sarah:  So at Kensington, do you mostly work on romance?

Esi:  I do!

Sarah:  So tell me more about that, please.

Esi:  Yeah, I do a lot of romance at Kensington.  You know, when I was at Avon I did a lot of historicals and paranormals, and now that I’m at Kensington I’m doing more contemporaries and some romantic suspense, but then I also do some mystery, which has been really fun.  I hadn’t done any mystery before I got to Kensington.  And then also some sort of, like, general women’s book-club-y fiction.  It’s fun, you know, it’s, it’s nice to just sort of dip my toes into other ponds and see, you know, what I like and see what applies from everything I’ve learned in romance to other genres and what things from other genres I can apply to the romances that I work on.

Sarah:  Ooh, ooh, ooh, yes, please!  Can you tell us some of the books that you are working on that you’re really excited about right now?

Esi:  Oh, gosh.  Everything?  Is that an acceptable response?

Sarah:  Absolutely.

[Laughter]

Sarah:  Of course that’s a totally acceptable response!  Go ahead!

Esi:  Well, one thing that I’m, I’m really excited about is I have a new historical romance series coming out in our Lyrical imprint, which is our eBook-first imprint, and what I really like about it, other than the fact that it’s great is each of the three books – the author’s Susanna Craig, and the first book is To Kiss a Thief – and they all are connected to or have someone who lives in or is from Antigua –

Sarah:  Oh!

Esi:  – so while they have lots of sort of Regency-esque rompiness, they also have some really interesting stuff about the slave trade and Britain and how, you know, all of the sort of heiresses who get hitched to men with titles who have no money sort of also have to contend with the fact that, you know, where did that fortune come from, and where is this money in England, you know?  Whose labor is really going into making, you know, our dresses and these lavish balls that we pay for?  So that’s been really cool, and in one of the books, like, the, the heroine’s sort of entire motivation is to get a hold of her inheritance so she can free the slaves on her family’s plantation.  So it’s been really fun working on them.  It’s been great working with Susanna and sort of having, showing that you can have all the things that people love in historical romance and still deal with some sort of pretty big real-world issues.

Sarah:  That’s pretty amazing!  I mean it’s a, it’s a way of saying, okay, we have this incredible opulence and the once-upon-a-time fantasy of historical while also having social awareness of what was going on among other people who were alive at that time.

Esi:  Exactly.  Exactly.  And sort of them, when they get their blinders taken off, both how it changes them and also in the ways that they sort of realize they’re helpless –

Sarah:  Right.

Esi:  – you know, that they are within the system, and you can’t not be in it.  And still being, like, still there’re pretty dresses and, you know, wacky neighbors and gossip and sexytimes.

Sarah:  Well, you can’t not have sexytimes.

Esi:  No, exactly.

Sarah:  So one of the things that we talked about at RWA, and one of the reasons why I wanted to do this podcast is that you and I had a really interesting conversation about diversity in romance, right, which you remember, I presume –

Esi:  Yes.

Sarah:  – ‘cause it was, like, the last day, and we were almost out of there.  So there’s a lot of discussion about diversity in romance and in the books that are produced, but as we talked about, you are one of the few women of color –

Esi:  True.  Yes.

Sarah:  – in editorial.

Esi:  In publishing.

Sarah:  In publishing in general.

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  So is it an exaggeration on my part to say that you are one of a handful of editors of color?

Esi:  Yeah.  Except I will – it’s not an exaggeration, although I will say less so at Kensington, both editorial and just, you know, company-wide.  It’s, it’s a very, very diverse staff.

Sarah:  That must have been a bit of a surprise.

Esi:  It was.  It was.  Having been in publishing for seven and a half years and going somewhere that was much smaller than where I’d been and the companies, you know, that I had friends at, ‘cause a lot of people I know work at, you know, the big whatever it is now, four?  Three?  I don’t even know.  Yeah, right?  It was, it was different, in a great way.  So, yes, less so at Kensington, but in general, in publishing, you know, in romance, absolutely.  One of the few.  And, you know, it’s one of those things, you know, with all this talk about the need for diverse books, like, it’s true, but I think, I think one of the ways we get there is by broadening what we look for in authors, but I think another way we get there is broadening, you know, the makeup of our publishing staffs, not just editorially but sales teams and marketing teams, so that, you know, for a long time, publishing was all about putting things in their box and marketing to the people who like those boxes.

Sarah:  And using well-established, well-worn, familiar marketing channels.

Esi:  Exactly!  And because, you know, publishing, sort of, you only had one way to access all the information, it was pretty easy to work that way.  And now that we have so many more ways for people to get information and get access to books, I think that, that old mindset has not entirely left the building, and so I think getting different perspectives is sort of, you know, behind the scenes, is going to be the first step, because you’ll still have African-American romances, like, romances, couldn’t be more romance-y and, you know, shelved next to Langston Hughes in the fiction section.

Sarah:  And I have read all of Langston Hughes’s romances.  I mean, I’ve read every one he’s written.

Esi:  Yes, exactly.

Sarah:  There’re so many.

Esi:  Exactly.  So you’re sort of missing out on all possible buyers when you do that, because your romance readers go to the romance section, and your fiction readers, while they might read romance, they’re not necessarily looking for one when they’re looking in the African-American fiction section.

Sarah:  Right, plus –

Esi: So –

Sarah:  – you know, romance readers, we have been taught to look for a very specific set of cover cues:  big hair, big dress, some fuchsia, maybe some teal –

Esi:  Right.

Sarah:  – possibly both, and so when you’re a fiction reader and you come across the big hair and the big dress and the fuchsia and the teal, you’re like, what is this?  This is, what?  Wha-, this is not mine!

Esi:  Exactly.  And I find that, because, you know, I have, you know, in the past when I’ve given, you know – I have white friends!

Sarah:  What?!

Esi:  I, I know!

Sarah:  Got to warn me!  I need to sit down.

Esi:  I know, it’s shocking!

Sarah:  Shocking me like that!

Esi:  Shock-ing.

Sarah:  So not cool.

Esi:  And when I’ve given them books, African-American romances, what I hear all the time – and, and mind you, these are also often not romance readers – is that I get a lot of, I would read more romance if I knew it was like this, and, but they didn’t even know the books existed, and even after me introducing them to the authors, it would still be on them to really look, because the outlets that cater to a white audience don’t really talk about people of color that often –

Sarah:  Or know how.

Esi:  – or know how, and so they wouldn’t even, you know, we have consumers out there who would be totally into buying these books if they even knew they existed, but no one’s telling them about them.  And I see that, you know, across the board.  I love working with new authors, I love working with debut authors, and it’s really hard, particularly in print, because, you know, why are you going to give shelf space to someone you’ve never heard of when you can give it to a Debbie Macomber reprint which you know you’re going to sell 50,000 copies of?

Sarah:  And on the business side, of course, you know, the market is contracting; we have to stick with the familiar, the familiar things that sell!

Esi:  Exactly, exactly.  So I completely understand on the business side of it.  I mean, I think the other thing, too, is that I, I, I will be curious to see in the next year or so, you know, now that we’ve been talking very openly in romance about the need for diverse books.  I mean, part of it is that there are actually a lot out there, and it requires people to buy them for publishers to keep publishing them, so I think on the other side of it is that consumers who really want the books really need to put their money where their mouth is, because –

Sarah:  And that’s hard for readers, because, you know, it’s the same argument.  I have a ten-dollar book budget.  Do I spend my ten dollars this month on an author that I know is going to deliver, or do I take a chance –

Esi:  Right.

Sarah:  – on someone I haven’t heard of?

Esi:  Exactly.  ‘Cause what you’ll hear, you know, then, on the publishing side from your accounts or whatever is, oh, well, this book didn’t sell.

Sarah:  I was just going to say:  Those books don’t sell!

Esi:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Say it with me!

Esi:  Those books don’t sell!  And –

Sarah:  I need to cross-stitch that on a sampler.

Esi:  Right.  And then you hear from readers, why can’t I find a book like this?  Why can’t I find a book like this?  And you know, it’s the age-old story in romance, you know.  It’s not limited to diverse books.  I used to hear this all the time about medieval romances, and I’m like, yes, but it’s, you say we don’t publish any, but we do, and they don’t sell, so clearly, like, something’s getting lost, and maybe it’s that, you know, only 15,000 people wanted that book?

Sarah:  Which if you’re –

Esi:  And maybe –

Sarah:  – if you’re an individual –

Esi:  Right.

Sarah:  – author, that’s, that’s great!  15,000 copies for an individual is great.  If you’re a publisher, well, yes –

Esi:  Right.

Sarah:  – not so good!

Esi:  Right!  And it’s, you know, and also, I will say that’s why I think eBooks have been such a savior to debut authors and to anything that’s not, like, big name and just absolutely, like, the most popular genre at the time.  Because 15,000 copies in eBook, that’s really good, and it allows us to keep publishing people, to find new people, and to then be able to show if someone’s going to move to print, be able to go to the accounts and be like, look how much they steadily sell in E!  You know, you’re, they’re not arriving with a blank slate.  But again, people have to buy the books.

Sarah:  I also think part of the problem with the diversity of publishing professionals is attrition.  A couple of years ago, and I don’t exactly remember when, but I know it was after the publishing merger between Random House and Penguin –

Esi:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – I was asked to speak at an organization of publicists in publishing, and I got into the room, and I was on a panel, I think it was about interacting with online reviewers, of which I am one, and the people in the room were entirely diverse.  All of the people who had come to that meeting who were publicists at different houses –

Esi:  Right.

Sarah:  – were an incredibly diverse group of people, and I thought, oh, well, where, where do you go?

Esi:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  What, what, what happens?  Where, where, where do you go?  And I realized, okay –

Esi:  Right.

Sarah:  – New York is expensive, and publishing doesn’t pay a lot –

Esi:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – and so it’s really hard to maintain a job where you’re not getting paid a lot of money, and unless you are an, an –

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – and unless you’re an investment banker or unless you work in a very high-paying industry, you’re not making a lot of money, you’re going to live really far away from New York City, your commute is going to be more than an hour easily, or you’re going to live in an apartment with nine other people, and you’re going to have to take a lot of personal time getting from and –

Esi:  Yes.

Sarah:  – to your work, so, I mean, I know an editor who lives in northwestern Pennsylvania and commutes an hour and a half to and from her job on the bus, and, I mean, she gets all kinds of editing done on the bus when she’s on the bus for three hours a day –

Esi:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  – but that’s not, you know, that’s not unique to her.  Most of the editors who I know of personally live quite a ways from where they work, and their commute is very long.  You don’t make a ton of money, and it’s more likely that you start off –

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – at an entry-level position and then you take those skills that you’ve learned and go to another industry that pays a little more and also where the hours aren’t as long.  I mean, I know in editorial, it’s not an eight-hour job.  It’s not a nine-to-five job.  I know you take books home, and you take work home, and it’s, it’s a job done by people who are super passionate –

Esi:  Right.

Sarah:  – but it’s also very hard to sustain, unless you have other means of support.

Esi:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  It’s really hard to sometimes have a work-life balance, from what I understand.  It can be very difficult to manage a life where you’re in an –

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – extremely expensive city, you’re not making what bankers and hedge fund managers and other people in financial industries are making.  You’re probably living an hour or more from your job.  Your job doesn’t take up nine to five; it comes home with you.  It’s a very absorbing profession, it’s a very demanding profession, and my best guess is that a lot of the people who start in entry-level positions find higher-paying jobs in other industries, because well, you know, publishing is not the, the most, the most high-paying industry in, in the world.

Esi:  I think there are a couple of things.  One, yes, absolutely, you’re right, it, I think everyone knows publishing is not some wildly lucrative industry.

Sarah:  Few people are in it for the money.

Esi:  Yeah!  I mean, you know, when I started ten years ago, I believe the range, you know, across, you know, the established publishing houses for editorial assistants was between, like, twenty-seven and thirty-two-five.

Sarah:  Which in this area is, is not a lot of money.

Esi:  Yeah.  Nothing.  And so, but I, I think, so I think you’re right, and I think one of the things that you, you see is definitely attrition because people, you know, can’t handle the, what you have to give up, or they don’t have the ability to, say, live at home while doing it and save money or whatever you might have to do.  I mean, I think honestly the other part of it is the, you know, life in New York City in general, particularly if you’re coming here from somewhere else, you know, if you’re coming to New York City but what you have in your mind still is this life where you have a lot of space and maybe some outdoor space and you’re like –

Sarah:  Watching too much Friends and Sex in the City?

Esi:  Yeah, but not even that.  Just, like, the way people live in other parts of the country.  If that’s your goal still while you move to New York City, like, you’re not going to stay, because it’s not, unless you’re in investment banking, like, that’s not a thing you’re going to have while living here, and it’s not a thing you’re really going to be able to save to have while living here.  I think that it’s one of those things where it’s like, if your end goal is not to be a New York City lifer, then you’re probably not going to stay, and it’s probably going to be a choice you make pretty early on.  I think the other thing is about the support you get going into it.  So like I said, I sort of stumbled into publishing.

Sarah:  Yeah, like cannonballed into the deep pool.

Esi:  [Laughs] Yeah, exactly, but most people, you know, have been interested in it a long time, and the way they sort of get their foot in the door is internships, and doing an unpaid internship in New York City –

Sarah:  Oh, boy.

Esi:  – is an insane thing to do.

Sarah:  Yeah.  Oh, boy.

Esi:  And so, yeah.  I mean, I know one of the things that my boss, you know, at Avon, and I’ll say it was Lucia Macro, because I think that she said this sort of thing publicly, is that she always pushes when we’re doing, when we were looking for interns, you know, during the year who would get credit, she would always push that we didn’t just look at people from, like, you know, the Ivies, because to be able to get your foot in the door, you know, that’s, if you have Harvard or Columbia in your degree, it’s not going to be that hard, but if you went to, say, Pace or Pratt or Rutgers, if might not be as easy, and she would really push to get resumes from a wide array of schools so that we were making sure that we didn’t miss someone who maybe wanted to do this and would be good at it but wasn’t from somewhere shiny, and I think publishing in general needs to do more of that, because, to your point, that’s how, you know, New York being so New-York-centric, you can really lose sight of what the rest of the country’s doing and are into.  I mean, that was always a thing I would say whenever someone at a conference would be like, you know, why do books have so many dukes?  And I’m like, because, like, every, like, they want them.  Like, you personally may not want to read another book about a duke, but if we put out a duke book, it’s going to sell thousands of copies, ‘cause that’s what people want to read.  My mother refused to read any books without dukes in them.

Sarah:  Well, it’s a ready-made worldbuilding.

Esi:  Unashamedly.

Sarah:  Right, it’s completely created already –

Esi:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – and it’s familiar.

Esi:  And so, but I think there’s this idea that oh, this is so passé, whatever.  I’m like, no, actually, huge swathes of the country, this is exactly what they want, and I think keeping in mind all the people, you know, is really huge, and I think sometimes that’s what you see reflected in trends, which when you’re sort of in the publishing world seems skewed.

Sarah:  Do you think it’s right, though, that the industry’s location plays a role?

Esi:  Basically, yes.  It’s hella expensive to live in New York City.  It’s not impossible, but you have to really want it.  It’s hard, it’s doable, it’s hard, and it’s going to be, you know, I, I grew up wanting to live in New York City, so for me, it’s not like, oh, I’m giving up all these things I had thought I’d be doing at this age to do this, because this is the thing I wanted to do, but, like, if you thought that, you know, you were going to have a house and 2.5 kids and a dog and a yard, then, yeah, you probably shouldn’t be in New York.  Especially not working in publishing!  ‘Cause it’s going to be tough!  It’s going to be really tough.

Sarah:  So one of the benefits of working in publishing is that you know a lot about a bunch of different books.  So tell me, what books are you recommending?  What books do you love to talk about?

Esi:  You’ve seen Mean Girls, so you know the whole thing with, like, Tina Fey is a pusher?  So, like, myself and my, it’s not just editor friends, like, marketing friends, whatever, like, that’s how we always talk about ourselves is that we’re book pushers, ‘cause, like, we work a book into any conversation.  Not necessarily one of ours, but, like, I rarely have a conversation where I have not recommended someone to read something.

Sarah:  Yep.

Esi:  Sometimes I have it on me.

Sarah:  Oh, you’re evil.

Esi:  I used to do that with my favorite books; I’d just carry a couple copies around.

Sarah:  Seriously evil.

Esi:  And – yeah!  Oh, yeah.  That’s a real thing I used to do.

Sarah:  I, I, I admire that.  I admire that, that – I’m going to have to try to do that.  I’ve been, I have been introduced to people as, this is Sarah.  She can help you find a book to read, but she’s very expensive to know.

Esi:  [Laughs]

Sarah:  That’s you too.

Esi:  It’s so true.  I do get that from my friends who I introduced to romance.

Sarah:  Oh, God.

Esi:  Yeah, I’ll get texts from them that’ll be like, I’m in the airport and I just bought four, and I’m like, oh!  I could have given those to you, but thank you!  Appreciate it!

Sarah:  Ah, welcome to our very, very expensive, expensive world.  And since you’re an editor, you know, you get to push books and, you know, buy them and sell them to the romance populace, both books that you write and the books that you’ve read from other houses.  So tell me, tell me, tell me about all of the books, especially ones that you’re working on that you’re excited about.

Esi:  I have this series from Ines Saint set in the small town of Spinning Hills, Ohio, and the three brothers in it all sort of work doing home renovation, but the one thing I like about it is that at least two of the couples have children from prior relationships, which I think is not just very true to 2015 but very true of a small town where, say, people got married right out of high school and had a kid, and it didn’t work out, and so that’s been really interesting to me to sort of see and explore because, you know, you certainly can’t have that virgin fantasy if there’s a baby.

Sarah:  No, no, nope, nope.  Plus, you, you can’t so easily take the easy way out and demonize the, the ex.  You can’t –

Esi:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – make it so that the ex is horrible to make the heroine or hero more heroic.

Esi:  Right.  ‘Cause they have children to raise together.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Right, and I mean, I know for me personally, I went through this sort of phase where it seemed like around a certain number of years everyone’s getting married and everyone is having babies, and then a lot of my friends in the last few years have gotten divorces, and they have to work together –

Esi:  Right.

Sarah:  – because they have children to raise together, and it’s not easy to be like, well, I’m done, I’m going to go find somebody else, and I’m never going to talk to you again.

Esi:  Yeah, absolutely, and I think that, you know – I mean, I love a secret baby book.

Sarah:  No way, really?

Esi:  Oh, my God, I love a secret baby book.

Sarah:  Secret babies.

Esi:  [Laughs] Yes.

Sarah:  Well, I know you’re not alone in that one.  Many people loving a secret baby.  So do you have a favorite secret baby romance?

Esi:  Oh, gosh!

Sarah:  Or –

Esi:  Like an actual specific one?

Sarah:  Yeah, or a book that you recommend frequently or re-read frequently?

Esi:  Well, I mean, I don’t know if it technically counts as a secret baby, and now I’m going to totally forget the name, but I did really love the SEP one, where she was a genius and wanted to have a baby but didn’t want a man?  And so basically was looking around for, like, appropriate specimens who she could impregnate herself by but not be bothered with them anymore?  Why am I blanking?  I feel like her name was, like, Jo maybe?  But I just loved it because it was, like, in the book it was so great, and it was also one of those books, which I think we don’t see that often, which is where it’s the heroine sort of is really arrogant and needs her comeuppance?  And I like that because there’re plenty out there, and it’s nice to not always have it be sort of like, the woman is the gentling influence on this man who’s just been barreling through life.  And then, to borrow a phrase, her magic hoo-ha –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Esi:  – comes and, you know, changes everything to him and opens his eyes, so I always, I have a soft place in my heart a lot of SEP’s books, but that is one that I found truly delightful.  But yes, I also like books where people have actual, like, children who can walk and talk and speak, and you know, you need to negotiate that.  You need to negotiate, like, when do I introduce my seven-year-old to this guy I’m dating?  And, you know, how can I have a sleepover?  Like, do I have to tell my mother that I want to get laid and can she please watch my kid?  So –

[Laughter]

Esi:  – I don’t know.  I find, particularly with contemporaries, I find ones, I either want them to be, like, total insane fantasies –

Sarah:  Yeah?

Esi:  – or to hew pretty closely to how people would act in real life.

Sarah:  I’m actually embarrassed that my attempts to Google this book are coming up, because I can see the cover, and I remember so many things about reading it, but – someone, someone listening is yelling right now.

Esi:  I know, and I know it’s one, I think it’s one of those ones that, like, people have really strong feelings for or against, and I happen to be for.  [Laughs] It definitely is one of those ones where I think people do not necessarily take kindly to the heroine’s actions.  But I always, one of the things I love about Susan Elizabeth Phillips, if I can just fangirl for a moment, is she writes really flawed characters, and I find them all really fascinating, because it’s not easy to do, first of all, and I think that you probably – and, like, yes, now she is Susan Elizabeth Phillips, but she used to just be starting out, and I feel like, you know, so her editor to have not have been like, your characters need to be more likeable, I think speaks well of both of them, and it creates these books, so, like, I stupidly always start reading right before I go to bed, and then it’s three in the morning, and I’m like, but I was supposed to be asleep!

Sarah:  Yeah, well, it happens to everyone.

Esi:  Apparently.

Sarah:  Yeah, Elyse calls it being a proud member of the Bad Decisions Book Club.  So do you have romances that you frequently recommend to people who’ve never tried one or are curious about the genre?

Esi:  So, when I was at Avon, they dubbed it my Romance 101 program.  I would usually give people a Stephanie Laurens, a Julia Quinn, and a Rachel Gibson, and that would sort of be my, are you a historical or contemporary?  Do you like funny?  Do you like dramatic?  And then I’d sort of go from there.

Sarah:  Do you give them the same book each time?

Esi:  Yes.  I would always, and I still to this day always – and now I’m totally going to blank – I would always – no! – I would always recommend See Jane Score by Rachel Gibson.  Just, in life, in general, just read it.  And then for, for Julia and for Stephanie I would do the first in their big series, so I would do Devil’s Bride for Stephanie Laurens, and I would do The Duke and I for Julia Quinn.  And then I’d usually throw some Susan Elizabeth in there, and then I would probably grab for someone totally new, so it sort of just depended on, you know, what we were doing that day.  But, yeah, it was just one of those things where, you know, I had a lot of friends, you know, before I actually got into publishing, I used to give people Katie MacAlister a lot, her contemporaries, because they’re so funny, and I feel like a lot of people who don’t read romance, and you have ideas about romance –

Sarah:  Uh-huh.

Esi:  – don’t expect them to be hilarious.

Sarah:  Really!  Which one would you give people of hers?

Esi:  I gave people The Corset Diaries all of the time, which you haven’t read, it is about a woman who has to sub in for a friend on a reality show, and the reality show is, like, live as if you were in Victorian times –

Sarah:  Oh, really?

Esi:  – with this actual girl or something like that, but the friend she’s subbing for is, like, a size two, and she’s a size fourteen, but, like, it’s literally in a day, so, like, all the costumes were made for the size two friend and, yeah, it’s –

Sarah:  I want to read this.

Esi:  – awesome.

Sarah:  I want to read this –

Esi:  It’s so good.

Sarah:  – right now!  Like, give it to me now!

Esi:  And all, you know, all of Katie’s contemporaries have these just awesome, awesome premises that, for me, it was like, it was really easy to change people’s minds when I would give them one, ‘cause it was so not what they were expecting.  They all sort of, I don’t know, you would say romance, and they sort of had, like, a quip about bodice rippers, and maybe they could pull Harlequin out of the air, and throbbing manhood.

Sarah:  And Fabio.

Esi:  Oh, Fabio!

Sarah:  So you’ve mentioned your conversion kit and the books you give people to bring them over to the romance genre.  Tell me about some of the books that you are working on professionally that you are excited for people to know about.

Esi:  Okay, well, of my own, right now, I’ve been recommending 30 Days by Christine D’Abo left, right, and center, which is an erotic romance, and it is the erotica P.S. I Love You.  It was one of those books where, when I got it I said, what?!  And then I started reading it, and I was like, and, I mean, immediately, like, chapter one, I was like, this is amazing.  And it is, it’s, like, definitely erotic; it’s, like, really dirty; but it’s also really sweet.

Sarah:  So if someone isn’t familiar with P.S. I Love You, can you –

Esi:  Yes.

Sarah:  – can you explain what that it is?

Esi:  Oh, yes.  Okay, so our, our heroine, Alyssa, is a young widow.  Her high school sweetheart, who became her husband, died young of cancer, and he left her this letter where he was like, you know, I’m the only you’ve ever been with, and I know that, you know, one day you’re going to find someone attractive, and you’re going to feel guilty about it, so I’ve made you these thirty sex cards so that when that happens you’ll be able to sort of try things out and ease your way back in.  And so two years after he dies, this hot guy moves into her building, and she remembers the cards, and she propositions him with them, and he’s like, you know, this is, like, a little bit weird, but sure, I’m game, and yeah!  And they sort of go to town.

Sarah:  So this is a book that you edited for Kensington.

Esi:  Yeah!  That’s one of mine.  It just came back, and it came out in August.  I loved working on it, and we made up some sex cards, which I think they are, they’re doing, or they did, a couple of giveaways.  Christine, when she was here for RWA, one of the cards is touch a naked man, so she went out to Times Square and found the Naked Cowboy and took pictures with him.

[Laughter]

Esi:  So, yeah.  That one was really fun.  And there’s a, there’s a followup coming out next year called 30 Nights wherein – this, I’m sure, gives nothing away, because I, you know, it’s romance – so when our heroine for the first books has sort of, you know, figured out her life, she leaves the cards in a bag on her husband’s gravestone, and they are discovered.  And someone’s like, hey!  And I, I just, I just finished working on that manuscript, and it is equally sexy and sweet and fun.

Sarah:  Dude.  I know someone listening is like, I want to read that right now!  Right now, right now!  Okay, what else you got?  Tell me more, tell me more!  Greedy, greedy me.

Esi:  Okay, Sally, Sally MacKenzie, What to Do with a Duke is the first full-length book in her Spinster House series, and it is so good!  I edited it in a day because I couldn’t stop reading it.  I was supposed to be doing other stuff that day that didn’t get done.  It is historical, it’s set in this cute little village called Loves Bridge, and there is a curse on the Duke of Hart, who basically, one in the past did somebody wrong, and she cursed the Dukes forever that they will die before their heir is born unless they marry for true love.

Sarah:  Ouch!  Dude!

Esi:  You know, he did not treat her so well, but as the books go on, you start to learn more and more about the curse and the history and sort of what the real deal was.  And so in this house, she also left her home that can be lived in by any woman who chooses, because who doesn’t want to live a life, you know, as a married woman, she can have her own house.  So there’s this lottery to pick the new spinster, and shenanigans ensue.

Sarah:  Obviously.

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And –

Esi:  It’s delightful.

Sarah:  Sally MacKenzie also sort of specializes in funny romance.

Esi:  Yeah!  Yeah.

Sarah:  Like, if you’re, if you – I don’t want to say light, like there’s no emotion to it, ‘cause there is – but if you like funny and light and humorous romance –

Esi:  Right!  Exactly, like –

Sarah:  And it’s historical and hilarious, too.

Esi:  Yeah, there’s definitely high jinks and people sort of, like, scheming behind the scenes but in really sort of delightful ways, and there’re gossipy old biddies, and the heroine in this book has ten siblings, which is why she wants to move into the Spinster House.  [Laughs]

Sarah:  Oh, I can’t say I blame her.  Yikes!

Esi:  So, yeah, and then another book I’m really excited about, which I think the first one comes out at the end of this year on Lyrical is by Lee Kilraine, and it’s called Bringing Delaney Home.  It’s about Delaney, our heroine, is a wounded combat vet, and so – I think that’s the right terminology; I don’t really know how it works – she was a nurse in the Army, I think?  And she sort of is not in a great place, and her sister sends one of their friends to go get her and bring her back to their small town so they can, you know, sort of get her back on track, and she is not having it.  She is not interested, she would just like to wallow, basically, basically, and the guy who is sent to bring her back has, like, had a crush on her since high school, and she has never been interested, of course.  But I really like it ‘cause I think it’s good, and there’s great romance stuff in it, but again, it’s a heroine who, you know, she’s not sticky sweet, and she doesn’t always make great choices, and she’s not nice to everyone, and she’s had some, like, real shit happen to her that the hero can’t just, like, wish away because he loves her.

Sarah:  Yeah, I, I know that there are a number of readers who are looking for books where the heroine or the hero has survived something that’s traumatic, either assault or combat, and they have some sort of post-traumatic stress and issues that they’re dealing with, and while finding a person to be with in the course of the romance helps, all of their problems are not magically obliterated by the power of the magic wang, and some good orgasms don’t fix everything in their lives.

Esi:  Yep.

Sarah:  Because that’s, that’s not what happens in real life.  You don’t get, you know, like, ten good orgasms and suddenly you’re free of PTSD and you’re not triggered by anything and the terrible things that happened to you –

Esi:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – don’t affect you anymore, so when there’s a romance where a character’s going through or has gone through something horrible and the romance makes it better but doesn’t fix everything –

Esi:  Right!

Sarah:  – it’s much appreciated.

Esi:  Exactly.  Exactly.  And it’s one of those, and, and then he, like, has to have that realization where he’s like, oh, I don’t actually know what to do in this situation.  I can’t actually fix it.  And other people might know better than me what to do, and I can’t be mad about that fact.  So that one I’m excited about.  And then, I don’t know if you know about Zebra Shout?

Sarah:  Zebra Shout.  No!  Is it new?

Esi:  Yes.  So this is a program that we’re launching in January 2016, and it is new, either total debut or new-to-print authors, so some of our Lyrical authors are also in this program.  One book a month, $4.99, and I think it’s two or three books from those authors within the year, and it’s a way for us to get, to make new voices even more readily available, to promote in some different ways.  The first book is More Than You Know by Jennifer Gracen, which is a contemporary.  Really hot, and really, one of the things I like about it, there are many things, but I think your particular audience will also like is that our heroine is older than hero.

Sarah:  Oh, really!

Esi:  And the second book in the series is Jilting the Duke by Rachael Miles, which is a historical about a widow who, her husband’s best friend, who is her jilted fiancé, is named the guardian of her son, and so negotiating that, and there’s some spy intrigue in there as well.  But it’s going to be a book a month going forward, which, you know, $4.99 print price leads to very attractively priced eBooks as well.

Sarah:  Yay!

Esi:  But, yeah, it’s, you know, we definitely have some authors who did write or are still writing on our Lyrical lists who are also going to be in this program.  So, yeah, it’s just, we’re always looking for new ways in for readers to experience our books, so I’m really excited about Zebra Shout!

Sarah:  Okay, Esi.

Esi:  What did I do?

Sarah:  Nothing!  Well, sort of.  Remember that Susan Elizabeth Phillips title we couldn’t remember with the sort of secret baby and sort of not?

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  Yeah, I totally Googled it, because, well, I was really embarrassed that I couldn’t remember it, and –

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – Nobody’s Baby But Mine!

Esi:  Of course!  Of course.

Sarah:  [Laughs] That’s just –

Esi:  What’s the matter with us?

Sarah:  – just sad.  And you know someone was listening and screaming, screaming the name.  Like, no!  How do you not know this?  So, yes, everyone who was yelling, I apologize.

Esi:  You guys, I didn’t have any coffee today.

Sarah:  Yes, that’s why.  We’re under-caffeinated.  At least, that’s not my excuse.

Esi:  It’s not my fault.

Sarah:  That’s totally Esi’s excuse.

Esi:  But I do love it.  I love it, Susan!  I love that book!

[Laughter]

Sarah:  So what books in the publishing world that, have you heard a lot about lately?

Esi:  Well, I, I’ve been hearing a lot about Elena Ferrante, and I want to read her.

Sarah:  Ooh, me too!

Esi:  So I guess –

Sarah:  Yeah.

Esi:  – do that too, and I also, I do have a book coming out in November called Too Many Cooks by Dana Bate, which is women’s fiction and probably would have been called chick lit if we decided we weren’t going to call stuff that anymore.

Sarah:  It is so sad that we don’t have a better name for that particular genre.

Esi:  I know.

Sarah:  Like, I had a podcast guest recently, and I can’t quite remember who it was, but they were saying that their editor liked to call it gentle fiction, which is totally apt.  It, it totally fits, but chick lit, chick lit has just, ohhh, we need a better name.  We need a better name.  But anyway, Too Many Cooks.

Esi:  What I love about Too Many Cooks is it’s just such a great concept that the girl in it is a cookbook ghost writer –

Sarah:  Ooh!

Esi:  – for celebrities –

Sarah:  Oh!

Esi:  – and she gets a job working for a very sort of – she’s an American, but she’s living in London, and everything’s, like, raw and organic and natural, and she gets there and, like, of course, this woman doesn’t actually eat food –

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Esi:  – and so – [laughs] – plus, she’ll say stuff like, you know, oh, we should include my grandmother’s meatloaf.  I remember it tasted like, you know, clove, and then she’ll, like, leave for two weeks.  And she’s like, how am I supposed to create – what?

Sarah:  Clove meatloaf.

Esi:  Plus she has this husband who’s a politician, who is very attractive and very neglected.

Sarah:  Oh, dear.

Esi:  Yeah.  But it’s just so good, and, like, Dana’s such a, like, smart, fun writer, and it’s exactly the kind, it’s exactly the kind of book that, when we call things chick lit, it’s exactly the book for those kind of readers.  Like, it’s not totally light and fluffy, but it is perfect for, like, I just want a good read that I’m going to get totally absorbed in where the writing is smart and entertaining, and the concept is amazing.

Sarah:  I wish that that’s what chick lit meant to everyone, ‘cause that’s totally my thing.  I love that.

Esi:  Yeah!

Sarah:  It’s a shame.  I mean, I also love Jill Mansell, who writes what would be called chick lit here, except that I mean it in all the good ways.  It’s all sort of small town women starting over, experiencing new things, and their lives and the romance is not the only thing that’s going on.  There’s, you know, other, real-life stuff too that’s going on.

Esi:  Right, like in this particular one, her mother has died at the beginning of the book and sort of left her a letter that’s like, stop being boring.  [Laughs] So when she gets – yeah – so when she gets this offer for this job, she’s like, oh, Mom said, Dead Mom said stop being boring.  I’ll go do this thing, yeah.

Sarah:  Ouch!  Thanks, Mom.  I have to say, I love doing podcast interviews with editors, and it was actually Jane from Dear Author that clued me into this, because you’re the ones who buy the books from the author.  You’re the first person who gets excited about a book in the publishing process, so you buy the manuscript and you work on it, and then you talk to sales and marketing and everyone else and are like, okay, I’ve got this great thing, and here’s how we’re going to sell it, but you’re the one who gets excited first.  So talking to a publicist often gets you a very, very different description about a book than you would from the editor who actually bought it.  It’s like you’re the, I don’t know what’s the right word, the, I think, the internal steward of the book through the publishing process maybe?

Esi:  Yeah!  You know, whenever I talk to people outside of publishing, I also describe my job as project manager, because that’s sort of, you know, I don’t make the cover, but, you know, we sort of have to manage all those parts of the process, especially because, you know, as an editor I have to read my books –

Sarah:  Right, obviously.

Esi:  – but the art department is working on all the books, so we can’t expect them to have read every single book –

Sarah:  [Laughs] No, no, no.  

Esi:  – when they’re making these covers –

Sarah:  No, that’s too many.

Esi:  – so you have to really communicate to them the sort of feel and the tone and the market so that they can make a good cover without actually having to read, you know, two thousand 300-page books.

Sarah:  Right.  Because you can’t ask them to read all that much and then make an art.

Esi:  And then create art, exactly!

Sarah:  Right, it’s impossible.  And also, when you talk to editors, you also have this sort of dual perspective, because, you know, you’re all romance fans, and you all read romance, and you like romance –

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – because you wouldn’t work in it if you didn’t like it, but you also have to be able to look at a manuscript and say, oh, I really like this, and I know how to sell it, and I know how to say to art, okay, this is what it should look like, and I know how to say to sales, this is who it’s for.

Esi:  I mean, I would say half the time I, I pass on books it’s because it fall into the, I like it, but I don’t know how to publish it, and someone else probably does, but that person is not me.  So – [laughs] – it wouldn’t work out very well for you if I were to acquire it.

Sarah:  I think every editor has a book like that.

Esi:  Yeah!  I mean, I, I pass on books where I’m like, this book is going to be huge, and I just don’t quite know how to get it there.

Sarah:  Right.

Esi:  And then I see it out there in the world, and I’m like, yep!  Yeah.  Yay.

Sarah:  No, you’re not bitter.

Esi:  No, I’m never bitter.

Sarah:  No, no, not bitter at all!  Just –

Esi:  Nah.

Sarah:  – just a, just a smidge maybe.  Tiny little bit.

Esi:  Just the tiniest, but I do have a coworker who, like, is still angry about a book I lost in auction, like, on my behalf.

Sarah:  Oh, no!

[Laughter]

Esi:  Because I really, really did love it.

Sarah:  Oh, man.

Esi:  And she’s like, I just think about it sometimes, and I just get angry!

Sarah:  [Laughs] The rage burns eternal, man!

Esi:  Yeah, definitely.

Sarah:  Now, right when we were leaving RWA, you were telling me that you were going to go and see Hamilton, the musical.  Did you get to see it?

Esi:  I’ve seen it three times now.

Sarah:  And did you like it?

Esi:  It’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.  You could do a whole podcast about how I feel about Hamilton.

Sarah:  [Laughs]

Esi:  It’s incredible, and you know what, I’ve actually talked about Hamilton a lot to publishing people –

Sarah:  Really!

Esi:  – because I think one of the lessons of Hamilton in terms of creating art is if you make a great product, that will speak for itself, but you have to give it time to be great.  I mean, Lin-Manuel performed the first song, which was the only song he’d written, at the White House six years ago, and the team behind him didn’t push him to get it done that year.  They gave him the time to write it and make it right, and when it was at The Public and it was totally sold out and it was this, like, crazy phenomenon, they didn’t rush and move to Broadway last season.  They waited.  They’re opening early in the season now, and it’s like, if you, if you recognize good in something, you have to give it the chance to actually achieve what it can achieve.  I think, you know, there’s less shelf space and our shortened attention spans, you know, now if a book doesn’t take off in the first week, people will throw up their hands, or if an author’s first book doesn’t do that well, it’s kind of like, oh, let’s not pay attention to the next couple books.  I’m like, no, like, you need to be in it for the long haul, because that’s how great things rise to the surface.  I feel that Orphan Train is a perfect example of, you know, I think it was Christina Baker Kline’s fourth or fifth book?  I think it hit the list a few months after coming out, and it hit number one, like, eight or nine months after being published, and what if, you know, a month after publication they just had pulled all marketing money?  Or stopped telling people about it?  You know, you have to, we have to remember that we need to give things a chance to find their audience, and to me I feel like that is, other than Hamilton, the show itself and all the things in it, I feel like as people who are in charge of creative work, we need to remember that that takes time.

Sarah:  I totally agree.  One of my biggest frustrations is that books only have a week in which to make an impact, and then the following Tuesday –

Esi:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – you know, we’re done.  Whole new crop of books comes out, and we’re going to move on now.

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  And it’s – [sighs] – it’s completely unfair, I think, especially because, you know, let’s be honest, if that’s a medical condition in men, there’s a medication for that to fix it.  I mean –

Esi:  [Laughs] Right.

Sarah:  – seriously.  So one thing I’ve always wondered, and I’ve mentioned this –

Esi:  Mm-hmm.

Sarah:  – several times, and I still have no idea how to do this, is that, you know, in the record industry we, they have cumulative sales, right?  Like, if I say a platinum album, you know what that means.  If I say a gold record, you know what that means.  And I mean, even ringtones count as a download of a song so that when you say, this is a platinum-selling album, you know that that means, and it’s on umpty-zillion iPods all over the world, right?  But we don’t have that for books.  We get one week.  Your book comes out, you’ve got seven days, that’s your window, and –

Esi:  Exactly.

Sarah:  – that’s just such a short window.  But I don’t know how to create a cumulative measurement, because even then, we still don’t have accurate –

Esi:  Yeah!

Sarah:  – like, we don’t have accurate numbers for books.  Like, BookScan is not everybody, and if I get a statement from my publisher as to how many copies a book of mine has sold, that’s still ninety days out of date.  Amazon is only them.  Certain book lists are only a very small percentage of vendors, like the New York Times list.  Were these sales at the right bookstores?

Esi:  And were they at places that report to the New York Times, in regions the New York Times deigns to get information from?  Yeah!  How would you even do it?

Sarah:  Right?  And then, like, if my agent –

Esi:  Yeah.

Sarah:  – gave me a number, or if an agent gave me a number, well –

Esi:  And then how do you verify that number?

Sarah:  Exactly!  I mean, they could just, like, write a number on a piece of paper, and I don’t know if that’s accurate or not.  I’ve got no verification, so it’s really hard.

Esi:  No, that’s a really good idea.

Sarah:  Thank you!  I wish, I wish it were more feasible, because as a consumer, that would be meaningful to me.  A million copies sold, you know?

Esi:  I know.  ‘Cause, I mean, you’ll see it sometimes that you’ll, a book will come out and it’ll be, like, you know, over a million copies sold or whatever.  It’s, like, in the, in the copy or something like that, but it’s not necessarily a, like – that’s, and that’s a thing that, like, got figured out when someone went to write the copy, and they were like, oh, I wonder how many books this has sold?  And, and they look it up.  It’s not something that, like, when it happens necessarily, publishers don’t necessarily notice.

[music]

Sarah:  And that is all for this week’s episode.  Kind of a downer of a note to end it on, but I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did, and I wish it was more feasible to have a cumulative sales recognition for books.  I mean, like, if somebody said to me that Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie was a platinum book, I would know what that meant.  Like, bunches of copies sold.  I wish it was better, and, you know, it’s cool to talk to publishing professionals, ‘cause they have all the cool information!  So thank you to Esi for taking the time to talk me, because this was way fun.

And if you have question for her or if you want to ask questions of an editor, any editor that I interview, or you have feedback or ideas, or you have a way of cumalittlely, communimbembem – I’m leaving this in, ‘cause seriously, this is, like, the fourth time I’ve tried to say this.  I’m going to say this word now:  y’all ready?  If you have ways to cumulatively – check me out! – measure the sales of books over time or ideas of how that could be done cumulatively – look, I did it again – please email me.  [email protected]

This podcast was brought to you by Signet Eclipse, publisher of Bonded by New York Times bestselling author Laura Wright, returning to the Triple C Ranch for more cowboys, romance, and danger, on sale now wherever books are sold.

This week’s podcast transcript was sponsored by Married Sex, a novel by Jesse Kornbluth.  When a husband tries to convince his wife to join him in a tryst with another woman, there are unintended consequences in this sharply observed, erotic tale about the challenges of modern marriage.  Now available in paperback and eBook format wherever you buy books!

And I will repeat my happy housekeeping note:  if you would like to sponsor the podcast or the transcript for 2016, an episode, two episodes, three, four, eight, however many, email me!  I will give you all the information!  [email protected]; I would love to hear from you.

The music this week was provided by Sassy Outwater, and you can find her on Twitter @SassyOutwater.  This song is by the Peatbog Faeries, because I love them so much.  This is from their album Dust, and this song’s called “Room 215”.  This is genuinely one of the happiest songs I have in the podcast collection.  It makes me really happy.  You can find the Peatbog Faeries at their website or on iTunes or Amazon, or wherever your fine music is sold.

All of the books that we mentioned in this episode will be in the podcast entry at Smart Bitches, and in the meantime, on behalf of Esi and Jane and myself, we wish you the very best of reading.  Have a great weekend.

[happy music]