Literary Agent: Land A Nonfiction Book Deal!

Note: This is a rough transcription and errors will be present.

Alice Draper (01:14)
Can you tell me about a time in your life where you felt rejected? Personal, professional, whatever story comes to mind.

Sarah Bullen (01:21)
So many times, you know, and my very first, on the professional front, my beginning training was as a journalist. So I started off as a journalist, as a young cub reporter, we called it in those days, and I worked on Fleet Street as a financial reporter. That wasn’t the worst part of the job. The worst was when I got a job at a newspaper that’s called The Mail and Guardian. And I was a young reporter and every single day I was sent out to cover a story.

I out, I do all of the interviews. We had to get three independently verified quotations from high level experts. I would spend the whole day working. I would write the whole story. Generally, we had to file our stories at about eight o ‘clock at night for print the next day. And I was 22, 23 and I had, I’m not going to name him, but I had what is called a chief sub. A chief sub is the kind of quality control and

For my first six months, every single story I filed, he took and he ripped it in half and he balled it up and he threw it in the bin and he said, can somebody who knows what they’re doing rewrite this?

Alice Draper (02:36)
Wow.

Sarah Bullen (02:38)
So I learned very quickly as a writer, as an author, a journalist to not get too attached to the words. For the first few weeks I cried and I’m not lying to you, I’m not an easy crier. I cried every night. I sobbed, said, and I said, I hate that man. He is the worst person I’ve ever met. He is a terrible person. So my blame went very quickly onto the person who had rejected my words.

It took me years, Alice, years to realize what a great lesson in quality he gave me. And in developing a little bit of a thick skin as a writer that I had to understand that it wasn’t really for me, it wasn’t about me. Nobody was going to praise me. Nobody was going to say, is so wonderful. goodness. This is the most amazing story, Sarah. Thank you for all your hard work. So that was it.

That was one of my multiple rejection stories on a professional level. And the crushing feeling of that initially, particularly as being a young person was so hurtful and so deep. And it made me question, did I want to do this? Was it me? Is there something wrong with me? And then of course you go through questions like, am I a terrible writer? Do I have no talent? Has anybody ever been as bad as this?

So lots of personal demons come out and I’m sure this is common of many people who are rejected for many reasons. Is this about me? Am I a person who’s not good enough?

Alice Draper (04:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes, yes. Thank you for sharing that story. can like actually physically feel the pain, because I haven’t had an editor do that, but I have had, I’m sure it’s.

similar to you, but I’m so attached to my writing. So if I got bad feedback from writing, it felt a lot more personal than anything else. You know, if someone said you’re a bad swimmer or you’re bad at math or whatever, it’s like, okay, cool. I’ll keep moving. But writing was my identity and, you know, working as a young impressionable 20 something at the Melon Guardian, I’m sure it was for you. And so having that, I can…

almost feel that pain and I can imagine, can like remember the times I’ve gotten bad feedback about my writing and how personal I took that. So you commented on developing a thick skin and that’s what I’m curious about because there are some people who will get that feedback in the newsroom and think, all right, clearly not for me. I either they will think I’m not good enough so I shouldn’t do this or they’ll think people don’t appreciate what I’m creating. I’m not gonna.

be in the space where people are not appreciative. And a big differentiator between, I think, writers who are successful and writers who don’t get their work out there is the ones who take these as learning lessons and be like, all right, clearly what I’m writing is not landing. I’ve got to deliver it differently. It’s got to be something different’s got to happen. And so I’m curious to hear how you navigated that and whether it was a period of growth for you.

or if it took time for you to grow from it.

Sarah Bullen (05:56)
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there are professions that are harder than others and there are professions in which criticism feels personal. This, think, is the domain of any creative pursuit. I think if you are building a computer program and somebody says, you’ve done that wrong, you need different coding, it feels less deeply wounding and personal than if you are a creative person.

somebody who’s singing a song or writing music or a poet or an artist or a writer, because it’s not just something technically putting out there. You are actually pouring creativity into everything you do. So I think that makes the domain of creative people a lot harder, a lot more wounding. That said, I think that the power of getting criticism and rejection

This is the domain of becoming an adult, right? We come out of our teens, we think we know everything. When we are a young adult, we’re 18, we’re 19, we’re telling everybody else the way it is. And when we move into our 20s, it’s a period of deep fire and initiation as a young adult in any career, in any profession. And the invitation, I think, in this initiatory phase of learning is to stand in that fire and not get burned to a cinder.

So it really is that it’s can you be, can you take this? Can you absorb what the world’s telling you about yourself, about your product, about your art? And can you work with it? No, not everybody can. There were so many people as a young journalist who didn’t make it further, who got burned and left and took it personally and were devastated. You’re gonna find that in art, you’re gonna find that in poetry.

So this is the question and I think there’s an incredible vetting, Alice, that comes in this time of our work career or as a writer where we are rejected, where the world is pushing back and saying, can it be better?

Can you adjust? Can you adapt? Is this speaking to the market? And there’s an incredible vetting in which the people who are meant to rise and to become more and to expand their personal capacity will do so. And then people who don’t have that absolute drive to improve will fall by the wayside. And it comes also to, I often say that to authors, because I know we’re going to get onto that, that I work with authors and I’m a literary agent.

Alice Draper (08:26)
Okay.

Sarah Bullen (08:33)
And I really question people and I say, but do you really want to write a book? Do you really? Because this is what the journey is going to be for you. And I kind of lay it down and I try and put people off, which sounds terrible. But it is just from realizing that we have all these wonderful ideas and then the reality of the world molds them with us. And sometimes that’s not for everybody.

Alice Draper (08:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Sorry, just to interject there, I think that I love so much of what you’re saying. And there’s two episodes in this podcast that I think speak to exactly what you’re saying. One is Elizabeth Fremantle, who, her episode’s a few episodes back, and she’s a fiction author. And she talks about how took her decades to break in as a writer. And she knew she wanted to write fiction novels.

historical fiction novels from when she was 18 years old and started writing then. And it took up like complete decades before she became, I mean her movie is out in cinemas around the world now, Firebrand. And it really speaks to kind of there’s a lot of grit involved and Hayley Jacobson, who’s a fiction author also on the podcast, she…

talks about how she didn’t deal well with rejection when she was in acting school and that’s why she didn’t pursue it. And as a writer, she realized she was gonna get rejected a lot and she realized that she loved it a lot more than she loved acting. So she was willing to go through that journey of continual rejection. But like you said, it’s not an overnight trajectory. So I like that you kind of do that questioning phase because it’s…

a lot more complicated than I think we might assume in terms of getting our work out there, especially if we’re not famous and we’re not celebrities with giant audiences. So you tell me a little bit about your literary agency that you run. Where is it based? What kind of authors do you represent? What does it mean to be a literary agents?

Sarah Bullen (10:42)
Yeah. So on the most basic level, a literary agent is a person who represents authors. So I will find an author or an author will find me and I will think we’re a good fit and I have to believe I’m going to be able to sell their book to a publisher. And my job as an agent is to place the book with a publisher. So that’s the most basic kind of a description of what a literary agent is. And within that, we specialize very tightly. So.

I am based in Cape Town, South Africa, but I pretty much work globally with novels and with non -fiction books. So really what it means is that I am acting on behalf of authors. But that said, this is a business and I think that’s what so many people don’t realize authors because nobody’s writing to say this is a business. We’re writing because we have a dream of being a writer or an author. But the publishing side is a little bit different.

So as a literary agent, I am not a pro bono. Let me put it that way. I’m not in there to make no money. So I’m looking very critically at all books and all authors. And I’m asking a question, a simple question. It’s the same question a publisher is going to ask. And the question is this, will this book sell? Will this book sell?

So over my career as a literary agent, I grew into being a literary agent by virtue of having been in the business for many years. Initially, I was a writing coach. worked teaching the Avon Holoquin, how to write a steamy romance. So for an hour, myself was an author. So I was in the world of books and over 17 years of working as a writing mentor in the world of books, I got a lot of contacts. I work with a lot of publishers and becoming a literary agent was just an evolution.

I’ve worked across the board and I used to represent novels, but what has happened over the last two years is I have stepped away a little bit from representing novels. The reason being, and this is an interesting reason, novels are very unpredictable books. When we work with a nonfiction, with a book, fact based book, we have a level of prediction. We understand how many we may be able to sell.

We know the author has a certain network or they have a certain reach or they speak to a certain number of people. So we have an estimation we can make. Novels are not like that. Novels are books that are sold on a little bit of magic and good timing. So we don’t know. So they are harder books to work with and to place and to predict, which is why over the years I’ve moved a little bit more tightly into the realm of nonfiction, which is a more predictable market. And these are all important words for…

Alice Draper (13:08)
Hmm.

Sarah Bullen (13:26)
authors to hear because it’s the understanding of what publishing, what the end game of publishing is and how to also write a book that a publisher sees as potentially a good sell.

Alice Draper (13:41)
Mm -hmm. I love that. Yeah. I want to dive into the nitty gritty of all these things. But you just made me remember the other thing that Elizabeth Fremantle spoke about, which was working as a like kind of on the other end of books, just like you have. She learned a lot about what how to write books at the market once and how to lean into kind of like what’s happening in the market, which I think is not something that we inherently do as authors unless we’ve kind of worked in selling books.

Sarah Bullen (13:42)
So very important, all these things, yeah.

Alice Draper (14:10)
So that idea of making sure it’s commercially viable. But what’s fascinating to me that you highlighted is that novels are very, very unpredictable. So what came to mind is that very famous story I’m sure a lot of people know, which is J .K. Rowling’s novel being rejected. And a lot of people can be like, how could anyone reject it? But also, as you said, it’s very unpredictable. So from the publishers, their reason was that

people are over magic, like magic has been done and dusted and this is not what’s happening. And so they could not predict that what was gonna happen to Harry Potter would happen to Harry Potter. And I don’t even know like if we could sit here and say they did a bad job, that was just really unlucky because there is some magic that goes into novels. So I’m gonna ask you all about nonfiction and sort of selling a nonfiction, but back in your time of working with novels, were there any trends? You said that it was very unpredictable, but did you notice anything that…

you could look at as a literary agent to assess whether a novel could do well or not.

Sarah Bullen (15:15)
100%, 100%. And this is a really good question because it’s often where I often push people back when they’re starting a book, I say, look at the books that sell. And by that, I mean the categories or genres. So there are very big selling global genres that we know publishers are interested in and they change over decades. So back in the 1950s, cowboy novels were fantastic. Short stories, you know, last…

Alice Draper (15:29)
Mmm.

Mm.

Sarah Bullen (15:45)
sold very well in the 70s, 80s, 90s. Now the world changes a little bit. So if you come to a literary agent with a cowboy novel, they’re going to say we don’t do that anymore, pretty much. So we watch the trends. But there are trends, there are kinds of books that sell perennially, which is really what a publisher is looking at. Alice, I also just want to say, and I’m going to tell you what they are, but what’s also happened, it’s been a huge change in the market over

the era of Amazon ebooks, mass book sales, trade book sales. Because what has happened is that buying patterns have changed. And I often explain it like this. And I’m talking now about how do people buy books, which is important for an author because you need to understand the patterns. When you were younger, you may have read widely. You read this and you read that and somebody recommended a magic realism book and you read it and somebody recommended a, you know,

Alice Draper (16:21)
Hmm.

Sarah Bullen (16:43)
coming of age book when you read it or sci -fi book when you read it. But what happens is people’s buying patterns start to tighten over time. And as our readers get older, they get more and more segmented and clear about what they like to read. So what we found in the sales of books is that the fringe categories have faded away and buyers group together under certain very big and well -selling genres. And we all know them.

I don’t even have to tell you walk into a Barnes and Noble, walk into Waterstone Books and Piccadilly Circus. These are the big categories. It is crime. It is romance. It is action. It is young adult, new adult and of course children’s books, which are a huge category in themselves. So and we’ve also got a grouping that we call speculative fiction. Speculative fiction is a little bit of a grouping of kind of fantasy, sci -fi,

urban fantasy, all those kind of books together. So we know that these books sell. And what’s tightening and tightening buying patterns is Amazon and online algorithms. Because the second we see, the booksellers see that you’re buying consistently Sarah J Maas.

We know that this is the sort of book you like to read and you’re going to be suggested and recommended and it’s going to come in your feeds and it’s going to come in your TikTok feeds. And so what’s happening in the domain of book sales is the smaller categories are falling away. Readers know what they want. They expect things out of those books. They expect links. They expect kinds of characters. They expect certain beats to be hit in each of these books. Why I’m raising this is as an author, it’s so important to know them.

to know what books are being bought and to write within genres that publishers are looking for. So that’s kind of one of the beginning points of all this conversation of knowing what publishers are looking for and writing within those domains. So that’s why novels, the sales of novels has become so tight.

Alice Draper (18:35)
Hmm.

Yeah, yeah.

Sarah Bullen (18:58)
And I’m sure you’ve got people on your rejection stories, many novelists, and I can give you lists and emails of my novelists who pitch and pitch and pitch and pitch and pitch and pitch and pitch within Taituki. They even know the categories they’re writing. They know it’s a middle grade fiction and the consistent feedback may be this is not a standout novel in this genre. We’re looking for a standout novel, which is kind of what the modern publishers like in this day and age. And I can unpack that.

Alice Draper (19:27)
Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah. So I’m thinking as you highlighted all of those genres and like your Barnes and Nobles or your Word of Stones of all the romance and the like crime and stuff is that a lot of people who read, those are the biggest genres and when people read them, I get the sense that they read a lot of them. Like I once represented, not represented, I managed a social media but like very successful.

Sarah Bullen (19:28)
a little bit more what that actually means.

Alice Draper (19:57)
like crime thriller author and his readers read everything he wrote religiously and they read like 10 other crime and thriller authors and they just like sat at home reading like these types of books all the time. And but to me it always like sort of raises like to me it seems kind of boring because I’m like the books feel very predictable to me.

But are you saying that that is what most people want? When you say that these are common genres, is it that they’re predictable and they hit certain beats that you kind of can predict? Or is it that they just need to fit within these genres?

Sarah Bullen (20:39)
both of those things. the first thing is books are expensive, right? They’re like $21 or if you’re on an Audible, I don’t know, what is a credit? I don’t remember in this these days. So books are expensive purchases. So it also means before we buy a book, we think a little bit about it.

Most often, when we buying a book, we are looking to be entertained in the domain of novel. so novelists, buyers of novels want to be entertained. Buyers of nonfiction want to be informed. They want information about something. So when we talk about novels, we’re looking that a reader is buying a novel because they enjoy novels. They want to be entertained, be it the 11 hours on Audible or be it the one week it takes them by their bedside to read the book.

And because our spend is getting tighter and tighter, we are finding that readers want a predict, they want to know that they’re getting what they want. And I want to challenge you guys and ask you who’s listening. When you buy a book, let’s say a friend recommended a book. Okay, this hasn’t been a friend, a random person said, you’ve got to read this book. You go and look at it. Maybe you’re in the bookshop, you pick it up and you read it or even you buy it. The question is, how long are you going to give that book before you bail or commit?

And most often it’s less than you think. Most often we used to say it’s three chapters. It’s not even really three chapters anymore. People make the decision within the first few pages of the book, really the first chapter. People go, I’m in or I’m out. And if they’re not in, on Amazon they can return the book, on Audible they can return the book and get a refund. So what is happening is it’s a combination of spend and the fact we want a predictable good read.

Alice Draper (22:00)
That’s a very good question.

Sarah Bullen (22:29)
And that we want to know that when we buy, when we go on our summer holiday to Greece and we buy five books, they’re going to be books we love. And then we join book clubs and book clubs have certain themes. We all like the same books in book clubs. So what happens is our expansive minds, our experimental reading that maybe at our university libraries, maybe in school it was prescribed reading, it diminishes. And we like…

books that give us the expected dopamine hit. This is exacerbated by the Netflix generation. I want to add that because the era of generic book genre category is getting stronger and stronger. So it’s all these factors. And in fact, you’re completely right. If you find an author you like, you don’t buy their book, you buy all their books. In fact, you may buy the 12 book deal at a discount.

download them all onto your Audible, Amazon, whatever it may be, and listen to them over time. So that’s absolutely the buying pattern. And I know you all, if you’re listening, you’ve done that. So let’s say you suddenly hit some Sarah J Maas, you’ll read every single one of her books. If you suddenly discover Danielle Steele, Nora Roberts, Lee Child, doesn’t matter who they are, you’re gonna love what they’re, all of them, all of them, all of them. And as an author,

Alice Draper (23:37)
Yes.

You’re gonna buy all the books.

Sarah Bullen (23:55)
If you do a little bit of research, may, if you go back to the beginning books, you’re going to see, and if you track them by year, 1997, there’s 40 books they’ve written over the last whatever years, you’re going to see how the books got better and better. It’s very important. Go and look at Dan Brown. Dan Brown, this, you know, amazing book, The Da Vinci Code, a breakout hit. I think it was his seventh book. And if you go back to his beginning books, which of course became hugely popular,

The craft is not as good. He learned his craft through his seven books. But by the time readers discover that person, they’re hooked and they will buy your back inventory as well.

Alice Draper (24:26)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just such an important lesson on getting the books out and, you know, allowing time to ensure that they’re, to help them, yeah, kind of get that traction. But what I want to ask you is I’m hearing that people want something predictable, something they know is going to hit them, give them those dopamine hits and the predictable ways that they want. What does this mean for authors who don’t want to write a generic book?

What does it mean for authors who want that standout book? Can they create that standout book? And, you know, that book that changes readers’ perspectives? I think that’s an aspiration of many authors. Are you saying that that is a commercially not very marketable book or just harder thing to get out there?

Sarah Bullen (25:21)
Hmm, good question. Let me think this through. When I work with authors, particularly unpublished debut novelists, I often say this, don’t reinvent storytelling. Storytelling has a structure to it. If you are in any doubt, get The Hero of a Thousand Faces, read Joseph Campbell, who has analyzed thousands and thousands of stories and mythologies since time began. They have beats. Stories have beats to them.

And it’s to understand that and know that and then find a way within the category you have chosen. So if you tell me you’ve written a crime and we don’t have a body, we don’t have a mystery at its very center, and we don’t have particular kind of characters, you haven’t written a crime. You’re just not sure about what you’ve written and you haven’t segmented your story the right way. You haven’t landed it in the right runway.

Alice Draper (26:10)
where it fits.

Sarah Bullen (26:20)
planes, you know, we need the right runway to land a plane in. so, so, so don’t reinvent story. Don’t do something weird. Don’t do something wacky. Don’t jump time like Quentin Tarantino. Don’t do experimental stuff. Don’t write the whole thing in third and second person. So I say that to debut novelists because you want your best chance of getting readers and publishers. It is better.

Alice Draper (26:41)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (26:49)
to look at a well selling author, to read a few of their books, to read a lot in your category, to understand how these books work, how a crime works, why is this a crime and why is this not a romance? How have they plotted this book? What are the big beats of a crime that have to be there to make this a crime? I, Alice, as a literary agent, I spent a lot of time reading manuscripts of

debut novelists or people who have spent many, many years on a book. It can be 10 years. And one of the most common questions I may reply to or with if I reply, because I don’t always reply, it may be I’m confused. What genre is this book? Now, I know that they don’t know. It doesn’t mean it’s a bad book. It means they’ve just straddled two different shelves. And I want to make it as simple as this.

Alice Draper (27:38)
Mm -hmm.

Sarah Bullen (27:48)
When we stack your book in the bookshop, when we open that box that comes from Penguin or Random House, that 18 year old at that bookshop, it’s a vac job. And they look at your book, which shelf are they gonna put your book in? And it needs to be pretty much as obvious as that because if you don’t know what shelf they’re putting your book in, you’re gonna run into plotting problems, you’re gonna run into genre problems, and you’re gonna battle to place your book with an agent or a publisher.

Alice Draper (28:04)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (28:18)
because they know the conventions.

Alice Draper (28:20)
So would you advise first time authors to really stick to kind of some of the more common rules where you’re not reinventing the wheel, as you said, you are following what you have to hit in a romance or a crime or whatever it is, you have a clear genre. And it’s more like if you have done that successfully and you have an audience and you are good, then perhaps you’re allowed to sort of

play with bending the rules and blending genres. Would you say that that’s something that could be possible?

Sarah Bullen (28:56)
So, 100%, the first thing is, I’m gonna answer the last thing first, never bend genre. Don’t bend genre. Rather be smart within your genre, be literary within your genre, be stand out within your genre. But you need to know you’re writing a crime, you need to know you’re writing a young adult, you need to know you’re writing a new adult, whatever it may be. Okay, so don’t bend genre, please. It’s the fundamental.

Alice Draper (29:05)
Okay? Okay.

So what if it’s like romance with some crime in it? Is that possible? Like…

Sarah Bullen (29:26)
Yeah, so I’ll tell you one of my early rejection stories when I was a beginning and then I’m going to come back to this. Should you write a simple book? I’m going to come back and answer that. So one of my first books and I was already a multi -published author. I three books in non -fiction books under my own name and I wanted to write a novel. I spent a lot of time writing a novel and it was set in a small town and it was a young woman who went back, stranger goes, she went back to her hometown and there was a murder and she was trying to solve the murder.

And I did the whole thing, first draft, second draft, third draft, fourth draft, fifth draft, sent it out, self -addressed stamped envelopes. Because in those days you posted your manuscripts. This is in like 1997. Posted your manuscripts. And I was really lucky because of the 20 I posted, two people got back to me after three months. The one said, no, thank you. And the second sent me a long letter that said, and then followed up by a phone call.

which went along with was an LA agent in Los Angeles and they said, Sarah, we can see you have talent. We can see you can write, but you’ve made a huge error. You’ve got a crime and a romance. You need to choose one and by far your strongest plot line is your romance. I was all of 25 and I took their advice and I thought they’re wrong. It’s the strongest plot is not a romance. It is a crime. And I rewrote the whole book three or four more times.

Entitling the crime aspect, sent it off and never got published and it must have been 12 years later that I came back from working all over the world and I was cleaning out files and I opened and I saw this book, this printed out book sitting in my bottom drawer titled The Ticking Shed and I read through it and with the hindsight of 12 years I slapped myself on the head and I went, of course it’s a romance. I mean really, they were brooding cowboys, they were damaged.

people looking for love. It wasn’t a crime. So I had, what I had done is I just got the genre wrong. So what does, what is the other lesson to extract from this story? Most books have a main plot and a subplot. The most important thing is what is your main plot? If it’s a crime, the driver of the plot is solving a mystery, okay?

Alice Draper (31:22)
Mm.

Sarah Bullen (31:51)
The romance is your subplot. It’s happening on the side. It’s pulling the reader forward. It’s important to know that. If romance is your main plot, the driver of the whole novel is will they, won’t they? Will they, won’t they get together, fall in love, whatever it may be, but it is will they? And then maybe at the subplot is a crime, maybe just on the side. It’s a quiet, a gentler story. There’s a crime involved. But

You need to know what your primary genre is and you can go look on Amazon. Please do yourself a favor. Go and I’m talking to the writers out there. Go onto Amazon, look at the categories and their subcategories and be super clear. Even if it’s a crime, is it a, it it a, you know, if it’s a crime, is it a cozy, is it a paranormal, is it a forensic pathology, is it a forensic crime, is it a, you know, noir?

Alice Draper (32:35)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (32:48)
What is it within the crime genre? So that’s the answer.

Alice Draper (32:51)
Yeah, I love that so much. Are you ever going to go back to that book and bring it to life as a romance? The book you wrote in your 20s?

Sarah Bullen (33:00)
It’s such a great question, you know, because we’re all sitting there with half finished projects in our drawers. No, is the short answer. You know why? I think we learn so much from rejection, which is what you’re talking about. We learn so much about the books that fail. And many years on from that person, that 20 or five, whatever, can’t remember all the ones who wrote that. I promise you the book I wrote right now would be so much better because I take on in my backpack.

Alice Draper (33:11)
You

Sarah Bullen (33:30)
I would have all those tools, all those ahas, all those things I learned and I wouldn’t want to resurrect those old characters. I would rather start from scratch.

But often with authors, I say to them, go and look at those manuscripts that are lying by the wayside. Are they worthy? Are they good enough? Can you pick them up and work those ones a little bit more? Or should you just start from scratch?

Alice Draper (33:55)
Yeah, I love that so much. So when you were selecting fiction authors, were there some boxes that they had to check? Like, was there like, okay, it’s a genre, the story is good. Like, were there kind of, if you had to give us a checklist, is there a checklist you could give us? As an agent.

Sarah Bullen (34:13)
as an agent.

100%. I’m going to talk novels at the moment because non -fictions are different and I want to tell you what it’s like. Yeah, because they’re a little bit different. Let me describe what happens when you’re somebody like an agent. I’ve worked for big agencies and I’ve now got a small agency. It’s the same for a publisher. It would be a similar process across your desk, in your email or via Submissible, which Submittable, which is the online forum. You get a number of books on a given basis.

Alice Draper (34:21)
Yes, a novel. Sorry, I’m gonna get to nonfiction just now. Yeah, novels.

Sarah Bullen (34:44)
big publisher is going to go to their assistant first, a small agent like myself, I’d read them myself. So the first thing you’re to do is you’re to look at the query letter. You’re not even going to open the email for sure, right? You’re simply going to look at the body of the email. And what you expect to see in the body of the email is a few things. You expect to see, you don’t care what the title of a novel is, really, it’s not that important with the title of the novel. The first thing you want to see is they know the genre and that you represent that genre. So

I don’t represent children’s books. So if you send me a children’s book, I’m immediately going to send it to my sister with the note reject. She’ll send a very nice email back saying, you so much. We do not represent children’s books. Simple, right? That you don’t take that personally. The next thing I’m going to look for in the body of the email, this is before I’ve opened the novel synopsis. I want to see two things. I want to see they know the genre and I want to see a character who’s in terrible trouble.

That’s all I want to see. There’s a third thing. I want to see there’s a story. So don’t forget the query letter is essentially your back cover blurb. It’s a teaser. It’s maybe a few hundred words. It’s two or three paragraphs at the most. All I want to see is there’s some characters I can buy into. I can absolutely see they’re on a journey that’s genre relevant and that I kind of like the vibe. There’s a bit of a feeling of a story that’s going to develop.

So that means, all that means is I’m going to open the next part which may be there, which will be the novel synopsis. The novel synopsis, as you probably all know, is an entire breakdown of your novel. It’s gonna be blow by blow over three to five pages. This happens and then that happens and then you meet this person and then they do that and then they do this. And I’m gonna glance through that. And if I still think, they’ve got something there. I like that character. She’s quirky. She’s a…

Virtuo is a violinist. I like that. And she’s discovered a body hidden in a cellar. This ticks the crime boxes. I’m going to then open the next piece, part three, which could be the attached first few chapters. Authors don’t always attach that, but if at that point I’m interested enough, I’ll mail back, I’ll say, hi, girl, thanks, so initial look looks interesting, please send me your manuscript. Or please send me five chapters. That’s the next step.

So, and then I may read the first five chapters. When I open the first five chapters, pretty much, I’m gonna see very quickly by those first five chapters if there’s a book there. Quickly. What am I looking for? I’m looking initially for a character who is interesting. The second thing I’m looking for is an inciting incident. What happens? Okay, build your character. Something’s gotta happen to put their life in turmoil.

Alice Draper (37:21)
Mm -hmm.

Sarah Bullen (37:40)
And then I want to see that you can kind of follow through. There’s a little bit of a story building and that you’ve got somebody hooked at that point. They’re going to say, they can write, the character’s good. Clearly they know their genre. They’ve hit a lot of, they’ve ticked a lot of these boxes. I’m going to ask for the full manuscript.

Alice Draper (38:00)
I love us. Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (38:00)
That’s the steps we’re going through. And to reduce all of that, what am I looking for? A good story. Good story.

Alice Draper (38:08)
A good story. I think that if like, I think takeaway is don’t think that the story is going to be in the manuscript because if you cannot get that good story across in the synopsis, if you cannot get it across in that initial email, nobody’s ever going to reach the point of reading that manuscript. So I love that so much. I think, and I think

you know, getting your attention so fast, even reach a synopsis or reach reading the first few chapters. It’s that initial email. So that initial email, the genre needs to be very clear. There needs to be a protagonist in trouble with a great story. Is that correct? Love it. I love it.

Sarah Bullen (38:48)
That’s right. That’s right. And you know, Alice, the thing is, I rip because I’ve I’ve taken on authors and I’ve tried to sell some of their books for maybe up to a year young novelists. And I also want to tell you that as as literary agents, as publishers, we can see talent and we can see it in this way. there’s a there’s a quality, there’s something different about it. Right. There’s a there’s a there’s an ease of reading.

I represented one young author. She is, I’m not going to tell you her name. She was a young Indian girl. was 19 years old, living in India. And she’d written a sensational book. And I took it on. It was a novel and I pitched it to quite a lot of, UK based agents, sorry, publishers. And the one publisher I worked very closely with eventually got back to me and her and they said, we can see she has got huge talent. She’s somebody we’re going to watch.

We want you to rewrite this book and we don’t want to see it before two years. Make it work. Okay. They also gave some specific feedback about things that they wanted shifted and changed. And the one thing was it was a long generational story about seven lifetimes of lovers who came together and destroyed each other. And they felt some of the lifetimes, they were very controversial things that they didn’t want to, you know, within the Indian culture. I can’t remember at the time what they were.

but they were just political. didn’t want those in the book. They wanted her to rewrite it, a stronger thread, change two of the lifetimes. And they said, don’t give it back to us before two years, which means this, young authors are worth investing in and publishers nerd and agents nerd in. And we can see that they’ve got potential. They may not yet have reached it yet. And that means we’re going to keep our eye on these people. What else may happen is they may assign you a developmental editor.

which happens a lot. They may say, you’re good. I want you to work with a mentor. This is a great story. This is a rising genre. Work with a mentor. The other reason we like to see a talent and a younger talent in this day and age is because publishers don’t want any one book out of you. In fact, in fact, most of the publishers will tell you that in a novel, this is true in many countries, not all countries.

Alice Draper (41:00)
Okay, yes, yes, yeah

Sarah Bullen (41:09)
is it will take five books to build enough momentum and sales to establish you as a robust novelist. So this is really important. In fact, we have in South Africa, really well -known international author, Dion Mayer. He writes crime books and his publishers, and I work with him quite a lot, have said that it’s taken him five novels to get this massive global deals where his books are in 17 languages. It takes that long.

So when we’re looking for a debut novelist, we want to know that they’ve got the ability to write a book, they’ve got a little bit of edge, quirk, and that they are disciplined enough to produce potentially a book every two to three years.

Alice Draper (41:55)
Yeah, I love that. Jill Mansell, who’s on the podcast, she has a very similar story with writing her books where she writes a book every year. And, you know, that’s what the publishers wanted when she signed on to them is that she’s producing something every year so that there’s always a predictable summer read that people can get onto. And as she explains her success, it was very much a gradual process that got built on and built on and built on. so she

distinctly remembers the time where she realized, I’m successful and like, we’ll never have to worry about money ever again. But it was not overnight. It took multiple books before that happened. So that I love that. So before we, you know, I really want to, there’s so many questions I want to ask you and I feel like we’re going to run out of time. So now I need to ask you about nonfiction. So you are representing mostly nonfiction authors right now. Is that correct?

Sarah Bullen (42:34)
Right, right.

Mm -hmm.

moment yes and as I said because nonfiction authors are predictable authors when a nonfiction author comes to us we have a sense of them we know their sale capacity we can estimate so for me as an agent

Alice Draper (43:02)
Mm. Mm.

So what do you look at to estimate a sales capacity?

Sarah Bullen (43:10)
Yeah, so this is really interesting and you know the world of publishing has been incredibly challenged and changed by the advent of digital Amazon online publishing because it has allowed a massive rise in what is self -publishing which used to be called vanity publishing. It’s a huge shift in the publishing market. It’s meant that

you no longer have to be at the beck and call of big publishers like your little browns, penguins in order to be published. And that has really benefited non -fiction authors. And, you know, I’m going to come into what do I look at in a second. But what’s very interesting in all the authors I represent, there is very often and I’m going to say in 80 percent of the authors who come to me.

I would have a conversation at 80 % to them straight up and I’m going to say to them, you’re not going to get a publisher. I would recommend you go down and look, investigate the self publishing route.

because you may probably make more money. That’s a given if you have the capacity and it’s a lower bar. Like you can get your book out there if you have a message to share with the world. So with 100%, I mean, I’ve got a bookshelf of authors behind me. These are all my authors. I would say 50 % got a publishing deal and 50 % didn’t and none, neither of them are more or less successful than the other to be absolutely honest with me. Some of my most successful self -published.

Alice Draper (44:18)
Okay, yeah.

Sarah Bullen (44:43)
most successful, highest earning authors publish their own books. So that’s the first thing. When in a traditional publishing environment, when a nonfiction author comes to us, there’s a number of things we look at. Firstly, we look at what are they writing about? And this sounds like a ridiculous thing to say. But for example,

there are books that sell by virtue of their subject matter. So if you came to me five months ago with a really written biography of Kamala Harris, it’s gonna be snapped up because the topic is wanted, right? So if it’s something that’s contemporary, current affairs, you’re first of the mark and the book’s solid, are very interested. Publishers are very interested in high turnaround, very quick current affairs books.

that speak into an event. I’m going to give you an example. Imagine there’s a very quick, terrible plane crash. Somebody, a journalist probably, jumps very quickly on that. In two months, they’ve got a whole book about it. Publishers are going to jump on that book because it’s fantastic, right? It’s guaranteed. Everyone wants to read about what happened. So that’s number one. It’s current, it’s topical, it’s fast, it’s out there. The second thing is, who’s the author?

Alice Draper (45:57)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (46:50)
So more than what are they writing about, if it’s not a subject matter driven book, we’re gonna say, well, who are you and why are you gonna sell books? How are you gonna sell books? So the very first thing I’m going to do, and this is really practical if I get a proposal from a non -fiction author, I’m gonna go through the exact same process. I’m gonna read the email. I’m gonna open their book proposal, which is different to a novel synopsis, because a book proposal has got to tell you lots more things.

It’s got to tell you competitive titles. It’s got to tell what is your Facebook following, your Instagram following, your LinkedIn following, how many people in your email database. And the next thing I’m going to do, which any publisher is going to do, is I’m going to go and Google you. And I’m going to look you up and I’m going to think, say, are they somebody who’s got the capacity to back and sell a minimum number of books? And I say a minimum number because at the very least, the publisher wants to cover their own

Alice Draper (47:33)
Mm -hmm.

Sarah Bullen (47:50)
At the very best they want a breakout bestseller and anything in between is okay. So I’m going to do that. I’m going to say, who are you? Who are you in the world? Why? Why are you an expert? I’m going to tell you what that is. I’m going to make a rough estimate and I think that once you’ve sold about 2000 books, a publisher’s sold around 2000 books, you’re okay. Okay. You’re okay.

Alice Draper (47:51)
Yeah.

Mm.

What is the minimum to cover costs? Sorry, it’s interjection.

Okay.

Mm -hmm.

Sarah Bullen (48:15)
They in fact would probably cover costs in selling under 500 books, but that’s not really what they’re looking for. Not really what

Alice Draper (48:23)
Yeah, yeah, but they don’t want to bring on an author just to cover the cost. Anyway, sorry, please continue. Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (48:27)
You don’t read.

And that’s true and that’s not true because it’s an interesting question. So yes, on the baseline level, are in the business of making money, but they’re also in the business of something a little bit more noble, which I really admire in this industry. They are also in the business of recording history. And that’s why publishers bring out books that may not be commercially viable, but they are important. They’re important. They record.

history or an unspoken about minority or an event that hasn’t been recorded or concepts that need to go down in public libraries and be there to be read by future generations. So this is really interesting. And I have to be honest with you. These are a lot of the books that get sold and commissioned. So if, for example, there is a small and as an author, because this book is for authors, I so your podcast.

Alice Draper (49:20)
you

Sarah Bullen (49:30)
I often say the best way to write a book and to get published is to get commissioned to write a book. And by that I mean, take a really good look at the contemporary market and find out if there’s a nonfiction book you can write that you can pitch to a publisher that’s really useful. Maybe there’s a minority population in your area who hasn’t, there’s nothing about them. Maybe there’s an important story that hasn’t been told.

It could be a big public figure that nothing’s written about them, an artist, a politician, an activist. Pitch a publisher. Show them you can write and say, this is a great book. See what happens. You’d be surprised. Most of the books are commissioned books. Publishers won’t particularly want

Alice Draper (50:14)
I love that. love that. So when you’re commissioning a book that I mean when author is trying to get a commissioned book that’s when they’re writing the book proposal, but they haven’t actually written the book. They’ve simply written a proposal and they’re hoping that they will be commissioned before working on the book. Is that correct?

Sarah Bullen (50:30)
And I’m going to give you an example.

Alice Draper (50:32)
And fiction authors need to submit a manuscript. Fiction author can’t get commissioned.

Sarah Bullen (50:36)
100 percent. 100 percent. If you write a novel you have to finish it. Okay, do the best you can then go through the torture of doing your synopsis because writing a novel synopsis is very difficult. It’s tough and your query letter and then you start sending out you’ve done all your work with a non -fiction book. Very often I encourage you to test the water by just sending proposals. I’ve recently got a fantastic book commissioned

Alice Draper (50:49)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (51:04)
One of my authors, came to me, she has a deep love of the ocean. She said she really wanted to write a book about ocean warriors. And I said, sounds so fabulous. Don’t go ahead and spend a year and a half on your life yet. Write three chapters, write a really good proposal. Let’s send it out. And I want to share this with you so you understand how this business works. She went ahead. She did. She interviewed three incredible people who work in the ocean, with the ocean, freedivers internationally.

She wrote a good first chapter. So what she had was probably the equivalent of 15 ,000 words, four chapters. She wrote a solid book proposal. It just so happened that I work with a lot of publishers. I knew one publisher and I absolutely know that her husband is passionate about open water swimming, open water diving, diving. So all I did was I threw her the book. said, you may like this. I know you love the ocean. All she read were those four chapters.

She signed a publishing contract with this woman. She said, fantastic. You’ve got 18 months to write and deliver the book. And here are the people we’d also like included in the book because we want this book to sell. So here’s some big name people. We’ll facilitate the interviews. So this is a great example of jumping on a contemporary trend, which is the ocean preservation, cleaning up our oceans, protecting oceans, climate change.

Alice Draper (52:23)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (52:30)
pulling together a great idea that interests you and finding a good fit with a publisher who have a special interest in that.

Alice Draper (52:38)
Yeah, I love that so much. So thank you so much for sharing all of that. I’m hearing that finding a contemporary trend, looking at being very topical is a great way of getting a book deal potentially if you don’t have a huge audience. So if you’re being Googled and you don’t have tens of thousands of followers, perhaps if your angle is unique enough, speaks to some kind of…

like social issue that the publishers care about, then that’s potentially a way. Because there are people on the podcast, Jason van Ruele, who actually, built 140 ,000 followers to get a book deal because he wanted to write a book and he was told he needs to be famous. So that to me seems like a very hard thing to do. And I’m hearing that there is another way around it. So.

Yeah, so I love that. if a writer is kind of thinking along those lines, what does it mean to start looking? would you have any kind of advice of how they could start looking at what sort of trends, contemporary trends there are that potentially publishers would be interested in right now?

Sarah Bullen (53:34)
Yeah.

You know, this is just like what we call social intelligence. Like just look at what your peers are talking about. I think the first, there’s three aspects to this. Firstly, writing a book is a long process. This is not a blog you’re writing. This is a commitment that is going to take you a year. And it’s a date with you and your fingers on a keyboard, right? So you want to make sure that you like the date. You like the date. Don’t write a book.

Alice Draper (53:58)
Mm.

Sarah Bullen (54:22)
that you’re not interested in, that you’re not passionate about in the non -fiction realm. So that’s the first thing. Like what really gets you excited and maybe possibly contemporary and interesting? The second thing is access. Is there somebody you know that has a fantastic story that you can get access to? I mean, imagine, for example, that you happen to know or have access to a serial killer and you want to go behind the scenes of the serial killer. You know, true crime is very popular right now.

just want to add that’s one of our real rising non -fiction genres. And the third point, the third thing to think about, and I often, I often laugh. Don’t try and get too serious. I want you to walk into a bookshop. I did this research recently in America. I strolled through lots of different areas and, you know, from Boston to Boulder, and I was looking at bookshops. was going for some of my authors to check their books.

And I looked at those books that sell and I promise you, they’re not the heavy books. Some of those books that sell relentlessly. Think of the boy, the mole, the fox and what’s it the boy? I can never get it right. People love a light gift book. Don’t underestimate the power of a book of sayings, of beautiful quotations from the great masters. You know, people come with these unbelievable heart and soul projects that are about trauma or loss or…

People like to have light books. So is there a book that’s easy, that’s light, that’s a holiday read, that’s somebody, that’s a gift book? Think about gift books. They’re people buy for other people. So another, and look at what’s selling, and it’s one of the biggest selling books, the genre is Christian publishing. So if you happen to be religious and a Christian, think about that as your publishing niche. Again, we’re talking about genres. Christian publishing is huge.

Alice Draper (56:18)
Yeah. Yeah, I love it.

Sarah Bullen (56:20)
So take a look and also have a bit of fun with it because a book’s got to be fun. You’ve got to enjoy the process.

Alice Draper (56:26)
Yeah. I love that. So a lot of people listening are not just authors, but they’re also entrepreneurs and they run businesses and they’re interested in writing a book that’s related to their business. So that could be self help because they’re a coach. It would probably fall under the sort of self help genre. Maybe business, like maybe kind of teaching business stuff. And that’s a very saturated markets. I personally find that it’s very hard to

Just as a reader, it’s very hard for people to distinguish themselves and write something that’s very different to what’s been written before. It feels like all the advice has been given before, and now there’s just different words to explain the same advice. Do you ever work with those sorts of authors? Is this something that you can speak to in terms of how to differentiate yourself in this space?

Sarah Bullen (57:18)
Yeah, absolutely. In fact, most of my mentorships I run, are year long or four month mentorships are exactly that. They’re with business people, they’re with coaches, they’re with people who’ve run a big business. They’ve learned some stuff, they want to share it. Or they want to elevate themselves to the next level. So just to speak to the trends, you’re absolutely right. It is a very saturated market. And unfortunately,

people default to names they know. So we would battle in territories like South Africa, Australia, New Zealand to compete with the big names. Who are the big names? Simon Sinek, Anthony Robbins, James Keir. Yeah, you know who they are. In fact, if we have a homegrown author who’s unbelievable habit, how to change your habits, how to change your life,

Alice Draper (57:58)
Grants. Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (58:11)
they will battle on a shelf with James Clear, Tom McCabbitt. In fact, we default to these big American brand authors. What that means is publishers are hesitant to pick up somebody like that. They’re very hesitant. This is absolutely the author who’s gonna benefit from a self -publishing model because…

Alice Draper (58:15)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (58:35)
Most often they’re not writing the book to become a New York Times bestseller, although that’s very nice to have. We all want that on our book, on our tick box. Most often when you invest a year of your life and write a book, you’re doing it because you know you are an authority and you want to stake that ground. Writing a book

Alice Draper (58:59)
Mm -hmm.

Sarah Bullen (59:01)
elevates you above all those people who make podcasts or talk. I’m sorry to say I didn’t mean podcasts in a derogatory way, but I mean who write Instagram posts. People who write Instagram posts or long LinkedIn, or they tell their friends or they talk to business meetings and they share this font of knowledge. Writing a book is really truly, it’s like becoming a doctor. It’s the equivalent of a PhD, the effort, the investment, the time, the research.

Alice Draper (59:07)
No, no, no, no.

Sarah Bullen (59:29)
The digging deep, the rejection to get that book to 80 ,000 words. They deserve the authority that they get from it. So that’s why people write a book like that. So it’s to do talks. It’s to get conferencing work. It’s to be a keynote speaker. It’s to do those kind of things. Some of my biggest authors I represent are exactly that. They’re futurists. They’re thought leaders. They have not got traditional publishing deals.

They sell their books and through their talks in massive conferences in Dubai, Chicago, LA. They order those books on Amazon. So the books get delivered at all the costs. 5 ,000 books arrive at the conference all through IngramSpark, which is easier. It’s the printing division anywhere in the world. They arrive at the hotel where they’re delivering a keynote address, 500 books. Let’s be conservative. And they deliver the talk, sell the books and they make 80%.

Alice Draper (1:00:02)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (1:00:28)
the sale which is what Amazon offers you by the way you get 80 % of a book sale as opposed to a publishing deal where you get a royalty of between 12 and 14 percent of a sale so your coaches your your people this is the way generally they are moving they are moving into investing in their own books

Alice Draper (1:00:33)
Yeah.

Mm, mm.

Yes, I love it. You touched on that. And most of my clients are coaches, keynote speakers, you know, in this domain. And most of them have self published or they have gone hybrid publishing where I actually on this podcast interview two CEOs of hybrid publishers. And that is just to help with kind of like getting into bookstores and help with the like marketing and sales of the books. Yeah, but it’s you’re not getting

picked by a big publisher, you are actually putting the costs upfront to the hybrid publisher. But as you touched on Sarah, purpose is often a lot sort of, it’s not this typical author purpose where it could be increasing your thought leadership. You’re more likely to get booked for big talks and selling books through talks is a great way of selling a lot of books. my…

Second to last question for you is one more question about books and then I just have one sort of question to close off a conversation. Is the size of the book deals? So I spoke to someone on the podcast, Amy Chantel, and she said that she got a book deal. She worked really, really hard to get a book deal and she only has 3000 or so followers. She doesn’t have a huge audience.

And it’s a nonfiction book. So it’s just that genre. We’re just talking about kind of the Adam Grante style of writing. And so she got rejected a lot because nobody wanted to represent someone like her without a lot of followers. She was even advised by some agents to buy fake followers if she wanted a book deal. You raise your eyebrows at that. And so she eventually did, but she commented on our interview that

it wasn’t a big book deal because someone with her size was never going to get a big book deal. So she was not getting like that much money. And as you mentioned, she probably didn’t get a lot of royalties either. So for authors who are going in what we just discussed, that sort of current affairs, speaking to social problems, not speaking to business, self help side, but you know, maybe they’re worried about the oceans, which is what you spoke about. Do they, would they make money out of their book?

or like, like, is that something that is realistic or is it more something that they would be doing as a passion project?

Sarah Bullen (1:03:10)
So to answer that question, let me just think about this. I have over the years, I think I have had in my books 80 different authors that I represent. If you want to, are any of them millionaires? Not one that didn’t come into the book deal a millionaire. My best, I’m going to say my most successful author and that’s a very interesting yardstick.

would be potentially an author called Gabby Lowe. Her book is called Get Me to 21. She wrote the book about her daughter’s journey to get a double lung transplant before she turned 21. Gabby wrote this book as a tribute to her daughter and she has got a publishing deal and she has promoted this book. And when I say promoted, she speaks at organ donor functions. She speaks about her this relentlessly. She’s done probably in five years. She probably does.

20 big events a year. That’s a lot. That book is selling and selling and selling and selling. It’s successful because not because she’s probably she’s made money out of the book, which I don’t think she’s made much money. It’s successful because the amount she’s raised for the Organ Donor Foundation has been astronomical. So publishing is an interesting industry because I don’t believe anybody goes into it to make money. I think it’s a passion and a calling.

Alice Draper (1:04:27)
Hmm.

Sarah Bullen (1:04:38)
And truthfully, when I look at my authors and how much money you make, it’s negligible. Your JK Rowlings are different. They break out hits. Even, but what it does for your life is where the money comes, right? So the payoff is going to be at the conferences. Is it the one of massive keynote speakers talks you doing? It’s very hard to judge.

Alice Draper (1:04:56)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (1:05:07)
how a book is going to sell and what money it’s going to make. And I feel that the industry is very tainted by these big American concepts of what it is to be a published author. know, America has topped on book sales, which means before that book is launched, Tony Anthony Robbins or anybody who’s a big name has or what’s his name? Joe Dispenser has pre sold to his followers 10 ,000 copies and every single Barnes and Noble has already ordered.

Alice Draper (1:05:17)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (1:05:34)
500 copies per store and it’s the New York Times bestseller before the week it launches. That is not how books really for the average folk work. They don’t work like that. We sell books 10 at a time. We add book talks at the little events and then it grows and then it grows and then it’s 100 and then it’s 500. So can you make money? You can make money out of books. But I don’t personally.

Alice Draper (1:05:39)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (1:06:04)
know people who have made that much money out of their book sales. Sorry, I wish I could say.

Alice Draper (1:06:09)
Yeah, yeah.

But it’s like a reality check that I think we all need to know is that, you know, you are going to be one in a million probably if you’re going to get rich off your book. And something you touched on, which I also just want to re -highlight is that it’s very hard to quantify what the effect of the book is going to be on you because you may not be making tons of money off the books and the sales. A client of mine recently, his book just launched like two weeks ago, it was like immediately a number one bestseller on Amazon and he doesn’t have a huge audience just that we

We’d been doing a lot of PR for months before, but he was saying to me, like, it’s not a money -making process, it’s an expensive process. And I was saying, I think it’s very hard to quantify what the effect is gonna be, because when someone reads your book, they’re sitting with you a lot longer.

a lot more intimately than they are when they listen to you on a podcast or read your LinkedIn post or read your Instagram post. So just in the right hands, like, you know, someone who’s booking very big keynotes or wants to bring on a new board member for some very big event or something. If someone like that is reading your book, the relationships, the opportunities that can come to you, I think are huge and it’s very hard to quantify what that is going to be. So yeah.

Yeah, just probably not something we should be doing if the plan is to get rich very quickly, unless you have marketing skills that neither of us know about.

Sarah Bullen (1:07:41)
Yeah.

Alice Draper (1:07:41)
Sarah, thank you so much for your time. It’s been such a fantastic conversation. My final question for you is, do you have any bold risks or rejection goals that you are setting for yourself this next period of your life, which could be the next year, could be the next 10 years?

Sarah Bullen (1:08:01)
Do I have any bold risks? that’s a really good question. I have just launched a brand new book and it’s called The Other Side. I, apart from representing authors, I write. So it’s my first book and it’s called The Other Side, Journeys into Mysticism, Magic and Near Death. And I want to tell you that the risk I have taken with that, it’s more of a commitment, is that I will do 30 book events over the next 12 months to

get the book out there. Now, this doesn’t sound like a lot, but I want to tell you that often it’s such a process. I’m writing a book, I’m writing a book. You forget that once a book’s out in the world, it’s a little baby. You can’t just dump it. You’ve got to nurture and grow the book and do lots and lots of things. So the bold risk is to put myself out there at 30 events and…

And you know, it’s quite interesting because there’s no such rejection like standing in front of a group of a few hundred people and having completely blank faces and any author is going to tell you that. So I think rejection is reading the reviews. my God, what if people think it’s rubbish? What if people think it’s I don’t know what I’m talking about. And the worst thing is what if nobody even notices? Nobody reads it. It’s like just disappeared. So there’s so much risk of rejection.

Alice Draper (1:09:13)
Mm -hmm.

Sarah Bullen (1:09:26)
And putting anything out there, I always love the Brene Brown concept of rejection and putting yourself out there. You know, she speaks about how difficult it is to stand in the arena. It’s really easy to be in the cheap seats like throwing or booing or clapping or thumbs up and liking a post. And that is not the domain of what we do as authors and as changemakers.

Alice Draper (1:09:39)
Yeah.

Sarah Bullen (1:09:53)
You know, putting yourself out there, writing a book, doing a podcast like you do, sharing stuff with the world is is extremely out there. It is bold and it opens up so much possible rejection. So we’re doing it. We are doing it.

Alice Draper (1:10:09)
We’re doing it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s such a lovely closing note. Like putting ourselves out there, doing the thing is vulnerable. So congratulations on getting that next book out there and speaking out for it. And I talk about this all the time, but I think when we’re really passionate about something like the least vulnerable thing to do is to be very quiet about it. So for you, could be writing the book and not.

like trying to get into events and not trying to like kind of build a buzz about your book. For me, it could be making this podcast and just publishing it and not getting my community involved and not like sort of pitching people to kind of help get this book out, this podcast out there. It’s vulnerable. It’s vulnerable trying to get people to share the thing that we’re extremely passionate about because now we risk them saying it sucks or saying no, or, you know, this as you mentioned right at the beginning.

This is our creative work, this is not a program that we’re coding and so it feels very personal to us. So thank you so much. Okay, so if anyone wants to find you, where should they find you and what can they find you for? Like what services would you potentially be able to?

Sarah Bullen (1:11:19)
They can find it at the writingroom .co .za. And really, I work with authors over mentorship. So I run a 12 -month mentorship, working very over a year to get you all the way to publication or a tight to four -month one to just push you to write the book initially. And I run writing retreats. So I have run writing retreats every year in Greece, in Tuscany, and every two years in Lama or a magical little island of Kenya and in Cape Town, South Africa.

Alice Draper (1:11:45)
I’ve there! Love Lamu Island.

Sarah Bullen (1:11:48)
It is magic. It is magic. So yeah, and really as a literary agent as well, take a look at what I work with. You’ve probably heard me speak about it. I never really solicit for authors because generally I have a waiting list. You’re to find most agents do. But a beautiful book that’s just time is well placed. I am looking for it and all publishers are always looking for books. That’s our business. We want good books.

Alice Draper (1:11:50)
Good.

Yes.

Sarah Bullen (1:12:15)
So can find me there, The Writing Room or InternationalWritingRetreats .com

Alice Draper (1:12:20)
Amazing. Thank you so much for time, Sarah, and listeners. Create that magical book and work on that book proposal. This was fantastic.