In troubled times, many turn to books for comfort. Reading is resistance, they say. Knowledge is power. But books are not untouched by this period of unrest. How is the publishing industry responding to this period of social, political, and economic upheaval? What does the future hold for books and the people who make them?
Author and literary agent Rebecca Podos recently sat down with agents Jim McCarthy and Stefanie Molina-Santos and authors Tehlor Kay Mejia and Tamika Thompson to discuss recent gains and losses in publishing. How has the industry changed since the start of their careers? Do they notice signs of hope?
Rebecca Podos
Let’s start off with a little context on how and when you came into the publishing industry. Jim, do you want to go first?
Jim McCarthy
Sure. I started working for Dystel, Goderich & Bourret in 1999, which at the time was Jane Dystel Literary Management. I was still in school and working part-time. I actually kept leaving because I was studying urban design, so I went to work for the City Parks Foundation. Then when I graduated college in 2002, a full-time job opened up, so yeah, now I’ve been here twenty-six years.
Tehlor Kay Mejia
I wrote my first book in 2013, which went absolutely nowhere, and then the second was the one I started querying with. It got a bunch of rejections because it had no dialogue. Literally none. At all. It was just like a girl walking around on the beach thinking stuff. And then I wrote the third one and signed with Jim after a series of [revise and resubmits] that was very long. [laughs] He kept being like, “It’s almost there, if you could do one more edit,” and I did, and the last thing he said was, “I think this is two books, I’m so sorry.” [laughs] And I, with all my zero clout or knowledge of anything, was like, “Look, I’ll do it if you sign me first,” and he was like, “Bet,” and that was like ten years ago. Then we sold it. Now it’s We Set the Dark on Fire and We Unleash the Merciless Storm, and he was right that it should be two books.
Podos
I love that duology.
Mejia
Thank you. [Jim] is awesome.
Podos
And Tamika?
Tamika Thompson
My background is in journalism, working for network news and then a prominent public affairs show on PBS. I think it was about fifteen years ago when I transitioned to creative writing. The three books that I’ve published so far have come from small presses. I coedited a multigenre anthology for writers of color that won a Foreword INDIES Book Award. A novella came out from a small horror press, and then my collection of stories came out from an independent press in 2023. And that won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for horror. And my upcoming work that Becca sold . . .
Podos
Big fan.
Thompson
[laughs] My novel, The Curse of Hester Gardens, will be traditionally published in March 2026 by Erewhon.
Podos
And finally, Stefanie.
Stefanie Molina-Santos
After being a senior editor at a literary journal for a few years, I started interning at a literary agency in about 2019 and became an agent in 2021, when the industry was simultaneously being influenced by COVID as well as still going fairly strong in the drive for diversity. So I was pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to make a difference, and remote work was a normality for me already.
Podos
And I came into this industry in 2011 from a grad school writing program, and I started an internship at the little boutique agency up the hill, which was Rees Literary Agency. My path was really short and straight, and I stayed there and brought YA into the agency. I was really determined to do that. I was with Rees until just this year and am now at Neighborhood Literary.
Everybody has so much experience and so much wisdom in this field. How have you noticed publishing change, traditional or indie, since you came into it?
Mejia
I’m doing a mentorship thing this year with an aspiring author, and she’s working on her first book, and she’s talking about querying, and I feel like I have no advice to give her about querying. [laughs] Because it’s been like a full decade since I did it, and it feels like it is really different. It feels like everything is taking a lot longer than it used to. To me, it feels like things are a little bit more conservative in terms of what risks people are willing to take. I feel like earlier on, when I was going on submission with books, people were really willing to take a swing on a cool premise, and now you have to have way more pages, a lot more proof that you can execute, and they want something that’s extremely marketable. Less risks being taken, for sure, which can be tough as a marginalized author whose characters’ identity is often seen as a risk. I do worry about the conservative shift making it less possible for both people who are doing cool innovative genre things and people writing about marginalized experiences having less success breaking in.
Thompson
I would agree with that, for sure, particularly about the risk. When I was starting out, the message that I got was that it was Big Five or bust, and I was not picked up by a Big Five publisher in the beginning. And I think back then, small presses were not championed in the way that they are now. Self-publishing back then, I think, was not really respected at all. Amazon was challenging the publishing industry—both publishers and bookstores—so I think that also contributed to publishers not [being] willing to take a lot of risks. At the same time, what I was seeing both in journalism and publishing was that social media was starting to flatten distribution and marketing. People were becoming more aware of MFA programs, and low-residency MFA programs in particular.
What I see now that is so different from when I was starting out is that anyone can publish, market, and distribute their work, and the backlash to Amazon has kind of harnessed social media, so we are supporting and being champions of indie publishers, small presses, indie bookstores. We have our Indie Bookstore Day now, growing respect for self-published authors and indie authors. There’s this ecosystem that’s been created within the indie world for reviews, for awards, for bestseller lists. I know our anthology, Graffiti, when it came out, our distributor was Small Press Distribution, which is not around anymore, but they had created a bestseller list. I think when people talk about these things, they don’t see reviews and awards and bestseller lists as marketing tools, but that’s exactly what it is. I think the indie world has co-opted some of that marketing language of the Big Five and been able to use it for our works. Which is really important for marginalized authors. It used to be if you weren’t picked up by the Big Five, your work was living on your computer, but we have an opportunity now to find readers and expand readership. So within the indie world, I’ve been happy with the changes that I’ve seen.
Podos
I think that’s so fascinating, Tamika. One thing that brings to mind is when I was first starting out at Rees, we were just seeing the rise of the e-reader. One of my first jobs at the agency involved publishers sending amendments for the ebook rights that they had never bothered to scoop up for all these old and current titles, and I think about how much that technology has enabled self-publishing and indie publishing. I also remember how, back then, if you self-published, I don’t think you spoke about it. There weren’t conversations between trad-published authors and indie-published authors. I certainly don’t think there were as many hybrid authors by any means, and now I have plenty of clients who are hybrid authors and prefer it that way because they like their corners of their businesses. And I think it’s great that’s putting pressure on trad publishing, because I think [indie publishing’s] also able to adapt to the demands and the hunger of the market in a way that trad publishing is either unable or unwilling to adapt. And that includes platforming and prioritizing marginalized authors, for sure.
Jim, hopping back to you for what’s changed since you started out.
McCarthy
I feel a little bit like Old Man Winter, like I had to hike through the snow. But it’s been so long, and it really is a different time. Back then, every manuscript still went out in a hard copy. We had our bike messengers picking up our manuscripts every day and then riding around the city to drop them off on editors’ desks. Every query was paper. Everything was so mysterious—agencies didn’t have websites, and to find who to query or who was acquiring, people were dependent on Rolodexes. If you wanted to find an agent’s name, you had to go to the library, find this giant book called The Literary Marketplace, and scan from category to category and find who was willing to do what you do.
One of the most encouraging changes I’ve seen over the years is the democratization of the knowledge needed to break into publishing and to publish successfully, not only traditionally, but also, as Tamika was saying, independently. I think we’re seeing a lot of genres succeed that really only broke through because of the indie market, because people were able to prove a readership where publishing was really never willing to take a chance. Because of the fundamental dependence on comp titles to sell a book, you can’t prove something works if you never publish it. Indie publishing broke that wide open in ways that have been enormously helpful—artistically and professionally. So there’s been a lot of change there, and a lot for the better. Not all the way better, but I do think it’s a more accessible industry than it was when I started. By a long shot.
Podos
Yeah, you talk about the democratization of this information and how much more time and access and privilege of proximity was required by authors trying to publish, and too, how the rise of social media, for better and worse, has also given us things like whisper networks, where authors from underrepresented backgrounds can speak to one another and share information and resources, and share warnings in some cases.
Stefanie, how have you seen the landscape of publishing change since you started agenting?
Molina-Santos
Trad publishing is much less vocal about wanting to publish underrepped voices. I almost feel that everyone went back to status quo beyond the obligatory note in their MSWL that they’re looking for diverse voices—the folks that already cared still care, and the folks that didn’t still don’t get it. I do think there are some in the middle who learned something from that racial reckoning of 2020 and have moved and continue to move toward supporting diversity in stronger ways. However, burnout ultimately limits how far anyone can go.
Podos
And that brings me to my next question, which is how have you seen publishing respond to the changing social and political climate?
Thompson
I think the changes have been very slow. But I do see some opening up. I think there’s the realization now that not all marginalized writers have to write to our pain or our trauma. I think we’re moving beyond tokenism. It used to be that places would only have one Black author, or one Latinx author. I think social media has taught us how to talk to and about one another. The use of pronouns, for instance, discussions around Black Lives Matter, and more recently how to talk about fascism and the ways that it shows up.
McCarthy
Yeah, I think a lot of things that were just accepted as truths have been challenged head-on in ways that are encouraging. I represent a lot of queer authors, and in that space particularly it went from the subject that dare not speak its name to something that’s pretty common, not just in adult publishing, but also more and more in children’s. I don’t hear people having conversations like, “No one buys a book that’s not set in America.” That’s something so many people said out loud for years. Just that sort of accepted wisdom that was so narrow-minded and limiting has fallen by the wayside. But I do think, as much as there have been a lot of cultural conversations that have been pushing publishing to be more progressive, there have been gains and losses. I think we were moving in the right direction, and that is feeling, for me, like a bit of a retraction. I think the cultural conversation is frighteningly getting tied to the political realities of the country, but I know we’re getting into that in a moment, so I’ll pause here.
Podos
Thank you, yes! Stefanie?
Molina-Santos
For my list, it’s become harder to sell, quote, unquote, “serious stuff,” which I understand, but I also think this is a huge loss. I think as editors start to want to escape reality, they respond by assuming readers do too—but at the same time, it feels more important than ever to publish thoughtful work that explores our collective grief and struggle. How can we do that if editors don’t have the capacity to take that work on? It goes back to burnout. Teams that are too small and not getting paid enough. And of course, social and political burnout. So I guess my response is, I haven’t really seen the larger industry respond, beyond I guess maybe doubling down on their insidious support for questionable books and people. To be clear, I don’t think it’s editors’ responsibility to un-burnout themselves and create their own capacity for difficult books. The powers that be are simply failing to respond to that need.
Mejia
I have a complicated relationship with publishing’s correlation with social media, how they sometimes use it to expect midlist or non–big deal authors to market their books, and that’s a whole separate thing. But I do think the pressure that social media can put on publishing is pretty cool. I’ve especially been inspired by younger and newer publishing professionals who come in with big ideas about how to change things. I’ve worked with people who are newer to the industry who still have a lot of hope that those cultural conversations can change, and I’ve seen them use social media to really leverage—like, hey, you can’t do this kind of thing anymore. But it’s slower than I would like, obviously, watching publishing respond to that pressure.
Podos
Yeah, shaming individuals on social media? Not the best use of our time and energy. Shaming companies and corporations on social media? An excellent use of our time.
I’m going to echo some of what Jim said as well, that when I first started, which was mainly in YA—I think YA’s been at the forefront of expanding the market when it comes to recognizing non-white, non-cis, non-abled identities. But I remember some of the earliest clients that I signed were writing queer books and were queer authors of color in particular, and I remember the blatant rejections that we would get back in those days, which jettisoned the quiet part, which was like, “I don’t think audiences are ready for a book that is queer and a fantasy,” or “I think this is too many things,” or “We just don’t have a readership for this identity.”
But I was also watching when Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda got published and took off after it won the Lammy, and I was watching as these books started coming out that were primarily issue books, that were about the identities that they were representing. That has historically been the first boot in the door, and then the market proves out for that, and the door gets wedged a little wider and a little wider and a little wider, and we stopped getting those kinds of rejections that said the quiet part. Nobody can say that the market hasn’t expanded, but as I think we’ll all address in part two of my previous question, it could be more.
So the second part is how have you seen publishing fail to respond to the changing social and political climate? Let’s start with Jim since you were about to address this a few minutes ago.
McCarthy
Yeah, not to go to another industry to talk about it, but I’ve found it really interesting having meetings with Hollywood producers and coagents of late, where two years ago if the show Yellowstone came up, everyone was like, “It’s really embarrassing, but it’s really successful. It’s not what we want to do, it’s the one-off, we’re really looking for diverse voices, new worlds, etc.” And in 2025, everyone’s like, “We want the new Yellowstone.” And I think that is just happening out loud a little bit more in Hollywood than it is in publishing, but I do feel, maybe anecdotally, like there is a pulling back, that publishers no longer feel as pressured to do the work to increase the diversity of their staff, but also of their authorship and their readership. It just doesn’t feel as urgent as it did a couple of years ago, and I think some of that is a business that’s patting itself on the back way too early, and some of it is the horrifying cultural moment we find ourselves in, and this really frightening—to me—reentrenchment in conservatism that seems to be happening nationally, if not globally. I think we all want to pretend we’re the artists, we’re the people who are doing it for the creative work and the art, and it’s not just about money, but when the Big Five publishers are owned by five international conglomerations, we’re really just in it for the bottom line. So as well-intentioned as anybody in the industry is, we are dealing with the fact that News Corp controls one of the most important publishers in America. So I’m encouraged by a lot of the change that has happened and very tentative about where we go in the coming years.
Thompson
I think I would echo what you’re saying. A great example is after George Floyd was killed, everyone promised that they were going to champion Black voices, and that there were going to be Black people in leadership within industries across the country, and the numbers just do not bear that out, particularly when it comes to gatekeeping in the publishing industry. The leadership is still predominantly white. Lee & Low’s report some years ago was 80 percent white leadership, and I think it’s still somewhere around 70 percent at publishing houses.
We’re under attack. The Librarian of Congress was fired. DEI initiatives are under attack. Academic presses are affected, both by attacks on DEI and attacks on universities. My husband and I graduated from Columbia, and it is wild what’s going on right now. Arts and humanities funding is cut. I think the issue that I’m seeing that will not get resolved immediately is that where the power is, within the country and the [publishing] industry, does not need white people, does not need cishet people, does not need patriarchy to uphold those institutions. You can even put in people of color as gatekeepers, but they’re still reading for the white gaze, they’re still acquiring for the white gaze, and white readers are seen as the reader, as the default reader. We look at the controversy around American Dirt some years ago. How do these things continue to occur in 2025?
I’m hopeful when I see things like We Need Diverse Books, I’m hopeful when I see the Feminist Press, but the changes are slow because they’re designed to be slow. We’re meant to be distracted and for progress to be slow.
Podos
Absolutely. Tehlor?
Mejia
I know this isn’t possible, but if you can show on the transcription that I was vigorously nodding the whole time Tamika was talking about this mess. [laughs] Yeah, I agree with everything Tamika said, 100 percent. When I first came into publishing, around 2017, it was sort of the Hamilton era of publishing, where it was like, “Oh, we’re patting ourselves on the back for doing a good job, we’ve got all these diverse authors, look at us, we’ve got our checklists,” everyone was sort of optimistic, but the numbers show that none of the stable of white default culture authors were being displaced at all. It was just that [publishers] were expanding to add a new little offshoot. Our stories and our identities in publishing were basically contingent on whether we’re trendy or not, and at the time we were. It was like, “You can have Mexican characters, you can have queer characters, you can have Black characters, because we’re in a Democratic leadership era and that’s a trendy cool thing to do,” but it puts us all at enormous risk because when the culture shifts politically to a more conservative track, publishing loses nothing by getting rid of all of us. Because they kept all the people who were the core of what they publish. None of those authors were competing with us at all. They were just sort of adding us on and then oops, sorry, it doesn’t sell. So it’s possible to have “diverse”—I’m doing air quotes—marginalized voices, to have non–default culture voices, and then get rid of us when we’re not popular. Because we’re seen as a trend, almost like a genre, rather than people writing within the existing structure of publishing. Which is not great.
Podos
I think about what you say about the trendiness of underrepresented voices, and I think about what you say, Tamika, about publishers putting out these statements after George Floyd committing to Black Lives Matter and publishing these books, and it was a trend. It was this cool thing to do that will get you some superficial admiration and likes and let you feel good about yourself and, I think, let white and straight and able-bodied authors feel better about working with this publisher because look, they care.
But we’ve hit a wall with the change that is possible from the bottom up. Which we were also excited about with social media and the platforming of voices that didn’t have this access before, but we’ve seen time and time again editors of color, marginalized people who work in publishing, run into the wall of what they can accomplish and what they can achieve without adequate support from their teams, without adequate pay, and again with no infrastructure to keep them moving up within this industry that continues to be run by white people, continues to be largely run by straight people, straight men and women. So now it’s not a trend, and we don’t even see those statements being made. They don’t have to. They can afford to just keep their heads down where marginalized authors cannot afford to do so, especially now more than ever as authors are pushed to promote themselves and be responsible for their own success.
Stefanie, what about you?
Molina-Santos
I agree with you, Becca, that we’ve reached or almost reached the limit of what we can do from the ground up. There are so many movers and shakers right now, but they typically aren’t in a position where they can change the very foundations of this industry. We’re relying on people’s passion to push them through being overworked and underpaid. In the past, I think that hustle has been glamorized, and I’m glad we’re moving away from that. But we haven’t seen a response from the corporate level that actually makes a career in publishing sustainable for young folks who don’t have financial support from their families or partners. That means we’re constantly losing talent and lived experience that could otherwise transform the way the industry looks and operates. So basically, the failure to put money back into the people who make books possible equals failure to invest in long-term changes for the better.
Podos
Exactly.
And we’re running out of time together, but can we end on the question of what in publishing right now gives you hope? Let’s start with Jim.
McCarthy
No!
Podos
[laughs] Fine! We’ll start with Tehlor!
Mejia
[laughs] I actually want to go back to what Tamika was saying with our first question. What’s happening in the indie space is giving me a lot of hope right now. For me, watching people who are realizing that we’re not going to necessarily be prioritized or defended or advocated for by the traditional publishing industry be like, “You know what? We’re going to take this into our own hands and not only publish our own stories, but gather together and help each other promote small press work”—the shift toward “If you’re not going to do it, we’re going to do it ourselves.” I love that, and I think it’s beautiful. There’s some really amazing stuff happening in indie right now, and I can only hope that puts pressure on traditional publishing to be like, “Oh, we’re going to lose all of our authors to publishing their own stuff and all the cool books are happening somewhere else.” Hopefully that makes them realize that you can’t afford to bury your head in the sand during times like these.
Thompson
Knowledge sharing gives me hope. When I was coming along, there was not this opportunity for beginning writers to understand how to get their work out. Now we have things like Women Who Submit. We Need Diverse Books helps people with their submissions and queries. I know Eric Smith and Neighborhood Literary share information in communities about how to get published. I’ve started my own “Art of the Query” workshop to teach writers how to put it into practice. I think knowledge sharing is so important for marginalized writers, but in the country in general. I think that’s how we stand up to fascism. I think that’s how we stand up to the powers that are trying to keep us separated and make sure that we don’t know how to do things and get our work out there. We are resisting by sharing information with one another.
McCarthy
Sorry I panicked when asked to be hopeful. But I am genuinely delighted by the new generation of editors and agents. Watching young people coming into the industry who are entering at a moment where so much progress had happened, they are free from, I think, the kind of internalized bullshit that we got stuck with when I came in 2002. You don’t have that voice that’s like, “Is there room for that, does anyone want to read these voices?” I talk to younger agents and editors, and some of these thoughts would never occur to them because they’ve never heard them before. And that is a beautiful thing. I know editors more than I know other agents because of the nature of my job, but there’s such incredible fight in this class of new editors that makes me genuinely hopeful for the future in ways that I never was before. I do worry a lot about the future of publishing, but I do think there are actually a lot of reasons for hope.
Molina-Santos
I want to stay on what Jim mentioned about this younger class of editors and agents not having that little voice in their head saying, “Will someone buy this? Will someone really read this?” because they never actually heard that from anyone. It reminded me of how infrequently I personally encounter editors who don’t care about changing the status quo. Most of my editor connections are also in my generation, and 99 percent of them are just as wildly passionate about diverse voices as I am. Because of that, I’m hopeful that as we age, and mentor new talent, we’ll fill the industry to the brim with people who care. We just have to make sure most of us stick around.
Jim McCarthy began working at Dystel, Goderich & Bourret as an intern in 1999. Today, he is a senior agent and vice president, working with a dynamic roster of clients, including award winners and bestsellers such as Caroline Tung Richmond, Daniel Black, Eric Gansworth, Fonda Lee, Jake Arlow, Joy McCullough, Kosoko Jackson, Livia Blackburne, Michael Arceneaux, Nicole Melleby, Olivia Abtahi, Rasheed Newson, Remy Lai, Richelle Mead, Tehlor Kay Mejia, Tess Sharpe, and Victoria Laurie, among many more. He lives in Queens, New York, with his husband and their beloved dog, Winston.
Tehlor Kay Mejia (he/him) is a bestselling and award-winning author of books for all ages. His debut young adult novel, We Set the Dark on Fire, received six starred reviews, as well as the Oregon Spirit Book Award for debut fiction and the Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award runner-up honor for debut speculative fiction. It has been featured on Seventeen, Cosmopolitan, and O, The Oprah Magazine’s best books lists and was a 2019 book of the year selection by Kirkus and School Library Journal. Mejia’s debut middle grade novel, Paola Santiago and the River of Tears, was published by the Rick Riordan Presents imprint at Disney-Hyperion. It received four starred reviews and was named Amazon’s best book of 2020 in the nine through twelve age range. Mejia strives to create stories that showcase the importance of community, radical inclusion, and abolitionist values. He lives with his child, wife, and two dogs in his home state of Oregon and is active on Instagram at @tehlorkay.
Stefanie Molina-Santos joined Ladderbird Literary Agency in April 2021 after spending her early career advocating for marginalized folks in publishing as a technical editor at a national laboratory, senior editor at the literary journal F(r)iction, and book coach and editor for women of color. She is one-half Mexican, one-quarter Japanese, and one-quarter Irish. She holds a bachelor of arts in English and a bachelor of arts in communications, both from the University of California, Davis. Aside from reading, she enjoys hiking, swimming, baking strange new things, and playing the piano. Her favorite place in the world is Yosemite National Park. You can find her on Twitter at @agentstefanie, on Instagram at @agent.stefanie, or on Bluesky at @agentstefanie.bsky.social.
Rebecca Podos is the Lambda Literary Award–winning author of YA and adult novels. Homegrown Magic, her adult fantasy debut cowritten with Jamie Pacton, is their latest, with the sequel to follow in 2026. By day, Podos is a senior agent at Neighborhood Literary, with fourteen years of experience in agenting. She serves as a codirector of the Communications and Fundraising Committee for Literary Agents of Change. Find her on Instagram and Bluesky at @beccapodos and on her website, RebeccaPodos.com.
Tamika Thompson is an author of award-winning horror and suspense. Her debut gothic novel, The Curse of Hester Gardens, is forthcoming in spring 2026 from Erewhon Books / Kensington.
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