Susan Velazquez Colmant

Growing up, I was always a big reader but ironically, I never thought about publishing as a career.

As a kid, I actually thought I wanted to be a writer–an author, a screenwriter, a playwright. Part of the reason I chose to go to SUNY Oswego was because they offered a Creative Writing program with a variety concentrations. There, I took classes in writing for television and film, short fiction, creative non-fiction, and playwriting.

However, I noticed that I really dreaded having to come up with my own ideas. Instead, I greatly preferred helping my classmates workshop their projects. But I didn’t make the connection to working in publishing until my senior year, when I took a course that crossed over with the education department.

I can’t recall the title of the course but the purpose was to study current middle grade and young adult literature and discuss how educators would make their selections for school or public libraries. In that class, the professor shared with us copies of Publishers Weekly and other industry outlets so we could see ongoing trends that were shaping YA literature.

From there, it clicked for me that I wanted to be in publishing and be one of the people who were helping to bring the amazing titles that we read for class to life. My next career goal then was to be an editor. Like many people, this decision was informed by the fact that the publishing industry is generally pretty opaque and “editor” is the occupation that is the most visible and commonly known.

I wish I knew about my interest in publishing sooner because I feel like I missed out on a lot of educational internship opportunities that major publishers (Penguin, HarperCollins, etc.) offered to current college students in exchange for credit. By the time I decided to pursue publishing, I missed the deadline to apply for these positions so I looked to other publishing-related opportunities.

I applied to internships at literary agencies, thinking that I would just use agencies to get the industry experience to then apply for an editorial position at a publishing house.

At my first literary agency internship at Foundry Literary, we were offered a weekly “internship academy” class that gave us an overview over a different part of the industry. That’s when I first got to learn in-depth what editorial duties truly look like and when I finally did, it didn’t really appeal to me.

Instead, I greatly appreciated the flexibility and freedom agents had: the ability to represent a wide range of projects that reflected your changing taste, the potential to champion unknown writers, and getting to stick with an author for all of their career versus just a book or two.

After my time at Foundry, I continued interning at various agencies, a small press, and I did some part-time admin work for an author as I tried to build up my resume to qualify for a full-time position.

In 2017, I was hired to be the agency assistant at JABberwocky Literary, assisting our president Joshua Bilmes and vice-president Eddie Schneider. At the time, Joshua was handling audio rights for the agency by himself so he was ready to pass on that workload to someone else.

Working with audio rights prepared me for agenting as a whole. I had to learn to write effective pitch letters, negotiate deals, network with acquisitions editors, carefully review contracts, advocate for our clients, and review royalty statements to see how well our clients’ titles were performing. (Ironically, I actually don’t listen to audiobooks all that much!)

Although I was focusing primarily on audio rights, I was allowed to embark on the junior agenting track and start building my own list. I acquired my first client, Joy Lanzendorfer, in 2017. (Fun fact: I first read her debut novel RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED FROM when it came into the query box for an agent I was interning for).

Then in 2019, our then-head of the subrights department (then just called the foreign rights department) was departing for another position and that’s when I was asked if I would be interested in stepping into the role since a lot of my skills in selling audio rights were transferrable there. I was still allowed to keep my current clients and to continue acquiring new ones, but I was reminded that subrights would have to be my primary focus.

And then 2020 happened.

It was already enough of an adjustment to step into a new role. Now I had to step into that new role amidst a global pandemic that was changing everything about how publishing worked!

In happier news, the traditional-turned-indie fantasy/romance authors that we represented saw a massive boost in international interest from the romantasy trend that skyrocketed during the pandemic. Through them, I saw the potential in representing indie or hybrid authors, regardless of whether or not they decide to cross into traditional publishing.

Today, I split my time between subrights and agenting 70/30. I now have to be extremely selective about the new clients I take on, whether it’s solely for subrights or full service agenting, in order to be mindful of my emotional bandwidth.

I hope to continue to serve in this type of dual role for the rest of my career. I greatly enjoy working with our partner agents and seeing publishing trends across the world as much as I love working closely with my clients to develop their manuscripts.

I don’t know if I’ll ever try to go back to being a writer myself. Now more than ever, I know that hard work that goes into writing a book while balancing day to day life. For now, I am very content to help authors bring their ideas into the world.