S1E5 - Pictures & Pages Q&A with Laura Harris on Publishing

Welcome to Pictures & Pages with Amy Freund, a Kelly's Writerly Q&A Podcast spin-off series that takes you behind the scenes of the Australian publishing industry!

Listen to Amy Freund's 5th episode where she chats to publisher, editor and publishing strategist Laura Harris. 

This episode is all about: 

• The Australian publishing landscape and how it’s changed over the past 20 years.

Formerly Publishing Director at Penguin Random House Australia, Laura has worked with some of Australia’s most celebrated authors and illustrators including Mem Fox, Aaron Blabey, Morris Gleitzman and Sonya Hartnett. Laura has also served on the boards of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and WestWords, and in 2023 received the George Robertson Award for distinguished service to Australian publishing before launching Laura Harris Publishing in 2024.

A great background into the Australian publishing industry, and for those wanting to know more about how its changed and evolved over the past 20 years.

Thank you for listening!

*If you enjoy this podcast, please like, share, or follow. Your support, big or small, will help keep us creating!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:04

Welcome to Pictures and Pages, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the Australian publishing industry. I'm your host, Amy Freund, author, freelance editor, and tea lover. Each month I interview a different publishing professional from designers and editors to illustrators, marketeers and agents, shining a light on what it really takes to make books a reality. This episode is all about the Australian publishing landscape and how it's changed over the past 20 years. And this is part one of my chat with Laura Harris,

Meet Laura Harris

SPEAKER_01 0:36

publisher, editor, and publishing strategist with more than 35 years' experience in the Australian book industry. Formerly publishing director at Penguin Random House Australia, Laura has worked with some of Australia's most celebrated authors and illustrators, including Mem Fox, Aaron Blabey, Morris Glitzman, and Sonia Hartnett. Laura has also served on the boards of the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and Westwords. And in 2023, received the George Robertson Award for Distinguished Service to Australian Publishing before launching her own Laura Harris Publishing in 2024. So welcome Laura to Pictures and Pages.

SPEAKER_03 1:14

Thank you very much, Amy. It's lovely to be speaking with you today.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

So can you tell us a bit about your experiences

On Laura's experience in the publishing industry

SPEAKER_00 1:20

in the publishing industry as an editor, an agent, and also a mentor?

SPEAKER_03 1:25

So I have been working in children's publishing for just over 35 years, and I would love to say that I was a teenager, but I wasn't. And so I started working on New South Wales School Magazine, which is a literary magazine for children. It's the oldest one in the world, established in Australia in 1916, which still takes submissions for all those writers out there. They still publish unsolicited, they accept stuff. And interestingly enough, School Magazine, I was employed, it was my first year out of uni. My boss was Anna Fienberg, very well-known, gorgeous Australian creator. Yeah, and she hadn't even started writing properly then. And at School Magazine, I was there just as a part-time job to cull some books, and it turned into an editorial traineeship. So I trained there for five or six years, and I loved it because it was completely focused on children's books for primary age children. But we published stories and puzzles and plays and we reviewed books, so we saw everything being published both in Australia and overseas. So it was a fantastic learning time to kind of read a lot of books. I had majored in my English degree in Australian children's literature as a last-minute thing, and I loved it, and I didn't know how much I loved it till I was doing it at uni. And so this was a great opportunity. And then people like Kim Gamble were illustrating for them. Ruth Park, the muddle-headed wombat, classic Australian, was first serialized in school magazine. So it really has a fantastic pedigree. And from there, I was offered a job at HarperCollins Publishers, and I moved into children's editorial there and ended up being publisher. Then I went into adult there. Then I hated doing both. I was doing adult and children's. And I got a call from Penguin in Melbourne, and they said, Oh, a little bird tell us told us that your first love is children's. And I went, Yes, it is. So I um I moved to Melbourne and I took a job at Penguin, and I was there for 25 years before a couple of weeks ago. I know it's a long time, but it was fabulous, and it was a real, I think it was a really fabulous time for Australian publishing at that time. You know, I moved down there, so let's just say the turn of the century. So the early 2000s, we're in 26 now, and I was in Melbourne, and I yeah, I loved it. There were so many exciting things, and I got to publish Maurice Gleitzman from then on till I left. I worked with Mem Fox, Melina Marquetta, as you know, just to name a few. And I got to work. I actually I remember when he came into the office with his portfolio. I published the first, I think, five or six books of Aaron Blabey before he went on to do scholastic and become a multimillionaire. Um, but it it was a fantastic time. Children's books were really buoyant, and

On the evolution of the children’s publishing industry in Australia over the past 20 years.

SPEAKER_03 4:28

it was, I think, a really important time where we moved away from wanting a lot of our children's books were either an English experience or an American experience. And people before me had really started to find Australian voices. So I came in with that turn having occurred. Uh, MO was increase the list, find new talent, and we did. And I think it was a really exciting time, and I loved it. The other thing that I thought really changed then, and I think it's an interesting one about the publishing industry. Children's books were always looked at as a little bit sort of little sister of major publishing, you know, the the really sexy stuff was adult books or nonfiction and you know, having a Tim Winton, all valuable. But kids' books were looked at, everything was looked at as nice, you know, children's book authors were nice, they did lots of stuff for free. If you were a children's book editor, you were probably paid less than an adult editor. And I think I was really part of a group of people, not just me, who really pushed to kind of quantify that children's editorial was its own specialist thing, and that you choose to write for children. It's not lesser. You choose to edit books for children or be a publisher, and it really shows now. I think you see it everywhere now. It's not a second-class citizen at all, both in how it's treated artistically, the merits, the awards, all those things. I think it's much more highly respected. And you can really see because so many people want to be in children's books now that there's so much going on. But it was also a time

On developing new talent

SPEAKER_03 6:07

where we were able to develop talent. So, you know, people took a punt on new people, they committed for one book, two book, three years. There were multiple book contracts, things that now in the business I of my own, I realized that's something that publishers aren't able to do. Everything is sales driven, data driven, which has its place, and I don't blame that. But you know, it it's become, I think, a little more difficult for a new writer to get published. If you look at the best-selling books across, you know, young adult middle fiction and picture books, you're hard pressed to find someone who only started working 10 years ago in kids' books. Everyone says they want to find new talent, but I think they're so swamped with the amount of books they've got, all meeting sort of financial things that the long-term investment has just shortened, you know. You and I think that's for publishing all round with adult books as well. So that sort of makes it really difficult for creators. So cut to me. So when I left Penguin, I didn't know what I was going to do. I I wasn't sort of done yet, but I I kind of thought maybe I could bring some knowledge about what would make life easier for me as a publisher, like what I saw from my side, and hopefully help writers answer some of those kind of dilemmas beforehand.

What is Laura Harris publishing?

SPEAKER_03 7:35

And one of the things I've discovered in and that the services that I provide, which basically with Laura Harris Publishing, and we offer children's book services to creators. So we do editorial work, quite a lot of mentoring, and every now and then we take on a management process where we often mentored an author, talked to publishers all the time. And I have to say, I've been very fortunate and had a lot of support from colleagues. So I can go directly to like the children's book publisher, I can go to you know someone at a firm or to penguin and just say, look, I've got this project, I think it's got legs, and they'll

On why it’s difficult for new creatives to enter the industry

SPEAKER_03 8:14

look at it. And I think how to submit and how to get seen is some of is one of the biggest problems writers have these days. The idea that publishing houses used to be open for unsolicitors, well, they're not now, you know. And in fact, it's become this kind of it's a marketing tool now, isn't it? Like I'm open for a month, send me this, send me that, but only for a month, and you know what it's like. You rush to do it, and then you wonder, is are they really looking at it? Do I get feedback? And I think publishers and and I hear it from both sides, publishers are so swamped that if something doesn't work for them, they're very polite and very generous, but they just can't give detailed feedback. So we so really when I set up my business, it's kind of to bridge the difference and be able to work with people on their manuscript, see if it's something that's viable. But I do ask a lot of publishers, I keep a very detailed list when I speak with the publishing side about what they're

On Laura’s management services

SPEAKER_03 9:13

looking for. And my management services, it's not quite an agent because an agent invests in a writer full-time and takes money ongoing. I kind of modeled it's really it's quite crass actually, but I modeled it on real estate. And that people use uh, you know, a buyer's agent, you know, to do the emotional hard stuff because it's so emotional trying to buy a house, especially in Sydney, like it's crazy. So having someone advocate for you and almost being a matchmaker, trying to find the right thing that suits your needs, that's going to give you what you need, and and then try and bring those two elements together, is really the model I use when I manage people. So I do think of it as matchmaking, and um, but I matchmake, you know, people's babies, their their writing work with hopefully the right publisher, because one of the things I know how important it is, and this is advice to any writer, is you really want to find a champion of your work, you know, because a publishing deal is great, but lots of people have experienced this, you know, the person that might have bought your work leaves a company, and then you've got a manuscript there, and most people want to do the right thing by it, but you don't have that person who had the spark or passion or got what you were trying to say, and it can sort of, you know, just kind of linger nowhere. So my advice

Advice on finding the right management / agent for you

SPEAKER_03 10:43

is to always find someone who you feel gets you, and I guess that's what I try to do is try and match the project and the person with the publishing house and the person at the publishing house that may want something like that, and then I just basically it's a I it's an introduction service, go back to the matchmaking metaphor. I introduce people and and hopefully there's something comes of that. And it's happened a few times well, and I'm really excited about some of the projects that I've managed to do that with. And yes, there are some fees involved in this process. What I don't do is I have nothing to do with royalties for people. I basically, it's a get-in, get out, find them a home, like a bro, you know, a bro in that brokery way. Yes. And then walk away, really. But I'm always or any

Back to Laura’s management and how it differs from an agent

SPEAKER_03 11:30

of my clients that I manage, I'm sort of there to answer questions. I also do contract work for people because that's a really tricky area and people can feel unsure, especially a new writer, what they're giving away. So I help with those processes as well, um, since I've been doing that for a long time. So that kind of is where it goes there. Generally, though, it's come from mentoring in that, and as

On Laura’s mentoring services

SPEAKER_03 11:55

part of my business, where it's a really long-term but very fast activity. Mainly I do these mentoring things that are really over two months, and we work on a particular project, and there's homework involved. I said homework, I do I do have a teacher background. So, and it seems to work really well. And I I have to say, I get so invested, and I, you know, usually I really like my clients. Well, actually, I should take that back. I always like the clients I'm working with. Yes, and that's where it starts. Otherwise, I wouldn't have started with it. But you know, what I believe is gonna work isn't necessarily the only way of getting published, but hopefully we work on getting a book in a really great state. And the other thing I assist with in that process is helping with how you submit your work, because if publishers are time poor, they want certain information very succinctly, you know, and very interesting so they can take it to their company, to their salespeople, to their marketing people, because all those factors play in when you're trying to acquire a book. And unfortunately, it's not unfortunate, it's just practical.

On publishing and what they want from emerging creatives

SPEAKER_03 13:02

Publishing is a business, and a publishing house is going to put down a lot of money for you to make a book. So they want as much information about what their return will be. You know, great sales, great author, a personable person, someone great to work with, someone who's got another book in them. Those factors are really important. Sometimes people submit things and they don't actually say that. They don't say, Well, this is I'm working on three books and this is a serious thing. This is not a one-off while I, you know, train for the Olympics. It's not a sideline. And that does matter about you know, investing if something works. You want to be able to have repeat authors, so that's quite key. I think it is not that people aren't talented. In fact, I've had a lot of responses to manuscripts where someone's gone, I really love where this is going. We just don't have the staff or the time to take it somewhere. And so I think there's an I'm not the only one. There's a number of people working with writers to get it to the best version. And everyone that's writing is told, you know, don't submit till the best version. But then an outsider needs to help you to know what that is. If we all knew what the best version is, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

It's just not something that you can do yourself, is it?

SPEAKER_03 14:14

No, it's it I think it's quite tricky. And look, I wouldn't write because I can't write, but it would be so difficult to have someone judging your work, so you really have to have a thick skin about it. That's why I think the relationship stuff really matters, and we're

On publishing events and community

SPEAKER_03 14:30

fortunate in Australia that there are a number of people that do similar things to myself, but you've also got Kid Lip Vic and you've got the Squibby group who are a fantastic kind of community to give you tips and and opportunities, you know. Even though publishers take less, they do attend those events in the hope that they will find some new talent. And I I do recommend that, you know, those things can be really valuable. But I also think keep writing, don't stick with one manuscript. You know, some people, I saw this as a publisher, somebody would get feedback and then they'd resubmit. And for years it's just the same book, and you go, Oh, it still might work, but do something else as well. Yeah, because I think it's good for your writing anyway, you know, and and your skill set for all of that kind of thing. But in the early 2000s, it wasn't unusual. And we used to do it a lot at

Passion projects in the early 2000s

SPEAKER_03 15:23

Penguin, and I used to say this to the team a lot, you know, something might not be perfect, but everyone could take on almost like a pro bono project a year, and you have maybe we would option it, you know. I don't even know if an option exists anymore, but an option really said, here's $500, and if we ever go to contract, that will come off your advance. But if we don't, maybe, you know, because we can't take it further, maybe this work we've done is we kind of have like paid for you to sort of focus with us. And you know, editors had very wide and unusual projects, and some turned into you know, fully fledged books, others didn't, but it was something everyone could have like a passion project that they believed in, and even if the company couldn't quite see it, they could come back in a year's time and go, Oh, and here is the vision.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Gosh, that sounds amazing. I'm sitting here going tell me more about that.

SPEAKER_03 16:20

Like, I know, and and and it's the time poor thing and and staffing and and the way things and what's demanded of people, and I get all of that. And I saw it when you're in it, you don't see it that in that such hard ways, it just becomes slowly, slowly up with you, and then you have your own authors. The other thing with kids' books is that a lot of authors are repeat authors, so you might then have a stable of five or six authors and looking after them, the requirements

The industry as it stands today and the importance in networking, a mentor or an agent

SPEAKER_03 16:50

now for the sort of marketing and publicity that's required, that kind of attention is huge. We don't have the kind of pages of reviews that or avenues for reviewing like we did many years ago, and it's not that the old days were good and that these days are bad, it's not that at all. It it is just an evolution. So that evolution is just something we've all have to, and I'm gonna use this word, we've all have to pivot about how we do things. Um, but it's not impossible, and it's not something where people aren't getting picked up. There are so many great publishers, really talented people, and finding them and matching hopefully yourself or being introduced to them is really important. Just so when they get, you know, their desk is full of possible manuscripts for whatever reason, they're open for submissions, or they've met lots of people. Maybe you've met them and so you stand out or they remember you. So they might just go to your manuscript first. It's a little bit like when you have a finished book and it's in the bookshop and there's thousands of beautiful new books. What is that thing that will make it stand out or just bring it to the fore a little bit? That's really attracting, but I think that's what's required of people now that I don't think was always required. I think that is a real difference. I I published and worked with, and so did my my colleague Julie Watts, really worked with her a lot. I think Sonia Hartnett's one of the most beautiful writers ever. And she's a quiet, introspective writer, and and she's great at festivals and she's been on many panels, but it wasn't a prerequisite to you know do a stand-up routine in a school to support your book either. So that has emerged, but then the good thing with that is authors in schools have got more kids onto loving reading, or they have prompted people to go, oh, I wonder what that that person talked about a story that really relates to me, so I'm gonna go and buy it. So that change has occurred, but it also brought really good things with it that weren't there before necessarily. So it's you know, you've got to weigh it up, and there's still possibilities, and you've got to keep going, and there are lots of sort of places out there to get help. Just be mindful of having to pay again and again. I mean, obviously, other people like myself, we have we're trying to make a living as

Advice on finding the right mentorship that isn’t expecting too much

SPEAKER_03 19:08

well, but there is a point where you can be asked for two like extra money with the idea that there's a promise of publication. That's one thing I know I don't have, I'm not promising to publish you, I'm just hoping to get you to a good level in your manuscript. But anyone that promises, you know, do this and you'll get a deal, maybe, just be a little conscious, a bit weary of that because it's very disheartening. There's so much disappointment. I try to be a bit protective of writers as well and not steer them too much to rejection because it's heartbreaking to see new talent. They're rejected constantly, I guess. I think I haven't taken a breath, Amy.

SPEAKER_02 19:46

I'm loving it. I'm just listening, taking this all in. I feel like I'm getting so much out of this as the you know, the interviewer. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 19:59

Thank you for listening to the Pictures and Pages podcast. Stay tuned for part two of this great chat where Laura discusses mentorships and their importance for emerging creatives.