Sarah Cottrell: Hi, and welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Cottrell. I practiced law for 10 years and now I help unhappy lawyers ditch their soul-sucking jobs. On this show, I share advice and strategies for aspiring former lawyers, and interviews with former lawyers who have left the law behind to find careers and lives that they love.

I'm really excited to share my conversation with Lilly Ghahremani with you this week. Lilly was one of those people, we've heard many people like this in the podcast, who got to law school and pretty much immediately was like, "This is not the thing." She did, however, go all the way through and finished and ended up through various circumstances working with a lawyer who worked with the publishing industry and now Lilly has worked as a literary agent for more than 20 years.

We talk a lot about that experience, publishing, and the fact that there are so many lawyers who consider various aspects of publishing when they're thinking about doing something else that isn't practicing law. I'm really excited for you to hear Lilly's story and all of her insights about the publishing industry. Let's get to my conversation with Lilly.

Hi, Lilly, welcome to The Former Lawyer Podcast.

Lilly Ghahremani: Thank you. Hi, how are you?

Sarah Cottrell: I am great. I am really excited for you to talk about your story in part because there are so, so, so many lawyers who are thinking about doing something else. One of the things that float around in the list of possibilities is something related to publishing, writing, et cetera. Let's start with you introducing yourself to the listeners, and then we'll jump into your story.

Lilly Ghahremani: Sure. Hi, my name is Lilly Ghahremani, and I am a literary agent. I went to the University of Michigan, and I studied English. Followed by that, I went straight to law school, rather young, I went when I was 21 to UCLA. At UCLA, I will say on the very first day, I was like, "Uh-oh, don't think this is a fit for me."

Sarah Cottrell: Highly traditional.

Lilly Ghahremani: Yeah, day one I remember. Back then it was pay phones. I called my mom on a pay phone and I was like, "I've made a mistake. I'm not supposed to be here." What I remember most is they did the welcome talk and they were talking about Carly Fiorina, I guess at some point I had been sitting in those same seats and made the decision to leave and go into business. They were saying, “Some of you guys are going to decide this isn't right for you.” That is all I can remember from the first day is them mentioning that someone left.

But I persevered and I called my mom from that pay phone and she said, “You know what, finish a semester and then see how you feel about it.” So I powered through the first semester. As we all know, it's not necessarily easy. Then I was like, “Yep, still don't like it.”

She said, “You've already done a semester, why not just finish a year? You have a full year of law school on your resume.” So I finished the year. I said, “Yep, still not loving it.” She was like, “You've gotten the hardest year done.” At that point, I was like, “The hardest year is done, let me just wrap it up.”

So I finished. As it turned out, I graduated in 2002. We were on the receiving end of the September 11th economy, and there were not a great number of jobs. I had more of an opportunity than most to think about what I wanted my next step to be. I randomly found a job listing as I was coming off the bar for a small practitioner who worked in publishing and was looking to bring on an associate.

It was completely by luck that I even learned about the lawyers working in publishing. I became an advocate for authors at a small law firm. From there, a couple of years later, I went on to co-found Full Circle Literary, which is our agency. I have been with Full Circle for 20-plus years working as a literary agent. That's the broad strokes of my journey from law to publishing and looking forward to talking with you more about it.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, it's so interesting. First of all, I also went straight through. I was also a liberal arts major and undergrad. I was an international studies and leadership studies double major. If that doesn't scream law school, I don't know what does.

It's interesting because there are so many people who have been on the podcast or who emailed me because they found the podcast, so listeners who tell me, “I knew in my first day of practice after law school that this wasn't for me.”

Then a lot of people will still find themselves practicing 5, 10, 15, 20 years, I've worked with quite a few people who are 20 to 25 years in and will say, “I knew in law school this wasn't a good fit for me.” But you described that conversation with your mom and that's a very common theme in these stories.

People just being like, "Oh, well, maybe I should just give it a little more time and give it a little more time." It snowballs from there. It's interesting because I think that there are, especially for those of us who went straight through, you're so young and it's such a clear path.

I'm wondering, that's something that's come up on the podcast before that there is a little bit, even if you have the sense of like, “This isn't a fit,” it's like, “Okay, but here's this really clear path. I continue through these three years of law school or??” I'm wondering for you if that was part of the dynamic.

Lilly Ghahremani: Absolutely. You're right that it was such a secure path. At that time I remember going to our counseling center, oh, it's this great law school, I went to the counseling center, and I said, “I don't think I want to work at a traditional law firm.” They said, “Oh, there's a binder over there about non-traditional opportunities.”

Sarah Cottrell: I was going to say, did they give you a binder?

Lilly Ghahremani: They gave me a binder and, Sarah, that binder was empty.

Sarah Cottrell: Oh, my gosh.

Lilly Ghahremani: It was such a symbolic moment. This is something that I've repeated over the years. It really felt like there was not a lot of vision for the way we could be equipped with legal education and work in parallel fields. What I think is so exciting about legal education is it teaches you this masterful art of persuasion.

There are ways to use that outside of the traditional legal system or like I said parallel. I still do a lot of law and we'll talk about that. But yeah, it did feel at the time, to go back to what you were talking about, you go into these concrete areas and if you went to law school, you did it to become a traditional lawyer.

That was just how you applied the degree. That was one of 10 options out there for what you could do. If you weren't science-minded or you weren't going into education. Thankfully, I think we're all learning to be a lot more creative about thinking about our talents, where we can plug in who we are, and what we have to offer in the world around us.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, it's interesting because in your story, obviously, you started basically directly out of law school on this slightly unconventional relative path, unconventional for law, which is extremely conventional. But one of the things that comes up so often for me with clients or people on the podcast talking about their experience leaving law is the longer someone has been practicing, often the less able they think they will be to do anything else, if that makes sense. I think there's this sense outside of the law, like people who look at a lawyer and say, “Oh, you've been practicing for 15 years, you must have all these skills.”

But in many cases, that 15-year lawyer has more questions about whether or not they really have transferable skills, basically, than someone who has less experience. To your point, there are so many things about both legal education and practice itself that can transfer into so many different types of work, but it can be hard to see that when you're in that position.

Absolutely, I think you're right. I almost think we start to think about it almost like it's a sunk cost. When you become really good at something, sometimes your self-confidence is based on believing, you can get cornered into thinking that's the only thing you can be good at.

Sometimes it helps to talk to people who have a wider view of things and can help you pick out, “Okay, well, the fact that you did this at a surface level means you can do A, B, and C. You have these talents which are now transferable.” I think just with law, we've started to talk about legal skills in such a technical—not we've started to, we've always talked about it—it's such a technical way, we almost treat it as a trade, and it's so much more than that. It's really a strong set of communication skills that I think has extremely broad application once you match it with your passions.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, so let's talk a little bit about, okay, well first, like at the meta-level. I know I mentioned at the beginning of the conversation that a lot of lawyers will mention to me that they are thinking about trying to pursue something in the publishing field, whether it's some editing or potentially being interested in the role of a literary agent.

I think a big part of that is that when lawyers are thinking about doing something else, they think about, “Well, what do I like?" Many, many lawyers are like, "I really like to read and/or I really like to write."

I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about the substance of your day-to-day because there's the idea of what someone does as a literary agent and then there's the reality. I think that would be really interesting for people who are thinking about this as one of the potential options.

Lilly Ghahremani: Sure. Oh, Sarah, thank you for noticing that there's a difference between the reality. When I signed on, I was like, “Oh, as a literary agent, I'm going to lie in my comfortable chair and sip coffee and read manuscripts all day.” I hate to break it to you, but let's start here, the fun reading, the reading of the manuscripts, that happens in your free time.

I often have to remind even my clients about this, which is the fact that reading manuscripts and thinking about the creative side of it, really takes a backseat to the administration of managing people's careers and finding opportunities for them. You asked me to talk about what my day looks like.

Well, I would say right now, as an agent, I really want to highlight it as a role of advocacy. I'm spending, I would say at least a third of my day negotiating deal points and contracts. This is when I say I've left law, but not entirely. The complexity of legal contracts cannot be understated. From large houses, they are probably 20 to 25 pages easily.

A lot of agencies who do not have a legal background, which is the majority, they'll advocate as best they can, but then they kind of eventually will sign off on an agreement or they'll just give the agreement to their author to sign. But what I'm really trying to do is think strategically about making sure there's space in those agreements for other things that my clients want to do, being thoughtful about non-competes, and of course, being thoughtful about terms.

That can be months of negotiation. A third of my day is just finalizing the terms so this deal can be put through, paid, happened, and my author's hands won't be tied from writing other books for years and years. That's one-third of the day. I'd say one-third of the day is admin of answering questions that come up.

It's not just about selling books. The publishing world has become so diverse in wonderful ways, but also complicated, because there are so many thousands more books trying to get attention. You're not able to just sell a book and put it in a publisher's hands. Authors have to be their own advocates in the marketing and publicity spaces.

Just because you sold a book to a big five house like Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House is not the finish line. It's not a baton you hand off. We really have to coach our clients a lot of times or be by their side as they're asking questions and figuring out the steps to stand out in that marketplace.

Then a third of the day, I'd say, is pitching to editors. My job is, at a meta-level, to matchmake editors and great projects that they would want to see. Part of that comes down to really seeing a constant contact with the hundreds of editors that we may work with and knowing what their tastes are, what they're looking for, how books are performing for them, where they're looking to acquire and constantly figuring out what projects we should be putting in front of them and what projects I should be signing as an agent that are most likely to sell based on those shifting tastes and market needs.

That's kind of the day. It's an ongoing flurry of emails and conference calls, and the reading and the fun part that draws us all to books really tends to happen at nights and on weekends.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, it's so interesting because I think often when people think about, for example, being a literary agent, what they are thinking about is more a negotiation piece, which, as you said, is obviously a huge part of the role. But there's also that promotion, selling, coaching your authors in terms of doing their own promotion. Those are very different skill sets. Some people who might be drawn to one might not be drawn to the other.

This is one of the reasons why I'm such a big advocate for if there's something you're thinking about doing, please talk to people who do that role because it's very common that people will think of one piece of a role as what is involved, and there often are significant components that are using a completely different skill set, which for some people can be hugely exciting and for other people, it's like, “Oh, wait, actually, maybe that's not the best fit.” I have so many questions.

Lilly Ghahremani: I'm here for it. I'm here for it.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay. Well, maybe just for people who aren't super familiar with why authors have agents, how does that work? Can you just talk a little bit for people who might be unfamiliar with the overall landscape of where working as an agent fits in the publishing industry and maybe even a little bit about how it has changed over the last 10 years, because I know there have been tons of shifts as you said, as there are so many more books to market.

Lilly Ghahremani: Yes. Okay, that's great. Okay, so I'll start with the first part of your question, which was kind of why I have an agent, what's the role of an agent? The publishing industry used to be such that authors would send their manuscripts straight to publishers and then publishers would decide if they wanted to publish or not and they'd write a nice rejection if they weren't going to publish it. We've all seen the Instagram posts about the famous rejection letters.

Well, now publishers are getting thousands upon thousands of submissions and they need a way to filter for quality. What they count on agents to do is to be that first frontier to filter and to sift through what's out there, to find what feels salable and to bring it to them.

Then from there, they begin their process of deciding what they think they can make into a success. An agent becomes a credible authority in some ways for a publisher. Something some people don't realize is agents work on commission. There's no flat fee.

If you are being charged a flat fee by an agent, they are not working with industry standards. That would be a huge red flag. It's on commission. We don't succeed until a project has sold. In some situations, we'll work on a project for a year or two before it gets placed.

The way it works is the agent becomes basically your ambassador to publishers. Again, it's the agent's job to know who is acquiring what. Once you've found an agent who represents your type of work and feels the same passion you feel for getting your project out there, the agent then carries the ball into the publishing sphere, finds—excuse all the mixed metaphors—and finds the right people to share it with, puts it what's called out on submission, follows up with the right publishers, gets them hopefully competing against each other, keeps nudging them, keeps bringing them new information to get them excited about the prospect of working with you.

Ideally, ultimately cultivates one or more offers, helps you work through those offers, and then helps you negotiate the deal points. Then of course, as we talked about, coaches you through the experience of publishing, which is really a completely wild experience that requires a little bit of sideline coaching through delivering the manuscript, finessing it, doing marketing, doing publicity, doing follow-up projects, whatever it might be.

It's interesting because some attorneys who may be out there wanting to write would say, "Well, I'm an attorney. I'll just review my own contract." Without naming names, I will say that I represented years ago one of my law professors who was already very well published at big publishing houses and was one of those people who just signed on the dotted line.

The contract was one of the worst I've seen because he was an attorney, but not a publishing attorney. He didn't know what these little terms that may look innocuous would stop him from doing. In this case, he was technically by contract forbidden from publishing in his area of legal specialty. Well, you can imagine that's a problem.

I would say, we all know when we're outside of our wheelhouse as far as our legal specialty, and I think it's very important even for an attorney, sure, look at your contract, but unless you are in publishing law, if you are out there and attempting to publish, there are a lot of benefits to an agent beyond getting your book to a publisher even once the contract's in hand, even once a deal is made. There's a benefit. A good agent can benefit you throughout the life cycle of publishing and throughout your career.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. To your point, an experienced agent knows what is industry standard in a way that an experienced lawyer who doesn't have experience with the publishing industry, particularly, you're not going to look at something that immediately like, “Oh, this is outside the norm.” Whereas an experienced agent can look at something and be like, “This is nonstandard,” or whatever.

Lilly Ghahremani: Absolutely. Right now I'm excited that there are more great books coming out. Everyone's getting more and more excited about publishing. But there is definitely a flood of new agents who don't all totally know the ropes. Not that someone can't hang up a shingle and be a great agent. Obviously, once upon a time, I did that.

But when you talk about an experienced agent knowing the industry standards, that's absolutely true. When you work with an established agency, you often benefit from their heavily negotiated boilerplate terms. We're not reinventing the wheel every time we go to a publishing house with a project, a lot of times they'll start from our last contract and grandfather in terms that could be beneficial to you.

Also, agents who are seasoned, who are connected with other agents, throughout the industry also know what's coming down the pipeline. For example, we may know that a large publisher is planning on adding a certain clause or a certain feature to their contracts, and we may be able to encourage you, “Let's hold off a couple of weeks. Let's wait and make sure the draft has that put in it.” These are nuances to having seasoned guidance that you just can't quantify but that certainly matter.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. You talked a lot about how one of the things an agent is doing is knowing who's buying what and who's thinking about doing what and all of these sorts of things, which makes me think that it might be more likely as an agent that you focus on particular types of books. Is that the case for you? If so, is there a type of, or several types of books that you tend to represent?

Lilly Ghahremani: Yes, absolutely. Most agents do specialize. One thing I would love to share with your listeners, if they are aspiring to write, is to get a membership to the publishers' marketplace. You will be able to track not every deal in the publishing industry, but a good number of them and you'll get a sense of what agents are representing, and what they're interested in, agents have pages on there.

Yes, there are agents who focus on adult books. There are agents who focus on children's books. There are agents who focus maybe on adult nonfiction versus literary fiction. There is nuance to what people tend to gravitate to. It's funny because as a reader, I personally read almost exclusively fiction and literary fiction.

But as an agent, I represent children's books of all ages from board books through young adults and I represent adult nonfiction with very limited categories. I started out as an adult agent and I shifted over to kids books. But as an example, if you were to pitch me an adult fiction novel, 99% of the time I would not be the right person for that.

Doing a little bit of research can make a big difference in finding an agent sooner. Like anything else, people like to know that you did your research. If there's one thing lawyers are great at, it's doing the research. Yes, so in my case, I tend to focus on children's books, that's really the bulk of what our agency does.

I do some illustrated adult nonfiction, but not a lot beyond children's literature. That's where my love is right now. But each agent has a specialty. Sometimes at an agency, they'll have adult side agents and kids side agents. The more you do that research, names will become familiar and you'll start to figure out who's doing what successfully.

The reason why it's important to go with an agent who has a certain type of specialty is that a lot of their contacts are already in place. They already know those important pieces of information we're talking about like who is buying what.

If someone sends me a mystery novel, I may love it, but I don't automatically have that list of 10 editors I would send it to because it's not what I'm selling all day every day. Doing that bit of research can really help a lot.

Sarah Cottrell: I'm wondering, if someone is listening and they're listening to you talk about what you do as an agent and they're thinking, “This sounds super interesting,” but they don't have any previous experience in or around the publishing industry, I know you mentioned subscribing to publishers marketplace, I think that is what you said, is that the thing where they have the announcements of an author?

Lilly Ghahremani: Yes. They do a post.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, okay. Anyway, are there other things that you would recommend for someone who's like, “This sounds super interesting. I think that I could potentially be a good match for something like this, but where do I start?”

Lilly Ghahremani: Sure. Honestly, the place to start would probably be being an intern or doing some sort of apprenticeship with a literary agent, so you can actually see what the day-to-day is like. We are lawyers, so we all are not scared of schooling. There are also really great publishing courses and publishing institutes.

If someone is serious about it, that's another way to approach it, is really learning the pieces of how books are put together and then getting into agenting because understanding how books are put together is going to change how successful you are as an agent.

I would suggest following successful agents. A lot of them live their lives on Instagram, share what they're doing on a daily basis. People are on X, but they're moving off of it, obviously a little bit. I think it's a little bit hard to describe what an agent does. I really think having that direct contact with agents, potentially attending writers' conferences, even as an aspiring agent, and you may think, “What am I going to do at a writers’ conference?”

But again, this is a publishing industry conference and agents attend, they talk about what they're looking for, they talk about how they make their decisions, and that would be a great place to get facetime with agents as well.

Sarah Cottrell: Okay, so here's a question that came to mind that has come up in sort of other contexts frequently, which is making something your job changes your relationship to it. For example, we've had conversations in the podcast about how there might be something that you do as a hobby.

If you turn that into the thing that is supporting your livelihood, you have a different relationship with it. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit about that. In particular, I know you said that if you're reading manuscripts that's happening outside of work time.

I think one of the reasons people feel drawn to many different things in the publishing industry is because they're like, “I really like to read.” Can you talk a little bit about that? The dynamic that is created when it's like, “Yes, I like this presumably, but also it's my job and I need to get it done.” Does that make sense?

Lilly Ghahremani: Absolutely. I feel like my reading time, personal reading time, has been compromised by working and publishing. Because anytime I have to read, there's a stack of work from my clients that I need to go through and then not to even mention the submission box of people who would like to work.

My own to-be-read pile often lies neglected. If you're hoping to get into publishing so you can read all the time, it's really the opposite. I have to confess, at one point in my career, I've missed free reading so much that I actually took a break. I went back to business school and I explored other options and I got to read more.

I do feel like, you're absolutely right about that, when you make your passion your life, then it shifts the way you see your passion. It shifts the time you can put into just sheer enjoyment versus the business-tainted aspects of that passion. I don't know if I'm answering your question.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, totally. I'm wondering, can you talk a little bit about that decision to go get your MBA and both how you decided like, “Okay, this is the time to make this shift,” then ultimately how you ended up moving back in the direction you're going to?

Lilly Ghahremani: Sure. One of the things I will say totally candidly, as an agent, again, working on commission, it's not a steady income flow for a few reasons. You can set goals of when you're going to sell books, but you will never dictate it, because your sales are dependent on what publishers are willing to buy, how much they are willing to buy things for, and whether your clients deliver their works on time.

I reached a point where I felt I wanted a steadier income. I also had reached a point where I got into publishing, probably like some of our listeners, I got in because I wanted to just grab books I loved and just convince publishers to buy them. What I was missing was, I think, really understanding how markets and marketing work.

That's actually when I went back and studied to get my MBA in marketing. I came back and I still acquired the books I love, but it made me a lot savvier about how to write my pitch letters, and how to frame the works that I was sending out to people in a way that would make it more persuasive.

I will say that my pitches became savvier, and I will say that as a result of that, my sales increased tremendously the way I thought about my authors, not just as having a specific book but thinking about their long-term trajectory as a brand in the marketplace, it just shifted my thinking as an agent to be so much bigger. I'm personally a fan, I think that the JD and MBA should be a joint effort. It felt like it filled in a lot of holes in my legal education. I'm just a huge fan. It made me appreciate my legal education, but it just balanced it out.

But that decision to leave was honestly because the publishing industry is not always financially stable. Being an agent is not typically salaried, at least at my level it was not. I had to make this decision, but then, my addiction to words and publishing brought me right back and here we are.

Sarah Cottrell: I think this is such an important point. I've talked with several people about this from the podcast. Most people who are in various positions of being self-employed, and of course, I am now self-employed, lawyers who are working for some organization, whether it's a law firm or in-house will often think, “Oh, working for myself will be so much better.”

There are many ways in which if you are the boss, it can be a lot better. However, the thing that is important for people to think about, and as you were talking about the volatility of working on commission, there's this reality of, yes, you work for yourself, but also it's not as though you have, to your point, complete control over all the players that ultimately are involved.

You can control what you do, but what your authors do and what the publisher is doing and the timelines and whatever things, there are still lots of factors that aren't in your control. That is what I am trying to say.

I think it's important for people who are thinking about either going into something that involves working for a commission or being self-employed where there is more variability to have this awareness that yes, there can be more flexibility in that in many ways, but also it is not a situation where you're like, “I have control over what happens.” You still only have control over the things that you do.

Lilly Ghahremani: Yeah. Tell me if you agree, but I think law draws a particular personality. We like to be rewarded for our performance. We rely on ourselves. We got through law school because we are driven. I think that wave pushing you back from realizing that everybody, it's like working on a group project and everybody else isn't necessarily doing their pieces on time, it can honestly feel like that.

One thing I would encourage people who are thinking about publishing to think about as they—and there are so many things you can do in publishing, being an agent is one sliver of it—but to really think about how important it is to have a set income. If that's important, I would say agenting or agenting particular types of books may be harder and maybe you need to think about if you're going to agent, what is the category of books that is more likely to pay your bills?

I will tell you as an example, I love picture books, but you have to sell them in volume. You have to sell a number of picture books, whereas novels sometimes can sell at a higher premium. Instead of selling one picture book, you could sell one novel, and that's a multiple of the picture books.

I think that that commission piece is something that I didn't think carefully about before I got into publishing. It's something important to know. I will tell you, I do know a lot of agents who have some side gig just for that steady piece of income, whether they are writing books themselves or editing books or they have some totally separate little side job.

That is probably important to mention because when people are in particular thinking about making the switch, agenting, I would typically say takes a couple of years to really ramp up and even get to a point where your payments are coming in regularly in some way or another.

Then, of course, royalties start to come in and that's really why we're in it. We're gamblers. We're hopeful gamblers who want the book that backlists and sells for years upon years. That's the self-employment piece. It's a lot of fun to have that flexibility but then you have to think about where is that steadiness going to come from if that's important to you.

Sarah Cottrell: Hmm. Yeah. Oh, I want to circle back to something that we touched on before because I know you said that you've been working as an agent now for 20-plus years. I'm wondering—this is purely just my own interest and curiosity—I know there have been so many changes, especially in the last 10 years in terms of the number of books that are in the market as self-publishing has risen and that sort of thing, I'm wondering for you as an agent, if there are any big changes that you have seen in terms of your role over that time.

Lilly Ghahremani: Okay. I would say as far as my role, the biggest thing has been an increase in helping coach clients on what to do once the book is out. As you said, they're really fighting for attention and space. Reminding them about what they can be doing on social media, helping make sure that the publishing team is really looking over their questionnaire and thinking critically, and constantly nudging and following up with the publishing team to make sure this book and this author are on their radar, that would be probably the number one biggest thing that has changed as an agent. As you mentioned, there are so many other ways for people to become published and they are all valid.

I am not here to bash self-publishing because I think it has a space. I have encouraged certain people to go and self-publish. I think if someone, for example, has an urgency to get their work out, traditional publishing is not the way to go. People do not realize that if I sell your book today, you're still not going to see it on shelves typically for one and a half to two years minimum.

If I sell your picture book text today, you're going to see it in 2027, which is just mind-blowing in a world where you could publish and drop it onto Amazon. I think there's a space for self-publishing if someone is willing to do that work now of promoting it and getting it out there.

Again, where my job has changed and where you're talking about all of these books coming out there, as an agent, we're having to be really thoughtful about AI and electronically how publishers are acquiring and using our creators' rights. I say creators because I should have mentioned this before, I represent authors and illustrators.

I think of myself as a creative advocate across the board. That has changed things a lot, is really helping my authors think in the contract about how we're protecting them, and in an ongoing way, staying aware of how their work is being licensed, where it's showing up, making sure copies aren't popping up, things like that.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah, I can only imagine. I just wanted to touch briefly on something that you mentioned, which is something that is not necessarily intuitive to people who don't have a connection to publishing.

There are all these different types of publishing now available, but I think that the average layperson, if they think about a book being bought by one of the big five publishing houses and being published by them, there is a sense of if that happens, then the publisher is going to handle all the things.

My impression from the authors that I follow is that might have one day or previously been a little bit more true, and I know you've mentioned this several times, but these days, there's still a lot that the author themselves needs to do. I think sometimes people have this sense of, “Well, if I sold my book to a big publishing house, then I wouldn't really have to do that much.”

Lilly Ghahremani: Right.

Sarah Cottrell: I don't think that is accurate.

Lilly Ghahremani: That is not and you're totally right. It's unfortunate because so many people are under that belief and in particular, they get set on working with large houses. The large houses can be great. It depends on whether your book is blessed. It's really so unpredictable.

A publishing house can actually pay beautifully for a project and not promote it at all. I've seen it happen over and over again. At the same time, you could go to a small publishing house and because you're only one of 5 or 10 books they published that year, they will give it so much love and be more creative about how they publish.

You end up being a bigger fish in a small pond, but there is no guarantee, zero guarantee that publishing with a large house will get you exposure. There's no guarantee you will find your book in your local Barnes & Noble. There's no guarantee they will put you up for events.

In fact, and some people don't realize this, publishing houses sometimes have a quota of how many projects they can submit for this or that. You may actually be limited in certain ways by going with a traditional publishing house where they'll say, "Sorry, we didn't have the budget to put you up for that because we already used our budget,” meaning on other people.

It can be a great experience. It's just not guaranteed. That's why I always tell people there are a number of factors to think about when you're publishing, but there is no guarantee for how your book will be promoted and marketed short of what you promise yourself you are going to do. Anything else the publishing house does, I always say consider it a bonus.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. I think it's interesting. I think if you follow authors with any regularity, that becomes clear. But I don't think it's what the person on the street who doesn't like watching that kind of thing would necessarily expect.

Lilly Ghahremani: Yeah. No, I mean, think about it for all the household names that we know as authors, there are thousands of others who were published within the same year that you've never even heard of because really just a few are given these super stellar marketing campaigns that are the guaranteed projects and the financial reward they bring to the publishing house allows them to invest in other authors in acquiring their books, but they don't have the money to then put into the marketing.

Sarah Cottrell: Yeah. Okay, Lilly, as we're getting to the end of our conversation, is there anything else that you would like to share with the audience that we haven't talked about yet?

Lilly Ghahremani: I think if you feel a call to do something outside of law, as I said, your talents are so needed, those advocacy talents. Whether or not it's as an agent, we need savvy recovering lawyers, and former lawyers to come on board. We need advocates for creatives in this space.

I think it's never been a more daunting time as an illustrator or an author to enter this realm where it's human versus technology in some cases. They are always looking for that guidance. Whether it's an in-house role as a contracts associate at a publishing house, whether it's as a publishing attorney who learns the ins and outs of this and becomes an outside advocate for agencies and for authors, this area of expertise is needed.

We need more people who are passionate about books and can bring legal insight to the conversations that we're having now. Whether it's on the creative side or as a formal legal advocate, I really hope your listeners will consider jumping in because I would love to see them with me in the industry.

Sarah Cottrell: I love that. Okay, Lilly, if people want to connect with you, where can they find you online?

Lilly Ghahremani: Instagram is usually a great place to find me. I tend to try and kind of lurk on Instagram and otherwise, that's about it.

Sarah Cottrell: Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

Lilly Ghahremani: Thank you for everything you're doing and good luck to everyone out there.

Sarah Cottrell: Are you sick of just thinking about it and ready to take action towards leaving the law? Join us in the Former Lawyer Collab. The Collab is my entry-level program for lawyers who are wanting to make a change and leave the law for another career. You can join us at formerlawyer.com/collab. Until next time, have a great week.