Shelly Romero: In Conversation

IN CONVERSATION WITH SHELLY ROMERO

Shelly Romero is a children’s literature editor who is passionate about working with BIPOC creators and traditionally marginalized authors. She is currently the Lead Editor at Cake Creative. Shelly graduated from Stephens College with a bachelor’s degree in English and attended the 2017 NYU Summer Publishing Institute. Most recently, she was an associate editor at Scholastic where she acquired MG and YA titles and worked on Goosebumps. Born and raised in Miami by Honduran parents, she now resides in New York City. When not working, you can find her rewatching her favorite horror movies.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

You’re lead editor at Cake Creative. Can you describe a typical day in the life for you?

Sure! Cake is a book packager. We're not a publisher. We create our own IP (intellectual property). We find authors, go out on submission, and then sell them to the publisher. Book packaging is very different than traditional publishing. At Scholastic I used to do quite a bit of IP work too, but their process is completely different and honestly they don’t pay authors as much as they should. But now my role at Cake is to manage the titles; mostly kid lit, but also some adult titles. I’m also developing, concepting, creating outlines, meeting with authors and seeing which ones are a right fit for the projects. Basically a lot of project managing. It’s a lot of work, but a lot of fun. Our focus is publishing traditionally marginalized authors and so a lot of our projects are centered around BIPOC, queer, disabled characters and authors.

Was this mission something you always wanted to pursue when beginning your publishing journey?

From the get go I was very adamant about what I wanted my editorial list to look like. I started meeting with agents about 6 months in, (publishing career) and I didn’t acquire until I was about a year and a half in.

For me the focus has always been if it's going to be queer, my priority is queer authors of color. I want to show that representation because publishing does not always like that.

I’m familiar with the large conversation happening right now about representation in publishing, especially on different forms of social media. Can you discuss your shift away from Scholastic/publishing? Was this a part of it?

There’s a lot of reasons why I left Scholastic, and not necessarily because of my list. I got to acquire some really amazing titles that were predominantly BIPOC authors, queer authors. But there were other reasons. Not being supported enough, and even though I had really good bosses, not being advocated for in the way I thought I should be advocated for. Not being paid what I thought I deserved. No, not what I thought I deserved. What I deserved. The industry tends to be overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly cis and straight, and this tends to leech out into all the different areas of publishing and how that impacts your work and yourself. Before I wanted to leave, I thought about staying longer but, I’m glad I didn’t because I probably would have burnt out and left publishing. (Cake) fits more in what I want to do. This is a company that wants to take care of authors of color and support them in ways they might not have been had they gone out on submission by themselves.

I’ve read your Bustle interview and Publisher’s Weekly article (from about 2-3 years ago), and the focus of those conversations were very optimistic about diversity in publishing getting better. Since then have you seen a lot of changes or is it still very much of the same?

Yes and no. There have been a lot of changes to certain companies and imprints. At Scholastic, David Levithan really took it upon himself with his team that I was a part of (27 of us) to really start looking at how to change the way we go about things. And for a while that was going great; we were having really tough conversations that I did not think we were going to have ever. We changed a lot of the ways we looked at submissions and how we responded to them; to try to check our own unconscious biases. But what ended up happening, which is what unfortunately tends to happen a lot, is that we got a lot of red tape which slowed down our momentum. Then we ended up getting what I felt was a repetition of events. We ended up feeling like we were just back to square one. We got the industry talking a lot more, but talking has only gotten us so far. And while it's been able to break down some of the opaqueness, especially with social media/Twitter, it's been a way for things to spread more quickly within our bubble. The actions that we have wanted to see have not been followed through. So yes and no, but mostly no. And that’s why you’ve seen a lot of editors leave, especially people of color.

With all of this being said, would you even recommend BIPOC or LGBTQ+ aspiring publishers or graduates to even pursue it? What advice do you have for them?

That’s a really hard question because its very much a you decision. You really have to decide what it is you’re looking for, and what are the things you’re willing to sacrifice, and what are the things you’re willing to fight for. What are the battles you want to fight and what are the ones you don't want to fight. All I can do is give you my experience and my advice. I never saw myself represented in books. And so for me coming into publishing, that’s been my goal, my priority. I want BIPOC books, I want queer books. I want Central American books.

Shelly Romero

Right before I left Scholastic I actually co-aquired Roy G Guzmán’s YA memoir. And to me that was a very emotional moment, to sit in acquisitions, to have David who wanted me to come in with him on this project, who knew how much this meant to and give me the floor. Roy’s book was the first time I saw myself represented on the page, the first time I saw my mother’s Spanish spoken on a page. There are references in there that are so amazing and there are so many layers as to why I wanted that book. I left that meeting and started to cry, and that to me is part of what makes it worth it. I’m going to edit these books that teen readers are going to pick up and think, “I have never seen myself represented. ” Every imprint comes with its own levels of crap, and you have to find a community outside of your work that will keep you sane. It’s not easy to be in this industry.

I saw that you went to the NYU publishing Institute, how was that experience for you and do you recommended it to undergraduates pursuing publishing?

The publishing course was good in that I got to meet a lot of interesting people. Both my classmates and publishing people. I ended up making really good connections with them. It's important to do informationals to figure out what you want to do in publishing. However I found, specifically at NYU, that some of the lecturers gave advice that was kind of outdated. One lady said something like, "If you don't send a thank you card, written by mail after your interview, you are so disrespectful and I don't want to hire you. " I've gotten both, email and cards, and you know what's better for me? Email. Why? Because I actually save those, put them in a folder, and if I see your name pop up in the future it might be because I gave you an informational. I'm always happy to see this and I might reach out again. Unfortunately I remember the HR reps also said things like, “If we see someone who has NYU, Columbia or Denver (publishing courses) on their resume we know they’re very serious about publishing. We know they’re going to really want this. ” That’s BS because a lot of people from my program ended up leaving. It’s also very expensive. I had to take a $9000 loan. I got a $2500 scholarship from NYU, but they don’t offer that any more. My year was the first and last year they offered it. I just want to emphasize that you don’t need to do these programs to be successful in publishing. It’s basically networking on silver platter, but you can still reach out to people without doing that program. Get internships, complete informationals and make connections.