For my two outside sources, I will be using an interview I did earlier this week, and one of the books I just finished reading. My interview was with Chris Hart, who works at Penguin Random House on the operations and production side of the publishing process. He was able to give me a lot of insight on the production part of the whole process, like what contracts look like, how pricing works, and what publishing books internationally looks like. This answered my essential question by directly informing me on the many steps that take place, from the first draft of the book to its publication. He touched briefly on the work agents do, which raised some curiosity and questioning in me because I would love to learn more about the publishing process from the perspective of an agent.

My other source is the book I just finished reading, Writers & Lovers by Lily King. I absolutely loved this book and enjoyed reading and reviewing it very much. It’s a book about a young woman struggling to find herself as a person but also as a writer, and it touches on her writing process from here and there. While I was able to get some information regarding my essential question from those moments, most of the information I got were from the choices King makes throughout the book. Though they may seem minor or even go unnoticed to the reader, the way she chose to write, create, and even gender her characters completely changed the way the book read and the things readers could take away from the book.