WME has promoted Caitlin Mahony, the book agent behind popular romantasy authors including Callie Hart, Scarlett St. Clair and SenLinYu, to its partner ranks.
Mahony, who has been with WME since 2016, reps commercial fiction authors across the board but is especially drawn to romance, science fiction, fantasy, horror and “anything with a strong genre backbone.”
Working under WME’s books department chief Jay Mandel, Mahony has been focused on working with authors who originate from non-traditional spaces, including those on fan-fiction platforms like the website Archive of Our Own (known as AO3 to the reader community) and writers who self-publish their work on Kindle Unlimited (KU).
One of her most high-profile deals in that space was signing fan-fiction author SenLinYu to adapt their highly popular “Harry Potter”-inspired fan fiction “Manacled,” a dark romantasy focused on the characters Draco Malfoy and Hermione Granger, into a traditionally published book called “Alchemised,” coming from Penguin Random House’s Del Rey in September 2025.
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Mahony’s major upcoming releases in 2025 include “Hungerstone” by Kat Dunn, “The Conditions of Will” by Jessa Hastings, “Terror at the Gates” by Scarlett St. Clair, “Heart Strings” by Ivy Fairbanks, “Game On: by Ki Stephens, “Alchemised” by SenLinYu, “The Ballad of Falling Dragons” by Sarah A. Parker and “Brimstone” by Callie Hart.
See below for Variety‘s interview with Mahony as she takes on her new role.
What got you into publishing?
Like probably everybody who works in publishing, adjacent to publishing, anything, I’m a lifetime reader. And in particular, I am an obsessive romance reader. It is the way I celebrate happy moments or grieve sad moments. There are some authors who I’ve been returning to since I was in high school. And so I’ve just always known I wanted to work in publishing, work with books, in particular, work with romance authors who are largely women. That’s always been my driving thing.
Growing up, I used to consume “Twilight” fan fiction on fanfic.net. So there’s always been alternative publishing that happens, but what happened was there was all this publishing on Kindle Unlimited, KU, and I was voraciously consuming it. It was so good, and then the books got better, and there were more of them, and it was impossible not to notice a disconnect between what people were just putting out themselves and what was available in bookstores. And it felt like these two worlds aren’t talking to each other, and they’re writing for everybody. So I was like, how can we bridge this gap? And that’s a lot of how I started signing these women: Me asking, can I add value to your life in traditional publishing? Can we bring the ethos of indie publishing into traditional publishing?
How do you go about finding your clients?
When I find someone I really like, I have a system I’ll go through. I’ll check a lot of stuff, it’s never just one thing. It’s never just TikTok. I read a lot of Goodreads. I read a lot on Amazon. I just kind of go through and see what is the more qualitative take. But I’m not looking for the massive books, I’m looking for the stuff that makes sense for me to represent. Again, should this book be in a bookstore? That’s a question I ask myself a lot. Some books don’t have to be, they’re perfect the way that they are in this format. And so I think about my mom a little bit, because she’s not on TikTok or even KU really, and there’s so many books that are indie published that my mom should be able to discover.
When you sign authors who then achieve success, what is the next step?
We’re always focused on longevity, that’s the big thing. It’s not about one book, it’s about building a sustainable career. At the heart of everything is the material and the story and the characters. I think all my books are excellent, and all of them have that timelessness to them. And so we just talk about, how do we build readerships? How do we sustain them? Some of that is touring. It’s different edition sometimes, but we’re never overly focused on just this thing. We always want to have a long term
view.
What has led to the recent rise of the “romantasy” genre among a larger audience?
These books have always done really well and they’re being published in a different way right now, I think that’s a big piece of it. A lot of romance was published purely in mass market paperback, only available in grocery stores, which feels sexist to me. When I first moved to New York, I remember going to an indie bookstore, and I worked for the agent who represented a big romance author at the time, and I went to my local indie to buy it, and it wasn’t there. Of course it’s not there, why would they carry her? But it should have been there! And that’s doesn’t happen anymore. And I think part of that is because of the shift from mass market to a trade original or a hardcover publication. That’s a big deal because these books are now shelved with every other work of fiction that comes out and that seems like a small change, but it’s a big change.
And I think the other piece of it is that these books naturally lend themselves to community. It’s stuff you want to talk about and yell about and grieve because they’re sad. They take you on an emotional roller coaster of a journey, and you have to talk to somebody about it. And so I think that’s so natural. So whether it be TikTok or Instagram or just talking to your friends on FaceTime, whatever, there’s just something infectious about them, and you have to talk about it. And I just think at some point, maybe it was the pandemic, because we were all in our homes and just needed to read and then talk about the books, it led to such a natural outgrowth. These books that have, again, done well for a long time, are being published differently, but also just lend themselves to something that you have to yap about.
The really interesting thing about romantasy right now is that it definitely has the heartbeat of romance, but it’s truly bringing in fantasy readers too, which is cool. You’re just opening up readership audiences. You’re teaching fantasy readers about romance, teaching romance readers about fantasy. It just feels like a great expansion of the community. And I think part of that is the ‘ACOTAR’ and the ‘Fourth Wing’ of it all. But also I just think they’re great books. They’re great books that are being published differently and placed in the front of the stores and being put in front of readers in a way that these books haven’t always been made visible.
When it comes to working with fan fiction authors who are now turning their works into traditionally published titles, like SenLinYu with “Alchemised” adapted from their popular “Harry Potter”-inspired fan fiction “Manacled,” how are you approaching that amid a trend of looking for new authors in these untraditional places?
Sen is amazing and brilliant and “Manacled” — man, I get chills just thinking it and talking about how much it has affected people and how much “Alchemised” will. It’s incredible. I think every situation with fanfic is different, and that’s what’s really cool about something like AO3, is that if an author wants to remain completely anonymous and never consider a traditional deal, they don’t have to, and it can just exist the way it is. And sometimes they want to take control back of their story and and publish it. And that makes sense, too. It’s not even specific to some a fandom writer. I just want authors to be in control of their art and what they want to get out of it.
How do you weigh in on the book to screen adaptation process for your authors?
That’s a part I delight in, because I am not the expert there. So I could be like, this is great guys, maybe we’ve got a movie! I have these amazing colleagues in Los Angeles who I’ve known for years, but across the country, and for us to work together on clients who I found, who I believe in, so much, it feels so incredible. When we can do a deal with someone like a Netflix or an Amazon, whatever, it’s just so great. And who doesn’t love to think about the potential for their book to be a TV show or movie? It’s the best. And so I’m lucky that a lot of my authors have great option deals and we’re seeing movement on a lot of them. It’s a very cool thing about the WME of it all. When I reach out to authors, the thing I talk about is we have this boutique book department within this larger entertainment company, and if there’s something that you can dream up, we can get you to the right person who can help you accomplish that dream.
What are your top goals now that you’ve taken on the role of partner?
I want to get women, and any men I represent, into the best situations possible and help them shape culture with their books. A thing that I love about a lot of my books is you can read them in a couple ways — if you’re just having a shitty day, you can just go home and read about two hot people falling in love, and that’s good. But then there’s another way to read every single book that I work on, which is for a gentle or nuanced exploration of grief or longing or loneliness or despair or disability, sexual orientation, gender identity. There’s so much to parse through. And you can get that from it, too. And I just want to keep finding those voices and those storytellers, and bringing them to as many people as possible, irrespective of where they live. I want everybody to read a romance novel.
This interview has been edited and condensed.