Get a Literary Agent: The Complete Guide to Securing Representation for Your Work (2 page)
Read Get a Literary Agent: The Complete Guide to Securing Representation for Your Work Online
Authors: Chuck Sambuchino
“Publishing is a business, but writing is an art form. An agent can take care of the business aspects of a writer’s career and allow them to write, which is probably what authors want to be doing more of anyway.”
—Suzie Townsend (New Leaf Literary and Media)
Most of us have lofty expectations for our work, whether we verbalize them aloud or not. When we dream of publishing books, we likely dream of the following.
- Having our books distributed to all major bookstores nationwide
- Receiving a sizable up-front advance payment (i.e., more money) that is ours to keep and making sure we get fair royalties
- Seeing our books in Hudson Booksellers and all other airport stores
- Selling foreign-language rights to overseas territories so that our stories can be enjoyed in other countries and we can, in turn, get paid more
- Negotiating film deals with Hollywood for a chance to see our books become movies and, again, generate revenue
- Receiving publicity and marketing assistance from an individual (or several) at the publishing house, whose job is to increase book sales
- Retiring from our day jobs!
These are the things I dream of—as I expect you do, too. So how do you accomplish these goals? From everything I’ve seen, the best way is to sign with a large publishing house that has the staff, money, contacts, and infrastructure to make it happen. And how does one sell to a large publishing house? Only with agent representation to bridge the gap.
That
, in my opinion, is why you need an agent. Sure, an agent keeps 15 percent of your earnings. But she earns her keep. For starters, an agent fights to get you a better deal than you could get on your own. In doing so, she effectively pays for herself.
Keep in mind that an agent won’t necessarily represent everything you write. Here is a breakdown for how your agent is involved with your writing life.
An agent will:
- PITCH YOUR BOOK-LENGTH WORKS
—whether fiction or nonfiction, children’s or adult—to publishers who will give them serious consideration, at no cost to you. This is their primary responsibility and their specialty. - OFFER CAREER GUIDANCE.
An agent’s job is to help you develop your brand and plan your next move. - NEGOTIATE YOUR CONTRACTS AND TRY TO GET YOU THE BEST TERMS.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, you will get more money for your book with an agent than without one. - TRY TO GET THE BEST DEAL POSSIBLE FOR YOU
—including any and all subrights sales, such as audio, film, translation rights, and more. - GARNER RESPONSES FROM EDITORS FASTER THAN YOU COULD ON YOUR OWN.
An agent will not:
- HELP YOU SELL ORIGINAL MAGAZINE ARTICLES.
- REPRESENT BOOKS OF POETRY.
Books of poetry are rarely traditionally published; most chapbooks available online are self-published.
What’s the correct protocol if you don’t have an agent but already have a contract offer in hand from a publisher? Should you sign the contract? Or should you try to get an agent at that point to help you negotiate the deal? That decision is yours to make—but obviously agents are very open to stepping in at that point. Says agent Laura Rennert of Andrea Brown Literary Agency, “It’s fine to approach an agent [when you have a contract in hand from a publisher]. We’ve taken on new clients in cases where we’re the first person to see the work and also in cases where there’s already an offer on the table. In fact, sometimes the editor who has made the offer will recommend the author contact us. … Agents do more than just secure an offer. They also negotiate contracts, act as the author’s advocate and champion, and help the author navigate the path after publication.”
Ask any agent what she does on the job, and she’ll tell you that she wears a lot of hats. While a newer agent may spend most of her time hunting for clients and reviewing slush-pile submissions, an experienced agent, on any given day, must deftly juggle a variety of tasks. Let’s journey through the theoretical day of an agent so you can better understand her skill set and responsibilities. In no particular order, here is what an agent is doing in the office.
- SHE PITCHES PROJECTS FROM EXISTING CLIENTS TO EDITORS.
Once an existing client has a completed manuscript or book proposal that’s polished and ready, it’s time for the agent to target editors and pitch the book. Much like writers carefully target and personalize their query letters to agents, the agent, in turn, carefully targets and personalizes her pitches to editors, almost all of which are done through e-mail. - SHE REVIEWS WORK FROM EXISTING CLIENTS AND SUGGESTS REVISIONS IF NEED BE.
As her writers pass along their newest masterpiece, an agent carefully reviews every page and detail to spot weaknesses that need to be fixed before submission. This takes time. Looking over a 90,000-word novel with an editorial eye can take dozens of hours. - SHE READS INDUSTRY NEWS.
An agent needs to know when an imprint launches, an editor switches houses, or an assistant gets promoted to a crucial role. reading trade publications such as
Publishers Weekly
(which is a good magazine for writers to peruse as well—hint, hint) lets her know what kinds of books are selling and which publishing houses are acquiring such titles. If she’s part of an agency, she will work with her fellow agents to corral important news and update the agency database.Just as writers educate themselves about agents and their tastes, agents educate themselves about editors and
their
tastes. An agent will spend some of her time reading interviews and blogs to learn editors’ personal preferences and will also peruse publishers’ backlists to learn what they’ve already published. - SHE READS NEWS SOURCES OF INTEREST TO HER
—especially when they are connected to nonfiction categories she represents. Most fiction travels
toward
the agent, coming from writers through cold queries or referrals. But regarding nonfiction, it’s quite common for an agent to personally seek out experts, journalists, and persons in the media to write books. For instance, if an agent sells a lot of pop-culture books, she is no doubt hunting for the next humorous blog that is on the verge of blowing up (such as the Twitter account that inspired
Sh*t My Dad Says
or the blog that led to
Texts from Dog
), hoping to turn the material into a best-selling book. - SHE MEETS PERSONALLY WITH PEERS AND EDITORS.
Though not as martini-heavy and glamorous as you probably picture them to be, plenty of lunch meetings still happen in New York. An agent will often get together with an editor simply to see what she’s currently looking for so that the agent can funnel the most appropriate submissions to him. It’s also beneficial for the agent to attend book release parties and industry gatherings when she can—again, to meet editors. I personally think of an agent as an insider, and you can’t gain such a title without knowing what’s going on within inner circles. - SHE RECEIVES OFFERS, QUESTIONS, AND REJECTIONS FROM EDITORS REGARDING MATERIAL SHE HAS ALREADY SUBMITTED.
An agent has already sent plenty of material to publishers at any given time, so responses from editors trickle in almost constantly. An editor may say yes to a project, and thus the negotiation process of nailing down “deal points” (major points, such as money) begins. The editor may also respond to a project with questions or ask for more materials—such as sequel concepts or marketing ideas. He may reply by requesting specific revisions that must be implemented if the book is to formally go to acquisitions, or he may say no outright to a project.If it’s a particularly wonderful day, the agent may handle an auction, which is a scheduled time for multiple editors to bid for one of the agent’s projects.
- SHE FOLLOWS UP ON PAYMENTS, DEALS, AND LOOSE ENDS.
An agent chases down the latest royalty payment for your book. She nudges an editor for a response regarding a submission or question. She e-mails her contact in China to see if the sale of Mandarin language rights went through. Because an agent plays the role of middleman, she is, by definition, in the middle of a great many things, messages, deals, and happenings. Her checklist of to-dos is never small. She is your advocate. - SHE CONTACTS EXISTING CLIENTS WITH NEWS, THOUGHTS, CONCERNS, AND REASSURANCES.
An agent often has many clients for whom she is pitching books, as well as clients who already have published books in the marketplace. She must send a lot of different messages and keep in constant touch with each of them. She informs a client when his book reaches a bestseller list, when the publisher decides to promote his book in a magazine, or when a publisher turns down his latest project. And so on and so forth. - SHE FIELDS REQUESTS FOR APPEARANCES AT VARIOUS WRITING CONFERENCES AND EVENTS.
Agents are in-demand faculty members at writing conferences and retreats nationwide (and worldwide). Once an agent receives an invitation, she will initiate a conversation to work out details such as timing, travel, on-site duties, presentation topics, and critiques. - SHE COORDINATES WITH CO-AGENTS REGARDING SUBSIDIARY SALES.
A typical literary agent specializes in selling your
book
. Meanwhile, she works with talented co-agents to sell film rights and foreign-language rights. This means whenever she takes on a new client or a new project by an existing client, she must pass material to contacts in Hollywood and overseas, possibly scheduling a call to discuss the book and answer any questions. - SHE REVIEWS COLD SUBMISSIONS FROM UNKNOWN AUTHORS—AKA, TACKLING THE SLUSH PILE.
Once all of her mandatory duties (the points above) are taken care of, it’s time to seek new clients and review queries. That means tackling the slush pile. While most agents review their own query letters, some have their assistants review letters. But ultimately, most assistants are there simply to weed out the worst of the worst queries (e.g., letters littered with typos or submissions that don’t fit the agent’s list), while the rest simply get passed on to their boss, the agent.
THE EVOLVING ROLE AND LIFE OF AN AGENT
“I can only speak for what we do at our agency, but it’s been a long time since any good agent I know has just sold books. Agenting is a full-service business and, in this day and age, when editors sometimes seem to be playing musical chairs and projects are orphaned almost as soon as they’re bought, providing editorial feedback for our clients is increasingly important. We like to think that our role is to ‘cause’ books to be published, and for that to happen, we need to be involved every step of the way.”
—Miriam Goderich (Dystel & Goderich Literary Management)
“The biggest way in which my job has evolved in the last five years is that I’ve gone from building my list to solely focusing on the writers in my stable and how to make them grow. My sense is that the longer you’ve been in the business, the more focused your list becomes. With that in mind, the more research a querying writer does, the better. If you read up on me, for example, you will see that I am looking only for fiction, whereas if you queried me ten years ago, I was looking for memoir, pop culture, young adult, and fiction.”
—Elisabeth Weed (Weed Literary)
“I entered the industry at a time of great change, so I quickly understood I would need to work closely with my authors to build their careers. In the beginning, I counseled them on the importance of having a website, using social media, and developing a general presence on the Web. I think there is a sense from authors (especially ‘old-school’ ones) that this is the publisher’s responsibility. This may have been a role publishers had taken on at one time, but this is no longer the case. In fact, in the digital-publishing landscape, if you do not have all of these things in place, you could risk a deal, since turnaround times are much quicker with digital. As an example, I sold four or five books to digital publisher Diversion Books, and those books were released within a month. Diversion would not have bought the books if the authors had no Web presence.”
—Elizabeth Kracht (Kimberley Cameron & Associates)
“One of the most obvious ways my job as an agent has evolved can be seen in how much time I spent with my clients getting their work ready for submission. Whereas I used to be able to take a look at a manuscript or proposal and give some detailed notes and be ready to go, I now find I am digging deeper, and this can be tricky as I take on more new clients. If I really feel a project has potential, I have been asking more writers to work with independent editors and book doctors—and while this does mean money out of a client’s pocket, in the long run, it is worth it. That said, I do try to offer as much one-on-one attention as I can, but this all depends on what I’ve got on my plate at the time. I always keep in mind that editors are looking for a reason to say no—and I do my best to find as many potential issues and smooth them out before we submit.”
—J.L. Stermer (N.S. Bienstock)
Soon you’ll learn how to research potential agents and markets for your work. And when you start to look at individuals up close, you’ll discover that while all agents sell books, they’re quite different in other ways.
For example, some agents will be very hands-on and help you edit your work, while others gravitate toward projects they believe are great as is and can be pitched immediately. Before you think that the former (a hands-on agent) is preferable to the latter, consider that she may request changes in your manuscript that you disagree with. In other words, both a “hands-on agent” and a “nonediting agent” will have their upsides and downsides.
Some agencies are well versed in the digital marketplace and the evolution of publishing. An agent at this type of agency may seek out self-published bestsellers on Amazon and may have a co-worker at the agency dedicated to helping writers build their social media presence. And for every one of these agents, another prides herself on simply finding the best writers of paperback romance (or science fiction or literary fiction) and making sure they get published—and that’s it.