The Most Frequent Question: Agents
Several years ago I went to a writer’s conference and was double-billed with a New York literary agent. This might have made an interesting program---the writer, there to answer creative questions; the agent, there to talk marketing. In fact, it was a bad idea. It soon became apparent that most of the writers in this packed house had come to hear the agent. It was also painfully obvious that many had yet to finish a book. They wanted desperately to know how to sell it: they assumed they already knew how to write it.
I spent much of my time that day listening to the agent, whose name I did not recognize and cannot remember today. But there was one exchange between us that does stand up like Fort Ticonderoga in my memory. When a young writer (who had finished his book) asked how he should approach agents and publishers when the book had already collected dozens of rejections, she said, “Don’t tell them that. Lie a little if you have to.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, pushing my way into her opinion. “Hold on, time out, point of order, objection. You can’t tell them to lie. You can’t be serious.”
Yes, she was either serious or had slipped into a stick-to-your-guns-when-challenged mode. I remember arguing this point with her in the hall as we left the auditorium. I liked this young woman, who was personable, witty and charming. I liked the messenger; hated the message. So here’s my message, for what it’s worth.
I should first admit that the world has changed (oh, wow!) since I last went looking for an agent. Some of the rules have changed but some of them have not. The agent I found is my agent today, thirty years later. But let’s take a look at the advice I have been dispensing to young writers all these years and see how it stands up. Here’s what I tell them.
Do you need an agent? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. Many big houses won’t even look at unagented manuscripts.
Is it true that it’s almost as difficult to get an agent as it is to find a publisher? It can be, with marginal material, but this is where you start. Even with a good book it can be a tedious, difficult search. The best agents are busy and can’t take on work they feel is iffy or lukewarm.
Look first at agents located in New York---10017 and 10036 are great zip codes for agents, but don’t assume that, just because someone lives in New York, he is either (a) real, or (b) God’s gift to the publishing world, and you would be damned lucky to get him.
Conduct the search on a high level. Don’t waste the agent’s time, don’t call uninvited, don’t send out twenty queries at once, and please-oh-please don’t put it up for bids. Don’t write a copyright notice on the title page in 72-point type, as if you’re afraid the agent is going to steal your book. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot before the agent has even had a chance to see your manuscript.
Be a pro, even if you’ve never sold a word to anybody.
Don’t send the agent a 300-page manuscript without warning. Query the agent briefly in a letter of no more than a page or two. Summarize the book brilliantly but don’t hype it. A tall order, you say. Yes it is, but you’re a writer, write something that makes the agent say, “I’d better look at this.” But don’t be cute.
Send stamped, self-addressed envelopes with everything, query letter or full (solicited) manuscript.
Get names from the Association of Authors’ Representatives, a merging of two agents’ groups, with a canon of ethics and professional standards set out in its bylaws. There are LOTS of agents there to choose from---more than 30 pages of them, last time I looked.
Watch out for sharks. Anybody can set up shop in Gopher Prairie USA and call himself a literary agent. Don’t sign a contract allegedly binding you to some agency before a book is even sold. Never, ever, ever pay an “agent” to read your book. Such fees can run into hundreds of dollars, and for what?
Don’t give up. This may be the most important point in this column. If you believe in your book, don’t give up. Churchill said in the darkest days of WWII, NEVER give up, and look how that turned out. The publishing world is full of stories of writers who have made the rounds and hit it big on the 20th, 30th, 50th submission. You have spent at least a year or two writing this thing. Now have the courage to keep it going. Send it till the type wears off the page.
Start another book. Don’t wait for this one to run its course.
Don’t ask other writers to read your stuff. What does it matter what any of us thinks? Get it in the hands of an agent who will tell you straight-up what she thinks.
And now I would add this: Don’t lie.
Oh, I am aware of the writer who did tell a few whoppers to his agent and then went on to a fabulous mega-million-dollar career. I know him well and that’s a funny and true bit of Denver literary folklore. However, it’s also a one-in-a-million story that may have more to do with plain old luck than anything else. It could just as easily have turned out the other way.
You know what? I still like these points. I like them all, even the ones that may go down hardest with a gung-ho new writer, certain of his brilliance and impatient for the world to discover him.
September 2003
