So, there are many agents and a great many writers. As one
of those writers, I want to maximise my chances. Here is what I have been
doing. Maybe it is the right idea and maybe it is not. As I have said, I don’t
have an agent yet.
Agents generally list what kind of books they are interested
in. Some agents only handle fiction and some only handle non-fiction but even
within those broad categories, there are multiple specialities.
A very common complaint from agents is that people send them books outside of their
area of interest. I can see their point of view.
One of the things that must be valuable to an agent is their
relationship with publishers. They need to be seen as reliable and reasonable
so that a publisher is likely to read a submission; remember that agents are
paid from commission and no sale means no money. Imagine two agents, A and B. A
is that guy who offered up a self-help book, a sparkly vampire romance novel
and a funny book about dogs. B is the guy who has offered up four wartime
dramas that didn’t quite make the grade but who is getting better at finding
what the publisher wants. Which of these guys would get more credibility?
An
agent that broadens his or her range too much could well be working against
themselves.
There is also the question of personal taste. Remember what
I said about the amount of time that you probably have to convince someone is
under two minutes? How much harder is that sell when it is “Here is a genre
that you don’t like and have asked people not to send you but people that like
that genre might buy this” compared to “You said you like genre X and here is a
great example of it”?
Poor targeting wastes the agent’s time and it wastes
yours. Wasting the two minutes that it takes the agent to shake his head and
move on is unfortunate. Wasting the three months before you can politely give
up and approach another agent is unforgivable.
This does make cross genre work harder to place, I think…
and yes, I am trying to get representation for a cross genre book. I never said
that I was smart.
There is also the question of experience. Agents come fresh
from being an editor or even fresh from graduation and gain experience until
they have an established list of writers and relationships with publishers.
The newer the agent is, the more reason they have to build
their client list and the more time they will probably be spending reading
submissions. They will have fewer writers to look after. Let us put ourselves
in their shoes for a moment. Come with me on this and, yes, this is pure
supposition on my part. Your name is John and you are a brand new agent. You
don’t have any writers on your list. You have been given introductions to a few
people at a couple of publishers by one of the senior agents. Any decision that
you make is going to be checked by a senior agent. You are under some pressure
to find something that the agency can get published and get some revenue
rolling in. Your best bet is something that should be an easy sell to a
publisher and which won’t make you look stupid. This is probably not the time
to take a chance. If publishers are taking books on political infighting among
dog breeders, you are probably going to be looking for the best book on that
topic that you can find. You will have to voraciously plough through
submissions looking for them.
Let us swap shoes now. You are Liz, an agent who has been in
the business for 25 years. You have a string of writers and you know them well.
You have contacts at most of the publishers and sometimes you catch up with
them for lunch. Your client list is pretty full and you are not really looking
for new writers urgently but you there may be something good in the submissions
and it is worth a look. Maybe you will find a writer to take on for yourself or
someone for John, the new guy. His agent list is very empty. What you are
looking for is going to be different. A writer doing something interesting
might be more appealing than the safer option of choosing the least bad of the
genre de jour. Maybe you could spot a trend before it really gets going and end
up with a best seller. If you decide that you like something, you can back it
without having to justify it to anyone and a publisher is much more likely to
give it a read because you have sent a lot of good stuff to them in the past.
If they don’t like it, it won’t do you a lot of harm.
Are these accurate portrayals of typical agents? I don’t
know. They seem like pretty credible models to me. If we assume that they are
then it seems then that the hungry young agent is your best bet for getting an
easy to place book read but your worst bet if you are trying to get
representation for something unusual. If you go for a more senior agent, they
are less likely to read your work (and the more astonishingly good your
elevator pitch needs to be) but they are more likely to be interested in something
that is not a safe option that is following the fashion.
Hmmm. I have been approaching newer agents. I am now
wondering if this was a poor move. I saw a tweet from one agent that I had
approached to say that she was nervous because she was approaching a publisher
for the first time and that struck me as beautifully honest, refreshingly
candid and a little worrying. I am a pretty new writer and I would hope that my
agent was at least as experienced as me.
I could be wrong about these things. I have been wrong in
the past and I know that I will be wrong in the future. If you think or know
differently, I would be delighted to hear your comments.
Thanks for reading and good questing.
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