Everything You Wanted to Know About Literary Agents

Great Article and Q & A from the brilliant Neil Gaiman and his amazing editor, Teresa Nielsen Hayden.

Enjoy!

--------------------------

I'd been a writer professionally for about five or six years, and had three or four books published before I decided that it was time to get an agent, and I got that agent (Merrilee Heifetz, of Writers House) because she'd just sold DON'T PANIC! on behalf of Titan Books in the UK, and we met while I was in New York, and I liked her and felt very confident in her; she's been my agent for almost 18 years now; which is my way of saying that I don't know much about the ins and outs of getting agents.

I have read Ten Percent of Nothing, however, a book which explains how Dorothy L. Deering, possessing a high school degree, a recent embezzlement conviction, and no experience as a professional writer, editor, or publisher, began operating a fee-based literary agency out of her garage in Nicholasville, Kentucky. Over the next ten years, she racked up a fortune in reading and marketing fees, learning the business of sham publishing as she went along. Later, as the owner of a vanity press, she bilked 1.5 million dollars out of her clients, masterfully manufacturing dreams of literary success until she was brought to justice by Fisher s investigative journalism, an FBI probe, and the retaliation and testimonies of numerous victims. So I know there are bad people out there who call themselves literary agents.

And best of all, I know Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Teresa's an editor at Tor Books (she's edited other places too over the years) and she knows publishing better than anyone else I've ever met. So I asked her...

What I got back was the kind of comprehensive post that aspiring authors should read with care. Study, even. Mark it and copy it and use it as a resource:

Hi, Neil --

Happy to answer.

1. If you're writing fiction, the True Secret Answer is "get an offer." If you've got an offer, you can get an agent. If you don't have an offer, you don't want the kind of agent you're likely to get.

a. If you're good enough to get published, having an agent may prove helpful. If you aren't (yet), you definitely don't want the kind of agent you're going to get.

i. There is no substitute for writing a book that people want to buy and read. If you can do that, you can get published. If you can't, no clever workaround will help, because we can't force people to buy and read books they don't like.

b. Some ways you might get an agent without getting an offer: Be obviously and extraordinarily good. Sell a lot of short stories. Have some other seriously hot credentials.

2. Don't start by looking for an agent. Do your research first. Start by learning about agents, submissions, publishing houses, the industry, et cetera. Note: This is a huge subject.

a. No matter how you think it works, the publishing industry doesn't work the way you think it does. This is true even for publishing professionals. They know how their part of the industry works, and they know a lot about adjacent areas, but the further afield they go, the less reliable their expertise will be. People who aren't in the industry generally don't have a clue.

i. A phenomenal number of articles about how publishing works are written by people who don't know what they're talking about. This is partly because writing about writing, or writing about publishing, is what wanna-be authors do when they've given up on writing, but don't yet want to admit it. It's also because a made-up version of the publishing industry is going to be much simpler and more logical than the real thing, and thus is easier to write about.

ii. Look askance at articles that credit some industry practice to the stupidity of people working in the industry, who have failed to see the simple and obvious solution the author of the article is about to suggest.

3. There are easily as many scam agents, useless agents, and clueless agents as there are real ones. They all swap bad information with each other. The difference is that the scammers know it's bad information.

a. You can't research this subject just by getting online and looking. You have to stick to good sources.

4. Did I mention that any idiot can write a book about how to be a writer? When you see someone who's never sold a book, but who's written a book about how to get your book published, and said book was published by a vanity house, and said author is nevertheless accepted as an authority on the subject by a great many aspiring writers, you know you've wandered into strange territory.

a. The scary part is that I've just described more than one Authoritative Source of Advice about Writing and Publishing.

b. Any idiot can put up a website, too.

c. Check out your source's credentials.

i. It's always worth your while to assess the quality of the info you're getting, because bad advice can cost you such an inordinate amount of time and effort.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT NEIL GAIMAN CLICK HERE

Cheers!
Brian M Logan
ThatActionGuy.com
EMAIL ME HERE

Never miss out on a great article or blog post by joining the 'Blog Up-Date Notification List' by sending an email with the word SUBSCRIBE in the 'comments' field!