A day in the life of an agent

Thanks for the link, I love reading things like that.

I vaguely remember a few years back, a bunch of agents did a hashtag for one day, something like #agentday, just listing all the agenty things they were doing as they did them. It was SO interesting! But I never saw them do it again, sadly.

Thanks for sharing! Great link.

This is great. I kinda had a sense what it might be like, and this confirms it.. Fun to see a 'day in the life'...

Interesting read. Thanks for the link.

So . . . how did she find the time to write and post this rather long essay?

caw

Yesterday I decided, just for fun, to write down all the stuff I did during the day. Kinda thinking it might end up a "day in the life" post like this one, or just might be interesting for my own records.

It took virtually no time to jot each thing down as I did it. Unfortunately it was a mind-numbingly boring day, so... LOL. I don't think very many readers would be interested in: 11am - read a film contract. 12pm - kept looking at contract until my eyes bled. 1pm - applied poultice to bleeding eyes, ate lunch, looked at social media. 1:30pm - looked at another contract. etc. OH WELL. ;-)

"In adult, she’s specifically looking for new adult, romance (all subgenres), fantasy (urban fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, epic fantasy) and crime fiction (mysteries, thrillers). In Childrens’ she loves YA (all subgenres) and is dying to find great Middle Grade projects."

This is a problem I have with the publishing world. I am sure this is not a reflection of agents, but of whom they have to try to sell manuscripts to. There seems very little room for writers who simply labor at prose. In an ideal world, writers would be trusted to come up with the elements of suspense, tension, and drama that make any quality piece breathe. Instead, so many put blinders on and try and mold their writing to the genre.

Commercial publishing = what has sold in the recent past, or what an agent/acquisition editor thinks *might* sell in the near future. The categories are a way to reach stronger, more loyal markets. They can be annoying, hence the rise in self-pub crossgenre work from established authors. But categories are not there to rain on your prose parade.

That way of thinking can cripple your writing from the start, and may well lead to bad habits when it comes to submitting work to commercial venues.

Agents can reject perfectly good mms with the statement 'I have no idea how to sell this'. It's not a reflection on the book or the author.

Damon Shulenberger said:

This is a problem I have with the publishing world. I am sure this is not a reflection of agents, but of whom they have to try to sell manuscripts to. There seems very little room for writers who simply labor at prose. In an ideal world, writers would be trusted to come up with the elements of suspense, tension, and drama that make any quality piece breathe. Instead, so many put blinders on and try and mold their writing to the genre.

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I don't understand what you are saying here. I mean... where does this "prose" go in the bookstore? There's no "prose" section. As a reader, you don't walk into a bookstore with a blindfold on and hope that whatever random area you stumble into has books you'll like in it -- you find the section or sections you are interested in.

So it is for agents. Like, I rep children's books - middle grade and YA specifically. It's no good your saying "well good writing is good writing" -- sure, it is, absolutely, but I have a specialty. I know all the editors who do kids books. I know who is buying what. And I know how to sell it. If I took on a grownup cookbook just because it seemed cool, I wouldn't know what to do with it. (I could learn... but it would mean putting the years of work in from scratch). So I don't think there's anything odd about an agent having specialties - and I don't think there is anything wrong with AUTHORS having specialties.

They are not MOLDING THEIR WORK to fit the agents taste - rather, one hopes, they are writing the best most awesome books they can... and then querying agents to whom that work is likely to appeal.

Interesting and worth reading. Thanx for making it available. I realize Ms Townsend deals in YA, which I don't, and never did I think agents were laying about doing nothing all day, but her schedule is tiring so I have guess she is successful and a benefit to the agency.
I do have a question... and this is not my trying to cause trouble, but why are the majority of lit agents women? Seemingly real estate professionals are also mostly women. Not a bad thing but... Why?

Filigree said:

Agents can reject perfectly good mms with the statement 'I have no idea how to sell this'. It's not a reflection on the book or the author.

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This* actually happened to me in about the most disheartening moment I've ever had in the "process" of trying to get something published. Went like this:

Some years ago I attended a major writer's conference in the western U.S., where submissions of stuff and workshopping was a major part of the thing. I did all the requisite stuff, and quite enjoyed the week. On the last day, as I was walking across the university campus where the thing was held, an agent I'd never met or submitted to approached me, and introduced herself. She was a name I knew, well-known, from New York, with a very fine professional resumé and reputation.

Now, one of the things that got done at this conference was readings, open-mike, every evening, and I'd read from a short story a couple of nights before, so that's how she connected my tall, bearded, hairy, myopic appearance with my name. I had also submitted a portion of a novel manuscript as part of the conference entrance process, for the purpose of having it critiqued. It turned out that she had read it. She really liked it, wanted to tell me that, and took the opportunity to do so. I greatly appreciated that, and still do.

But she crushed it at the end by essentially prejecting any attempt I might make at submitting it to her, by saying:

"I don't know how I could sell this."


Yeah. That's a spirit-raiser if ever there was one.

caw

*I won't claim it was a "good" manuscript, because it wasn't my job to make that judgment. All I could do was be sure it was as good as it could be at the time it was submitted. Apparently that wasn't "good enough".

You know, blacbird, sometimes you have to be more of an advocate for your work.

When an agent says "I don't know how I would sell this," you have to be prepared to compare it to things that are similar that have sold. (Not in a "Well my book is as good as Frazen's so it should sell" kind of way. But more of a "This thing was published and it's similar in tone/style/content to my book," kind of way.)

I have been fortunate to find an agent who is not as dismissive of the market capability of Steampunk as most of the editors we've subbed to, but I still remind him that X and Y have come out recently and done very well. When I show him a new MS I always point out where it has an existing audience with fans of this or that. It doesn't mean that my assessment is always correct or that he'll be as thrilled about every book as I am. But if I'm not showing interest in my own work (and that includes doing research into how it might fit into the market) then I can't really expect an agent or editor to.

A thousand times this. You have to be an informed advocate. 'I don't know how to sell this' can be agent code for so many things, not all of them meaning an instant 'no'.

blacbird said:

*I won't claim it was a "good" manuscript, because it wasn't my job to make that judgment. All I could do was be sure it was as good as it could be at the time it was submitted. Apparently that wasn't "good enough".

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The agent didn't say it wasn't good enough, she said she didn't know how to sell it. Those are two very different things.

Maybe she meant she didn't have the connections to the right editors for that particular book. Or maybe she thought the book was hard to classify and she couldn't immediately see what kind of sales pitch to use. She thought the book was good, but she didn't think that SHE was the right person to sell it.

Also, everything Aggy B said.

Damon Shulenberger said:

"In adult, she’s specifically looking for new adult, romance (all subgenres), fantasy (urban fantasy, science fiction, steampunk, epic fantasy) and crime fiction (mysteries, thrillers). In Childrens’ she loves YA (all subgenres) and is dying to find great Middle Grade projects."

This is a problem I have with the publishing world. I am sure this is not a reflection of agents, but of whom they have to try to sell manuscripts to. There seems very little room for writers who simply labor at prose. In an ideal world, writers would be trusted to come up with the elements of suspense, tension, and drama that make any quality piece breathe. Instead, so many put blinders on and try and mold their writing to the genre.

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It has nothing to do with putting blinders on. It has to do with writing stories that readers actually want to read. As a write, I most certainly do come up with the elements of suspense, tension, and drama that make any quality piece breathe. Editors trust me to do exactly this.

I don't mold anything to an editor's demand, other than whatever it takes to create a story that has all the elements I want to see in a story. This is the point of what I write. I write stories I would want to read if someone else wrote them.

This means they must fit in some genre or sub-genre because that's what story is. Genre is no more than a convenient way to let readers easily find the kind of stories they love reading. I'm a reader, first and foremost. I love reading. I love reading far more than writing, and I've been read almost every darned day since I was three. Genre lets me find stories I want to read. Genre means I don't have to wade through hundreds of books to find a story I like.

I do read widely. Very widely. I can think of only two genres I don't read. But sometimes I'm in the mood for a fantasy, sometimes for a western, sometimes for a mystery, sometimes fo a hard SF story, etc.

I'm not after "prose", I'm after a good story, good characters, good dialogue, good writing, and that has something to say. All good writers labor at prose. I often spend an inordinate amount of time going over a page time and again to get the prose right. But prose without all the elements of story is meaningless, and genre IS story.

What is it you love to read? Whatever it is, it falls within a genre, if it actually has a good story, good characters, good dialogue, etc. It's what you should write.

If there is no genre you love to read, you'll have to actually create one, which has been done more than once, but it will still have to have all the elements of story and character that readers want. You can labor at prose until hell freezes over, but no matter how good you get at prose, that prose still has to say something readers that makes readers part with beer money to read. This means good story, good characters, good dialogue, and it also means it will fit neatly into some genre or sub-genre.

I love reading these things. It's interesting to see how an agents day could be so crammed with various tasks! Good job agents and keep up the hard work!

Laer Carroll said:

Instead of being crushed, you should have been elated.

She, an expert in publishing, said your stuff was publishable.

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No, she didn't say that. Nor were any constructive suggestions given. I know she was trying to be kind, but in the context of a lot of other experiences with agents and conferences I'd had, it came off as quite the opposite: just plain unsellable and unpublishable. It would have been better if she'd simply ignored my existence on the planet.

I'd been to a major conference every year for about ten years prior to that one. And I'd had a couple of truly horrendous experiences at the last two before that. This one cemented my aversion to conferences. I haven't been to one since. And it has taken me a long time to consider querying anything since, as well. I have one requested partial out right now, submitted in November in response to a query submitted in August. I can't any longer afford expectations.

caw

OK, but this agent did not have to come talk to you, blacbird. She probably spent the whole weekend fending off hapless writers and was exhausted, but wanted to approach you and tell you that she liked your writing. That is a big deal. And if you wrote or are are writing another book, you should query her because she likes you and will remember it. Not being able to sell one particular manuscript is about the ever-changing market and her personal editor connections, not your work.

Chiming in to agree with Niiicola. I think she'd be pleased to hear from you, and definitely think she was being welcoming/friendly/encouraging even if her comments didn't come off that way.

Thedrellum said:

Chiming in to agree with Niiicola. I think she'd be pleased to hear from you, and definitely think she was being welcoming/friendly/encouraging even if her comments didn't come off that way.

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Appreciate the comment, but this happened too long ago to matter now. At the time, it came off as a compliment like, "Gee, for an ugly hairy guy with a big nose, you don't smell so bad."

My main point was to indicate that this "I can't sell this" statement had literally happened to me, verbally, up close and personal.

caw

blacbird said:

My main point was to indicate that this "I can't sell this" statement had literally happened to me, verbally, up close and personal.

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I'm lucky enough to have an agent. Those were her exact words on the last manuscript I submitted to her.

Again, it's not that she didn't like the book. She just didn't see it as being marketable.

Just finishing up a manuscript for a book that she thinks she can sell. If it turns out not, then I've wasted months working on something that wasn't really the kind of book I wanted to write, because the stuff I really enjoy writing isn't what publishers are buying these days.

Honestly, it's not the best time to be a writer, for anyone.

rugcat said:

Honestly, it's not the best time to be a writer, for anyone.

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"For anyone"? Why? I would think what you describe might be specific to a few genres, or might just be the natural state of publishing in terms of the number who make it to certain levels.

Anyway, I hope your agent likes the new book!!