Becoming a Lit Agent??

... an easy enough thing to research. Just look in the Writer's Market Guide To Literary Agents. It's organized by state I believe. If not, it wouldn't be too hard to browse through the listings and find ones in your state. There are probably just a few, if you want to intern at established and reputable agencies. I kinda recall that FL actually has a bit of a publishing industry. So maybe you'll get lucky

ps You might also try publishing houses. Good experience, too.

Be careful, Evvie. I don't know as much about other states, but Florida has had problems with less than reputable agents. Check them out like you would if you were sending a query.

I wouldn't want to be called a scout of anything. It appears that in the creative industries (writing, acting), those giving themselves this title more often are actually scouting your money than your talent. Reputable agencies usually have many more queries seeking representation than they can work with, so scouting for new talent is a bit moot. California has actually enacted laws this year aimed at this direction.

You scout for a baseball or other sports teams.

In the literary world, the players come to you.

You might be confusing what she meant versus what you think a scout is...

Here is a blog post from Nathan Bransford's blog:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2006/10/so-you-wanna-be-literary-agent.html

I know Fine Print just posted they were looking for interns and I couldn't really tell if you could do it from a distance from the post, so it might be worth looking into! Good luck!

Jstwatchin said:

I wouldn't want to be called a scout of anything. It appears that in the creative industries (writing, acting), those giving themselves this title more often are actually scouting your money than your talent.

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thothguard51 said:

You scout for a baseball or other sports teams.

In the literary world, the players come to you.

You might be confusing what she meant versus what you think a scout is...

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No, there is such a thing as a literary scout. They generally work on foreign books/foreign rights, and search out books in other countries that they can sell to US publishers (that's not the only thing they do, or can do, it's just what the few scouts I'm aware of do, I believe). It's a very specialized thing, but quite a few agencies do have them, and quite a few of them do work independently.

You just don't hear about them/see them because they're not agents who take queries. But many times when you find a book published here that was originally published in a foreign country, it was found and sold by a scout.

Evvie said:

See--I saw that Michelle Andelman was a scout for a publisher for a short period of time before she joined Regal Literary and I was wondering what exactly that entailed. She seems to be a highly reputable agent or so I've heard in this forum. So are scouts for actual publishers considered bad?

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No, they're not. See my explanation above.


I have a question. You contacted a few agent; did you ask if they needed an assistant or if they needed/wanted an intern? They may not be willing to pay a greenhorn to come in and learn from the ground up, but they may be willing to let you come in for a few hours a week as an intern and do things like filing, getting coffee and lunch, sending emails or whatever for free, if you tell them why you want to do it.

I do know of a few agents who had out-of-state assistants, but am not sure how well that worked.

It's hard to get an internship, honestly. There are thousands of applicants. I urge you not to give up. Contact those agencies again, politely, with a more "sell-y" email, offering to work for free. Tell them you'll happily be their dogsbody, make their post office runs, pick up their groceries, and vacuum if they'll just let you watch them work for a few hours a week so you can learn, because you want to be an agent more than anything in the world.

Good luck!

I know of at least one agent who has an intern in Colorado while the agency is in NY. It might be worth writing around and explaining the situation. So much can be done electronically now that you might be able to work something out.

Hey, I'm amazed you have time as an English major. I think all I ever did in my spare time was read literature.

Good luck and hope you find something that'll work. Did you talk to your professors?

I'm glad that you asked about this. I just graduated with my B.S. in Liberal Studies and have no clue what to do with it.. lol. I'd love to get into the publishing, agentine, pretty much anything that has to do with writing in general. I'm planning on trying to intern or more importantly a job with one of the companies here. I like in TN and after doing some research and some of my lovely AWers offering advice, I've found out that TN is actually a pretty good spot to be in. They have a decent Christian market (not what I write but I figure that I can learn from it) and nonfiction market located here so you never know. I have also heard of several agents that work for companies that are actually across the country. Technology has opened up many doors. Keep your head up. If you want, maybe we can PM each other on our journies.

Hi, Evvie!
Here's one program I came across during my searches:
http://veritasliterary.com/internship.shtml

Rowan said:

Hi, Evvie!
Here's one program I came across during my searches:
http://veritasliterary.com/internship.shtml

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That's us. We're not looking at the moment, but I might post something here down the road when we need someone again.

One major word of caution. Working for a literary agent might seem like a way to advance your writing career, but it could actually be the opposite, for much the same reason that writers often discover that writing has spoiled their enjoyment as readers.

Why not become a copywriter in advertising and get paid to write during the day while you work on your novel at night?