Overhauling the Agent Process

Hi Everyone! I am a new writer and have been reading some of the threads from Absolute Write from time to time and decided to sign up. I just finished my first non fiction book and have been shopping for an agent. I am a professional musician and thought auditions were rough until I discovered what it's like to try and find a literary agent. What a total nightmare.

I am shocked by how poorly the process works and even more shocked by what I consider the lack of professionalism of agents.

I have been blessed with a fair amount of interest from my query letter and after WEEKS/MONTHS of silence was asked for book proposals and again for the manuscript by several. I have one agent on the hook who is an A+ agent and the rest were not even considerate enough to offer some constructive criticism or in some cases even a reply. I don't understand this behavior...They only accept like 3% of submissions and when they actually ask to read your writing don't even feel responsible for offering a response?

At least when you take a music audition they ask you to play it again if it is not quite right and offer suggestions to try it this way or that way. If they pass on you, you can go and play for the conductor or the person who auditioned you and learn why they did not like what you did or how to improve based on their insight. Why are agents not offering the same thing?

While I realize the only purpose of an agent is to sell your work, if they took the time to bother to read a lot of it in the first place, which they all claim they rarely do, then why will they not give you some feedback?

I specifically asked for it in 2 instances after hearing nothing and neither bothered to even respond after having requested all my material. It has been 2.5 months. The one agent who is very interested has asked me to redo my book proposal to meet her formatting guidelines and then supposedly will represent me. We have discussed her selling the book in the fall and her only other concern was the title of the book which I changed and she now loves. While she is the PERFECT agent, if I get her in the end, I was really hoping to learn something from this process and instead feel nothing but frustration.

How do you all put up with this horrible process? I have a thick skin and all- after all I am a professional clarinetist- but it is rather ironic that this is how it works considering it's the writing profession we are talking about...

Anyone have anything to add?? I am happy to have found this board. It feels good to vent to you guys who I know will understand this new experience for me...

Thanks for your comment but you would be SHOCKED how many musicians are entering music schools and earning a performance degree. Its a bigger number than you might expect. However if agents are only accepting 3% of submissions that means that at least 70-80% of what they receive is immediately tossed, right? I am sure they skim a lot of material.. the process just seems to be really out of date with the times I guess.....

At least as a newbie this is what I see. I am sure I will become hardened and jaded as time passes. (smile)

Thanks for your link. I found Nathan's blog post interesting and commented on it.

Technology offers so many ways to communicate and improve communication. Emails are easier than making a call or mailing a letter. Yet the world of agents and publishing seems to have a list of reasons why it is acceptable to not communicate. The written word, next to the sound of the human voice, is as intimate a process of communicating as it gets.

Don't you find it a bit ironic that the process is so provincial? Maybe I am simply not jaded and hardened to it yet but frankly I hope that does not happen to me. I tend to be the kind of person who wants to find a better way...

Well caw, in general, this problem is the reason I wrote my book Build A Blue Bike: Ride Your Artistic Blues to Creative and Financial Freedom. So I guess for starters, I am going to do the best I can to get my material into the market to try and help. The creative industry needs an overhaul in general. New ways to create market share need to emerge in all kinds of creative disciplines including writing.

I am a believer in creativity and its power. I built a business from my dorm room that lasted 20 years in the music industry. Through that experience and teaching creative career development to artists at DePaul University, I had the privilege to teach, train, advise and observe thousands of creative types and their trials and tribulations to thrive and survive.

I truthfully feel that creative types, which include writers, are being short changed. Sorry if this was more than you wanted... no easy short way to answer your question.

All I was trying to say is that there is a universal acceptance that agents need not offer anything more of a reply and writers have no choice but accept it. That process hardens you. How can't it? Is that good? Perhaps my motives are too pure. I would like to see every writer and artist find a niche they can profitably serve. While I do believe in survival of the fittest there are a lot of fit artists.

If you look at all the creative arts they all have the same issues. I have taught creative career development to artists for most of the past 20 years. This is in fact a big problem in the arts in general, mostly for artists that reach or approach a professional level. The competition for the same piece of pie is enormous and I simply believe that there might be new ways to make more pie by teaching artists how to get out from under the "system". I don't have all the answers but I have seen many climb mountains in less than traditional ways and I believe in original ideas.