A Tale of Two Agents
11 Dec
Agent A
Agent A goes into the office first thing and checks his e-mail. There are usually anywhere between 30 and 40 electronic queries from people the agent has never met. Nevertheless, he goes over them with great care, weighing the pros and cons of each one, and thinking deeply about their literary and commercial potential. This takes all morning.
Then, his assistant brings him the fruits of the regular mail. Agent A spends his lunch hour and most of the afternoon processing another 30 or 40 query letters with great care and much deliberation. At the end of day, there is just enough time to tweak the Submission Guidelines page on the agency’s website and to start drafting that all-important entry for next year’s Writer’s Market.
Agent B
Agent B starts her day having coffee with a police detective she recently saw on the local news. The detective is handling a high-profile case and comes off as articulate and charismatic on TV. There might be something there.
Then Agent B swings by a bookstore to see who’s on the front table displays and to chat up a bookseller she knows. The bookseller happens to mention a friend who has a great idea for a YA techno-thriller set in the pineapple industry. Intrigued, Agent B instructs the bookseller to have her friend query her and to make sure that he mentions the bookseller’s name in the letter.
Lunch is with the editor of a small, up-and-coming online journal that the agent discovered while surfing the Internet. It’s unclear what the editor and his stable of writers have to offer the world right now, but Agent B sees potential and extracts a promise that they keep her in mind as they continue to develop and grow.
Then Agent B stops by the office. She picks up the day’s query letters, which have already been sorted by her assistant. On top are the letters that are either requests or referrals. Then come the unsolicited queries that the assistant has deemed worthy of Agent B’s attention. Then come the unsolicited queries that the assistant has tagged as rejects. The agent takes the top layer to read at home later, then gives the second layer a single read and pulls a couple of queries that show promise. (She’ll read them along with the top layer.) Agent B then skims the last layer just to make sure her assistant is doing her job. On some days, she ignores that last layer altogether.
Finally, a quick staff meeting where Agent B and her assistant and their intern talk about the manuscripts and partials that are currently on submission. Meeting quickly devolves into a more general discussion about what is going on in the culture, what bores them, what excites them, etc. Toward the end of the meeting, Agent B’s assistant reminds her that the deadline for the Writer’s Market entry is at the end of the week. Agent B tells the intern to write something up and have the assistant review it before passing it along to her for final approval. “Just make sure you say we don’t handle romance novels,” says Agent B. “It won’t stop people, but what can you do?”
Questions:
Which agent is more successful?
Which agent would you rather represent you?
Which agent is more likely to exist outside of yet another ham-fisted parable written by Dennis Cass?
Tags: publishing
Your question is rhetorical, right? This is a much clearer way to understand the importance of networking in addition to the work and the query letter (which I know I just ragged on but which is good practice in backing up an idea). Nice.
Glad you liked it, Sara. But what I’m getting at here goes beyond mere networking . . . .
The efficiency that agent B seems to employ illustrates her ability to sort through the minutia to find the “true gems” while her constant connection with the real world keeps her up to date with the latest trends and possible ‘big hits’. Although seemingly harder to reach, once you have made it through two gatekeepers to her top layer you can be assured that you have something worth representing.
The care Agent A has is rare and very special, but I can’t be certain that his pacifist attitude would be the best route for me.
Beyond networking this seems like more of a parable on the difficulties of making sure your work can stand out in a crowd whether or not your agent spends a great deal of time sorting through queries or not. Either way, if you don’t have a good hook up front you will never get through regardless.
Agent A is a drudge… slaving away, tied down by traditional methods, disconnected from the larger community. There is only one way to reach Agent A: the query.
Agent B is immersed… connected to culture, aware of local trends and opportunities, open to new ways of finding good work. There are many ways to reach Agent B: send a query, get a personal referral, start an online journal, or just be an interesting person (like the police detective).
Agent A is passive, waiting for the good stuff to reach him. Agent B is actively seeking the good stuff, and likely knows exactly how to get it published when she finds it. I’d much rather have Agent B on my side.
Hi Dennis,
Thought I’d stop by and say hi. We talked a few months ago on BookRoast.
It reads like I should want Agent B, but I have to tell you, I’m happier with Agent A – doing his own reading, thinking about the prose, not leaving this to an assistant. I say this as a potential client.
Totally off the mark?