For my inaugural post (hi, I’m Rob), I thought I would roll up my sleeves and share a real nuts and bolts sort of link for those of you who, like myself, might be starting on the road to publication. If you’re already a published author, swell. We’re very proud of you. Now go away and leave us to our desperation.
Last summer, after beginning work on a memoir about my experiences raising an amazing and strange little girl with a rare neurological disorder that keeps her from speaking, I began my search for an agent. I’d read and been told that this was the hardest part, the one that would be filled with sorry and frustration and endless rejection letters. Take heart, friend! You’ll eventually prevail!
Two weeks later, I was signing a contract with a very well-respected literary agent in Manhattan.
Now, I’d love for you to think that it happened because my written proposal was such a stellar piece of literary gold that agents were falling over themselves to represent me. And if you’d like to think that, I’m not going to stop you, because hey, I like being petted.
But deep down, I suspect that the reason I was able to find an agent so quickly had more to do with sending my query letter and/or proposal to the agents whose past work and current projects made them more likely to take on my work. Most agents handle a particular type of work, and if you send your fabulous new Cajun cookbook to an agent who handles murder mysteries and true crime novels, she might steal some of your recipes for her next dinner party, but no matter how much she loves your stuff, she’s not going to represent you.
The best tool I found for targeting those letters and proposals was Jeff Herman’s Guide To Book Publishers, Editors & Literary Agents.
Subtitled “Who they are! What they want! How to win them over!”, Herman’s book gives you not just the names and contact information for agents, publishers and editors. Detailed surveys were sent to agents and editors to fin out not just their backgrounds and past projects, but also their preferred genres, the kinds of authors they like working with and the ones who frustrate them, the things they like to do with their time, and their ratio of accepted to rejected manuscripts. (That number is usually pretty bleak, from 95 to 99 percent refusals.) In other words, the listings give you a pretty good idea of who is likely to appreciate your writing.
The contact information is current and includes which agents will accept proposals from the outset, as opposed to requiring a query letter. Even better, it tells which agents prefer to be contacted by regular mail and which ones like email. The agent I eventually signed with was one I contacted by email. The first piece of paper that passed between us was the contract I signed with her.
Jeff Herman is himself a literary agent, and it shows. He knows the business and has some great advice, in addition to the listings. I can’t recommend his book highly enough. (Note: I was using the 2004 edition, but there is now one for 2006.)
