My sister gave me this biography of playwright Wendy Wasserstein for Christmas. It is a masterfully told tale of a complex woman, and a fantastic profile of what it takes to make art. I'd recommend it for anyone interseted in theater, writing, creativity and women making their way in the world.
how to find an agent
1. This list of steps assumes that you need an agent, which is to say that you have a finished, polished manuscript (critical for fiction and many types of memoir) or a very carefully executed non-fiction book proposal; that you want to sell it to a mainstream publisher; and that you understand what it will cost (somewhere around 15% of everything your book earns.) If you would like to explore self publishing or e-publishing, or publishing with a small or alternative press, chances are good that you don’t need an agent at this time.
2. Start by thinking about what you want in an agent. You want someone to sell your book, obviously, but an agent is also an advocate, a partner in building your career, and someone you will lean on to understand the business, the industry and the language of a publishing contract. Do you want a hard-hitting business partner? Someone who is no nonsense? Someone who has a slate of big name authors and big name editor pals – but who may have an assistant answer their phone? Or do you need to have someone instantly responsive to you at all hours of the day and night? Someone without a big list? Someone who may work for themselves? To read a series of great agent interviews and agency write-ups, check out http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/ Click on the “Editor’s Blog” tab and look at the categories on the left hand side of the page. There are some entries on successful queries here, which is fun to read. I especially like the “How I Got My Agent” feature: http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/CategoryView,category,How%20I%20Got%20My%20Agent%20Columns.aspx
3. Go to the bookstore and plant yourself in front of the section where you hope your book will be shelved. You’re going to have to pick one physical place, so you may as well start now. Look at books like yours – ones you admire, ones that you think look good in terms of how they are packaged and presented. Look in the acknowledgement section and see if an agent is mentioned. Note these names in a notebook. Before you leave the bookstore, be sure to buy a book or two so that the bookstore will be there the next time you need it.
4. Sit in front of your bookshelf at home and do the same thing as in step #3.
5. Now go to your computer. Go to www.agentquery.com and start looking up the agents on your list. Make a grid. Note the name of the agency, what the agent requests in a submission (one chapter? Three? A synopsis? Table of contents?), if the agent is accepting new clients, which books they represent that are similar to yours, and something personal that connects you to this agent – i.e. they went to the same school, they grew up in the same hometown, they represent your favorite author. You want to have some reason why you chose this agent, because you will be telling them this reason in your query letter. (Just saying, “I think it would be cool to be represented by the same person that represents Stephen King” is not enough.) For each agent you look up, click through to the agency websites and see how they look. What kind of vibe do you get? Does it look like “home” to you? (Note that Step #5 can literally take days and days of your time. It’s fun and enormously useful– but it’s a time sucker.) Remember that a reputable agent will never ask for a fee to read your manuscript.
6. Now go back to the homepage of agentquery.com and initiate searches on a variety of criteria related to your book. See if the same agents pop up who you already have on your list. Add new ones to your grid – ones who love the kind of work you do, ones who are looking for exactly what you are offering, ones whose hobbies are the same as yours. The goal is to have a short list of approximately 10 agent you adore and 10 more who you really, really like.
7. Rank the agents in your grid. (Perhaps assign groupings -- #1, #2, #3.) Do you love one above all others? If so, you can plan on sending them an exclusive look at your manuscript. Do you really, really like a handful? You can send out a simultaneous submission to all of them at once. Agents can take a very long time to get back to you. Start bracing yourself now. Here’s novelist Allison Winn Scotch writing about how that goes: http://www.allisonwinn.com/ask-allison/2009/9/15/how-long-is-too-long.html. While you wait, you can refine pitches to other agents, contemplate your next book idea, and start thinking about marketing and publicity (Do you have a website? Where does your audience connect with books? How can you reach them? Who is blogging about books like yours, topics you cover, authors you love? Should you be blogging, too? What about Twitter? You will have to answer all of these questions if you sell your book, so you may as well spend time thinking about it now.)
8. Make sure you have all the elements every agent on your list might request. If someone asks for a summary or a Table of Contents, make sure you have one ready to send. There’s nothing worse than getting a call from an agent and not having what they want. If you think you might need a synopsis, you may want to do a bit of research on what they are, what they’re for, and how to write them. It’s harder than you may think! Check out this post on How to Write a Synopsis at Nathan Brandford’s blog http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2007/08/how-to-write-synopsis.html; or this one, which is from Miss Snark and gets right to the point about memoir and synopsis http://misssnark.blogspot.com/2005/12/memoirs-of-platypus.html; or this one from a romance writer – but don’t laugh because those romance writers know a thing or two about plot and story so they have a lot to teach the rest of us about writing a synopsis http://brendacoulter.com/BrendaCoulterSynopsis.htm
9. Do some research on how to write a query letter. You can read everything ever written about it (and there’s a lot!) at Jill Corcoran’s blog: http://jillcorcoran.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-write-query-letter-advice-from.html. Don’t forget to visit query shark and query clinic to see how it’s NOT done. You could also poke around absolutewrite.com, which some people swear by, but which tends to make my head hurt.
10. Draft a query letter for each of the agents on your list, personalizing the parts that need to be personal.
11. Ask you writing coach or someone you trust to review your grid and your pitch materials. Revise until perfect.
12. Send out your queries and wait for the replies. Agents may reply anywhere from a minute later to never, so expect all possibilities.
If this wasn’t enough information, check out these great books:
· The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published
· Jeff Herman’s Guide to Literary Agents