QQ No. 6
"What should I write to a literary agent to ensure they pay close attention to my book submission?"
Literary agents are often asked these QUESTIONABLE QUESTIONS by writers looking to understand how book publishing works. They’re reasonable questions and yet they reveal a misunderstanding about the industry. I hope this series of answers is useful.
6. “What should I write to a literary agent to ensure they pay close attention to my book submission?”
Tell the agents you’ve been offered a publishing contract by a good publisher. Though the contract had best be real.
Or tell us that Megan Mason, J.K. Rowling, Brian Eno, Marian Keyes, Ian Rankin, Stephen Fry, Anne Enright, Sally Rooney, Matt Haig and Margaret Atwood have all read your manuscript, adore your book and have offered gushing endorsements, the list of which you provide below. Though the quotes will need be authentic.
I’m not trying to be smart. I want to convey that agents love certainty - ‘a sure thing’. It rarely exists but we’d like it all the same. A ‘sure thing’ grabs our attention because it will instantly have a publisher’s attention. Literary agencies, like any other business, enjoy projects with little risk. It doesn’t mean we don’t take on risky books – maybe a novel that could prove hard to place well – but we fund the time spent on the risky projects with surer things. If you want an agent’s attention, make them feel confident about placing your book with a first-class publisher – for a decent advance.
If you have a public profile, such as a significant following on social media, I’ll bet you have already been approached by a publisher. Did they ask you to submit a book proposal about whatever made your name: your life, your work or special expertise? If so, tell potential agents about that approach first.
If your profile is big, or your topic very popular, publishers skip the proposal stage and offer you a lovely-looking contract immediately, details of the book content to be worked out together later – after you sign. Don’t touch that agreement. That moment when you’re sitting in a publisher’s office sipping coffee is our industry’s version of the scene you’ve watched a hundred times on TV, with the innocent sitting in the police station. The coffee offered by the cop is not great, but the officers’ smiles are warm. They’re suggesting the innocent one signs a statement.
Stop.
Wait.
Remember your rights.
How does it go?
This is my book publishing version:
You have the right to an agent.
If you do not know an agent, one can be found for you. Just shout out that you’ve got a publisher contract in hand and one of us will come running.
The publisher is not looking to cheat you. But they’re highly unlikely to be offering you the best terms – financially or legally. Maybe they are, as they’re claiming, your best choice of publisher. And they do deserve close consideration for winning your attention and offering a deal.
That doesn’t mean the deal is right. The agreement is not just a contract anyway. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, that agreement is filed and never seen again. What matters is your book and their publishing process. What exactly will they be publishing? That needs to be agreed in advance. How will they publish it? Forget the nice noises being made today. A year from now, when your book is being published, how do you know the level of publisher marketing and publicity attention it will get?
Every single month, that publisher publishes at least one book that gets all the resources needed for successful launch. That same month, they have other books being published that hardly get enough of their time to win any notice at all. It’s how the industry works. Every book’s author got the big smile and the confident assurances about marketing at contract time.
You need an agent to unpick the terms of the deal and identify the probable outcome. An agent doesn’t ensure success, but we are your vital asset. Is part of you thinking that you don’t want the deal to go away while you hunt for an agent? Maybe you don’t want to appear difficult. Perhaps it’s a natural reserve, a good-mannered modesty. Let me quote from one of my favourite film characters:
If I may make a suggestion... I think the time has come for you to shed some of your humility. It is just as false not to blow your horn at all as it is to blow it too loudly…. We all come into this world with our little egos, equipped with individual horns. Now if we don't blow them, who else will?
Addison De Witt (played beautifully by George Sanders) in All About Eve (1950).
Whatever you’re being offered with no agent around will only improve when you introduce an agent into the mix. Since my head is filled with old movies today, there’s a lovely moment in the classic 1955 musical Guys and Dolls when a canny gambler (played by Frank Sinatra) offers Sky Masterson (played by Marlon Brando) a bet that looks too good to be true. Brando takes a moment, then responds with measured certitude:
One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you're going to wind up with an ear full of cider.
If you have been offered a publishing contract, talk to a literary agent.
Maybe you think getting a contract saves you connecting with agents, but it doesn't. You don’t just need one at deal time. Get an agent for the life of your book – to help ensure it has a life. Your contract offer does guarantee you'll jump to the top of the submission pile. It ensures you’ll get an answer from the agent you contact. Does that annoy you? Have you been rejected by agents in the past and resent giving one fifteen per cent of whatever deal you are now being offered? Even though you can believe they’ll get you better terms and save you more than that 15% commission they take? Get over it. The contract offer gives you power – it reverses the power dynamic between you and the agent. I’m not suggesting you take revenge for what you judge to be our previous indifference. But you are allowed make us hop about a bit if it perks you up.
Most writers submitting to agents don’t know an established author to approach for a supportive quote. Though it’s worth saying that each of those famous writer names I dropped early in this piece were approached for an endorsement, at one time or another, by authors we represent. The endorsements were given. Before you reject the idea, think about whether that woman your aunt’s best friend’s son once dated, who is quite a well-known writer, might forgive a cheeky email request to read a bit of your book and even consider offering a gushy sentence or two about it, if your manuscript is as good as you believe it to be.
I’ve avoided answering the question about what to write to agents with my side-tracking about publishing contracts and endorsements. What about most authors who have no route to lure a publisher or a famous writer? I’d like to help and I’m about to try – I promise. Though this is a topic I wanted to avoid. Because it’s a question that every agent online writes about. When I google around literary agents and online support, I find a lot of guidance about what writers should say to us. Most of it is obvious. I didn’t want to talk about what’s obvious here. I want to convey what publishing is really like. How the book industry makes its workers think and act and what we don’t say. I want to lift the industry curtain covering the workings of places like Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group, Faber & Faber, and the rest, as well as the literary agencies, including our own. I have found that unpublished authors often are encouraged to have unrealistic expectations about what to expect from our industry. I want to address that. I’ll do it in other pieces.
It is reasonable to wonder what’s best to write to agents, so we rush to double-click on your attached book sample. I can understand authors getting obsessive about wording in their email to agents. We are word people after all. You’re probably over-thinking it. I must believe you’re perfectly able to write a good email. You are asserting yourself to be an undiscovered writer…
Ok, here goes – my earnest suggestion of how to make me pay close attention to your submission. I can’t speak for other agents. This always works for me – but perhaps only me. I always closely read submissions sent by writers whose covering note conveyed alertness, often in a detached wry way, to the reality of the thin thread of connection between them and me at the moment I am reading their email. Ironic commentary, done well, has magical power for me.
Show you are self-aware, conscious of your situation as an unpublished writer among many others, seeking attention from an agent whose main work is for the authors already signed but who keeps an occasional eye out for new talent. If you’re harbouring any resentment about your powerlessness, expunge it. If you’re feeling at all like a craven supplicant, wipe that away. If you’re anxious, clear your head. Find a voice on the page that shows you when you are feeling relaxed and confident, the easy best self you show to friends. Briefly highlight what’s most important for an agent to grasp about your book – whatever makes it less of a risky project and more of a sure thing – and what is most beautiful about your book to you. Then find a way of conveying an ironic awareness of the situation we are both in – as writer and agent. Connect with irony.
Perhaps one day it will delight us to recall even this[1].
That’s the best I can offer. I hope it’s of some use.
[ENDS]
Read disclaimer and hint for writers here.
[1] The line, “perhaps one day it will delight us to recall even this”[1] translated during Latin class in school, is my first memory of thinking about ironic commentary, though I wouldn’t have known the word. Maybe it’s more an offer of faint hope rather than pure ironic reflection. You can google and let me know.
This is great Ivan. Really important that authors understand that publishing is a business. As well as promoting art and knowledge it's also about turning something made up into a commercial reality.