Profiling An Agent

You're a new writer. You've written a novel, made a few sales, picked up some writing credits, and you're ready to start agent hunting. You do some research, read some articles, look through the Literary Market Place, maybe hit Preditors and Editors, and start picking agencies to receive your submissions. Everything's lined up, and you're ready to roll. All you have to do is get in with a good agency and you're set, right?

Wrong. Chances are that you haven't really solidified what a good agency is, particularly if you're just breaking in. Depending on how hungry you are any agent may look like a good agent. Beware. Even if the agent has sound business practices, that agent may still not be right for you. How do you know? What makes an agent good for you?

You'll need to ask yourself and any prospective agent some hard questions to find the answer to that. You're about to enter an important business relationship, and like any relationship the more you understand up front the better chance of success you'll have. So what do you need to look for in an agent? What do you need to understand about your own goals? Answering these questions will require more research, but it's a different kind of research.

First, you need to consider the business side of publishing. If you're looking for an agent, that's the arena you're entering. And for most authors looking for an agent, it's the first time they've entered that arena as an author, so they don't know what to expect. If you've been focusing on the creative side all this time, and you haven't thought about the business side, think about it now. It will be unlikely in the current publishing environment that you will be able to ignore this piece of publishing, no matter how nauseous the consideration may make your internal artist. Separate those two pieces of your personality. Use the internal artist to produce a fine piece of work, and let the business manager out of its cage when you're not creating (and if your internal artist is the cranky or idiosyncratic type, put that sucker in the cage you let the manager out of while you're dealing with the selling and marketing of the book). Remember that the agent is a person in the business of selling your artistic work. The more help you can give your agent, the better the odds your agent can succeed.

Understand what time and resources you can commit before and after you sell the book. In all probability, you have limitations on your resources. Competition for your time comes from every other element of your life: your job; your family; your friends; all social commitments or obligations. How flexible can you be around these? How much time can you commit if you need to promote the book? How much travel could you do if required? How much of a war chest will you have to draw on to pay for some or all of this promotion? Do you have or can you establish a platform (a forum with an existing audience who provides a basis for name recognition)? Do you know what a business plan is and do you have one? Do you have a plan for your next work, and the one after that? How much time can you split between creating and selling while your first book is out there and the second book is moving from head to hard drive?

Once you have an understanding of your resources, you can ask a prospective agent what they expect. Do their expectations line up with yours? If they do, excellent. If not, can you adjust to their expectations? If not, this is probably not the agency for you. So you need to understand an agency's expectations as to your role in the selling and promotion of your work. What else?

What expectations do you have of the agent in terms of managing your career, and vice versa? If you don't have a firm set of works cooking in the back of your head, and you can write to demand, you may want to work with an agent who is interested in working closely with you to develop your career. Some agents will give you their insight into the market, and will expect you to respond to that insight in the works you produce. If you want or need that kind of guidance, you'll be happiest with an agent with similar expectations. If your internal artist has a master plan, or is the cranky type who doesn't respond well to ideas driven by someone else, then you may want to look for an agent less focused on managing the kind of works you create, and more focused on matching the works you create to their likely markets. Need I say that you shouldn't even be considering an agent who doesn't cover the kinds of markets for which you write?

I didn't think so.

Another thing you and your agent need to understand is if you're looking for a long-term commitment or a one-book stand. Most agencies are most interested in long term, reliably selling authors. Multiple, steady sales are good for the agent and good for the author. Remember, the agent is in this game as a business providing their primary source of income. If they don't make a sale, they don't see any cash flow. No cash flow, no business. If you want to quit your day job, this isn't a bad attitude for the writer to adopt. If that crassly monetary attitude makes your internal artist nauseous, consider the other reasons you write other than quitting your day job.

The possible difficulty an agent may encounter when attempting to sell the book brings up the next point: what's the agent's try/fail cycle? If they can't get a bite on your book with their primary tier of editors, what's their secondary tier? What's their tertiary tier (if they have one)? What's the agent's strategy if a book fails to sell the first or second time around? This is a good gauge of an agent's commitment to the relationship.

What's the agent's reputation? Do they have an honest reputation? Are they new? Established? Only represent established authors? Willing to take on new authors? Is the agent reliable? Easy to deal with? How does the agent prefer to communicate? By voice? Email, snail mail? What's the frequency of communication the agent expects and what's the frequency you expect to be able to communicate? Too many queries to someone busy with numerous manuscripts are a good way to get on the bad side of an agent. So how do you find some of this out when you're sending out query letters? Don't send them out yet. Look around. Attend conferences with agent participation. There's usually an opportunity to talk to agents (and other authors) both formally (in pitch sessions) and informally. Use opportunities to talk to other people in the business. Check out agent/author blogs. Read more thoroughly on available agent web sites than their submission criteria. Look at an agent's author list. Read any articles the agent may have written. Acquire as much information as you can through the sources available, and be informed.

All of this is pretty simple stuff. Understanding the environment. Setting solid expectations. Communication. Laying a foundation that will support your goals. But when a writer is working on a long work, it can feel like climbing Everest, and when the writer is done, taking the time to thoroughly survey what's on the other side of the peak before crossing over into the undiscovered country feels like unnecessary and tedious work, when base jumping off the peak seems so much less tedious and more exciting. Entering into that new country with open eyes might be more conservatively tedious, but it can spare the new writer the considerable pain and indignity of hitting unseen outcroppings on the way into that undiscovered country.

About the author:
Loren W. Cooper has published over 30 short stories in electronic and print magazines and anthologies. His short story collection, The Lives of Ghosts and Other Shades of Memory, won the EPPIE for best electronic anthology in 2001 and is available in paperback from Silver Lake Press. The title story of that collection won the NESFA short story contest in 1998. Published novels include The Gates of Sleep and A Slow and Silent Stream, as well as his most recent work, A Separate Power, published by Mundania Press. He has two more novels due to be released in 2007 from Mundania—The Way of the Wolf: Walking the Path, and The Way of the Wolf: Breaking the Path.