The agent: understanding your relationship.

Overview:

The reality of Agent Maneuvers 101.

The business of publishing, fast-paced and filled with subjective decisions, does not allow for lingering friendships and idle chats at the coffee table. Think warp-speed: fast conversations, brief and to-the-point.

Long chats with your Algonquin writers group about plot twists and character afflictions need to be kept in the background. Think corporate development, not character development.

The Premise

In searching for an agent, prepare yourself to enter into a business partnership in which you provide a commercially viable (a finished manuscript or three chapters and an outline) product for that agent to present to contacts in the publishing industry.

Initially, it's a business contract. Always try to remember to treat it that way. Begin with a professional and structured business transaction. The agent is not yet your friend--although history proves that can happen--but the reality is this agent is simply a professional conduit, a road for your work to travel to it's ultimate destination.

Treat the agent professionally--with respect for their time--because the commodities they have are their contacts in the business and your work. Both take enormous amounts of time. Both have value. Respect both.

Present your best work (proper format, clean, readable typeface, and quality paper) to the agent, not something that tells them "that you'll need to polish this up" or "here's the gist" because the agent will give you the gist by not responding. Finish your work, revise it again, and have someone read it. Then send it.

Finding and Contacting Agents

Research the agents.

Standard practice in the industry is for authors to thank their agent, their publisher's key contacts, including the editor. Along with their mom, dad, dog, sister or brother (who may have keyboarded or typed the manuscript five times). Then there are distant relatives who may have housed, fed, and nurtured the author's talent.

Personally, I like authors who thank their dog. Who else stays up all night tending the midnight fires by your feet? If you must, next to the agent's name, write the dog's name, but critters have little clout in the industry.

(When your book is published thank whomever you must, but don't forget to thank your agent. The work is hard and they get little glory behind the curtain.)

Some agents specialize. Find out what their preferences are--usually they represent (or "agent") what they like to read as well as work that breaks or falls into current publishing trends.

Is your genre (category) mystery? Thriller, suspense, or science fiction? Collect the names of those authors' agents.

Are you writing the great American novel in high modern form? Read and absorb the style and voice of those books, and capture the agent's name.

Or are you crafting a memoir that wrenches poverty into a half nelson the way Frank McCourt's Pulitzer-Prize-winning Angela's Ashes did?

He thanked his agent with wit and grace in his Acknowledgments page. "Molly Friedrich, who became my agent and thought that Nan Graham, Editor-in-Chief at Scribner would be just the right person to put the book on the road. And Molly was right."

You see, there are few secrets in publishing, just a strict requirement to get the research done first.

Contact.

Do not call the agent. Ever. Okay, here's where we break that rule. Call them once. Just to find out the correct spelling of the agent's name and if they are still with the agency. Agents, like autumn leaves, drift occasionally. Verify that they still are where "the books" say they are. (See "the books" if you need details.)

Follow up.

You've sent your manuscript. Time scrapes slowly across the floor, denting parquet flooring with its claws, and you still have not heard. Wait an appropriate time. Ten days is not an appropriate amount of time. Try at least two months. Full ones, not February doubled. Send a one page follow up letter with a summary of what you sent, why, and ask, politely, if they have had a chance to review the work.

Conduct.

Do we really have to say this? No tantrums, no whining, and as a character in a film once said, "There's no crying in baseball." Yes, Tom Hanks.

Remember that you are in this for the long haul, your writing just needs persistence and time. Interestingly enough, editors have long memories and so do agents, so if you are moved to express yourself in ways which do not belong on paper and are much less appropriate over the phone, restrain yourself. You'll thank us later.

Whatever you do, enjoy the journey.