A literary agent unveiled!

Years ago, when I was first foraying into finding an agent, I was involved for several months with a small Canadian literary agency with one principal, a former practicing contract attorney (I’ll call her Virginia, though that isn’t her real name), and her associate Sandra, a woman who claimed to have years of experience in the New York publishing scene as an agent and editor. Before email became ubiquitous, ours was largely a relationship by mail—post cards, letters, faxes, and, occasionally, phone.

With my home in California, the physical distance prevented us from meeting, so I had to form my impressions by other means—the tone of the letters, the timber of voices, phrasings, silences. Since this was my first agent, I had nothing to compare the relationship to except idealized sketches I’d read in articles and books on how to choose an agent. But it was nothing like the descriptions I’d read of the ideal agent/writer contract, where the agent acts as buffer and muse, encouraging the writer to write, write, write, and “leave the driving to us.”

I signed a contract with these two women based on a biography for children I had written. I assumed that this unanimity would continue since both were enthusiastic about the biography and the prospect of a series. However, I was disappointed when they asked me to wait a few months before submitting to them a novel I’d completed, a coming-of-age story. They claimed to be overloaded with manuscripts.

A couple of months later, Virginia finally wrote me. I opened the letter slowly, trying to guess the contents, preparing myself for the worst—they wouldn’t like it. The letter’s tone was negative and even angry. The biography hadn’t sold yet, a surprise and a disappointment to them. While it wasn’t stated, the message was that they might stop sending out inquiries any minute. And I’d only reached the end of the opening paragraph!

I couldn’t believe they would give up so easily after only sending out the manuscript for two months. Where were these heroic agents I’d read about that persist until a publisher finally makes an offer?

Eventually, I reached the paragraph where Virginia told me that the novel had caused her and her associate to have one of their rare disagreements: Virgina said, “Sandra likes it; I don’t.”

Well, that response was clear enough. No easing into the negative. No softening the blow with some recognition of the work’s worth. No building up of the writer’s fragile ego so she can keep writing in the face of rejection. Virbinia’s critique was that the narrator had a “curious tone.” Curious? That didn’t tell me anything.

I decided to phone, wanting to communicate my response to the letter’s negative vibe and to clarify some vague statements. When I did get through to Virginia (she was out of town for a few days), her voice was warm, she didn’t sound angry, and she seemed quite reasonable, unaware, apparently, of how curt and discouraging she had sounded in the letter. (I had my husband and a friend read the letter to make sure I wasn’t overreacting; they each had the same response I did.)

After Virginia gave me a lecture on tone and audience that I respectfully listened to, noting her own tone and unawareness of audience both in her letter and in that phone call, she gave me Sandra’s home phone number so I could get her take on the novel.

Sandra didn’t sound surprised when she heard my response to Virginia’s letter. In fact, she appeared to be expecting my call. While Virginia was warm on the phone, she was still all business and aloof. Sandra was the opposite—emotional, stream-of-consciousness, slightly hysterical.

I found out that Sandra had done damage control many times for Virginia, this not being the first time correspondence had generated a reaction from clients similar to mine. Sandra also told me that the agency was having “cash-flow problems” and she had been cut back to one day a week. Not encouraging, but she insisted they were not going under.

A new agency, only about two years old, they already represented some fine writers. While Sandra had been in the business for years as an agent and editor, Virginia hadn’t, except as a writer herself of a published non-fiction book. Hence, Sandra constantly had to shore up pessimistic Virginia, who, apparently, was unaware that agencies often go through long dry spells. As Sandra said, it takes at least five years for a new one to stabilize.

I felt relieved to learn that Virginia had alienated other clients, and I was not just being ultra-sensitive. Unlike Virginia, Sandra told me everything, more than I wanted to know, about her chronic depression and how ironic it was that she ended up encouraging Virginia, about her family’s floundering finances, about her troubled kids.

Yes, the honeymoon was over. No longer were these women the invincible, removed, godlike humans I’d imagined that would hang in there through thick and thin, advocating for me, and eventually selling my work. They were as vulnerable as I, only more so in some ways.

While I have just my own rejections to deal with, agents carry the weight of all their writers’ failures. They also are trying to support themselves in a business that has become increasingly difficult. The doorway into publishing seems to be narrowing for writers and their agents: there’s less room for risk, less interest in quality. As Sandra told me, business interests increasingly run the publishing houses, and publishers also are reducing their staff. The bottom line becomes the most important one—editors are being eliminated, changing the whole character of publishing. Sandra also insisted that if my main character in the novel were a boy, the book would be picked up instantly. Prejudice still exists against females in publishing as elsewhere.

After talking to Sandra for half an hour and hearing her woes, mine seemed insignificant. At least I still had the satisfaction of creating the work, of giving birth to something original. Whether I sold anything ultimately didn’t really matter, though, of course, I wanted to find my readers.

Though the honeymoon was over with my first agents, from then on I had a more authentic relationship with them. I felt part of the family, the child who finally wised up about her parents’ situation. Virginia came across as curt in her letters, but I recognized it was only her lawyer’s persona. Having labored under the notion that an agent should fill some ideal, a combination nurturing mother, aggressive father, enthusiastic listener, and cheering section, I realized that I might need to play these roles for them.