Lilith Saintcrow

G’morning, everyone, and welcome to the regular Friday writing post. First, though, Chapter Seventeen of Selene is up. Next week will see the grand finale–chapters Eighteen and Nineteen as well as the Epilogue. (And after that I’m taking a sabbatical, I swear.) There’s also the Page 99 test for Hunter’s Prayer.

You might also want to pop over to John Scalzi’s and take a look at his Candidate For The President of WTFistan. Trust me, it’s worth it.

And now, to the point.

I get a lot of mail that runs like this: “Hi Lili, love your work. Can you tell me the name of your agent? I’m an aspiring author/the author of a work named ______ and I wonder if…”

There are two reasons anyone might send one a letter like this. The more charitable explanation is that the person honestly wants some advice–that they’re awash in the fog of confusion that can be submitting your work. They want to know what worked for me, in my search for the Grail of Getting Published.

Since most of these letters come with attachments–samples of the work in question–I can only assume they fall into the other category. Which roughly translates out to this:

* Hi Lili, love your work. Translation: Here’s how I’m going to soften you up.
* Can you tell me the name of your agent? Translation: Now that I’ve complimented you, you owe me something.
* I’m an aspiring author/the author of a work named ______, and I wonder if… Translation: This is a sales pitch, and since you owe me, you have to spend time you could otherwise use writing your own stuff to take a look at mine, since I am the center of the universe.

Now, I’m fairly sure it isn’t meant this way. I’m sure they have the purest intentions in the world. But as with so many things, it’s not what they meant but what actually gets across that sends those emails straight to the rubbish bin. Still, though, it’s my self-chosen job in these Friday posts to tell you about the life of a working writer, and an agent is part of that life. It’s a subject that could use a little demystification. As much as I can offer from my own personal experience, that is*.

So let me tell you pretty much how I got an agent, and how I recommend one might go about getting one.

I got my agent through hard work. The actual names etc. are something I can’t talk about for various reasons, but I can give you a story and a thought.

A friend of mine had a girl he was dating; this girl was an “author”. We met for lunch because she wanted advice, and the “author” didn’t really want advice–she wanted the name of my agent and an introduction. The world revolved around her, apparently, and I was just a cog in it.

I suggested that she take the path I did: work like hell, submit to small presses, build relationships with small presses, then network inside those relationships until you’ve accumulated bona fides. Those bona fides function as entrees, and I met my agent almost accidentally–

“Oh, no,” she interrupted. “There’s not enough money in small press.”

Right then was the point at which I signed off from the conversation. This job pretty much pays shit, especially if you’ve got any prima-donna notions about being so cool and wonderful the world will of course pay your rent and groceries just-because. If you’re determined not to work hard and work up because it’s beneath you, nothing I say is going to help and I’m sure as hell not going to put my good name on the line recommending you to my agent. Puh-leeze.

Chance favors the prepared mind. In other words, I did meet my agent almost accidentally, through the good offices of someone I knew in small-press publishing. Someone vouched for me because I was prepared–I had worked my ass off, turned in reasonably-salable product, met my deadlines, and taken my editing like a pro. I had shown I was professional and reasonable to work with, ergo, the person who had an amount of credibility vouched for me, and my agent read my stuff with that in mind. I didn’t have to go through the slush pile, and I had earned a little bit of goodwill by being professional.

Goodwill does not come to you as an angel in the night to the undeserving. Goodwill needs to be earned with hard work and professionalism. This is a constant in pretty much every career, and I don’t know why people think writing is different. You do hear about overnight successes or books culled from the slush pile, but these are not the typical road. It’s like that little thing on weight-loss infomercials–the fine print saying Results not typical. Which means “Don’t hold your breath, Fanny.”

There are, to my mind, a few different ways to get an agent. All of them require hard work. You can:

1. Work hard, polish your craft, do your Writer’s Market research and submit, submit, submit to agents. If you practice and produce and submit, sooner or later the law of averages will work in your favor and someone will want to buy your stuff.
2. Work hard, polish your craft, make friends who do the same, do your research, submit to small presses instead of agents. Build your repertoire that way, practice and produce and submit, and sooner or later the law of averages will work in your favor.
3. Other variations of the above, all with hard, consistent work in the starring role.

You can write a heartbreaking work of staggering genius that will make the world beat a path to your door. I don’t entirely rule that out. But the chances of you doing that, my dears, are astronomically small. You will have better luck winning the lottery or having an airplane part fall out of the sky and onto your head. In other words…don’t hold your breath. It’s possible, sure. It’s possible that tomorrow aliens will land and the world will be turned into Candyland. And flying monkeys might sally forth from my rectum. All these things are possible, but not probable.

The name of this game is to make it increasingly probable that you will get published. To do that, you have to realize that you are one in a sea of thousands sending in slush. Slush piles are monstrously huge, and your work can and will get lost in them. You might have the best book in the world, but it might get read right before lunch when an editor/agent is hungry, or pissed off, or just plain tired of reading crap. That’s why it’s the slush pile–there’s a low, low chance your work will be:

1. read in a timely fashion (because of the huge numbers involved–these are people, not superhuman publishing machines!)
2. read while the editor/agent is concentrating fully on it
3. given more than a cursory chance

Working on your craft and your bona fides does not GUARANTEE getting an agent/published. But it ups the chances by an order of magnitude. Instead of a crapshoot you’ve suddenly got real chances, and the more you polish your work, submit, learn, and have professional relationships with others in the trade, the better those chances get.

Getting an agent isn’t a mystery. There are things you can do to maximize your chances. Agents want books–this is why they bother having slush piles and professional relationships with other people in the biz. They want authors who know their craft, are salable, and are professional. They are actively looking for these things. Being these things makes it exponentially easier for an agent to take a chance on you–put their good name and credibility to work for you. This makes it easier for a junior editor to put their good name and credibility to work for you in convincing a senior editor, or a senior editor to convince his or her boss to sign the check that adds your work to their budget. It makes it easier for them to convince the marketing people, and for the marketing people to convince brick-and-mortar buyers to stock your book or give it floor space. Which makes it easier for people to see your book and decide to pick it up, and give it a chance. At every step of the process, you are asking people to trust you. They’ll find it easier if you’ve done the kind of hard work that means they can trust you. Much, much easier.

Not guaranteed, mind you. If there was a guaranteed magic wand to wave, I would be busy waving it instead of working my buns off and handing out advice. (Hey, I’ve got kids to feed.) Nothing is ever guaranteed. But you can up your chances, and it’s foolish not to do so if you really, truly want to get published/an agent.

And that’s pretty much all I can tell you.

* Which should kind of go without saying, but I’m getting a lot of nasty comments about how I think my way is the only way. It isn’t–and if you don’t like my advice, don’t read the frickin’ Friday posts. Nobody is twisting your arm and you can find advice that suits you elsewhere on the wide, wide Web. I am always amazed at people who want to complain they didn’t get their money’s worth from free-f!cking-advice. *rolls eyes*

This entry was posted on Friday, September 26th, 2008 at 12:37 pm and is filed under Writing (About). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.