Life of a Literary Agent
I called a novelist friend and asked her if she knew of any MFA graduates who were employed as literary agents and she replied, “MFA graduates are writers, not agents.”
She was categorically right, but she wasn’t totally correct. As there are book and magazine editors who write books and publish poems, there are also literary agents with degrees in English and graduates of MFA programs. While writing the next Great American Novel, or waiting for their last novel to be made into a film, MFA graduates do have to earn a living to support themselves and their families.
The Front Line of Publishing
A career as a literary agent gives an MFA graduate the opportunity to stay close to what they love most in the world, books. In fact, agents are on the front line of publishing. They discover the writers that publishers want to publish.
As Anna Stein, a literary agent with Aitken Alexander Associates, states, “the pleasure of discovery! There's nothing like it. Bringing that discovery into the world, introducing new work to publishers. It is intoxicating!”
Anna began working as an agent straight out of college and then went off to earn an M.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and an M.Phil. in Textual and Visual Studies from Trinity College, Dublin.
When she returned to New York with two masters degrees that she says today were useless to what she really wanted to do in life, she started at the bottom of the literary ladder, answering phones at the Wylie Agency. Within a few months, however, she joined Donadio & Olson Agency, “and with their support and mentoring,” she says, “I sold my first book within a year.”
Julie Barer, a literary agent with Book Group, began her work career after college as a bookseller at Shakespeare & Company, a book store on the West Side of New York City. When she got her first job at an agency she knew it was the right spot for her. “I loved that as an agent I had the privilege of working directly with authors on every aspect of their work, from the editing process of shaping and defining a story or a manuscript, to pitching, selling and negotiating with a publisher, to thinking beyond one book to the next project and the whole arc of a writer’s career.
“I also loved being able to help discover new talent and nurture that talent; being one of the people who help introduce new writers and their work to the world is a deeply fulfilling experience.”
Today at the Book Group Agency Julie’s clients have won numerous prizes including the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Rome Prize, the Los Angeles Times First Book Award, as well as grants from The Fulbright Fellowship, The National Endowment of the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Almost every agent will tell you the reason they are doing what they do is because they love books. “Reading has been my favorite thing since I was a little kid hiding in the closet with a book and a flashlight,” says Jennifer Johnson-Blalock of Liza Dawson Associates.
Jennifer graduated with honors from The University of Texas at Austin with a B.A. in English and earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School. Before interning at Liza Dawson Associates, she practiced entertainment law and taught high school English and debate. She left all that behind her when she decided to become an agent. “I love helping to bring more books into the world. I also think it's a great fit for my personality and skills--I'm very business minded, but I like working with more creative types.”
Linda Camacho joined Prospect Agency in 2015 after nearly a decade in publishing. After graduating from Cornell University, Linda interned at Simon & Schuster and Writers House literary agency, and worked at Penguin before happily settling into children's marketing at Random House. She has an MFA in creative writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Peter McGuigan, a literary agent with Foundry Media, is another would-be writer who started, he says, “outside the ‘mail room job’ as a bike messenger,” and then became an assistant at a small agency. It took him five years, until 1999, to become a full time literary agent. He became one, he says, “because I like living by my wits. I enjoy working with writers. I understand them. Also, I prefer to participate in pop culture rather than just consume it.”
Peter is indeed a wide-ranging pop culture lover, and this shows in his client list. From Vicki Myron and Bret Witter’s number one New York Times and international Bestseller Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World to Patrick deWitt’s Man Booker Prize shortlisted novel,The Sisters Brothers, Peter works closely with authors, he says, “to develop innovative, rock-solid proposals and manuscripts.”
Peter studied creative writing, journalism and literature at Virginia Tech and Virginia Commonwealth University. He then decided he was “too independent” to be part of corporate publishing, and he took a job at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates where he began developing his own diverse client list and worked with international bestselling authors such as Dan Brown and Nicholas Sparks. In 2007, Peter and his business partner launched Foundry Literary + Media.
To be a success in this business, sums up Peter, “requires thick skin, good phone skills, and a lot of energy. Also, to be a successful agent today,” adds Peter, “a person needs one important skill: An instinct for what’s big because publishers want books with platforms and big audiences, and you have to find books that sell. These books buy you the time and energy to do the harder-to-sell projects.”
Jenni Ferrari-Adler, an agent at Union Literary in New York, graduated from Oberlin College and then earned her MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan. After graduate school, becoming an agent wasn’t her first job. She taught pre-school while writing full-time and worked in a farmer’s market before hearing about an opening at an agency and applied for the position. She has been an agent for eight years.
Today she represents many writers she first met when they were all MFA students at Michigan. She has also written, edited and published the anthology Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant, Confessions of Cooking for One and Dining Alone and has taught fiction at the University of Michigan and the Gotham Writers’ Workshop.
As a literary agent, she represents award-winning food writers and food shops as well as authors Mo Daviau, Aya De Leon, Rebecca Dinerstein, Chris McCormick, Eileen Pollack, and the Estate of Pamela Moore.
One advantage that MFA graduates have as literary agents, according to Jenni, is that they have a vast amount of experience reading, responding to, and judging writers from the many classes they have taken as students. They know what ‘works’ and what doesn’t work.
What Do Agents Do?
What attracts many MFA graduates to the role of agent is the complexity of the work and the skills required to be successful. “You need so many different skills that it's almost impossible for anyone to excel in all areas,” sums up Jennifer Johnson-Blalock.
Jennifer lists these basic skills in particular.
* a strong editorial eye to pick out the right manuscript and help polish it;
* the ability to build relationships with both writers and editors;
* able to serve, at times, as a stand-in therapist for your clients;
* a “gift of gab” to sell the book to a publisher;
* writing skill to craft a pitch letter;
Once the book is issued by the publisher, additional skills are required, adds Jennifer. “Keeping track of what money your author is owed and being able to give solid advice on marketing the book and creating publicity about it helps in an increasingly competitive market. That said, what the literary agent needs most of all is an understanding and vision about the world of publishing. “Every agent,” Jennifer notes, “need to help their clients shape long-term careers. So yes, it’s not a very simple job!”
What is very clear from speaking to literary agents is that the ‘right person’ for the job is someone who is ‘many people’ in one. The ideal MFA candidate for the work is certainly a reader and lover of literature and language, plus a good editor. These are the first-and necessary-skills needed.
What is also important, and what goes unsaid, is that an agent must have the ability to juggle all these jobs at the same time. “On any given day,” sums up Julie Barer, “an agent might have one book about to go out on submission to a publisher, another in need of blurbs from other writers, while preparing for the publication of a book by a client that is coming out in the next few months. Multitasking…It is not a career for someone who wants a nine-to-five orderly business life.”
An Agent’s World
Book editors work for publishers, and are paid salaries with benefits. They often work within the comfortable structure of a corporate environment. Agents, however, work mostly on commission, meaning income and job security is a lot less predictable. “It is the kind of career, says Julie Barer,”that’s a good fit for someone who is highly self-motivated and doesn’t mind chasing after projects and coming up with ideas on their own. Being a self-starter is key.”
Finding A Agent’s Job
William Clark of William Clark Associates began his literary career while he was a student at William & Mary. Editing the college review for three years, he came into contact with a number of New York-based writers, including a professor who had recently published a biography with a Random House imprint. Her agent needed an assistant, recalls Clark, “and though I was intending to move to New York in any case, I thought it would be better to move there with a job in place, and interviewed with the agent and landed the job.”
It was when he was working as an assistant that he found he not only liked the work, but that he had the skills for the job. “I discovered early on that I enjoyed working with and championing the work of authors. I also had a head for the nitty-gritty of contracts. Ours is an administrative, collaborative, and social business, and the best agent will constantly evaluate what that means in the context of the rights business. Furthermore, I liked the vantage point of ‘agenting’ as opposed to publishing—the ability to see the business as a whole, and not just a list.”
What Clark learned was that the key to being a successful agent was to hold the author’s interests before his own. In addition to that, an agent today, says Clark, “must have an understanding of business administration and the value of relationships; he or she must have taste, tenacity and confidence, and a willingness to stay on top of what it means to advocate in the most effective way for the client.”
Clark is credited with being the first agent to accept queries via email, and for using new technologies in the changes in the marketplace. As Clark says, “While the basic mechanism of introducing seller to buyer hasn’t changed since A.P. Watt, the business of developing, marketing, and selling books has.”
Clark uses a website, blog, and Twitter feed in his literary agency, all of which has happened because of the changes in how authors and publishers reach readers. According to William, “The publisher must connect directly with readers, which it hasn’t done before, and the author has an opportunity to do the same, which authors have done before in various ways, but without the wonderful means to do so as available
now.”
Wonderful Work
All of these English majors, writers and MFA graduates, have taken their love of books and their skills as editors and literary critics and fashioned for themselves independent careers and life-styles as literary agents. They are doing what they love to do best, read books. And they are getting paid for it!
Not a bad job or a way to live one’s life.
Biography
John Coyne is the author of 25 books of fiction and non-fiction, including a bestseller, The Legacy, which was also a successful film starring Sam Elliott. His short stories have been included in several “best of” anthologies, such as Modern Masters of Horror and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. His most recent book is Long Ago and Far Away, a love story set in Africa, Europe and the United States that spans 40 years. A former caddie and life-long lover of golf, he has published three novels on the sport and edited three books of golf instruction. A former college professor and college dean, he has also co-authored three books on alternatives to traditional college education. His articles have appeared in dozen of national publications including Smithsonian, Travel & Leisure, Glamour, Foreign Affairs, Redbook, Diversion; he has written for The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.