I was approached recently by the European Booksellers Association to attend a conference in Amsterdam to sit on a panel about the route to publication. It went brilliantly and I am delighted to be posting here an extract from my keynote speech on How To Approach An Agent....
1. Don’t write in your covering email that
a) the book has been turned down by 19 agents around town and that you are now trying me.
b) most bestselling books are rubbish and that yours is so much better.
c) your friends think your book is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
d) my biggest rival has recommended me as a potential agent for the book. They hate me. Go figure.
- Don’t email me your manuscript in 29 separate attachments and ask me to stitch it together at my end. There is a reason why my keyboard has a delete button.
- Don’t ring me half an hour later and ask if I have read it yet.
- Don’t send me a badly photoshopped cover design for your book.
- Don’t send me an accompanying picture of you wearing speedos and holding a copy of ‘American Psycho’.
- Don’t ring me every day on my mobile to ‘see how I am enjoying the novel’. The journey from prospective client to stalker with a restraining order is a swift one.
- Don’t email me two three or four times a week saying ‘I have changed a section in one of the chapters – I have attached it – please substitute the pages in the copy you are reading and then alter the main character’s name from George to Jenny and please note I am thinking about changing the setting from Louisiana in 1830 to Solihull in the present day’.
- Don’t email me again a day after I have turned your book down and say ‘I have taken on board all your comments and changed the book accordingly – I’m sure you will take me on now’. I won’t.
- Don’t then ask to be my friend on Facebook.
- Don’t write again 2 years after I have rejected you and say ‘I am now self-publishing my novel and am set to make millions selling it from my website. I will prove you very very wrong indeed – what do you know anyway? You loser’. P.s Can I send you a finished copy in case you want to reconsider?
5 comments:
I am now very clear about how to approach literary agents, and particularly take on board the idea that if my friends like what I do, it must be crap. I realise I have made many many mistakes in my approaches over the years, and promise not to do it again. You might also like to add that it is very important in the UK only to approach one agent at a time. Perhaps a list of UK v US agent etiquette points would be helpful as so many people read US blogs these days where they send out query letters to 50 agents at a time. Thank you. Josa Young
"5. Don’t send me an accompanying picture of you wearing speedos and holding a copy of ‘American Psycho’."
Hey, you snob, that was a good photo of me! My ex-girlfriend said so! And BTW, that was 'American Pastoral' I was holding in my hands, thank you very much!
I see you omitted stalk prospective agent in full honours psycho antag character — and proffer Tesco vouchers and/or lino.
Game on.
Just another patronising agent blog. "Serious" writers understand all this, give us something more.
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