What It's Like to Be an Agent for a Day
I started thinking about agents this week. Not for the usual reason – how do I get one. I already know the answer to that one, and it’s only partly in my control anyway.
No, I walked a mile in their shoes. It was enlightening. It was disheartening. It was a jolt of reality.
My job on the days in question was to identify college students as potential employees for digital marketing company. For four hours one day and five hours another day, both days at a university job fairs, I collected resumes and held first-date conversations.
Students lined up in double-file lines, one for each of us recruiters.
What are you looking for?
When are you available? (Or, when do you graduate?)
Tell me about what you’ve been doing the past several years?
What do you really want for yourself right after school and long-term?
In a different setting, I thought later, you could change the setting slightly, substitute the questions and turn college students into wannabe authors. And I’d reverse my role from catcher to pitcher.
What book did you write or are you writing?
Tell me about the protagonist.
What’s the conflict?
Do you see this as a stand-alone or a series?
Catching Somebody Else's Pitch
In the case of this day, college students pitched themselves. Some of them, bless them, could not discuss anything beyond what was printed on their resumes. They’d taken this class and that class, had some internships or other practice working experiences, but they could not answer the question I offered almost all of them: If you closed your eyes and thought about what your perfect, right-of-college job is, what does that look like?
One student in route to a degree in rocket science (not kidding) said what he really wanted to do was write science fiction and science fantasy books. “But I don’t know if I can make any money doing that.”
My answer: “You’ll never make any money on it if you never publish anything.” I then congratulated him on being honest with himself and saying it out loud, and then I advised him to keep writing, to get to a writing conference as soon as he could to learn what he’s doing right and what he’s doing wrong and to never give up. “It’s much harder than it sounds, but it’s good that you know what you love. If you really love it, you’ll want to get good and you’ll make it.”
You Probably Know 'It' When They See It
The reality part of this story, of course, comes at the end. Because when you go looking for employees and you know what you’re looking for, you know the real deal when you see it.
So, I very much suspect, do agents and editors.
It’s easy to say and think, “They just don’t get it. This book is a winner, and somehow I haven’t conveyed that simple fact.” (Which could be true.)
Much more likely is that what I’ve done isn’t good enough yet. Or that I am not informed enough to understand the correct pitch to the agent (or editor or publisher) sitting in front of me. Images of PitchFest abound, where a swarm of unheralded authors rushed at three dozen agents camped at two-tops in small hotel meeting rooms in New York. There they delivered their same lines again and again.
Sorry, this isn’t the right genre for me.
Sorry, but I sold a book very similar to this for a new writer, and I don’t feel I could represent you both right now.
I’m going to pass on this one. But keep me updated when you have something new.
Send me the first three chapters.
Send me the first five chapters.
I’ll read the full.
At these last three points, the pitching ends. You’ve done it. Now the work has to carry you the rest of the way.
New Respect for Literary Agents
When my colleague and I left the job fair that day, we were tired. We’d stood for five hours, and we each had the same conversation with dozens of people. We’d collected a stack of resumes and notes that we’d tucked away for more careful review.
In the back of my mind, I reminded myself to review them within 48 hours so I could remember which students I liked the most.
I then wondered about some of the agents I met that afternoon during Pitchfest, which was an organized, two-hour speed-dating session at ThrillerFest. The setting at the New York Hyatt was different. Agents were seated at two-tops in small meeting rooms. They has business cards laid out and a timer by their side. Writers got only five minutes, max, to make a pitch.
That day, I’d gone back to my hotel room giddy. I’d pitched 13 or 14 agents and 10 of them wanted to see something. One of them, Bob Mecoy, had even coached me up and helped me polish my pitch.
[caption id="attachment_610" align="alignleft" width="225"] Bob Mecoy[/caption]
Many months later, I realized some of the agents accepted every pitch that came their way, so long as it was within the genre they wanted or unless some alarm bells went off. Why not take a chance? The only thing they have to lose is time, the time it takes to read all those three- to five-chapter (or 10-page) submissions that were certain to hit their inbox soon.
I have a new-found respect for these men and women. (Well, most of them. One of them was a slick-haired douchebag who ogled every woman author who sat or stood near him.) All of them showed up to let a firehose of authors hit them in the face with the hope of uncovering something special.
They live in an uncertain publishing world, one that changes every week. Yet their goal today is the same as it ever was. They want a perfect marriage of client, author, book and publisher.
What’s wrong with that?
