Nathan here! My friend Rachel Stout used to be a literary agent at Dystel & Goderich, and now she teaches a course on querying called Query Mastery, which provides live sessions, modules, resources, and community to help you hone your pitch. I asked Rachel to write a guest post on the best approach to personalizing a […]
Literary Agents
How to research a literary agent
So. You have a finished and polished manuscript for fiction or a finished and polished nonfiction book proposal for nonfiction. You want a book deal. You need an agent. Now what? It’s tough out there for an author. There are literally hundreds of agents. Some are incredibly powerful and can transform your destiny with a […]
Interview: Agent Sarah LaPolla on how authors can stand out, negotiating offers, and the state of publishing
Sarah LaPolla is an agent at Bradford Literary Agency, where she represents a mix of middle grade, young adult, and adult books, with a focus on literary fiction, science fiction, magical realism, dark/psychological mystery, literary horror, and upmarket contemporary fiction. Prior to Bradford Lit, Sarah and I were colleagues at Curtis Brown Ltd. Follow her on […]
What Do Literary Agents Do?
Literary agents fulfill a crucial function in the publishing process. Here are the ins-and-outs on what they do. For context, I was a literary agent at Curtis Brown Ltd. from 2002-2010, so posts that I link to that were written during that time will sound as if I’m currently an agent (which, again, I’m not). […]
The key to a good query letter: Summarizing through specificity
Listen up all you query letter writers because this is the most important post on queries I’ve written in years. I’ve recently been devoting much more time to freelance editing and working with authors on their queries (need personalized help? Contact me!). This means that instead of just evaluating queries for a “yes” or “no”, like I […]
8 ways to know if you have a good literary agent
The author/agent relationship can be a tricky one. There are good literary agents and bad literary agents out there, and yet from the author’s perspective it can be very difficult to know which type you have. Many authors talk themselves out of their reservations about their agents simply because it’s hard to know if your […]