He got up and sat on the edge of the bedstead with his back to the window. “It’s better not to sleep at all,” he decided. There was a cold damp draught from the window, however; without getting up he drew the blanket over him and wrapped himself in it. He was not thinking of anything and did not want to think. But one image rose after another, incoherent scraps of thought without beginning or end passed through his mind. He sank into drowsiness. Perhaps the cold, or the dampness, or the dark, or the wind that howled under the window and tossed the trees roused a sort of persistent craving for the fantastic. He kept dwelling on images of flowers, he fancied a charming flower garden, a bright, warm, almost hot day, a holiday—Trinity day. A fine, sumptuous country cottage in the English taste overgrown with fragrant flowers, with flower beds going round the house; the porch, wreathed in climbers, was surrounded with beds of roses. A light, cool staircase, carpeted with rich rugs, was decorated with rare plants in china pots. He noticed particularly in the windows nosegays of tender, white, heavily fragrant narcissus bending over their bright, green, thick long stalks. He was reluctant to move away from them, but he went up the stairs and came into a large, high drawing-room and again everywhere—at the windows, the doors on to the balcony, and on the balcony itself—were flowers. The floors were strewn with freshly-cut fragrant hay, the windows were open, a fresh, cool, light air came into the room. The birds were chirruping under the window, and in the middle of the room, on a table covered with a white satin shroud, stood a coffin. The coffin was covered with white silk and edged with a thick white frill; wreaths of flowers surrounded it on all sides. Among the flowers lay a girl in a white muslin dress, with her arms crossed and pressed on her bosom, as though carved out of marble. But her loose fair hair was wet; there was a wreath of roses on her head. The stern and already rigid profile of her face looked as though chiselled of marble too, and the smile on her pale lips was full of an immense unchildish misery and sorrowful appeal. Svidrigaïlov knew that girl; there was no holy image, no burning candle beside the coffin; no sound of prayers: the girl had drowned herself. She was only fourteen, but her heart was broken. And she had destroyed herself, crushed by an insult that had appalled and amazed that childish soul, had smirched that angel purity with unmerited disgrace and torn from her a last scream of despair, unheeded and brutally disregarded, on a dark night in the cold and wet while the wind howled

The Secret to Finding a Literary Agent

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By Jennifer Carr

I was recently having coffee with an editor in New York, who was giving me some advice (and a pep talk) about finding a literary agent.

One of the things she said was like lightning into my analytic brain: literary agents are like real estate agents.

They want to move a product and make a commission. If a literary agent told you she liked it but didn’t know how to sell it, what she meant was that she didn’t know how to sell it for a lot of money.

When I came back home and told my writing group what I learned, one member was disheartened at the news. And this surprised me because I had seen this as a watershed moment in my approach to queries and my work as a whole.A literary agent could sell my book. Maybe not for a lot of money. Maybe there is an agent who can, and if so, great. But there are agents who can sell it, period. My book is sellable.

Maybe my optimism comes from watching so much HGTV.

For a three-year period, I was a bit of a junkie, especially for shows that involved buying houses in other countries. So it makes so much sense to me that literary agents and real estate agents are part of the same family tree.

A home may be something personal to the people selling it, loaded with many years of experiences that, for the family, have become inseparable from the building itself. Add to that the decorating and any add-ons, renovations, reconstruction, either by a crew or as family projects. The house is filled with personality, hours or weeks or months of personal labor, and has become an identifier of the people who have lived there.When it comes time for the family to sell, they factor in the emotional worth of the residence, beyond any calculations from an appraiser.

Then the realtor comes in with two things: numbers and a plan. The realtor wants a commission—that is what real estate agents do, it’s how they make their money. It is their profession, so let’s not knock them for making their living. They have researched the markets and have learned what works best. This can be a win-win situation for everybody: because their commission is a percentage of the sale, they want the best possible sale for the clients. But they know the business and also have to be realistic. And then they evaluate the house.

They don’t care that Sally and Billy bonded while making mud pies in the living room, or that Tommy and Gina didn’t back down in the kitchen. The realtor will tell the family to stage it for the new owners, to declutter, to take down what has become personal—to stage it in the precarious balance between inviting and neutral. So they do it.

HGTV House Selling ShowsPerhaps the process is intuitive when we think of home buying and selling; it’s such a compulsory part of American culture that it has a network devoted to it. (We’ll pretend home buying and selling is imbued into our culture to go along with the metaphor, even though I imagine renting makes up the majority of the aspiring writer’s domestic culture).

HGTV has round-the-clock programming, including perennial favorite Property Brothers and three or four spinoffs, Buying and Selling, A Sale of Two Cities, Designed to Sell, House Hunters and House Hunters International and at least 5 more spinoffs, Get it Sold, Curb Appeal, eleven shows with “Flip” in the title, Hawaii Life (and several more buying-for-specific-locations programs), Natural Born Sellers, Selling LA and Selling NY, adding up to somewhere around 230 programs, all either about improving real estate or moving real estate.

I have found myself many times rolling my eyes at the unrealistic expectations of home sellers who overvalue their home or don’t see the need to stage their shambolic property for sale. Like many other viewers, I’ve thought, “Buck up, people, and do what you need to do to get the job done.”

So why do so many writers let their emotions take over? Why do so many balk or even whine at the idea at the commodification of their work? I’ve listened to a lot of a whining over how unfair it is that agents wield so much power, how writing is such an emotional process and should be emotional and personal at every stage, from idea gestation to the acceptance of your MacArthur Grant. I have probably even whined once or twice myself.

But the truth is that unless we all plan to act like amateurs or write in journals for comfort, we had better start thinking of our writing as a sellable asset, like a house.

There is an asterisk for the Zen-gardeners, those who want to write the best possible fiction and are happy to make a small sale, the poet-laborers. However, they generally are not the ones whining about the difficulties of writing and publishing, because they are setting their goals and achieving them, which is a solid form of professionalism.

But if we want the big sale and if we value our product, we should act professionally, thinking in terms of hard business. And while we may at times resent the gate keepers who don’t immediately recognize our personal worth, we should spend the time and energy otherwise in dejection on investing in the improvement and showcasing of our asset.

Let’s finalize this metaphor: you have a finished book that has been edited, revised, edited and revised anew, been read over by others, and undergone any alterations from trusted feedback. Your house is ready to show. But what about the curb appeal, the neighborhood and schools: are you Pulitzer-adjacent? What can you do as the writer to make the sale?

Because it isn’t just about the one book, especially not anymore. If you’re serious about publishing (and let’s face it, about writing), you’ll do your research and keep working. You investigate the market and learn how to present (stage) yourself and your work.

woodtype-846089_960_720For those of us who read about writing and publishing, this is old news. But the test is in bouncing back after a sale falls through before escrow closes, or troubleshooting when no offers come in, usually by taking another look at the asset and adapting it to the current market needs.

Because if we’re being honest here, many of us either want to make something that makes an impact on literature and society, or makes a lot of money, or both. But realistically, that can’t happen for all of us. When people sell their homes, usually the money for the sale gets reinvested into the next home. If the initial investment was smart and the market was researched properly, a profit can be made and the homeowners can buy up. We can count ourselves fortunate if the same applies to our books—if we can grow with each book into better writers, and take those profits into the next literary investment.

The truth is that there is no easy way in, no magic wand to wave to get us published and sold, and if there is, then that only applies to three or four people in the country, so good luck waiting around for a big break. There are no overnight success stories, not without many years of hard slogging up to your knees in metaphoric mud.

Writing is difficult—and that’s the easy part of the process. So be emotional when it’s time to write, be analytical when it’s time to revise, and be a realtor when it’s time to sell sell sell.

Jennifer Carr is a Los Angeles writer interested in the cross cultures of the working class, especially in the union town of San Pedro, where she grew up. She studied creative writing at USC, received her MFA from Chapman University, and currently teaches high school creative writing at the Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana, California. Her work has appeared in Origins Journal and the Connecticut Review, and her blogs include critical analysis of Shakespeare’s plays through Queen songs. Read more at jennifercarr.net.

 

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10 comments

  1. That was really timely for me and well received, especially the penultimate sentence. As hard as it is, it’s the easy part.

  2. Great information and insight. If I may though, the title of the article is “The Secret to Finding a Literary Agent”. OK. I have the philosophy. Now I need the tool box. How do I find a Literary Agent? How do I navigate the markets and actually make contact with potential literary agents?

  3. People, don’t “find” a literary agent. Self publish and promote yourself. In terms of what will sell? Like everything else, the system is rigged. You must have a wide platform — that is, within the monopoly of political journalists on the left or right — to be guaranteed wide marketing opportunities. You could write a Pulitzer Prize winning book and literary agents will whine about it’s too this or too that — essentially telling you that you are not an insider and therefore can’t sell. Meanwhile, they will steal your ideas if they are good and then pass them along to a friend who has a platform by virtue of being an insider….Otherwise books are sold as payoffs to people….you get the advance as a reward for serving some agenda…or you’re a social influencer based upon having a “famous” parent who is famous for being famous. Today no one will not take a chance on a brilliant, but unknown author. You can be a horrible writer, but have vacuous insiders willing to promote you by virtue of being the child or friend of someone famous..and you’ll get a huge advance …or you can a superb talent without a platform and get ignored. Think platforms aren’t rigged? How many nobodies get millions of subs overnight whereas talented people can toil for years and never get a bite. The system is rigged.

    Don’t waste your time with these people. You’ll get every whiny rejection in the book, none of which are valid. You risk losing years of your life not getting published or getting published with a small imprint with minimal advance. Or your work will be shamelessly plagiarized. Have you read the quality of books out there? Most are garbage. Even chicklit. The people who are getting the top billing are siblings of other famous people….or they are contracted by insiders to sell a lifestyle or a new technology etc….Very little is original. If you’re not part of a program, some pseudo celebrity or fake “influencer,” your book doesnt have a chance in hell. Meritocracy doesn’t even factor in…

    Imagine the college scandals? Same thing is going on in the literary world — payoffs and gaming the system. These pathetic literary agents are “gatekeepers,” many of whom get paid off to get some garbage book published by virtue of the fame, not value, of the book…

    1. To Realist:
      I tend to agree especially in light of receiving more than 60 rejections from top agents for my Thriller Fiction. From what I read, Amazon is now the most recommenced “Go-To” source for Self-Publishing but the drawback here is that then Amazon has an exclusive on the sales and distribution. 2nd to Amazon, who would you say it the better source for S-P distribution and sales that will include Barnes & Noble and other notable sales outlets.

    2. Your article depresses me because I fear it’s true, mostly. If an agent comes across something outstandingly well-written and current, he/she would be fools to pass on it for no other reason than money!

  4. Yes, so now we know all the pitfalls to finding a literary agent. But I came here to find the secret in the article’s title, but in vain. I am already daunted by my experience contacting publishers direct and confirming what others have warned me all along – that the publishing field is shark-infested waters. That is why I said to myself (in UK language), “Sod it, I will go down the literary agent route instead”. My initial forays have not started off well, and my latest probe is a damp squib since the agent’s website was “down for repairs”, and still down when I tried to message later. I like to think I have an advantage by not looking for a personal return if my book is published, but then a fellow commenter on here shares the good news that if I upload the manuscript of my book, those at the other end will simply plagiarise or steal the matter in the book. I often imagine I’m wringing the necks of the whole human race for being anything but the sort of souls who will ever be permitted to dwell in heaven when they die, and seriously wondering if there are ANY beings that deserve the prefix “human”.

    1. No one is going to steal or plagiarize your book. That person simply doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

      Check out this article on Bookfox about literary agents — some more practical steps.