30 things I've learnt from 5 years being published: no 3 – A loyal agent is better than a hotshot agent
September 6 2023 marks 5 years since my first book was released 😲
I’ve now published 6, and have 2 more under contract.
To celebrate, I’m sharing a new post about what I’ve learnt from being published EVERY DAY throughout the month. This post is part of that series!
Click here for the rest →
With each day that I blog, I’m getting increasingly nervous that I’m going to get cancelled but hey, these are my truths and my lived experience and this is my blog and so I’m GOING TO BLOW THIS SHIT UP!
Ahem… share.
So, first of all: a little caveat for this post – for all the posts! – these are just MY observations and not some divine truth! Feel free to disagree with me 😉
If you have a ‘big’ agent and all is great then that’s brilliant and as it should be ❤️
But the third thing I have learnt from five years in publishing is that not all agents are born equal.
I first became aware of the concept of ‘hotshot’ agents when I was doing my course at the Faber Academy.
I remember someone talking about another writer and how excited they were as they’d just been signed by THE agent and thus they were destined for great success*.
Before that I’d believed, well, that a literary agent was a literary agent - that they were all rare mythical beasts we had to try to capture.
It hadn’t really occurred to me that any one agent might be more ‘hot property’ than another, in the same way that some authors are.
I guess I knew that the most important thing when choosing an agent was that you ‘gelled’ with one another, and that you had the same vision for the book (and more importantly, your career) but it genuinely hadn’t occurred to me that some agents had more influence in the industry than others (except for agents who were just starting out of course).
To be honest, before I had one, I thought getting an agent was so difficult that of course you’d accept the first one who offered representation and die of gratitude and live in dreadful fear of ever annoying them and being dropped.
But another thing I’ve learnt is that if your book is marketable then you probably won’t find getting an agent that difficult… sorry but it’s true.
If you are struggling to catch an agent’s attention, then it might be time to revise the MS and really think about where it might sit in the marketplace.
Sadly it’s not all about the writing.
It’s just as much about the commercial viability.
But anyway, I gradually became aware of the concept of these sought-after agents, the big guys (big women often, actually, but that sounds wrong), who had editors queuing at their doors to be the first in line to read whatever MS they next were going out with.
These were the agents who seemed to sell ALL their projects for huge sums, who got multiple translation rights for their authors and film deals and more…
But then I met some authors. And some more authors. And some more authors. And we talked, as authors do.
And I realised that a lot of the mythology surrounding some of these hotshot agents wasn’t giving the full picture.
Through the whisper network, I learnt that some agents only go after ‘big’ deals with ‘big’ publishers. They are fiercely ambitious, and do really well for (some of) their clients.
Nothing wrong with that, of course!
But they don’t manage to sell all their authors’ books (no agents do!). And sometimes, the authors whose books didn’t sell end up either being dropped, or pushed to the bottom of the priority list.
I’ve spoken to a sad number of authors who’ve gone from feeling like the most important person in their agent’s life, to struggling to get them to return an email.
It’s brutal!
My conclusion? A loyal agent is better than a hotshot agent.
(Obviously the ideal scenario is a loyal agent who is also a hotshot!)
“I’ve spoken to a sad number of authors who’ve gone from feeling like the most important person in their agent’s life, to struggling to get them to return an email.”
Choosing an agent is a minefield, I know. The best thing you can do is talk to other authors. Don’t just rely on social media hype. Get recommendations. Don’t just look at The Bookseller articles and target the agents who have just sold next year’s Shiny New Thing.
Look at the authors with long careers. Who represents them? You might find they aren’t the flashy agents, but quieter ones, who’ve stuck by their authors and truly believed in them through thick and thin, and had big successes but maybe don’t use social media so you haven’t heard about them as much.
Find an agent who shares the same vision for you and your career, long-term.
My agent is incredibly loyal, and I’m so grateful to her. She signed me when she was young and starting out and has since gone on to start her own agency.
She didn’t drop me despite my first two books not selling on submission.
I really believe she loves my writing and she’s determined to continue building my long-term career.
And to be honest, that’s worth more to me than anything.
*seven years later, this author remains unpublished and is no longer repped by the flashy agent 😬
