Perpetual WIPs: Literary Agents

Welcome to Perpetual WIPs, and thank you for checking it out! To see what it’s all about, read this post first: Am I Normal? However, as you can see, this time I’ve done something a little different, and gotten perspectives from the other side of the inbox. Hopefully, these fantastic agents’ outlooks will be just as helpful in guiding writers through the industry, if not more so!

Click on the question to see the answers provided by the wonderful literary agents who contributed!

What would you consider Fundamental Etiquette of Querying?

Do you respond to all queries or are you a “No Response = No” agent and why?

Is an author’s Social Media platform and experience important to you at all? If you advise authors to be more active in Social Media, what do you think are the most important tools/sites to use? What do you think it’s important not to do?

What’s are “must discuss” topics of conversation when you have The Call with a potential client?

Of course you love your client’s first project enough to have offered rep on it, but what happens when you’re not crazy about the follow-up project? How do you proceed – or suggest they proceed – when you don’t want to represent it?

Under what circumstances have you initiated or would you initiate a split from a client? What should and shouldn’t a writer do when querying again post-split?

How involved in the process do you like a client to be once you’re out on submission with his or her manuscript?

What factors into where you submit a manuscript, and what’s your standard submission strategy like?

Obviously the slush pile, winning contests, and referrals can all work, but have you ever acquired a client in another way? If so, how?

What’s your philosophy on representing a “hybrid” author, i.e. part self-pub, part traditional pub?

What training/experience do you recommend for someone who’s interested in becoming an agent?

What do you wish more people understood about the job of an agent?