The Ghosts of Agents Past -Agent #1
AGENT #1 – I got my very first agent the old-fashioned way. I went to the library, got out the current Writer’s Market and looked through the listing, laboriously copying addresses and requirements into a notebook so I could go home and use my speedy Commodore 64 to write my letters and then my sturdy high quality dot matrix printer to print out the letters onto a rolling cascade of microperforated printer paper (which had to then be carefully separated so it didn’t look raggedy at the edges).
I then changed out the paper feed for a label feed and printed out the labels, stuffed my submissions as guided by the information in my Writer’s Market (everything from a query, synopsis and full to a query only), and mailed them out to wait.
Got a lot back from the post office (the Writer’s Market only came out one a year, and often the information was out of date by mid year because agents and agencies move around a lot).
Got a few form rejections (boo hiss). Got a lovely personalized rejection letter from Audrey LaFehr Ann LaFarge [NOTE: my memory for names and faces is not great, especially names that are 18 years old, so I went and double checked the letter.] at Kensington (they accepted submissions from unagented authors). Was much too dumb to understand what that meant, so did not address her points and resubmit. Hindsight. Oh well.
Got a call from an agent. Not the agent that would end up representing me, but her “boss” (I so did not understand the business end of publishing at that time). She loved my book. Thought it was fabulous. That was, literally, all I needed to know. I signed with the agency and waited for my book to sell (I did not make the rookie mistake of holding off writing my second book, I started that right away).
Fast forward one year: my book did not sell, my agency had sent me three letters asking me to agree to pay them a quarterly fee for copying/postage, which I had ignored because my agent had already sent out my manuscript, using copies I supplied. And she had stopped communicating with me. I sent her the first three chapters and synopsis of my new book. She sent me an “It’s you, not me,” breakup letter. On my birthday.
HINDSIGHT: I later learned that the “boss” agent of my agency had developed an unfortunate addiction that led to her stealing her client’s money and not attending to her business in a professional manner. Hence the request for copy/postage up front fees. If my agent had sold my book, I may never have seen any of that money. Only heartache and frustration. I had absolutely no idea (the internet has changed all that, and it is possible to do much more extensive research to protect yourself against such things nowadays — not that everyone does it…but they should). I also learned that agent enthusiasm is a fleeting thing, and disappears with the first editorial “no” he or she encounters. That is not a negative (it is nice to have an enthusiastic reaction to your work, after all), it is just a reality of the business. I learned to be prepared with another book ready to go, and set off to finish my second book and begin the query process again.
Next up — The Ghosts of Agents Past -Agent #2
