From the Past: My Agent Search Summer
Small-town boy makes good, until he doesn't.
Around this time of year 30 years ago, I was entertaining myself around New York City, being rude to book agents.
Rude by Midwestern standards, anyway.
My method was to call their offices and see if they could find time to see me the next day for 10 minutes or so. Short notice, to be sure, but I’d had a book on the NY Times best-seller list for about 10 weeks by then, and I needed an agent to work out the deal for the 2 sequels I had been offered.
(The book, of course, was Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. Yes, I had sold it without an agent in 1993. No, it wasn’t easy.)
It was the equivalent of walking into their offices with a check that had yet to be filled out. After getting names from various publishing people I’d been working with, I called 9 different agents at different-sized agencies. I figured, hell, if they can’t find time to say hi to me, they probably aren’t the kinds of people who can respond quickly to events. (Yes, I was a little arrogant in this, though not in my demeanor. Outsiders often have a punky demeanor. So do Chicagoans.)
Of those 9 agents, 7 said that they had no room on their schedule, though they’d surely like to meet the next time I was in town.
One agent met with me. He was a very cordial elder statesman, and his name was on the door of the agency, but it wasn’t a good fit. His place and his list had a whole 1960s, Jimmy Breslin kind of vibe, and he looked about to retire anyway.
Finally, I met an agent I got along well with, at a respected agency. I admired all the current titles she had placed lately (the covers of which were printed on large foam-core posters around the office), and she found time to sit and talk for a while. She was smart, no-nonsense and engaging.
And she was about 6 months pregnant, which I related to right away, because my wife was about 3 months pregnant that summer. If things worked out, we’d all become a little book commune with beautiful babies bouncing around and contracts to be signed. And her expense account for meals.
I’m really not exaggerating. It’s hard to state the facts without sounding like I’m bragging, but it was a very heady time. My book had taken off faster than anyone at Macmillan had imagined, and bookstores kept demanding more and more. (Hats off to all the indie booksellers back then, who recommended the book to customers. You made my career!)
This was after the book had been turned down by 30 other publishers, mostly in general terms on mimeographed letters. I was a nobody, without an agent. I’ve kept a copy of the first agency rejection letter I received, from an acquaintance of a friend. It reminds me how much luck and hard work mean more than connections:
On the back of the letter was an article from his business school alumni magazine, describing what a whiz kid he’d become in the agency world. In other words, he was telling me, “Not only don’t I like your book, but here’s how good I am at finding good books.” It was comically harsh, off-handedly insulting. It’s a good thing he’d found a job in a relationship business!
Once PC Bedtime Stories came out and had sold a good number of copies, I had a very good time in NYC. I recommend this course of action very much to every writer, to write a best-seller. It feels great.
But I was still a modest Midwestern guy, or so I played it up. I love people in New York, especially natives — they can be the most loyal and generous people you will ever find, once they accept you.
But they are also, or can be, extremely provincial. John Updike once wrote about a NYC matron “who thought everyone who lived west of the Hudson was kind of kidding.” This attitude was omnipresent. You know, I was from Chicago, that podunk town. I did nice Midwestern things, like…hold the door for people. I played this up to my advantage often, just playing around to see how far people’s snobbishness could go. Or, I might just present myself as the humble, affable kid while people were discussing business with me, and later I’d call my agent with my unvarnished and generally clear demands. God, it was so much fun. I’d never had leverage before.
About 10 years later, my agent moved to become the head of an even bigger agency, which hindsight tells me was the time I should’ve looked around for another. She delegated the sales of my books to people under her, even “baby agents” who supposedly had better connections for the type of writing I was trying to move into. I will admit my agent told me early on, “I will only sell what you send me. I won’t work with you to develop your career.” She was honest about that, but this didn’t seem like a problem when we started.
And some of the weird things I was beginning to write? It couldn’t have been easy to sell. She was moving into deeper waters, and I was going to remain the geek in the corner.
In the end, I learned that some relationships don’t last. I’m envious of the writers who write in their Acknowledgements about their “friend and advisor of 40 years, who knows what I’m thinking before I even say it.” But how can I be envious of chemistry? How can I envy other people’s communication? My agent really didn’t have much of a sense of humor — I could rarely make her laugh, which is another sign I should have heeded. After telling a long anecdote that was pretty funny, she would deadpan, “That’s hilarious.” I THINK she meant it, but I could never tell.
And she hadn’t found me in the slush pile back in ‘93, so it’s impossible to tell if she could have seen promise in the stories. I wasn’t her “discovery”. I came into her office with a valid intellectual property making money, and for a time she turned it into more opportunities. I’m grateful for our time together, and our friendship. But I finally fired her. I had been too loyal, which is a habit of mine, but I was also afraid of going it alone. But if you go years without speaking to your agent, take the hint.
Many times people have approached me and asked me for writing advice. I can speak a little bit about patience and perseverance and craft, but I really have no good advice on finding an agent. With my publishing history, I come by my punk DIY ethos honestly. Absolutely no one believed PC Bedtime Stories would be a hit, and no one has known what to do with me since. That might make me a one-trick pony, but I’ll take it. I’ll ride that pony. It has paid the bills many times over.
Will I look for another agent? It depends. If I suddenly write a novel about several generations of one-eyed alpaca-breeders that reflects our current muddled state of affairs, I might try and find an agent. It would probably help get responses. But if I continue to belch out stories about private-eye clowns and “Anne Frankenstein, Scourge of the Nazis,” it would be a waste of effort. I’m getting too old to write to someone else’s specs.
The publishing industry is different now, technology is obviously WHOLLY different, and connecting with readers is different. It’s not a bad time to be a little DIY, though I do miss those expense account lunches. And having an agent doesn’t make the hardest part of writing any easier: Sitting your ass in a chair and writing.