It strikes me that many people might not know exactly what an agent does all day, and it's been a while since I talked about it. Oh, yes, you know we read manuscripts, hopefully sign on clients, and sell books to publishing houses. But really, there are so many little tasks that make up this job. It's part of what I love about it, other than the ( Read more... )

To give you an idea the type of people I work for, I went down to get the mail today and found a package from the main office. After giving it a little squeeze, I identified it as the three boxes of Girl Scout cookies I'd ordered from Deidre's daughter Tyler when I was visiting back in January. Sure enough, get the package home, slit it open, and ( Read more... )

This is my work equivalent of new year's resolutions, I suppose, and it has a great deal to do with having spent a few days in the company of my coworkers in Georgia. It was wonderful to have people right there in front of me to bounce ideas off of, and also to just talk about books and writing and publishing and where we'd all like to see things ( Read more... )

Expecting it to be another heavy reading weekend, for a number of reasons. First, I've requested a number of completes in the past week or so, which means the pile is growing again and I need to make a dent in the existing stack before all the new manuscripts arrive. Then, of course, there's the approach of the holidays. I'm getting on a plane in ( Read more... )

The earliest stages of a literary agent's career involve a careful mix of reading submissions, striving to sell books for new clients (and all of them are new when you're a new agent), and heading out of town to speak at conferences and network with editors and the writing community at large. As you build your client list, you spend far more time ( Read more... )