Perfection, and the Bridges Between

‘Think of your literary agent as your business partner. But, you can also think of them as your best friend.’

NY BOOK EDITORS

It seems a bit indulgent talking about literary agents, not every writer has one. It took me forever, years of rejections, before my first agent approached me, at a time I wasn’t looking. Like a bad marriage, it wasn’t the right one. I ended that relationship—both the bad marriage and the agent. In Australia, you don’t need to have a literary agent to find a good publisher, but it helps to have one. I am now represented by a major US literary agency and I’ve learnt a few things.

The hardest bit is letting go.

I say this as a perfectionist, my own harshest critic. I set personal deadlines, and deliver to them. I’m harder on myself than I am on others, but sometimes it overflows. I remember giving another chance to someone dear, the kindliest, sweetest soul, after they’d made one mistake.

One, and I snapped at them. In that moment I knew I could never stuff up like that.

I remember their hurt, the disenchantment.

It was a stop-check moment. When you yank a growl from Bambi … it has to be a moment of pause, reflect. And I mulled over what I already knew about me: the hardest bit for a perfectionist is trusting others to deliver on your behalf.

So here I was, an author, highly prolific across forms and genres. Since 2019, in a span of four years alone, I’d already published (or had in the publication process) seven books, seven collections (five short story, two illustrated prose poetry), two chapbooks and several edited anthologies. So we’re looking at a minimum of three book releases a year. Two of those books were published by publishers who’d first rejected early versions of them. But—the perfectionist I am, the focused, determined writer who refused to build a shrine of rejections—I’d refined the submissions, made the right connections and secured good homes for those works. I knew the ropes to getting published, had the right aggressive approach, the follow-through to publication, and my work ethics on delivery stayed immaculate.

And yet ...

I wasn’t featuring on bestseller lists.

Now I faced a major US literary agent, and I remember their question to me: ‘Why now?’

‘I want to be more strategic,’ I said.

I understood then that this was a lesson on trust. I needed to rip old habits. I needed to trust someone else with the business side of writing. Actual writing wasn’t a problem, per se, but I needed to get on, to really get on, with it. Seeking publication was digression. Soliciting a publisher is hard work! It’s research and selection. It’s wooing and chemistry. It’s picking your battles and settling to a contract you can live with, and sometimes, even that, falls through.

What I needed with a literary agent from the onset was a good marriage. The right agent for me was one with whom I had good synergy. But did I—really—trust?

The hardest bit is to let go. I’m still learning to trust someone to deliver on my behalf—and, for a perfectionist, it’s a process. In reflecting about my gains on representation, here are some thoughts on the treasure of having a good literary agent:

1. A business partner. Having someone steadfast on your behalf encourages a tactical approach to writing, knowing which projects to pour yourself into. The agent is paid when your work sells. So the agent wants the best possible outcome for your work—in the business sense. They understand the industry, have established the right connections, have a good radar of what sells.
2. A legalese-breaker. Having, in a sense, a truthsayer is eye-opening. I get it, truly I do, how little I know about terms of publishing agreements—what the heck are ‘one shot rights’? Should I have been startled in earlier contracts that royalties were on ‘publisher’s net receipts’? I didn’t even know that I could get a percentage of ‘book club rights’. Before securing representation, I’d foolishly given away unnecessary rights (translation, film/TV, audio, hardcover) to publishers who didn’t know what to do with them, or simply didn’t have the time or impetus to do anything with them. Now that I have an agent, I’ve gotten some of those rights back. What disconcerts me is I’d done all the right things: used professional writers’ organisations to assess the terms of my publishing contracts. Still, I made mistakes, found myself locked in agreements a good agent would have shouted: Don’t touch with a barge pole.
3. A negotiator. Having someone in your corner, a pugilist, say, willing to get scrappy, saves you from legal highway robbery. It’s appalling to consider some of the terms that publishers—especially major ones—offer. Without an agent, most unrepresented authors lose negotiation power because they simply want to get published, will take anything less than rather than leave it. A good agent will discuss with you stratagem, help you realise there’s choice. You don’t have to give your kidney for bugger all. How good it feels to, sometimes, say, ‘Stuff ’em.’
4. A quality assurer. Having an agent is adding one more quality-assurance eye to your project. It is the chef’s kiss. The agent is (almost) your work’s first reader—well, you’re the first reader. Akin to a peer group or a trusted critic who helps you bring the work to a better version of itself, your agent might give you advice to twiddle here, twiddle there, shore this or that to help raise the quality and sellability of your work.
5. A dedicated fan. Having an agent is assurance that you’re no longer running solo across the daunting machinations of publication. No more headless chooking, in Oz speak, cuz this chicken has a head. Writing can be a very lonely place. Before your personal experiment goes public, a good agent is a safe space to share your ideas, interrogate your non-drafts. In your literary agent, you now have a reader who has your publishing interest at heart. A good agent is riding shotgun all the way on the road trip with the characters of your story, smelling their rawness, touching the rise and fall of their chests … magnified by chemistry.

The right literary agent is a love match, the kind that flutters your heart, fills you with belief. So it’s good to let go, rip old habits, a little more each day. It can take a while to know what I know: that the agent and I can be on one page, the same one. We want the best possible outcome for my writing. Not just for one book, two books …

For a whole writing career.

But, again, it’s better to have no agent than a bad one.