How to Find an Agent, part 1
Whenever I give a workshop on publishing opportunities for writers, such as the one I did last week, someone inevitably asks how to find an agent. So I thought I would cover this subject in some depth so that it can be part of The Book Coach's archives. So here goes: how to find an agent.
Let me start with a little history, just to give this whole process some perspective. Back when Big Publishing began to coagulate—just as the centuries turned from 19 to 20—writers dealt directly with publishers and editors. Writers sent their manuscripts directly to publishing houses where editors (or someone chosen by an editor) read the manuscripts that "came over the transom."
As a percentage of the population, writers were small in number, almost all male, all or nearly all white. Publishing was considered a "gentleman's" industry as was bookselling. And books were either written longhand or laboriously copied on a typewriter. All of these circumstances kept the number of writers manageable, and editors had time to nurture those with a flare for words.
This began to change as the 20th century proceeded and accelerated after World War II. Changes in technology and in education meant more people wrote and wanted to be published.
Big publishing responded by lumping manuscripts into a slush pile where their first readers were not editors but, for the most part, young women recently graduated from college.
This system worked for a while but the number of writers prospecting for publishers continued to grow. By the 1960s, slush piles became notorious as little more than way stations on the journey to rejection, and savvy authors started hiring folks (friends of publishes, ex-editors, etc.) to represent their works.
It didn't take long for everyone—editors, publishers, and writers—to realize that agents could replace the slush pile readers, acting as gatekeepers and gate openers to the publishing industry. Since writers are the ones paying agents, publishing companies were more than happy to let these representatives take on their winnowing process. From that moment, publishers built a wall around themselves and topped it with a big sign that said "we do not accept unagented material."
So how does a writer find one of these gate openers?
Check in for the next edition of The Book Coach.