Agents and Writers

I WANT an agent. I want an agent in the same way seventeen-year-old me wanted a boyfriend, a desire filled with hope and just a little desperation. Which is, maybe, ironic. I have had two agents so far, and one of the most traumatic experiences of my publishing life came with a potential third. I sold my second novel, my short fiction chapbook, and my latest essay collection unagented. If anyone should be leery and suspicious of what agents can do and, likewise, aware of what a writer can do on their own, I should be that person. Yet here I am, preparing to query agents with my new novel.

Why? In part because I believe the conventional wisdom: Agents have connections with publishers and serve an important role advocating for their writers, helping books get better deals at bigger presses, both independent and corporate. Really, though, my desire goes deeper. At a conference I was at years ago, an agent talked about how she helped manage her clients’ careers to maximize their success, having seen several from their first book deal to nationwide acclaim. She was, she stressed, “in it for the long haul,” through thick and thin, success and failure—and therein is an answer truer than one measured in deals. I want an agent because I want to know there is someone who believes in me. I want a relationship. I want a partner.

I once heard a writer ask why authors so often talk about our agents in the same terms we talk about our lovers, pitching in forums we call “speed dating,” talking about “breaking up” when things go south, even though the relationship was only ever a business arrangement. For me the answer is clear: I’ve invested my agent with my dreams.

The conversation around querying has created a confusion between the tantalizing possibility and the concrete outcome. Writers quantify manuscript requests (“I got two fulls and three partials!”) as if a request came with the promise of an agent, and we confuse landing an agent with signing the book deal. Each step forward feels like a wink, a kiss, a reaching for the hand—and it is! For novelists, jolts of success come few and far between, and we should celebrate each win along the way. The problem is that those flirtations can sometimes start to feel like an end in itself, but an agent is not a book deal, and we need to disentangle the two if we’re going to talk honestly.

Over the years I have had a lot of private conversations with writer friends on this topic. So many adore their agents and rave about the support they offer, but many