10 Things You Never Knew About Literary AgentsA “Special Report” by Rusty Fischer pot

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10 Things You Never Knew About
Literary Agents
A “Special Report” by Rusty Fischer,
www.requestedmaterial.blogspot.com
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Introduction
Recently I was talking to a literary agent and her dog kept
barking the whole time we were on the phone together.
Over the holidays last year several agents sent me Christmas
cards with sweet, touching or funny personal notes inside.
A few months ago an agent forwarded me an email response
to one of my client’s query letters and forgot to turn off the entire
thread; his earlier responses to the person he was writing to was
littered with typos!
Another agent wrote me one of the most encouraging
rejection letters I’ve ever read.
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Years back a young agent took myself and a client to lunch
and left an 8% tip!
I say all that to say this: literary agents will surprise you.
Most of what we as writers know about literary agents
comes from Writer’s Digest magazine and their own websites, but
who of us has time to really give agents much thought beyond
what type of genres they represent and do they or don’t they
accept email query letters?!?
I couldn’t have written this “special report” a few years ago
for a variety of reasons. For starters, I wasn’t blogging back then
but, more importantly, I hadn’t spoken with, worked with, written
for and sold books through as many agents as I have now.
And it occurred to me, as I was walking another client

through the agent maze last week, we really do have a lot of
misconceptions about literary agents that should probably be
cleaned up if we’re going to work with them as writers.
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So I figured I’d come clean and share with you 10 Things
You Never Knew About Literary Agents, and that’s what I’ll be
including in this very special report:
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The First Thing You Never Knew About Literary
Agents:
They Are Human
A publisher recently asked to see a client’s book proposal,
via a great literary agent, and I was ecstatic; we hadn’t heard back
from anybody in awhile so this was definitely good news. Then
the literary agent shared with me a brief little anecdote about how,
exactly, the publisher asked to see the proposal:
He said the senior editor wasn’t too impressed with
the idea herself but, since it was lunchtime, and Friday, and
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she was feeling a little frisky, she decided to ask the
younger gas in the office – most of them assistant agents,
interns or assistants – what they thought of the idea (which
was a dating book with a particular twist). Turns out they
all said they’d buy it, so she decided to ask the agent to
send it along.
Now, amusing though it is, this anecdote immediately had
me asking 101 different questions in rapid succession, such as:
• What if it hadn’t been a Friday?
• What if that senior editor hadn’t been feeling quite so
frisky?

• What if the younger gals in the office had all gone out
to eat that day?
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• What if this had happened on a Tuesday instead?!?
Regardless, the editor passed on the book and the trifle
might have faded from memory if it hadn’t made me realize the
first thing you never knew about literary agents: they are human.
They eat lunch, obviously, and often at their desks; they can
be whimsical, fickle, uncertain, gracious, kind, petty and all the
other good and bad emotions that make them – and us – so
human.
Follow the rules you’ve learned on my blog and others, on
Facebook and Twitter, in dozens of books on how to get
published and, obviously, on the literary agents’ websites
themselves, but never forget there’s a human being attached to
those eyeballs reading your book proposal.
Write accordingly…
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The Second Thing You Never Knew About
Literary Agents:
They Have Long Memories
Every few years or so I pitch an agent I haven’t pitched in
awhile or, conversely, hear from an agent I haven’t heard from in
awhile who needs a proposal done or has a client who needs a
ghostwriter.
Whenever I do, I’m always amazed that the agent
remembered me in the first place!
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But agents will often say something like, “I remember that
non-smoking proposal you sent me because I lost a brother to

cancer six years ago…”
Or, “I’ll never forget that two sentence subtitle you sent me
for that business book a few years back!”
Agents: they’re just like you and me!
So don’t be afraid to mention to an agent that you’ve been
querying her for years, saw him at a recent writer’s conference or
just noticed his name in the acknowledgements section of a book
you read recently.
Anything you can do to create a personal, even emotional
response from an agent will only put them in a more positive
position while reading your proposal.
Maybe they’ll remember, maybe they won’t, but chances
are the ones who do might be a better fit as your new literary
agent.
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The Third Thing You Never Knew About
Literary Agents:
They Have Short Memories
Some agents never remember me, whether they’ve asked to
see half-a-dozen proposals or we’ve spoken on the phone before
or gotten really, really, really close on a deal.
These are typically the bigger agents, and I know they
certainly have bigger fish to fry, but I mention this mainly
because I don’t want you to be upset that they DON’T remember
your gardening, nursing or salespeople query from six years ago!
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Not every agent is going to be a warm and fuzzy, buddy-
buddy experience; they don’t have to be. Agents serve a
necessary purpose and the more you focus on the purpose versus
the person, the less disappointed you’ll be if you and your agent

don’t wind up being lifelong friends.
Don’t get me wrong; it’s awesome when you get to work
with an agent who also treats you like a friend, just don’t expect it
to happen too often. At least, not anymore than it would happen
with your doctor, your lawyer, your mechanic or your insurance
agent.
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The Fourth Thing You Never Knew About
Literary Agents:
They Are Workaholics
I have gotten responses from agents on Halloween, on
Christmas Eve, on New Year’s Eve, in the middle of summer and,
judging by some of the email time stamps the next morning, in
the middle of the night.
Many agents are workaholics who are at their desks early
and/or late. And, with technology, it’s easy to take your query
home with them.
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Not that all will, but many is the time if I’m doing a rewrite
on a proposal specifically for an agent or getting close to a deal I
see “sent from a Blackberry” at the bottom of their short message
so I know they’re working remotely, often early in the morning,
late in the evening and even weekends.
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The Fifth Thing You Never Knew About Literary
Agents:
They Are Away a Lot!
Just as hard as they work, agents are often on the road.
They travel frequently; they go to conferences where they
speak or workshops where they enjoy “meet and greets” and short

pitches, they take holidays and vacations just like everybody else.
So don’t be surprised if you get an auto-response to your
emailed query letter or if it takes awhile for an agent to get back
to you.
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The main thing is to just hang in there, keep pitching and
never lose faith in your book project. If you don’t hear from an
agent after a few weeks, send out another query letter to another
agent. If you don’t hear from that agent after a few weeks, send
out another.
Don’t sit on your hands; don’t wait around for the phone to
ring, the in-box to fill up or the mailman to come. Just… keep…
moving.
Some agents respond the same day I query them; others the
same week, still others that same month. The other day I got a
response to a query I wrote back in February – of LAST year!
The point is agents are busy; you are busy.
Don’t assume an agent doesn’t like you, or your book,
because they haven’t responded right away; just keep pitching
until you find an agent who responds in time – and in the
positive!
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The Sixth Thing You Never Knew About
Literary Agents:
They Are Quite Often Nice
Most agents I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to personally
are actually quite nice. They are often busy, but polite; blunt, but
fair.
The fact of the matter is an agent doesn’t have to be nice to
be good; it just helps everything go a little more smoothly.

Likewise, an agent doesn’t need a client to be nice, but it sure
helps.
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The bottom line, of course, is how good a writer you are and
how good an agent he or she is; “nice” is really just the icing on
the cake.
After all, the nicest thing an agent can do for you is give you
constructive criticism that actually helps your proposal get better
through a rewrite or two; this they actually do quite often!

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The Seventh Thing You Never Knew About
Literary Agents:
They Can Occasionally Be Nasty
A few years ago an agent said of a client’s book, “This will
never sell.” He went on to say it was “juvenile” and “petty” and
had “no place” on today’s market.
Just last year an agent rejected a client’s beautifully written
project (and not by me; he did it all on his lonesome) because it
was “too regional” and that “nobody outside of his time zone
would care.”
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Recently an agent told me, “Rusty, we think it best if you
stop sending us query letters.”
Ouch!
Which, of course, just goes to show that agents are human
and, often, moody, brusque, impatient, brutally honest, frequently
narrow-minded and occasionally downright mean.
There are as many reasons for rudeness as there are ways to
be rude. Maybe the agents who wrote the above responses were

hungry, hungover, tired, just got bad news themselves or broke up
with someone.
Agents are human and respond like humans; sometimes
nice, sometimes not-so-nice. The trick is to brush it off and move
forward so that you don’t become not-so-nice yourself!

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The Eighth Thing You Never Knew About
Literary Agents:
They Don’t Mean Anything Personally (Except
When They Do)
Whether an agent is being nice or mean, patient or
impatient, giddy or goading, never, ever, ever take it personally .
Again, agents are in business to sell books and make money
and they like to work with people who write good books that will
make them money; period.
When a client gets a query letter that somehow doesn’t
match their business model, they promptly reject it. This could be
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for any number of reasons, including a variety that have
absolutely nothing to do with how well you write or even what
you write about.
For instance, the market might be too crowded right now,
we might be in a recession (ahem!), a certain type of book might
be hotter than yours, they might even be representing a book like
yours at the moment.
So you see, there are literally hundreds of reasons why a
good agent might reject a good writer with a good book; none of
them have anything to do with you, personally.
I often hesitate to forward clients a brusque, blunt or

occasionally sniping rejection letter because I know they’ll take it
personally; still, knowledge is helpful and it’s a necessary evil to
know who isn’t interested so we can move on to someone who is.
The point of this post is to stop reading every rejection letter
for hidden meaning, stop taking it personally and move on. “No”
means “no” and regardless of how cryptic, or blunt, the rejection
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might have been, the bottom line is no matter how you interpret it
the answer is still, always and ever “NO!”
The sooner you move on and pitch to another agent, and
another and another, the sooner you’re going to get over the
rejection and start “getting to yes!”
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The Ninth Thing You Never Knew About
Literary Agents:
They Are In Business, Just Not Necessarily YOUR
Business
Agents are in business to sell books and make money, and
not necessarily in that order.
Some agents live for finding that new book that is really
going to inform people, move people, touch people or just
generally shake things up.
Other agents live for the deal; they talk constantly about
points and figures and rights and money.
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Neither type of agent is right; neither is wrong. Both types
of agent are in the business of selling books; both types of agent
typically make money selling books.
The critical point to take away from this section is that
agents are in business; they expect and demand to work with

professionals and the best way to secure an agent is to treat them,
your book, the market, the audience, the professionals and in
particular YOUR BOOK PROPOSAL like a business.
I know it’s easy to get caught up in the dream of becoming a
published author, but the best way to make that dream a reality is
to learn the business of what it means to get published in the first
place.
Writing a really good book proposal is a great way to start.
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