Writer. Contributing Editor at The Discarded Image. Digital Content Strategist. Here's where I publicly explore the books I'm reading, the projects I'm working on, and other current interests. P&W’s first “Agents and Editors” installment
The current issue of Poets & Writers launches their new series of interviews of leading agents and editors with a Q&A featuring longtime agent Lynn Nesbit, who represents Joan Didion among other bestselling clients. (An extended version is available online, though the cover story on novelist Susan Choi is not.) The first 2 pages is mostly personal history and name-dropping and lamenting the loss of the good old days, but skip ahead for helpful information about what an agent really does, how agents and editors work together, what a writer can do to attract an agent’s attention, and criteria for choosing a good agent (assuming you get a choice).
She also talks a bit about why fiction is so hard to sell these days, saying that agents and publishers are looking for the next book that is going to be an “event.” “It almost has to open like a movie, on the commercial side, or else the editor has to be convinced its going to get such praise, such positive literary acclaim, that even if it doesn’t sell a lot you’re launching a real voice.”
Goody. Like putting lucid paragraphs on paper isn’t pressure enough.
