Being a published author, I was hesitant to tell people, mainly other writers, that I wanted to move over to the dark side. The agent side. Trust me, this isn’t some kind of power-trip. I honestly wanted to help writers become successful in their goals.
The question was, how to do this without losing myself and becoming, what much of the writing world considers agents, a member of the dark forces. To tell the truth, there wasn’t a way around it.
Let me explain.
This process has afforded me considerable perspective as a writer. When I set out on this journey I was optimistic that good writers were in abundance. But after working for two of the best agents in the country for over two years, I’ve learned that it isn’t about being good, it’s about being sparklingly impressive from word one in both your query and MS.
These days the market is overly saturated. The effect it has on agents (and their interns) is this: We’re simply unable to give feedback, advice or anything BUT a form rejection. So...here’s a new angle on agents. Over one year I rejected 3,000+ writers. Among these: 90% were form rejections, 9% didn’t follow published rules for queries and 1% had pages requested. Of that 1%, only one...and that’s one person...was signed. So I began to ask myself, how do writers go from good to great?
