How Do I Get One of Those Extra Special Unicorn Literary Agents

The Sylvan Spy answers the controversial question

Hey,

A sentence of breaking news before we dive into today’s advice: I’m three chapters into polishing Casey #5, sitting in the hot shade on my back deck, minus the goat toad, and things are going well.

How do I get a literary agent? If I’ve heard the question once, I’ve heard it a thousand times, and a couple hundred of those times it was me asking it.

When I was a decade younger, this one haunted my dreams. If I could just land an agent, I knew my cinematic, fast-paced books would shoot up the charts faster than Casey on a treeway. But that’s not how it went.

Being a dad, I’m often telling my kids to do things in the right order and not to rush—so I’ve been reluctant to touch this question. Agents are the kind of thing you get to worry about after you’ve done a lot of writing, although there are rare exceptions. Earning the right to worry about something is a funny idea, but that’s sort of what we’re talking about. This topic of worry is way down the trail for you, most likely.

But I’ve decided my policy will be, You ask the questions, I answer them. So here goes.

First of all, you ought to know literary agents focus on the big picture. They want stories that check their boxes, and if your story does not check those boxes, it won’t matter how good your writing is. When they encounter a story, they ask themselves, Who could I sell this to and for how much? What’s unique about the concept? Does the story align with my view of the world and the topics I want to be known for? Is the author the kind of person I like?

Second—and this is an unpopular truth—you need to know at this point in time the writing industry is controlled by women, mostly young, who lean left politically. What does this mean—and why do people get mad when it is pointed out?

It means that if you hope to get an agent these days, especially in genres like middle grade or young adult, you will have to write the kinds of stories that these left-leaning young ladies want.

What do they want? Well—and now I’m going to be blunt again, but hopefully you’re used to it by now—they don’t want stories written by white males. They especially don’t want them if the white males are married to women, or would like to be some day. And if it’s possible to not want anything with a greater degree of passion, they really, really, really don’t want stories from white males, married with kids, who hold traditional values.

Example of traditional values would be believing in God, patriotism, two-parent families, telling the truth, and fighting monsters and bullies.

In case you missed it, I’m describing myself here. The Sylvan Spy tends to be autobiographical.

So the level of success you’ll have in finding an agent will have a lot to do with how far you can get from these big categories of whiteness, maleness, and traditional values. As you may have noticed, they are pretty far-reaching. Even if you’re a girl.

Certain people get mad when these things are spelled out, because they don’t want us to notice that the writing industry is controlled by gatekeepers, and the gatekeepers are motivated by politics.

I guess the idea is, How dare you notice, so rude!

But that’s how it is, and the sooner you know, the less time you’ll waste. Personally, I wasted almost a decade trying to land an agent because I didn’t notice. Imagine how much more writing I could have done. Imagine how much more time I could have spent learning how to sell my own books. But not a single agent took a minute to tell me the truth. To be fair, it would have been very uncomfortable for those young female agents to spell it out.

To sum up, it’s possible to get an agent if your identity—in terms of gender and race and orientation and politics—checks the right boxes. That’s assuming your writing is good. But once you get into that world of books, and politics, and politicized books, you’ll have a hard time getting out.

So, AJ, are you telling me everything is horrible and there’s no hope? Naw, I’m not saying that. Here’s the silver lining you’ve been waiting for.

The publishing world is being shaken up by new paths for authors. Those include small presses, self-publishing, email lists, direct sales and Substack.

If you self-publish like I do, you won’t get a big contract up front, or a team of editors who will massage your manuscript into a made-for-movies book. Sadly, you won’t get stunt choreographers either. On the bright side, you’ll get to write the stories you want. No sensitivity readers. No committees. No one will be able to force you to add stuff or change your characters. You’ll be in charge. And if you make money, you’ll get to keep it instead of giving half away.

Read that last sentence again. I’m being serious.

One final note. You may have noticed I have an agent. Ironically, I got mine several years after I stopped trying to find one. Scott tracked me down when he heard me on a podcast. He got in touch to talk about the Mostly Invisible Boy and ask how the heck I’d sold so many books. We agreed I’d keep on writing and he’d see what he could do with film rights, which was fine with me.

So as a bonus silver lining, I’ll point out there are some good agents out there, and while I wasn’t able to find one with a thousand queries, one of them found me after I’d been doing the grind for years and finally made a splash with my writing.

Nothing has happened yet, which is another truth about agents: They can’t guarantee loads of book sales or a movie, but a good one will work hard to connect dots for you. A good agent will give you a fighting chance to succeed on a bigger stage.

That’s all any of us writers can ask.