AGENTS & EDITORS, AUTHORS & AGENTS

I often whine and boast about our dealings with authors and queries, partials and manuscripts. I seldom discuss "the other side" of our job as agents, our outreach and business with editors at publishing houses.

If you're fond of analogies, I guess you could say that agents are to editors as authors are to agents. In other words, if you are an author wooing a literary agent you want to play by the rules, you want to put your best foot forward, you don't want to goof up by sending a sci-fi query to an agent who hates that genre. In short, you polish your shoes, iron your shirt, brush your teeth and put on lots of hair goo before you query an agent.

We're in the same boat when we pitch an editor. We normally call editors we've never met to discuss a project we think will be of interest. Sometimes we talk to the editor; sometimes we talk to the editor's assistant. It makes us nervous. We plan carefully before we make these calls. Our hands sweat and we take a deep breath before we dial the number. We don't want to waste their time or pitch a book that is not of interest. We brush, floss and sit up straight and usually the editors are very nice and tell us to send our projects in. We feel very good after these calls. (It's even more nerve-wracking when we meet editors in person for the first time.)

But, maybe we can increase our outreach. That's why I'm writing today. This blog has always been dedicated to authors. We write it to keep you informed about our business and to make sure you know just what we are looking for. You seem to appreciate this information and your comments and suggestions are much appreciated.

As you know if you read this blog, I am now Twittering and find that publishers are beginning to follow my Tweets. I hope they will follow me back to the blog. I'm thinking of writing about the books our agency is trying to sell to editors, reporting on what we're working on and how we're approaching publishers.

Here's the big question: Would you, the authors who read this blog, find this information interesting? Or would you feel I'm straying from the basics of author-agent relationships? Let me know what you think?

Thanks.