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ADVICE FROM A PRO
Writers! Need to Find an Agent?
Here’s How it’s Done
You’ve finally finished your Masterpiece. Now you need to find a publisher. Actually? You don’t. What you really need to find is an agent, who will submit that book to a publisher on your behalf.
Your chances of a publisher taking a look at your book are much higher if an agent submits it than if you do-it-yourself. Some publishers refuse to even look at a book that “comes in over the transom.”
In the Beginning…
At the beginning of my own writing career, in the early 1980s, when I was writing short stories, I had a terrific agent. Luis Sanjurjo didn’t just represent me. He also represented Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams and Wallace Shawn.
How did I connect with such a high-powered literary agent? It was simple. Whenever I published a story in a large circulation publication like Good Housekeeping or Seventeen Magazine, a dozen agents wrote me letters asking if I had a book they could take a look at.
They figured if I could write well enough to break into a large circulation magazine, I was worth taking a chance on. When they looked at my work? They saw dollar signs.
I had a bunch of agents clamoring to represent me. All I had to do was choose one. The choice was easy. Luis loved my work and was on my wavelength. I signed with him and stayed with him until his untimely death at age 45 in 1987.
My account was passed along to somebody else at ICM, but by then I’d decided to focus on short work instead of the book-length work Luis had hoped I’d write, so that relationship came to an end.
Fast forward to the present
These days I’m not only a fabulously successful Medium writer (hyperbole alert!) but I also work as a writing coach and editor.
I work with beginning writers and accomplished writers, and every kind of writer in between, on…
