Your Idealism Has No Place in the Publishing World
4 important lessons from my internship at a literary agency
As someone who studies or has studied language and literature, those things probably mean everything to you. They certainly did when I was a student. I was infatuated with Goethe, with Kerouac, with Romantic painters all across Europe, with African fairytales. Not only do we love books and cultivate an identity around them, we also consume a lot of what is considered canon, the classics, the highest art. We might still indulge in reading YA novels and watching TV at home, but we’re aware that these things shouldn’t be considered scientifically. Somewhere between our research and our private tastes, we form an opinion on what is and what isn’t good literature, all the while still believing in the power of books.
Therefore, many of us strive to break into the publishing world. We want to harness that power, shape readers’ experiences, maybe even change a few lives. We want good writing to be rewarded, we want to be stimulated and inspired by what lands on our desks every single day. Most of us secretly want to be authors, too, so there’s also learning for when you “finally write your novel” and empathy for the authors that you’re interacting with. We’re eager to move on from the theory and put all our ideals into our upcoming work.
My post-grad internship at a literary agency quickly brought me back down into the realm of reality, however. If you don’t know where literary agencies stand in the publishing world, they represent authors and publishing houses alike and try to get their work into a different market. If, say, you had written a romance novel, your agent would get you into contact with romance publishers they know and have previously worked with. Oftentimes literary agencies also sell translation rights. You pay them to pretty up your manuscripts and pitch them to however many fitting contacts they have, and then they will negotiate the terms of your contract with the publisher, as well. These days you need an agency to do these things for you. It is almost unheard of for authors to pitch directly to a publisher, especially considering all the genre-specific imprints. Publishing, these days, is far from the quirky stories we’ve learned about our favourite authors. It’s a tough field to choose, both as a writer and as someone who works behind the scenes. Authors have to navigate Twitter pitch parties, while those of us who want to work at publishing houses all try to get those coveted traineeships even if they don’t pay well, even if it means moving across the country. I was only vaguely aware of these procedures before I started my internship, and considered working at an agency somewhat second best to working at a publishing house, but quickly came to realise that I was in fact getting a good glimpse ofthe industry — it was not an easy pill to swallow.
It’s all about the money
This will probably surprise you less than some other aspects of this experience. Art very much takes a back seat when it comes to selling books. It’s not about the messages that a work carries or about the writing style, it’s about what sells. I remember negotiations on an Icelandic children’s book that both the original publisher and I personally were very passionate about. It was genre-bending and beautiful, quite different from what you usually find in both the fantasy genre and children’s literature. The Icelandic publisher was really wanting to push it and the author was already touring, leaving us with lots of great interviews and glowing reviews. We had all that material, we had the finished manuscript, yet the promotion fell to the the wayside because other books that were sure sellers (more on that later) were considered the priority. It was saddening, especially when I got reprimanded for my enthusiastic exchange with the publisher. Pitching less inspired works wasn’t an easy feat, either. “Focus on selling it well” is hard to hear for idealistic young alumni who want to go into publishing precisely because they don’t consider themselves good at making sales and because they aim to do something that aligns with their values.
You’ll be surprised by what’s important
What does sell, what is deemed important, then, is obviously not the cream of the crop when it comes to literature as an art form. Nowadays, unique formats make up a lot of the market — think audiobooks, cookbooks, and the infamous “influencer books” of both the fiction and the non-fiction variety. Remaining in line with the theme of children’s literature, think sticker books and interactive books. The highly-specialised market for kids’ books is one thing. Someone has to make “Where’s Waldo”-esque puzzles and ghost stories for little ones who have just learned to read. Apart from those, though, the real selling points might make people who read Shakespeare for fun cringe: Cash-grab joke books that are neither funny nor nicely illustrated, but that you need to describe as such, special books “for women”, “for men”, “for mothers”, “for dads” that you would never dare to spend money on and give to your loved ones, and then romance and erotica. Of course these books are out there, and they have merit in their own right, but seeing them in a catalogue that’s also trying to sell experimental novels about womanhood and sisterly bonds, about growing up oppressed, non-fiction accounts of climbing Mount Everest and the like has a specific kind of painful irony. They featured prominently and had to be promoted to the point that I was getting furious e-mails back from top-notch editors that felt like I was wasting their time. At one point, the interns and trainees collectively gasped in outrage over a catalogue entry that wasn’t so much erotica as it was a fantasy about sexual violence. A brave intern with little to lose made sure that it would be removed from the catalogue. It’s not just about things not meeting your subjective standards, sometimes you have to prevent them from doing actual harm, as well.
Writers are just as desperate as you currently feel
Maybe you do have a novel that you’ve been working on for ten years, or you’re a prolific fanfiction writer, or you have a notebook full of emotionally-charged poetry. You wouldn’t try to pitch that, though, would you? Well, some people do. When I worked with the agency’s editor, I did read a few samples that were hard to get through — riddled with spelling errors and tense switches, boring plot, one-dimensional characters — and those were the manuscripts that had already been accepted! I never quite looked at the pile of rejected works, but I remember that we specifically didn’t accept poetry, yet found a collection of very bad poems on our doorstep one day. Work experience I didn’t know I would gain came in the form of talking to nervous authors on the phone, trying to calm them down as they were inquiring about whether or not their work was doing well on a regular basis. Some legitimately hadn’t heard from the agency in a while, others ignored pleas to stop calling and let us handle the negotiations. This phenomenon is either further cause for concern about the goings-on in the book world, or it’s encouragement for you to finally pitch that thing.
Professional relationships make or break a business
As in many other industries, the connections an agent makes to editors and publishers are vital. Knowing what to pitch goes hand in hand with a personal rapport. Being friendly with an editor means that even if they reject a manuscript, they will tell you in detail why they didn’t like it, so that you can pitch more fitting works to them in the future. It means that they’ll go the extra mile when you’re trying to meet them, they will inquire after what you currently have on hand rather than just waiting for your next cold pitch. An agent’s strength, then, should probably be precisely what their employees never set out to do: They should know how to network, they should be able to read a room, they should keep tabs on what specific editors stand for and want to read, they should be flexible and charming.
Now, I won’t tell you that the agent I interned for completely failed at that because they cancelled every single meeting and book fair last minute and because they annoyed every editor they knew with endless pitches of mostly garbage erotica and crime novels. I won’t say that they didn’t know much about literature as a whole beyond what the current bestsellers were and that their agency has since shut down. The internship definitely wasn’t what I envisioned myself doing when I graduated, and the learning experience left a lot to be desired. However, it still primed me for a career I’m all the more determined to pursue now that I know what to look out for and what to keep in mind.
A burning passion for books can quickly get lost in the business aspects of the publishing industry, but at the end of the day, it might just be worth keeping an eye on quality rather than just on the numbers.
Thanks for reading Writers Guild — A Penname publication
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