Changing Literary Agents | An Agent’s Perspective
Changing literary agents is something not a lot of people talk about. I love talking about switching literary agents because I want to normalize it. I want to make sure that people don't feel alone if and when something happens to them in their agent-writer relationships, because like any relationship, they might not work out the way we anticipate.
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Changing Literary Agents Transcript
Hello, this is Mary Kole with Good Story Company, Kidlit, and Mary Kole Editorial. And I wanted to talk to you today about changing literary agents. This is something I have actually been dealing with in the past few days, advising one of my team members on their sort of hiccup that they had in their agenting life. And so I've been thinking about it a lot, and this is something not a lot of people talk about. I love talking about it because I want to normalize it. I want to make sure that people don't feel alone if and when something happens to them in their agent relationships.
Now, many years ago I wrote a post on Kidlit that said agents are not a magic bullet. And I really stand by that. I believe it. A lot of people don't want to believe it because a lot of writers say, "I would just be so happy with an agent. I don't care if they're a good agent." You know, they don't really say that, but the feeling is very much, "Well, I just want an agent and I would just be so lucky to get even one agent and sort of move my career forward." But the very sad thing is that not all agents are created equal, and sometimes agent relationships do fall apart. People leave agenting, they have a family or they decided to leave town like this guy did, and they're no longer agenting or they're no longer agenting you for any number of reasons.
And I think that by talking about it, by exploring the issue, we get more comfortable with this idea that not all agent-writer relationships are going to go the long haul, whether it's something with the agent, something with the writer, a little bit of both, usually. An agent-writer relationship is very much like a romantic relationship or a long-term partnership, like a marriage. And as we know, those don't always work out. People go into them with the best of intentions, with a lot of excitement. Usually, there's excitement generated by a project. An agent wants to represent the project or the writer. Everybody's feeling great. Obviously, everybody wants to think about their project being successful, and sometimes that is not the case.
Now, a lot of it depends on how you go into an agent relationship. Is this a relationship of I will represent everything that you write forever and ever or is it a project by project relationship? Those exist as well and they're not wrong or bad by any means, but sometimes the agent-client relationship really depends on your initial understanding. Is this person going to be with you no matter what for the long haul? Is that the intention or is the intention sort of, "Let's play around with this project, maybe sell it hopefully and then we'll see what happens"? So you kind of have to come into the relationship with your expectations set a certain way depending on the boundaries and the scope of the relationship, which ideally is something that you'll feel comfortable talking to your potential or existing agent about. I like to sort of advocate for a defining the relationship conversation with an agent, not just a romantic partner.
Depending on the scope of your relationship when you go into it, there are many things that can happen over the course of a client-agent relationship. Some of them great, like selling a book and riding off into the sunset. Some of them not so great when things don't really go as planned and both parties need to sort of unpack the situation and try to determine what their next steps are. Now, one of the ways in which this relationship can go a little sideways is if a book doesn't sell. Agents and any kind of media professionals, they deal a lot with hype. And if there's a lot of hype about a project, everybody's excited, everybody's, you know, blood is boiling and they just want to get out there and sell it, and, you know, champagne corks flying. But what if that doesn't happen? What if a project sort of fizzles out despite everybody's best intentions and a lot of good buzz around it and a lot of excitement? That does happen. People don't really like to think about it, but it does happen.
Sometimes an agent will also lose a little bit of interest, and I don't say this to stoke fear inside of you. I say it because this is reality. These are things that I've seen happen, and that my clients have told me about, people I know have told me happening to them. What happens then? Well, I would say that you have hired your agent. Even though it seems that they chose you, the reality is that they are working for you. They are your broker, they are your connection to the publishing world, and it is their job to sell your book. So if a submission round to publishers does not go as planned or a submission round to foreign publishers or to other people who might be exploiting your rights, like Hollywood agents, that sort of thing. If a submission round does not go according to plan, what do you do? How do you regroup? You are absolutely within your rights to talk to your agent and just say, "Hey, I know that we were sort of hoping for a different outcome. What are we doing here? What can we do about this to move forward?" Ideally your agent will say, "No problem. Here are my ideas. We're gonna go out on submission again," or, "No problem, I have some ideas for revision and we can go out with it again once we make such and such changes," and the sort of the train moves on naturally from there.
But at this point there's sometimes can be a bit of friction between you and the agent when something did not go as planned. So sometimes, writers notice that their agent is maybe not getting back to their emails as quickly as before. They've maybe are on submission with other clients and are not as responsive. For example, I'm just pulling from stories that I tend to hear pretty frequently and that is definitely one of them. If that's the case, I would say you are still very much within your rights to have a conversation with the agent. Talk to them via email, via phone, wherever you think you're gonna get a better, more personal response and where you'll be able to make your point heard.
And I would say don't come at them and say, "You aren't getting back to me," or, "This didn't go as I wanted, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah." Instead say, "Okay, do you have any ideas for next steps? Do you have any ideas for where we could go from here? What do you advise me to do? Should I start working on another project? Should I try and revise this one? Oh, guru, you know, advise me." And by giving them some of that power to really reinvest themselves in your project, you are sort of saying, "Hey, I will do what you say. I give you a little bit of platform, a little bit of power to advise me, but let's start thinking about me and my project again." And sometimes that's all a good agent needs to get them back on your wavelength and get the train moving again. Sometimes, though, that lack of initial response is gonna be damaging to an agent-client relationship and they may not respond in the way that you were hoping for.
Again, communication might get sluggish, they may not be sort of paying as much attention to you and sometimes this, unfortunately, is a schism that can grow between an agent and a client. If you find yourself in a situation where the agent is not being responsive, when you don't feel like you're being guided or steered in the way that you were hoping, I would say always check in with yourself and make sure that your expectations are reasonable for your agent relationship. If you're sending them 10 emails a day and they don't respond quickly, I would say part of that is maybe on you, you are expecting too much of them and it's completely understandable. You have an agent, you are so excited you wanna go, go, go. But it's not like you're their only client.
There is some adjustment of expectations that I think is reasonable in that situation. At the same time, if you're really not hearing from your agent or you've sent them some new projects or you've sent them some pitches, and weeks and weeks have gone by and not even a confirmation email from them, that could be a little disheartening, and I would say inappropriate if you just feel like you're screaming into the void with your projects, with your agent who is supposed to be your advocate, who is supposed to be on your team. I would say you are totally within your rights in that situation to talk to them and try and set up a phone meeting and just check in, say, "What's up?" Maybe there has been something that has changed in the relationship. Maybe they are less excited and you may need to prepare yourself to hear some things that don't feel too good about your project or about your longterm future with that agent or that agency.
Sometimes, agents do cut clients loose when projects don't perform as expected. It is not personal. It is a business reality though, and it does sometimes happen. Sometimes the agent has other things going on that you don't know about, maybe personal or financial things, family things. And they just are...they're falling short of their own expectations for being a good agent, being a good advocate. In that case maybe a honest, personal, and let's try and avoid blame. So maybe blame, a light conversation will get the relationship back on track or maybe ... and this does happen, maybe you have decided that you want a more responsive, communicative, proactive advocate, and your needs are not being met by that agent at this time. And that does also happen.
Maybe the situation is such that you may have to terminate the agent because you feel that they are not sort of living up to their initial excitement for your story or they are not living up to your expectations of just reasonable communication with you, I think communication breakdown is probably one of the biggest issues that writers and agents experience. And that can sometimes lead to the breakup of an agent-client relationship, unfortunately, but it does happen. And if the difficulties that you've experienced with your agent, their communication miss after miss was several projects, if those difficulties are severe enough where you don't feel like you're being represented, you don't feel like you're being served by your agent partner, you may wanna think about terminating them.
It does happen and it can be a very, very difficult decision to arrive at because you thought you had your agent, you were never gonna be in the dating pool again. You thought you were set, you thought you were sort of at the next step in your career and it feels like a huge step backward to voluntarily divorce yourself from your agent relationship. And a lot of writers really struggle with that decision and they wonder if can ever get another agent or if this is their one shot and here they are ''throwing it away'' because maybe they're being unreasonable.
But if your gut says, and usually a writer's gut is very right about this sort of thing, if your gut says that the agent is not being responsive, they're not being your best advocate, sometimes cutting ties is the solution, even if it means that you have some insecurity in the meantime as you look for another representative. Now back when I was agenting, this sort of multi-agented situation, didn't really come up that often. A lot of writers had an agent, they made a happy book music together for a long time and things were a little, I feel so old saying things were simpler then. But more and more I've noticed writers on their second agent, their third agent even, and this seems to be the way of the world. More and more agents are doing agreements with writers on a book by book basis. So maybe these longterm relationships are not as common. And sometimes there are schisms and breakups between writers or illustrators and their representatives. And that just seems to be kind of more commonplace now than it was 10 years ago, even 5 years ago.
All that is to say that situation is becoming a little more normal and is becoming a little less taboo. And I think the writers who do have one agent, two agent, maybe even a third agent in their history, in sort of their emotional baggage, they're more commonplace. And if you find yourself in that situation, take heart. It is not the end of the world just because you and an agent didn't work out. Maybe it was the agent's cross to bear. Maybe it was you or a combination of the two of you. Maybe something didn't work out. But I firmly, firmly believe that if you have come to this decision of either letting go of your representative or parting ways or if you have unfortunately been let go by your representative, I would say there's more road for you to travel and you are not at the end of your journey just because your journey with that particular person has ended. I don't mean to sound like an empty pep talk for you, but I really do think that if something isn't working, it isn't working for a reason, that all that is to say you can still get up the next morning query. Be honest about your status. Say I was recently working with so-and-so and we parted ways. You know, be honest, but get yourself back out there because there are a lot of agents out there, there are a lot of publishers, there are a lot of opportunities for writers, especially writers who are at a certain level, who are clearly writing at a certain level where they have been agented before.
My hunch is that you may get scooped up again by somebody who may be a better fit and who may be able to deliver what you deserve as a writer and what you deserve as a writer who has reached that level of being represented professionally to publishers. So take heart. I'm not just saying this. I truly, truly believe that these relationships, while they don't always work out, they will lead you to where you need to be as the next step in your journey. So even though it's hard, keep writing, keep going. My name is Mary Kole with Good Story Company, and here’s to a good story.
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