Finally: all that time you put into querying literary agents has paid off and one wants to represent you. Of course, you should celebrate—this is a huge milestone! However, before you sign the contract, you’ll want to shift the focus from you feeling entirely over the moon that anyone wants to sign you at all, to you taking charge and interviewing them to make sure they are the right fit for you.
Working with a literary agent is a business relationship that needs to go both ways. Before you commit to anyone, you need to make sure the agent is good for you and your project. You also want them to be someone you can grow with as you write more books.
The following 12 questions will help you interview a potential literary agent to make sure this will be a fruitful relationship—for now and for the long term.
Literary agents get hundreds of manuscripts a week. They’re barely able to spend a few minutes with each query, if that.
If I spent five minutes on every query in my inbox it would take me over three months of full-time, 40-hour work weeks to answer everything, and that’s if nothing new came through in the meantime. And reading queries is not my only job.
~ Literary Agent Kate McKean, “A Year of Queries”
Clearly, your query sparked something. What was it about yours that caught the agent’s attention and made them want to sign you?
Note: you’re not asking them this question so they can stroke your ego. Committing to a manuscript is committing to a relationship with it and with you. Their answer will indicate what about the project sparked something enough for them to want to get behind it.
Have they thought about how they will position your project? What does the agent think its comparable titles are?
*(If you had provided some comparables in your query or proposal, ask whether they felt those were accurate, or did they have other more appropriate titles in mind?)
Do they already have a sense of which publishers they’ll try to sell it to (A “Big 5” publisher or smaller indie house) or which editors they’ll target?
You may not be familiar with how this “behind-closed-doors” process works (or at least how this agent sells books), so asking them to explain their approach is reasonable.
This is where you will learn from what’s said (as well as what’s not):
All people love referrals, reviews, and testimonials, and this situation is no different. Being able to chat with one or two of the authors who work with this agent would be useful for you to get some on-the-ground intel.
You’ll probably be able to find at least a partial client list on the agent’s website, but if not, the agent should be forthcoming about providing a few of the authors’ names, particularly if their books have sold and been published (for those whose books are currently under consideration, there may be a confidentiality clause that prevents the agent from being able to share their names. Fair enough.)
If, however, the agent does not want to offer any names, including those whose books have been published, that may be a red flag. What would their reason be for withholding? (Especially given that most authors publicly thank their agent in the pages of their book’s Acknowledgements, so it’s not like with a bit of sleuthing, you couldn’t figure it out on your own …).
It’s illuminative to see the kinds of authors the agent tends to work with, the genres of books the agent sells the most, and where you would land on their list.
*Also, while probably not a question as much as something for you to note privately is whether their list of authors is diverse and across a variety of backgrounds and life experiences or they tend to rep people from specific backgrounds and experiences.
This answer, along with their general demeanor and other responses, will help you determine whether their youth equates to energy and out-of-box thinking or their experience equals wisdom and a stronger web of contacts and influence.
You may also get a sense of whether working with someone who has a long career (and likely a long client list) will indicate how much time they would have for you vs. an agent who is newer and has fewer clients.
That’s something to talk about when you discuss the level of interaction you can expect (covered in the next question).
Is the agent an emailer? Caller? How will they keep you apprised of what’s going on and/or how often you might hear from them?
Also will you only be talking with them directly or might you interact with colleagues of theirs as well?
*I know a few people whose agent seemed good and sold their book but later wouldn’t reply to emails. Again, this is a relationship, one that you might want to exceed the boundaries of that single book’s sale, and it’s important to have clear expectations and lines of communication that can carry you into the future.
What does the agent envision for the editing process?
I think it's so important to know your own habits, strengths and weaknesses as a writer. For editing, specifically, because I already had a set of writer/readers with whom I was editing, I was happy to have an agent who gave me good, general feedback: ‘The pacing is off,’ for example, or identifying structural flaws, but not offer in-depth or frequent critique. Also I need to know not only what is not working but what is working!
Kath Jonathan, author of The Resistance Painter
Have them lay out an example working structure for you or provide an example from another client. After all, you’ve never done this before, and you want to know what to expect. Is there a normal protocol they follow or is each book different?
– Will they also be supporting you with placing additional publications (op-eds, short pieces, etc.) in magazines and newspapers or with online entities to bolster your platform and help promote your project?
– Do they work on getting your book onto “best of” lists in magazines and newspapers?
– Will they find you other speaking engagements or source ways for you to collaborate with other authors on their roster?
– Do they support with other marketing elements or guide you with fulfilling a marketing plan?
Remember: The primary reason you need an agent in the first place is for them to handle the business end of your book’s sale.
This includes pitching and selling your book (domestically and overseas), contract negotiation, admin, and some tax issues—especially necessary if your agent works with an agent in another country to sell your book there.
*Not all agents handle all genres, so if you have more books in you that aren’t definitively going to be in the same genre as your first, this is an important question.
Understanding your rights and what’s included is essential. If and when you do sign with the agent, you’ll want to have first run the contract by a lawyer, or at least a legal representative from The Authors’ Guild in the U.S. or The Writers’ Union in Canada, who offer free legal consulting on literary contracts. Understanding your rights and what’s included is essential.
First of all, you need time to process everything. You also will need time to:
DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT ACCEPT AN OFFER OF REPRESENTATION DURING THE INITIAL CALL. Industry standard is to give the author two weeks from the time of The Call so that you have time to notify other agents, reach out to references, and most importantly, think so you can make an informed decision---if an agent is asking you to make a decision on the spot, this is a HUGE red flag.
~ Emily Krempholtz, “What to Ask on the Call with a Literary Agent”
It’s common practice to alert those agents you have already queried who are still actively considering your project to let them know you received an offer. Doing this may heighten their interest in you so they read your query a) faster and b) through the lens that you’re suddenly desired by someone else, which makes you more desirable generally.
You could also conceivably “requery” an agent who rejected you if you truly coveted them and was at the top of your list. You could politely ask them to please reconsider your query (include a “by” date). Recognizing they probably didn’t pore over your query the first time, this email may invite them to read it more thoroughly to either reject it definitively, or in a perfect world, make you an offer.
In both cases, you’d send an email with “Offer of Representation” in the subject line, so they know it’s urgent and not a regular query destined for the slush pile.
Here is an excellent list of email templates you can use.
If any one of these agents was to step up at the 11th hour, you’d then have some choice and can determine which agent might be better for you based on personality and professional fit.
Naturally, when you do eventually sign with someone, you would let any agent still considering your work know as soon as possible that you’ve been snapped up out of professional courtesy.
Thriller author Alexa Donne has some useful videos about the agent process:
If you’re querying many agents or want to learn more about any one in particular before you leap into letting them represent you, check out Publishers Weekly. It provides information about agents’ backgrounds: how long they’ve been agents, how many books they’ve sold, the genres they represent, etc. You should also fan out onto social media and ask around: who has worked with this person or heard anything, what do they know and suggest, etc.
All these interview questions for a potential literary agent are reasonable and good common-sense practice; the agent, after all, has already had time to make sure you fulfill their criteria. So, in this call, it’s your turn. Any good reputable agent should not blink twice at being asked these questions. If they do, tread with caution!
The interview with the literary agent will also be a great “first date” when you get a sense of them as a person. You don’t have to marry them, but it’s still a relationship, one the agent makes money from (the 15% commission they take from selling your book and any other projects is their pay). For you, it is important that the alliance between you two feel connected, fair, and in your best interests.
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