Allaboutwriting

Michele Rowe gives us all the tactics needed to find and secure an agent.

These days publishing a book is all about getting a bloody agent. But the chances of landing one are about as remote as finding an honest tax return in Juju’s sock drawer. That’s because agents make an art of being unattainable. Never underestimate their duck- and-cover proclivities. Assume that they don’t want to know you or your book ­– in fact, they want people to STOP WRITING books. They actually hate writers. They want us all to go away, already.

The thing is, they are drowning in submissions. It’s a literary tsunami out there. Manuscripts and synopses are pressed upon them at parties, slipped beneath their doors, jammed under their windscreen wipers. At night they wake screaming, flailing at fluttering white sheets of unwanted, unsolicited masterpieces.

Not that they ever read submissions. They just do lunches, and book fairs, and then more lunches to discuss the book fairs. Pore over the publishers’ weeklies to see which agencies’ writers are selling. Then chew their nails with rage and envy.

Not for them the lowly task of separating the literary wheat from the chaff. They have gatekeepers to do that. Usually M.A Lit students, who cavalierly flip through the hundreds of hopeful submissions, while simultaneously engrossed in FB posts to their friends, in which they boast about how they followed in Byron’s footsteps and swam the Hellespont, or raved it up at a week-long party with DJ Floorclearer on the Isle of Man.

What you have to realise is the gatekeepers are themselves frustrated writers. They’re all scribbling gobbet and gore graphic novels in their bed-sits in anticipation of being the next big thing. And you know how bitter and twisted people who want to be the next Haruki Murakami can be. Exactly. The last thing they want, is to see YOU get a big fat break.

So, how does one go about getting a bloody agent? Well, you stalk them. Okay, call it research then, but it’s really stalking. Find out everything you can about them. The Internet is full of disgruntled people who have been rejected by agents. Read all of their blogs, their posts, their bitter little outpourings. Eliminate names from your list accordingly. This should narrow it down to the reputable heavyweight agents. At least half of the heavyweights are not accepting submissions. They are too canny to take chances on rookies, so they concentrate on poaching best-selling writers from other agents. Of the other half, half again have drawn in their snail horns at the threat of e-publishing. That leaves about half a dozen fabulously kind, encouraging individuals on the lookout for a great new author like you. Get them in the cross hairs of your rifle. Sounds a bit extreme I know. But you can’t afford to let the good ones get away. Now that you’ve singled out your targets, start putting your strategies into place. Don’t be impatient. The publishing mills grind slowly. Check out their submission requirements. It will usually mention a LETTER. Warning: this is where it can go pear-shaped. The letter is critical. Be prepared to spend several days, if not weeks refining it. It’s all about tone, people, all about tone. Things to watch out for: the sociopathic jokey stuff. Don’t mention e-books or self-publishing as in “if you don’t take this I will just publish it myself and cut out the middlemen and then you will be sorry when it’s huuuge, and the Richard and Judy’s Book Club Choice of the Year blah bah blah.”

Threats are also a no no. Especially don’t bring up J.K and how many agents passed on her before Christopher Little’s office manager rescued  The Philosopher’s Stone from the slush pile. Try not to be presumptuous, as in: “My book is pacy, funny, literary fiction, sort of Jonathan Frantzen meets Bill Bryson meets J.M Coetzee”. Also steer clear of any suggestion of grandiosity. You’re doomed if your opener is, “I have been told by my friends/ tutors/ fellow alumni/ that I could be the next Donna Tartt. I enclose a snapshot taken of my Creative Writing class. I am the intense brunette on the far left wearing a pussy-bow collar and a beret.”

Remember, once the agents or their gatekeepers have got round to your submission letter after the fifty others they’ve read that day, they’ll be suffering a serious humour bypass. They’ll have coffee breath, be sombre, stiff-necked, and scrabbling to get out of the office to beat the traffic.

So don’t wind them up.

And forget about storming the Bastille via their social networks. The gatekeepers might chat to their pals online, but the agents are into serious protection of their anonymity. As you would be, if you were being stalked day and night by sweaty-pawed, psychotic maniacs. If you have Mossad or MI5 experience you have a remote chance of hunting them down and forcing them to read your ms. at gunpoint. If not, the only known weapon to penetrate the citadel is the WELL-CRAFTED SUBMISSION LETTER. This will determine whether or not they proceed to read your synopsis and sample chapters.

Here’s some guidelines for the covering letter. It should,

1. BE BRIEF

Keep it short and to the point. Follow the requirements on their submissions page to the letter. No improvisation. Introduce yourself in one paragraph. Sound like a grown up and don’t grovel. Quickly and concisely tell them what kind of book you’ve written, and what it’s about. You should be about half to three quarters down the page by now.

2. MODESTLY HINT AT PAST TRIUMPHS

If you have been commissioned or published before, be sure to mention it; even a seditious pamphlet or indie film script could tip the balance. But be judicious. That fun porn blog you set up when you experimented with swinging last year may go down less well. Say you hope the book will meet with a favourable reception and sign off.

3. BE FLAWLESS

Remember, you don’t want to give them the slightest excuse to toss your query into the multifarious battalions of large bins they keep precisely for this purpose. They hate typos.  Clean, double-spaced sample chapters, proofread down to the last comma. Spelling faultless. Don’t overwrite. Be assured that ‘multifarious battalions of large bins’ will not pass muster.

4. RESPECT THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

Send it off as per instruction. If they want it posted, post it. If they accept only email don’t send unsolicited attachments, especially not photographs of you, your children, spouse or pets, or links to your blogs.

Remember, the covering letter is your opening salvo, the sniper on the roof that takes down the first line of defence. Then you can follow up with the blitzkrieg of the unputdownable synopsis, killer opening paragraph, and gripping three chapters.

It’s almost more work than the book itself, I know. It’s enough to make you go AWOL. But enough with the conventional military analogies. Guerrilla tactics are what’s needed. Which brings us back to Juju again, and the bloody agents. So, don the Che beret, purple suit and matching shoes, cut off the phones, bring in the water and canned food and start polishing your rifle. Or should I say machine gun. Time for some target practice.

Umshini wam.

Michele Rowe is a novice novelist who managed to secure a top agent who represents many well-known crime writers, using the above strategy. Michele is the winner of the 2011 Debut Dagger Award for the best as-yet-unpublished crime manuscript for her first book, What Hidden Lies, a murder mystery set in Cape Town.  

Read more about South African crime fiction at Crime Beat on Books LIVE.