On April 25, 2006, The Asian American Writers' Workshop presented a panel discussion featuring four top literary agents sharing their expertise on how to land a book contract.

Panelists:

Sloan Harris has worked in the book department of International Creative Management for 16 years, specializing in narrative nonfiction and literary fiction. Clients include Jeffrey Goldberg, Hampton Sides, Doug Stanton, Susan Casey, George Pelecanos, James McManus, Anthony Lane, and Anthony Swofford, among others.

Dorian Karchmar is a literary agent at the William Morris Agency where she specializes in literary fiction and creative nonfiction. Clients include Jennifer Haigh, Eric Puchner, Dr. Sharon Moalem and Scott Heim.

Ayesha Pande launched Lyons & Pande International last fall with her partner Jennifer Lyons, and was previously an editor at Crown Publishers, HarperResource and Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Clients include Malaysian writer Preeta Samarasan as well Pakistani American writer Sheba Karim.

Ira Silverberg is a literary agent at Donadio & Olson. Prior to that, he worked in publishing in various capacities at Grove Weidenfeld, High Risk Books/Serpent's Tail and Grove Press. Clients include Christopher Sorrentino, Rene Steinke, Kate Spade, Lawrence Chua, R. Zamora Linmark.

Quang Bao, Moderator, is the Executive Director of The Asian American Writers' Workshop.

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Quang: There is no such thing as a million dollar contract, or is there?

Ira: Yeah

Quang: Sure, great. So, we didn't lie. [laughter] People wondered. People did call and say: Is there such a thing and we thought nah, but it's good to hear from the sources that there are. So, the way this works is that we're just going to have a conversation here, I mean, we're really trying to be helpful and real and just sort of practical. So, we'll go for about 45 minutes and then afterwards you can ask any questions. There's one thing that I always have to say about these kinds of panels that we do, which is that everyone always has a question about the cover letter, so what we're going to do is pause it for a moment when it makes sense and we'll just have that conversation and hopefully it will be complete, and then we won't get a bunch of questions about cover letters because no one really wants to come here to hear that. There's a million places you can turn to, to figure out the answer to that. Fair? Okay. I'll plug the Workshop later, but I'd just like to start by having the panelists introduce themselves.

Ira: Hi, my name is Ira Silverberg, and I'm a literary agent.

[laughter]

Quang: Ira represents poetry, as you can see, cause he's very minimal.

Ira: You want a whole rap?

Quang: Just tell us a little bit of something cause many of you have careers in which you didn't start out as agents and tell us a little bit of something about the stable of writers that you represent because one question I think writers have is the kind of work that you like.

Ira: I used to be an editor. I used to be a publicist. I worked in publishing—and I say publishing rather than representation, cause I think it's actually a different field. I worked in publishing for more years than I have as a writer's rep, so I've kind of seen the other side of it, and it makes it that much more interesting working with writers and trying to get them through what can be, at best, interesting, in terms of process, getting a book from manuscript to bound book. But I suppose if I had to characterize my taste, it's a hard thing to do. I'm probably better known for supporting work which is more difficult, either formally—I have, you know, I represent some more experimental writers, like Shelley Jackson and Gabe Hudson, and you know, there are people who are more traditional, young writers, like Adam Haslett who debuted beautifully with story collections. I also do very commercial nonfiction and pop culture. Neil Strauss, who's a music writer who just did a big book on picking up women, is a client. I represent Kate Spade, the accessories designer. So, I mean, it's a balance—and probably thirty other people—I mean it's just kind of, six names. But at the end of the day, if I can find a manuscript, a fiction, that somehow has either touched me or impressed me, that's all I'm looking for, and it's hard to characterize what that is. It's about writing. And I think you'll probably hear that again and again and again. I think each of us looks for something that moves us, and we're also, you know, I think we're all probably looking for something that's paying the overheads where we work, because it's a balancing act, and I don't know very many agents who are making it only on the love of great fiction. Though, I think most of us went into this business because we have an appreciation of writing, otherwise we could be making a lot more money and having more glamorous lives.

[laughter]

Ayesha: I agree with everything you've said. I'm a very new agent. I founded an agency with my partner, Jennifer Lyons, just last fall. And before that, I was an editor for fifteen years and I was actively lobbying all of my colleagues on this panel to send me good books with you know, varying stages of success. So, now I also am learning the art of finding a good balance of authors to represent, not allowing my passion, which is really for you know, literary fiction and wonderful voices and new, fresh things, to not overwhelm me, and also you know, to focus on my bottom line and that means that I take on pop culture projects as well, and spa books and yoga books and things like that, which I also love working on because at various stages of my career I've also worked for more commercial publishers. And I'm actually finding it extremely helpful to have been on the other side. Cause I was on the receiving end of a lot of projects that were sent to me by agents, and I knew what turned me on and what turned me off, so hopefully I can avoid some of those mistakes, but you know, that's only a hope, so....

Quang: Thank you. Dorian.

Dorian: Hi. Dorian Karchmar, I'm an agent at the William Morris Agency. I've only been there for about—exactly eleven months to be exact, eleven months and two days. I was for six years at a smaller, boutique agency called Lowenstein-Yost where I was building a list that was really primarily dominated by literary fiction, new voices. Before I was an agent I did an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing at the University of Iowa, and I do like to be overwhelmed by my passions. For books. And chocolate. That said, my passion isn't only alighted by one thing. First and foremost, it remains for me though, literary fiction, discovering new voices—especially novels, I'm looking for, as most of us are who are attempting to make a living doing story collections, which I'm sure is going to be part of this conversation, can be useful way to discover someone and to launch someone, but for most of us, it's not a terribly lucrative thing. Some of my clients—a lot of young upstarts. I represent a terrific novelist named Jennifer Hague. Her first novel, Mrs. Kimball won the PEN Hemingway award. Her second novel, Baker Towers, was a national bestseller and just won the PEN Winship award. An astonishing, I think, short story writer named Erick Puchner, whose first collection, Music Through the Floor, was just named a finalist for the Young Lions. Aimee Phan, which is sort of how I met Quang, and she's a young novelist out of the Iowa Writers Workshop. She did a first collection called We Should Never Meet, it's a linked collection about an orphan who survived Operation Baby Lift in 1975 and came over to America, and half the collection takes place in Saigon, during the fall of Saigon, and half of the collection takes place in Little Saigon, twenty five years later, sort of following the life of this orphan, or this group of orphans. But I'm pretty, you know I also have a more commercial side of my list, of the fiction that I do. I'm having a good time. It's been very interesting for me, moving from a small agency to a big agency where the opportunities are a little bit different, and expanding my list in certain ways, or figuring out how to expand my list in ways that remain consistent with my passions and yet, can also take advantage of certain opportunities that being at a big agency can offer.

Quang: Thank you.

Sloan: Hi, I'm Sloan Harris. I work at another big agency called ICM. I've worked there for sixteen years now. And I'm very jealous of the two former editors because I wish I had the foresight before I joined the agency to get a little experience in the publishing business. I simply started at the bottom of the heap at ICM and have worked my way up, and I really wish I'd spent a year or two on the editorial side. My start was marked by profound naivete. I was convinced that I could probably represent literary fiction, and more specifically, short fiction, to enormous success, and I was quickly disabused of that idea. And one of the ways in which my list changed and has grown a lot is I started representing the writers for our entire department in both the realm of literary fiction--in other words, selling stories to the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and places like that. But I also, I did the nonfiction magazine work for everyone in the department, and that has been a real revelation to me, to learn to love nonfiction, and particularly, creative nonfiction. The authors I tend to be drawn to in that world have nearly novelistic voices. So, a lot of the people on my list started out having really distinctive magazine voices, and I was just foolish enough to sign them up and work with them article by article, which is no way to run a railroad. And with the successful authors, I've been able to move them into magazine contracts and then into book contracts, and many of them are on their fourth, fifth, and sixth book. But I share with the other panelists a genuine love for prose, a genuine love for literary fiction, a genuine love for voice, and hopefully, a pretty decent mix of more literary authors with those that are more commercial. And it's easy to make commercial authors sound like the dirty work, and I really don't feel that way at all. If I'm not equally passionate about all my clients, I don't have any business representing them. But the commercial clients do tend to, as Ira said, cover your overhead and allow you to take on some passion projects that might not be as lucrative, and might be seriously time consuming. But it's a great freedom to be able to do that, to find a voice that's going to take a long time to develop and encourage, and know that you're going to be able to stick by the author for the long run. So that's sort of what I try and do.

Quang: Thank you. Now we want to know a little bit of something about the audience, cause it always feels like it's helpful to the panelists. Let's find out. How many novelists, long-prose types, do we have in the audience? Just raise your hands and keep em nice and high so we can see. Okay, so we got half the room, novelists. How many short story writers? Love a short story. Short story, come on, raise your hand higher. A third. Poets? Oh. Do you want your money back right now? [laughter] No, just kidding. Okay, um. I thought it might be good just to get the statistics out, you know, they're just statistics and it's just important to know when you're an emerging writer. I'd like to just know the number of writers that you signed on in 2005. And of those, how many were actually writing fiction. I ask this because you know—Some of you might know Eric Simonoff who's over at Janklow and Nesbit. He's a wonderful agent, he's signed one fiction writer in the last three years. So I thought, huh, maybe this is an average statistic. So let's hear it. Number of authors signed in 2005?

Ira: I don't know.

Quang: I don't know. Ayesha?

Ayesha: Um, probably a dozen.

Quang: And how many of those are fiction?

Ayesha: A little more than half.

Dorian: Um, I really don't know. Maybe I've taken on three or four—maybe four new writers in the last year.

Quang: Four in 2005?

Dorian: Maybe.

Quang: Okay. Sloan?

Sloan: One fiction writer.

Quang: One fiction writer. Okay. In 2004, there were 112,000 books published [the figure is closer to 170,000]. Most of them are not literary fiction. Right? Most of them are other kinds of books that dominate the market. So, it's just important to know these things. Um, so let's start. Tell us a little bit about what gets you excited when you open an envelope and you think: I really want to follow this lead. Other than passion for writing. I mean, I think we all can understand and appreciate good writing. And this is from your angle. But tell us what may be a tipping point might be if you were to get a letter and fifty pages and you said okay. Something specific to yourself, let's say, cause you all come from different backgrounds.

Dorian: I was going to say an exciting premise.

Quang: Uh huh.

Dorian: I don't know how specific to myself that is, but you know, a really compelling—especially if I'm talking about fiction—an idea that's clearly going to be an engine that's going to get the thing going. Then, to see that it's backed up by—again, if we're talking about more literary fiction—to see that it's backed up by some track record, of whether it's lit mag publications, or—Now, these things don't have to be there, there are exceptions to everything. But it's great, of course, when you say: Wow, that's a great idea. I want to read that. I know how to talk about that. That's really interesting. And this person has—and maybe this person can actually write. So, when I see those two things together, I get pretty excited.

Quang: That's good. And, how many of you actually have assistants who open those envelopes? Three of you. Okay. So, would they screen any of these things for you?

Ira: They screen. I mean, we can't—they don't, no—I mean, I feel like there's—well I—I represent a lot of—I don't know if like, Dennis Cooper means anything, or, I represent Kathy Ackers' estate, and I work with the William Burroughs estate, so I have such a high freak factor [laughter] in terms of what I get, that I what I actually get I do have my assistants screen for me, because I get a lot of really poorly written, pornographic, gay novels. And, um, you know, I'll only take on one of those about every five years. [laughter] So, the staff has kind of been trained to know, like, if they don't drop certain key names or publication credentials, I just don't want to see it, because I really—And it may be unique to me, because I do have this kind of side of my list that really is a magnet for nuts. And potentially, you know, sociopathic people. Anyway, apparently, everyone else opens their mail cause they're not scared of it.

Quang: How does it work for you at ICM, and is it different for each of those agents? ICM stands for International Creative Management, by the way. you can look them up on the web.

Sloan: So, I assure you that I get plenty of freak mail, too, and um, I don't know why I can't give up wanting to look at everything. I have found over the years, probably four projects that ended up being really interesting, that had absolutely no recommendation, previous publication, a referral—and there's something about the idea, as silly as it may be, that every morning could hold the promise of finding a new writer, that won't allow me to totally turn it over to my assistant. But I must say, the percentage of query notes that come out of the blue, to the stuff that I actually want to read, is tremendously low. So maybe I should have my assistant comb through it in the first place.

Quang: Ayesha, did you have a comment about your process of opening?

Ayesha: Um. Well, I can tell you the things that immediately make me either delete an email query or throw the query letter into the garbage.

Quang: Take your pens out, here we go.

Ayesha: One of them is being the letter addressed: Dear Madam or Sir. Which happens, you know, all the time, and it really annoys me when writers have done a great deal of work, I'm assuming, to complete a manuscript, and then they don't do any work at all to carefully select the agents to whom they're querying. Spelling mistakes. Maybe it's because I was an editor, but that's a pet peeve of mine. Having more than one project, you know, queried in the letter: Here's a half dozen projects that I have, manuscripts that I have, in my trunk, and please take your pick, any of those, you know, are available for representation. So, those are some of the things. And of course, the thing that impresses me, is somebody that has carefully thought about what it takes to become—or to make writing a career. And has, apart from creating a body of work, has systematically taken the steps to accomplish that, which includes you know, literary magazine publications, tried to get endorsements, gone to writers workshops, conferences, you know, those kinds of things which to me signal, okay this is not just a person who on a whim maybe got an MFA. You know, an MFA in and of itself is really not as valuable as it used to be, because those programs are proliferating, and so, I think most of us just see them as stepping stones. Okay, fine, you've done that, but what else have you got? Those are the things that will make more easily consider something carefully.

Quang: Right. How many creative nonfiction writers do we have in the audience? One, two—Okay, good. I wanted--Maybe you all could take either one of these two sort of technical terms and explain to our audience what a ?partial? is and more or less, kind of the way in which a book proposal is structured that it would be appealing to you to sort of, you know, work with that client. So, pick one and explain it. Either, anybody.

Ayesha: Dorian, do you want to take that?

Dorian: A partial is just a partial. A part of a manuscript. Ideally, if you're sending someone a partial, you're sending the partial from the beginning of the—You want to talk about pet peeves, someone enclosing a chapter, enclosing with the query letter, a chapter from the middle of the novel. Major problem. Anyway, sorry, partial usually starts with the first part of the manuscript. The proposal, maybe someone else can speak to more. I don't expect necessarily, to get a polished proposal hitting my desk.

Ira: Right, I think the thing about the proposal is its process, for many of us, cause I think a lot of us are approached by people who have very good ideas that they are able to outline very well. And then we step in, and we probably each do proposals with our clients differently, and I would imagine we each—I mean, there's not really a boilerplate, for a nonfiction proposal. I mean, there's a certain a certain kind of standard we're all looking for in terms of x number of pages, and making sure the ideas are getting across, and um, you know, perhaps outlining a table of contents or proposed table of contents, but I think, I mean, I look to Sloan, cause I think if he was doing a lot of nonfiction, I mean, you work with so many journalists, so I would imagine it must begin with an idea, and then go.

Sloan: That's right. Usually we get something really embryonic, and if you believe in the writer and his or her talents as a writer, and you believe in the idea, then what you usually do is develop the proposal. I'm constantly asked how many pages is a proposal, and there's no set answer for that. Some books take—I've sold 100-page proposals before, which, at which point you may as well start writing the book. And I've sold three- and four-page proposals before. And the thing that I've found, almost without exception, that you can find in a successful proposal, is that the synopsis is vividly told in the voice of the book. And there's a real tendency in writers, when they get into synopsizing, to dry out their voice and lose what's really colorful and wonderful about the world they're creating. And the most successful proposal writers can tell you a story in ten or fifteen pages, and the prose is all right there, and they've buttoned the story all down, front to back, and as far as I'm concerned, the rest is window dressing from there. The editors that are reading the proposal have way too much reading to do, so if you don't wow them—If you do wow them from the start, then you've probably got them hooked.

Quang: So, let's just talk about the cover letter. Five minutes, okay, no more. Um, cover letter.

Ayesha: Or query letter.

Quang: Query letter. Cover letter versus query letter, do you know? Go.

Ira: Flatter me by knowing who my clients are and having an understanding of what I do. Do some research and figure out that I might have some relationship to your work, because someone on my list is someone who you can relate to as a writer. That's kind of where it begins for me, because um—Which is not to say one doesn't find something that has no relationship to what you're working on, but I feel like I want you to know what I do before you come to me, cause there are, I'm sure there a bunch of them here, there are these writer's guides that like, we're all listed in, and we all probably get queries on, I don't know, sci-fi novels, and if you don't do that—Like, figure out who we are, as people who are professionals, because I mean, it is a business, I mean granted, it's also the arts, but figure out who we are first.

Ayesha: Don't talk about the book or don't describe the book in more than one or, maximum, two paragraphs. You know, keep it short, sweet, succinct. I think it's a real art to be able to sum up a long piece of writing in a few sentences, but it's really, really important that you learn that sooner rather than later, because you'll be talking about your work and your writing and your books, you know, a lot. And it's good to know how to be able to just talk about it thematically, you know, in a couple of sentences. And tell us about yourself, how you came to write the book and all the things that you've done to develop yourself as a writer.

Dorian: I think, just a ps to that really, which is that I think a lot of—a big, big mistake that a lot of aspiring writers make is looking for an agent too early in the career. And I really think that sometimes, when you're writing that query letter, the process of writing it can almost tell you whether you're looking too early or not. It can also sometimes tell you—and this probably true for collections as well as novels, as well as narrative nonfiction—If you cannot talk about your work in that concise way that Ayesha was describing, it may also point actually to a problem in the manuscript. It doesn't always, I know plenty of writers who are just not particularly great early on, at describing their own projects, but equally, I know writers who stumble around trying to describe the project simply because it's still nascent. They haven't really figured out, you know, what that 350 pages is about, and maybe that means half of it shouldn't be there. So, you know, I think writing the letter is maybe easier once you're actually at the point where you know what it is you're writing, and you have that little bit of a track record so you actually have material to put in the letter.

Sloan: I would agree. I think Dorian just made one of the best points you'll hear all evening, which is there's this false belief that having an agent is some kind of ticket to success and is a solution to all of a writer's problems, and it's simply not true. And a lot of writers don't need an agent until very late in their careers. And the longer that you work on whatever your craft is, whether it's a novel or creative nonfiction, the answer to the topic of this whole conversation tonight, how to get the best agent, is to be the best writer. And all four of us would start throwing punches for the right kind of writer, and we all represent different kinds of things, but getting ahead of yourself is a classic mistake. Another couple of real quick things. Lose the superlatives when you're talking about yourself. I get query letters where it's clearly Dan Brown and Jesus Christ have written me the query letter and the minute you read seven adjectives piled up in description about yourself, it's a turn-off. And if you have connections to the agent, like, Ira was talking about where you know you represented such and such a book, or we know someone in common, or my work has appeared in a real publication, you certainly want to mention those things, but say it quickly and trust in the quality of your book, because going on and on actually is a turn-off instead of a help.

Quang: Great. That's helpful. So, would a query letter look like, for example, a paragraph with kind of personal something about how you found this agent, something followed in a second paragraph about the book itself, and then sort of, closing paragraph that might list credentials or something like that. No longer than 1.5 pages.

Ira: I'd keep it to a page.

Sloan: One page.

Quang: One page. One page. Okay, a one page query letter. And with that query letter would you send x number of pages of the manuscript itself or would you wait for the agent to respond?

Ayesha: I think all of us have different um, requests, requirements, and so I think that's another thing, you know, do your homework and don't send something that's not requested right off the bat.

Quang: Right. Is all of the submission information available easily through google searches and things on the web? I feel like ICM and William Morris are kind of skinny on the information department. Yeah?

Dorian: I'm happy either way, I don't honestly care. I don't want to get a whole—it does bug me if I get a whole manuscript, but I don't mind at all—It's kind of nice sometimes if I get a query letter, and I'm actually excited by it, it's kind of nice sometimes not to have to wait and just to be able to turn to that and say: Okay, can they actually write? And to have maybe that first chapter there can be nice, that doesn't bother me. It bothers me if I'm getting like, a big tome on my desk.

Quang: Okay, sure. So, query letter, plus synopsis, plus maybe a submission, plus maybe a—

Dorian: I don't need a synopsis.

Quang: No synopsis.

Sloan: I don't think anybody's offended by twenty five pages. I think we can all live with twenty five pages, but beyond that it's tricky if we haven't requested it, because it's almost kind of pushy.

Dorian: Yeah.

Ira: But I really, I mean I don't even mind an email attachment, though I do prefer it when people ask: Would you like it via email or not? I think it's pushy just to push it into someone's mailbox, but I think twenty five pages is usually enough for any of us to know if we are connecting with the work, because that's what would keep us going beyond twenty five pages, and I think, you know, rare is the book that all of a sudden you fall in love with it, page seventy five.

Quang: Okay, any specific questions just about the query letter? Yes.

Audience Member: Do you prefer email or mail?

Quang: Okay, how many of you take what we've just described over email?

Dorian: I'm okay—I kind of prefer hard copy, but I don't mind getting email.

Ayesha: Yeah, I prefer—I mean, I definitely don't take attachments. But I do take queries, email queries.

Quang: Right. Email queries are fine for all four of them. Another question? Yes, in the back. Should we send a self-addressed stamped envelope? Always, for everything. Even to your mother. [laughter] In the back.

Audience Member: I'm speaking more about a nonfiction proposal. If you get a proposal and you like the proposal, and it's say, fifty pages, but the chapters you're kind of unsure about or you want people to work on it, do you typically work with people on it or do you suggest that they go to an outside editor?

Quang: So the question is, if an agent somewhat likes a fifty-page proposal, conceptually they like it, but it's flawed, would they work with that writer on developing that proposal—

Audience Member: No, the proposal is fine, the fifty pages, they like it a lot, and the chapters—the thing about, if they see something there, do they usually work with the writer or do they send them, say, why don't you go see an editor and work on this—

Quang: Are we all sort of absolutists in—

Dorian: The main thing is the writing so you hope that—I speak for me, the main thing is the writing, so you hope that you don't have to get through a fifty-page proposal, you know, the thing you're going to turn to is that writing. So if you turn to that chapter and the writing isn't any good, then it's not worth your time to suggest anything. If you turn to the chapter and the writing is great, it's a lot easier to go back and say, you know: I think maybe you gotta think of streamlining, about streamlining the concept—

Audience Member: But what if you think the proposal is great, that the chapter is pretty good, but maybe it's not hitting the right target or you think it could be better, do you typically work with them or do you send them out to an editor?

Quang: So if it's not a yes, to what extent would you be involved in developing the proposal a little more?

Sloan: I don't think you're going to hear from anyone here that we're sending writers out to outside editors. Usually when you have to bring an outside editor in, you've got a really substantial problem. And if we like it enough that we want to take it on—I had a book I sold earlier this year. I got a very smart query from an author who had great credentials, knew some of my clients, and I read the proposal and I thought the writing was fantastic, but I thought the way he had conceived and organized the proposal was really flawed. And I gave him very blunt notes about it, and I actually assumed I wasn't going to get him because I was so forthright in what I thought was wrong with it. The guy turned it around and it was picture perfect and I had people fighting over it. But we don't go to outside editors in general. Do you guys at all?

Ira: I—the only time I send people out are—I have clients who aren't writers. I have clients who are professionals in a particular business. I'm working with a woman now who is not a writer, but she can—she has the information in a particular field, and I have set her up with a collaborator.

Dorian: And the platform.

Ira: Yeah, she has the platform, she has the connections. I mean, this woman is not a born writer, but she's got information, so she's working with someone right now and that someone is a writer/editor who will make a book for her. But that's a very different kind of situation, it's like, you know, the CEOs or those business people or the realtors or whoever, you know, they have, yeah, what we call the platform. I think very, very rarely does one take on a client who isn't already there, because it's a frustrating experience for both the writer and the agent. I mean, it can be very difficult. And I think we're all really looking at the work. A great idea from someone who isn't able to really elaborate, you know, that idea, able to kind of execute what we need to get that person a deal, is not going to be someone that any of us can embrace, because what we need is the work.

Quang: Also we have a—I'm sorry, go ahead.

Ayesha: I just had a question about that, so the woman you matched up with the outside writer, that's somebody you've already taken on?

Ira: I took her on based on her expertise in a particular field and I thought she would be an appropriate person to do a book about the field she works in.

Ayesha: But you wouldn't say to somebody: Oh, go work with an outside writer and then come back and—

Ira: No.

Ayesha: Exactly.

Quang: We often get the etiquette question about whether or not it's proper to query agents simultaneously. Do all of you just want to address that in a sentence or so?

Ira: Whatever we say, you're going to do whatever you want anyways, so it doesn't really matter. Nobody ever listens.

Ayesha: I think it's kind of polite to at least let us know that, though. I mean—It's impossible to just query one agent at a time, but just let us know that you're sending it out simultaneously.

Quang: Right. And would you bother to say who it is?

Ayesha: No, no.

Quang: What is a reasonable response time for all of you? Assuming the query's in place and you've looked at it, you know. Are we talking two months maybe, could a writer wait for a response? Ten days?

Dorian: A response for a query letter?

Quang: Yeah, as a yes or no.

Ira: Just the letter?

Quang: I sent you a letter saying: Represent me. You get back to me, for how long?

Ira: A letter, you know, that's easy. That's probably within ten days or two weeks. A manuscript, that depends on a lot of things, like, three clients can deliver simultaneously, and you're obligation is to actually get to those clients first, so all of a sudden, you know, the manuscript you thought you were going to take home that weekend gets pushed to another weekend. I mean, I think we all endeavor to get back to writers as quickly as we can. If we have something on exclusive—I mean, for me, I will get to it really, really quickly. But if something is being submitted multiply, and I have other things to do, it's hard for me to make the time. I mean, I don't know, I mean, I really would like to get back to everyone within thirty days, but it's such wishful thinking. You know, cause there's only so many manuscripts you can read in—I mean, for me, it's the weekend.

Quang: Sure.

Ira: You know, it's different for everyone, and indeed we all have these writers we've been working with forever and sometimes they come in and need us. So, it's, you know, I don't know, it's—

Quang: Right.

Ira: Like, I need to hear from other people on this.

Ayesha: Yeah, I try to respond to queries within two weeks or so, but realistically, a manuscript can take me eight to ten weeks.

Quang: I feel like agent response time is a lot faster than literary journal editors, who can take [Dorian: It is] six to eight months to send you a form letter. So, that's a pretty decent rate. Okay, so, last question about the query letter. Anything? Okay, good. I wanted—You know, a lot of times I think beginning writers choose short story as a form, and many questions we get here at the Workshop center around the possibility of agents helping writers to place short stories, and I feel like it's important to understand the sequence of how that happens, because people open a journal and they see this writer published in the Paris Review and six months later their book is on the shelf and there's some correlation being made in people's minds. Can you explain your roles in placing short stories in literary journals for young writers? Sloan? [laughter].

Sloan: We do sell short fiction for our clients, and I say "we" because I used to do that, and I now have a colleague who submits my short fiction for me. And there are some exceptions, um, that I make on occasion, but I don't have as much time to pay a lot of attention to who's acquiring what kind of story for whom, and that market has really desperately dried up in the last five years. But we do do it, and we do it successfully. We only submit short fiction for those writers that we've taken on as a full-time client. And this gets back a little bit to your question about nonfiction. I apologize for confusing the two, but we should be clear, with the possible exception of an expert, like the client Ira was talking about, the assumption here is that we have signed up a writer for his or her career. And the trust that gets built up over that long-term relationship is really where an agent does his or her best work. So, none of us have any business submitting a single short story that's truly brilliant. If you've only read 2500 or 3500 words of a writer's work, I can't quite imagine saying to that person, I want to represent you for the rest of your career. But once, at least with us, once you have become a client, if you write a short story that we think is really terrific, and subject to us giving you some notes and editing it with you, we will absolutely submit it, and um, there's no real secret to the way we go about it. We try and figure out the best market for the story and start at the top.

Ira: Though, you know, I mean, the one great short story I have is the Adam Haslett story, Adam Haslett being a writer who was nominated for a National Book Award, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist, won the Winship Award, just won a Guggenheim last year, had one of those magical debuts four years ago, was a—hit the New York Times bestseller list with a story collection because he was the second writer chosen for the Today Show book club when that was a brand new book club. And Adam is actually someone I took on based on one story.

Sloan: But he is an exception.

Ira: Yeah. So, I think the exceptions exist. And I think it's funny, cause I'm thinking about the people I have taken on too early, and I read a few stories, and I thought: Wow, there's something there. And more came in and I couldn't place it, they couldn't place it. I'm working with one writer who I really, really, really believe in right now, who's been what I call kind of a victim of the MFA culture. He's, you know, gotten the MFA and is now out there looking for the tenure track job, and is so desperate to finish a collection that he's giving me substandard work, work that's simply not as good as the work I saw when I took him on. So, it's a very tricky thing and you know, we also do a lot of dividing and conquering with people at the office, and with the client, like, if I think something is not gonna sell to the New Yorker or Harper's or whatever is left at this point. Also, you know, you can submit to Missouri Review yourself, you can do Virginia Quarterly yourself, cause it's really actually not worth my time or your time to have me go for that, but if I can introduce you to bigger places, that's good. So, it's, there's a lot of collaboration with people on stories. Sometimes one story feels more journal-ish and another feels more magazine-y. So you say to the client: You take that one, I'll take this one. And it can actually be a lot of fun. But it's part of career building, I think.

Ayesha: My thought about short stories is also that with the proliferation of MFA programs there's been a proliferation of short story writing, just because they're so much easier to workshop. And you know, I get told over and over again by students in MFA programs, you know, it's just so hard to workshop a novel, and it's so much easier to do this, and all of that, but very frequently, that short story collection is not ultimately what is suited to that writer's style or inclination or, you know, ultimate form, and it just brings me back to the point we were making earlier about making sure you create a body of work first. And you may have a collection or close to a complete collection when you come out of an MFA program, but that doesn't mean that's what you should be going to a literary agents with. Because of course, the market is dismal for literary fiction and even more dismal for short story collections. And when I was on the other end and acquiring, I always wanted to see whether this wonderful, talented writer could also produce something over a much longer form, which is a very different craft altogether. And you know, I'm convinced that everybody can produce a really good short story because you can be taught how to do that, but it's much, much harder to produce a good, you know, 300-page novel.

Quang: Right, right. It's interesting you know, because I was thinking when you were talking, Ira, there's an author named Thuy Le who wrote this book called The Gangster We're All Looking For, which was originally a performance piece that was published in excerpt in the Massachusetts Review, which was then republished in Harper's magazine, and then she signed with an agent named Nicole Aragi who sold her to—who got a book contract for her. I think one of the reasons that we always hear these kinds of stories is because they're mostly exceptional. [Sloan: Right] I don't think this is how most agents find writers. I think it's really important to remember that, because one of the things they're not crediting themselves for is that they've traipsed through MFA programs, they go to conferences, they participate in panels, because they want to find the talent. And it's not just about necessarily sitting there and opening an envelope and waiting for that magic to happen. It's hard work to write a story, but it's also a lot of hard work to find them, and one of the things I think happens in publishing is that most editors will tell you that they're publishing about 85% of what they think is the best work. And therefore, agents are representing some of the best work, right? So this is all kind of a big process that you have to go through. Okay, we've been talking for fifty minutes. Now it's your turn. And you can ask questions as you wish, to elaborate, or new ones. I just pray for pithiness. Go ahead.

Audience Member: Can you talk about representing Asian American writers, and is the market for Asian Americans writers more difficult or challenging?

Quang: What do you think about representing Asian American writers and is it more challenging to represent them? Good question for this space. You're all not Asian American. How did that happen?

Ayesha: I am.

Quang: Oh, of course you are. See, we're so color blind here, it's very cool.

Ira: I think that's a really tough question to answer because I really think it's about the writing. It's about the writing, it's about the writing, and I think we live in a culture where um, notions of cultural representation in the mainstream are really important to all of us. I think we're all very concerned about our responsibility, you know, in terms of getting diverse work out there. But I don't know that it's any harder to represent an Asian American than it is, you know, an African American, or an Indian American, I think if that person is good—and they're good, and they're good, and they're good, it doesn't matter. I mean, so, it's tough, I mean, I have two Filipino American writers and another kind of Pan-Asian writer, and I can't say that I think of them any differently than I think of, you know, the white girl who grew up on Park Avenue or the, you know, whoever it is, they're all interesting writers to me because they're interesting writers and so, I don't know.

Dorian: But if you want to talk about it cynically, it's actually, I think, harder to represent—and if you want to talk about story collections especially—you know, straight young white males on story collections than—you know, because how do you talk about it? How do you get off the book page attention for that person? How do you market them? How do you get any attention for the book? It's just a straight young white man, who cares what his experience is? I mean, it's—[laughter] And I think especially now at this moment where there is tremendous interest, at least surface interest, in, you know, other cultures. And international writing, as long as it's not in translation. So I think that—again, this is the maybe the slightly dopey, cynical answer, but not entirely unrealistic, that if the only thing, if the only way of talking—this is especially with collections, I guess, where it's so hard to deal with collections period—how do you talk about them, how do you get them out there, how do you market them. But I think in fact, it's uh, I think in fact it can be easier.

Quang: Does anybody want to add anything to that? It's a good question. I think there's one agent who expressly called and said she liked Asian American writers. I mean, they all do, but she—Sandra Dijkstra, you all probably all know her, she represents Maxine Hong Kingston and a number of others. D-i-j-k-s-t-r-a. You can google her. But also, you know, the interesting thing is to see the number of Asian American writers who are represented across the board by all kinds of agents. Whether they're boutique agencies or big companies, it's actually not possible anymore to answer the question of: are there agents interested in Asian American writers? Because they are, right. And it's just a matter of trying to find the right fit between the person who's supposed to be very enthusiastic about you and the kind of work you're producing. Because it's pretty diverse now, it's not as simple anymore as just saying that. Another question. Okay, I think you asked one, so I'm going to go up here.

Audience Member: Do you guys see any trends, either positive or negative, in the types of submissions you're getting? And also, any trends in terms of what is really selling these days?

Quang: The question is about, sort of, trends, in literary works.

Audience Member: Uh, yeah, like, are they seeing the same thing over and over again?

Ayesha: Well, I think that again it varies for each of us, because hope—because we sort of get known for doing particular things, I guess, you know, the kind of submissions we see vary. I tend to get a lot of multicultural—quote unquote—fiction for good or for bad, and I think there was a trend, you know, to kind of build on Dorian's cynicism a little bit more, um, maybe a number of years ago where, you know, sort of immigrant fiction or international fiction was kind of the hot thing and, you know, that's what all of us were looking for as editors, you know, just if it was Thai or Filipino or whatever, that was, you know, that was good. You know, it was definitely an advantage. But I think that that's sort of more or less over and, you know, it's not really enough to rest on that. But I still do get a lot of those kinds of queries, you know, I'm something-slash-American and, you know, I'm writing about the immigrant experience, and I—To me, that's sort of insufficient and ultimately, a little bit lazy to just rest upon, you know, that kind of identity, rather than doing the hard work of actually creating, you know, excellent fiction.

Quang: Yes.

Audience Member: I have two quick questions. One is do you have any agents that write both fiction and nonfiction and do how do you suggest they go about it first. And the other was, do you ever get queries of incomplete manuscripts, perhaps the whole synopsis and the plot is there, but the writer admits that it's not yet finished as they're sending it to you?

Quang: So it's two parts. Do you have any clients that do both fiction and nonfiction, and do you take on clients who haven't finished a manuscript?

Ira: Yes, yes.

Ayesha: Um, no, no. [laughter]

Dorian: Yes, yes.

Sloan: Yes, yes.

Quang: Alright, I have some yes/no questions for you, in fact. So, here's just four. Okay. Yes or no, no elaborations, please. Let's try to be absolutists about it. It's possible to get a contract from a major publisher without an agent. Yes or no.

Ira: No. [Sloan: Yes]

[laughter]

Ayesha: No

Dorian: Yes

Sloan: Yes

Quang: Short stories are harder to sell than novels.

Ira: Yes

Dorian: Yes

Ayesha: Yes

Sloan: Yes

[laughter]

Quang: Contacts will help you in the query letter.

Ira: Yes

Ayesha: Yes

Dorian: Yes

Sloan: Yes

Quang: It helps if the author is attractive.

Ira: Oof.

[laughter]

Ira: Yes

Ayesha: Yes

Dorian: But in a totally—

Quang: Ah-ah. No, violation of the rules!

Dorian: I can't do that!

Quang: What about you, Sloan?

Sloan: Yes

Quang: Yes. Okay, so that's the reality. [laughter] Another question. I think we know who's going to get published, just by looking out—Okay, god there's a lot of questions.

Audience Member: I would really like some advice. I have finished a novel that has been in the semi-finals of the Faulkner for two years. The screenplay of the same project was a Nickel Fellowship finalist, which is the Academy of Motion Pictures, and the musical of the same project—

Quang: That's great.

Audience Member: And I had been with an agent who was only a film agent. That agency saw its demise, and I did not stay with that person. And I would like to know whether I should go—I would like to be represented first for the novel, and I don't know whether it's best for me to go to a boutique or to go to a house that might be able to represent all three.

Quang: That's a good question. So the question is: If you are doing many different kinds of art forms, is it better to be with a smaller agency or a bigger one that might accommodate that? Though I must say that though you work in big companies, you're both in the literary department.

Sloan: Right. I'll take this one?

Dorian: I think you still have to get, I can speak for me, that just because you're getting a literary, someone from the literary department on board at a big agency, that you're automatically gonna have access to the L.A. office and the book-to-film people. You'll have the book-to-film if the book happens, but that, you know, it's not an in to the whole agency, you're being taken on by one department, and you still—And while, if the book works, et cetera, et cetera, than it may be easier—it will be easier to have entree into other arms of the agency, it's by no means an automatic. You're brought in for the literary department, and the rest you're still working for.

Audience Member: Um, if you're fortunate enough to have sort of, to pick an agent, could you tell me why you'd pick a small agency or a big agency? And what an agent actually does for you to sell a novel, because, you know, no one's actually said that.

[laughter]

Quang: So, um, pros and cons of small versus big agencies. And what do you all do?

[laughter]

Ira: I think, at the beginning of one's career, it's actually about the agent, not the agency. Issues of large versus small tend to come up later in one's career, and we do see a lot of writers moving to larger agencies because they actually need more of the services of a large agency. I think at the beginning of your career it's about a connection with that person, it's about trust, it's about—I mean, I've always likened it to kind of bringing on a doctor or a lawyer. It's both professional and intimate simultaneously, and you wanna have faith in the people who advise you, you know, in the law or through your life as a healthy person, and I think a lot of that is gut and instinct on both parts, and that's where you have to begin, because if a person doesn't have the belief in you, it doesn't matter where they work. They're the person who's kind of like, cheering for you and flying your flag, and it doesn't matter if it's one person working at home or if it's Andrew Wiley or if it's, you know, the corporate agencies. It's passion and it's a field really, really, really built on passion.

Quang: Sloan, do you want to answer the question of how you, once you've signed an author and you feel like that person is ready, what happens?

Sloan: Sure. We—I'm sure all four of us are far more editorial than you would imagine. the thing that I've had to learn the hard way is, when you make a submission, at such point as the agent the author agree that the book is ready to go out and be submitted, you're really only getting one chance with each publishing house. And you can make exceptions to that, but, the first thing we have to do is build trust with the writer and make sure that we are encouraging and inspiring the writer to make the project be as good as it can be before it hits the street. And that works for both nonfiction and fiction. The job of an agent is basically to allow a writer to do what he or she does best, which is write. And so, we are both working on the manuscript, making sure it's in good shape. We're supposed to be putting it in the hands of the editors at the most appropriate publishing houses that we believe will do the best job publishing the book. We negotiate the deal. If we get an offer for the client, and hopefully you have a competitive situation, but that doesn't always happen. We do the legal work of representing, of uh, negotiating the contract. Uh, we chase the money. And that's all the easy stuff. The hardest part of the job, for me, is working to make sure that the publisher is doing a good job with the publication. And there's little that's more terrifying for a first-time author, than walking into Borders or a Barnes & Noble and seeing how many books are there right in front of you. And agents don't get a lot of credit for how much work we do with the publicity and marketing effort and talking to magazines about books and talking to writers and trying to create word of mouth and making sure the publisher is doing their job. And that's all the micro-job of the agent. The larger job is to constantly pay attention to the writer and where he or she is in their career, and how each project fits into growing the writer, because it's horrible to admit, but a costly mistake right now, with the wrong book at the wrong time, can literally cost you the ability to get published again. And that's where some of the best work of an agent comes in, is being able to say to your client: I know how awful it is for you to hear this, but this is not the right time or this book is fundamentally broken and we've got to start or we've got to do something different. And if you, when you ask small or big, if you don't—if you can't count on the agent you signed up with to give you that kind of good advice, to give you hard advice, and to be working, thinking about your long-term career, you have no business being with that agent, it's not the right person for you.

Quang: Good advice. Okay, a question from this side of the room. I saw some hands. In the red.

Audience Member: Just to follow up on that question, say we were working—ideally, in a perfect world, how long would it take before, after the point where you sign a client, to the point where you are able to negotiate the deal. And how long would it take after the deal is negotiated, til the book is actually published. Is that process years?

Quang: Ayesha, do you want to take that one?

Ira: I have a question for you: Is the book finished? Okay.

Ayesha: Um, I think, the first part of the question varies quite considerably. Because, you know, if your project is really, truly finished, and all it needs is some fine tuning, then that's all that would need to be done, along with maybe, thinking about how to raise your visibility, to make sure that we're creating the most marketable—quote unquote—package possible, you know, everything from, you know, maybe early endorsements to um, you know, prizes and things like that, if a lot of that is underway already, then you've done all the important hard work ahead of time. But uh, then, you know, I would say from the time of acquisition to the time of publication, that can also vary, but your editor would probably work with you anywhere from like, six to eight months, you know, revising and editing and stuff like that, and then it's another nine months to a year to publication after that.

Quang: Okay, another question? Up in the front here.

Audience Member: This is like, the horse before the cart. Um, I met a couple of editors at a conference and they asked me—they were very interested when I pitched my book. And now, I don't know if when I send the manuscript to them, I mean, the few chapters, if I should look for an agent. If they like it, how do I get an agent? Or, do I look for an agent before I send these chapters?

Quang: Right. So the question is: If an editor approaches you and says, I'd like to see your work, how do you go about making the decision to get an agent and how do you do that? Cause I was just—I'm reading Bernard Cooper, who's one of your clients, right, Sloan, who had an editor call him up and after publication said I'd really love to get this book from you. Dorian, do you want to maybe address this? Of when editors express interest in writers.

Dorian: Like most things, it's very hard for me to give a straight answer because it does vary a little bit, but I would say in your case, or in general, uh, if an editor reads your work and loves it and wants to acquire it, you're not going to have any problem finding an agent.

Audience Member: Just call an agent and tell em—

Dorian: Well, you're not just going to call any old agent, it has to be appropriate. It isn't that any agent will jump at it because they're so anxious, but what I'm saying is that if the work is strong enough that an editor gets that excited about it after they've seen it, then you won't really have a problem finding somebody. I don't think you need to step back and start at square one, if you've got editors requesting it. On the other hand, you might want to just try a few people first, and not blow your wad on, you know, go to like eight—

Audience Member: When you say a few people—

Dorian: A few of the editors first, so that you won't have exhausted the pool.

Quang: And probably the rules still apply, you still have to write a good letter and you still have to find the right agent to send it to, so [Dorian: Right] when you're looking for an agent it's sort of, varying degrees of excitability, you know, and readiness.

Audience Member: What if you've signed up with a really good agent and they've tried for several years to sell your book, but they haven't been able to. What do you do then, do you just give up on your book? Or do you give up on the agent?

Quang: What do you do with those short story collections, huh? No, the question legitimately is: What do you do when the manuscript can't—just doesn't sell? Two years, three years, I mean, this happens, too, right? Do you change agents, do you write another book?

Ira: I mean, this is something that you and the agent should have talked about already. I mean, I think these relationships are all really, really unique. Um, but after two or three years, that's an awfully long time, and that's when I think you gotta talk to your agent and ask: Are you still interested? Is it time to pull this back? Shall I be moving on to the next thing? Um, you know, but you gotta talk to that person, and you can't just—and you can't be passive, I think. Cause sometimes—Sloan said it, sometimes an agent has to turn around to a writer and say: It's not working. And maybe that's the case, and maybe it's time to put that away and move onto the next thing, but it's—I don't think there's a pat answer for that.

Dorian: I think if your agent has really done—just from what little you've said, sounds like you're essentially speaking positively of the person—that if they have really gotten the material out there, gotten it to the appropriate people, followed up, been responsive and responsible to you, and the book hasn't sold, then you need to move on to the next one, I think. And I don't think the answer is: Let me switch agents cause someone else can work magic where this person couldn't. If a given editor rejected a book from—assuming that the person is a fair, legitimate, you know, reasonable established person—the editor is going to probably reject it whether it came from that person, and certainly they're not going to revisit it from another person. So you probably just have to take it in stride and move on and think, on the other hand, it's possible to revisit that project maybe after the first one is sold, depending on how the first one does. It doesn't mean that that will never see the light of day, it might mean it's not going to be—it probably does mean it's not going to be your first book.

Audience Member: But what if it's a really large agency so it will be submitted to the really big houses, when there are all these small publishing houses, but agencies aren't interested because you can't make money from small houses, then what do you do? That's my—can you—because you can't—

Dorian: I would hope that even a large agency—An agent who loves your work and is passionate about it, whether or not they're at a large agency, is going to stand by it. And maybe they're not going—sorry, excuse me—they're going to stand by it, and they're going to be perfectly willing to try, and even happy—I mean, I've—and maybe this is dumb of me, but I mean, I've taken things on that I've thought: I think this is incredible. In fact, it may be incredible-ing me out of a really good commercial deal, but I'm going to try it anyway and if it ends up being—I don't know, if it ends up being a Soft Skull or a Milkweed or, you know, whatever, then fine. This is the first step. This is the first step in a long career.

Quang: The other thing I've heard editors say, even at large houses, is that they're really genuinely interested in careerist writers who will write—who imagine themselves writing many novels or whatever, through their lives, you know. And it's punishing to get a huge contract because it is so difficult to earn back that money for the publishing company that you have a sales record that could hurt your chances for future books. I mean, I think there's some level of persistence here, which is at every level. And you can probably find a lot of stories about people who were rejected fifty times before they found the small publisher and won an award, and in fact, somebody named Alexander Chee, who wrote a book called Edinburgh, that we gave an award to, was that kind of situation and has now moved to Houghton Mifflin, which is a pretty big publishing company, but nobody had ever heard of his publisher when they brought out his book. I also think that it's a legitimate question to ask whether a book is good enough, but if you ask whether I'm good enough, then you should get out, because it's the wrong sort of way of thinking about it. From this side of the room? Anybody else? Okay, we're moving back over here. Annapurna?

Audience Member: Um, this is maybe a bit of a follow up, but if you have an agent is not working that hard for you, how do you break up with them?

Quang: How do you break up with an agent who just, who's just not working hard enough for you? All of you—who has agents? And you're looking to change? Okay. How do you—when it's not right, what's the appropriate way?

Ira: Nicely. [laughter] Write a very nice letter. But this notion of an agent not working hard enough for a writer is a very, very subjective thing. Sometimes a discussion with the person who's working with you has to precede your termination of that agreement because I—you know, I think—

Audience Member: Well, if they don't return your emails to have that discussion—

Ira: Well, it, okay, it's tricky—[laughter] I mean, I think we're all a little defensive about this sometimes because I mean, there are writers in my life who, damn right, I'm not returning every email because six a day is five too many. So they hear back once, and I think, you know, we're working with a population of people who are a little bit more high strung than the rest of the world, so you have gauge your own kind of like, psychological state, and your anxiety with what you think that person is doing because it is a very, very anxiety-producing thing to put your work into the world, and notions of how hard the other person is working are all entirely subjective. So it's tricky, I mean, if this is a consistent pattern and someone isn't getting back to you at all, that's a problem. If they're not getting back to you as much as you would like them to, that's a different issue, that's more of a gray area, and I think, you know, again, we each find that these relationships we have with our clients, each one is very different. Some people have much higher needs than others, um, and it sounds to me like there's a little conversation you need to have, but, you know, I always tell the writer: Ask yourself how you're doing. It is a relationship and you've got responsibilities to that person as well, and I'm sorry, it's a real like, agent's answer, like: Take a look at yourself. [laughter] But, but I would suggest, you know, that might be a place to start.

Quang: I think it's important to understand that these folks represent a lot of writers. It isn't just the six or seven that you hear about, I mean there's potentially—How many writers do you have, Sloan, more or less, in your stable?

Sloan: I've never done a count, I really don't know.

Quang: How many do you have, Dorian? They don't even know how many they have!

Dorian: Well also cause things are at very different points. You know, you're not—you have thirty writers, you don't have thirty people whose manuscripts are hitting your desk that you have to—that you're going out on submission with and you're simultaneously submitting. So, I have, you know, fifteen writers whose first books have come out, I have, I don't know, eight writers who I'm kind of in process—at various stage of the process, that I've committed to, but their things aren't out on submission yet. I usually only submit one thing at a time, because a lot of what I submit overlaps, I think, it does a disservice to everything to go—So it is kind of a hard question.

Quang: Right, right. No, it's good. I think the other thing to say—I'm sorry to interrupt—is that I think everybody in the publishing industry really does know each other. And you know, they talk a lot, editors who become agents, agents who were once writers, and so, at heart it's a business, and it's important to be polite and professional, cause it'll come back to you very quickly.

Ira: Cause yeah, we'll, we'll haunt you.

Quang: Yeah, Ira especially. [laughter] Ayesha, did you want to say something on that point? About how to break up?

Ayesha: Yes, I agree, I agree with everything that's said. At the same time, I do think that we should also hold ourselves to the highest standards and that includes, you know, communicating with our clients on a regular basis, and, I mean, we go into this business knowing that we're working with people who create, who are by their very nature, probably people who need a little more nurturing than others and so, that's what we're signing up for, you know, so, part of that is just sort of lowering that state of anxiety and dealing with it. But yes, I agree, I think one email per day is probably enough.

[laughter]

Quang: Is there another question? Yeah?

Audience Member: In terms of selecting an agent that is a good fit for your work, is there a better way to research them aside from reading everything on the book shelves and matching up what you think your work is sort of like to the agent that—do you know what I mean—that um, that agented that book. Because it seems the best way is to just read a whole bunch of work and find out what work yours speaks to.

Quang: Sure. I guess this is a question about trying to find, through research, the best agents to query and um, reading some of their clients' works. I mean, is there a—I feel like people are always looking for the magic bullet and there's never really one, but I understand your question completely. Why don't we give them time to think about it while we take a second one, and then we'll pass the answers around.

Audience Member: I just wanted to follow up on an earlier answer, I think the panel indicated that, with respect to fiction, a fiction novel—the panel indicated that in most cases, or in some cases, they review non-completed manuscripts. But is there a preference as to whether you want to see completed manuscripts when you're dealing with a novel?

Quang: Is there a preference of seeing a completed work versus a partial, and a work that hasn't even been finished?

Ayesha: I definitely prefer finished novels.

Dorian: Yeah.

Quang: Yeah. They say you get the better agent, then you get the better deal, if you're done.

Dorian: Mmhmm.

Quang: Yeah. We're still thinking about your question. Is there another one in the back? Yeah, go ahead.

Audience Member: Do you deal with young adult fiction at all and is there a different way of going about trying to get an agent for that kind book?

Quang: How many young adult writers do we have in the audience? Two. Great. Do any of you represent young adult authors?

Ayesha: Yes

Dorian: Yes

Quang: Okay, do you want to address any of that?

Dorian: I think because the young adult—the few young adult projects that I do, and I've really enjoyed it, and kind of, am definitely open to doing more. But it follows a not terribly dissimilar line to the fiction that I do. I mean, I don't think—while the field players is very different, in terms of the houses and the editors, and so it really is learning another arm of it—I guess what I'm talking about is for literary young adult, uh, I don't—for me, the process isn't very—isn't a different one.

Quang: Ayesha, do you have a different take on young adult?

Ayesha: No, no I don't have—Yeah, it's just, it's just a different cast of characters, a different set of people that we're submitting to, but—and you know, there's certain probably slightly different rules, you know, for the kind of book and the kind of narrative that it would have to be. But also, there's more and more overlap.

Dorian: Yeah, a lot of the rules are breaking, which is why it's getting more interesting to do.

Ayesha: Yeah, exactly. And a lot of houses are, you know, maybe marketing to two different audiences for the same book. And it's actually it's a good area to be in, because there's a lot of stuff happening in the young adult world.

Quang: Um, I'm going to start my plugs because we're winding down here, folks. My father's—no, my boyfriend's father has a penthouse in Barcelona and he donated it to the Workshop, it's a 1,000 square feet penthouse with two terraces, right in the heart of Barcelona. And basically, if you rent it—

Dorian: I'll do a calendar!

[laughter]

Quang: If you want to go there and finish your book, we're renting it out and all the proceeds support the Workshop. It's a wonderful, beautiful place and there have been two novels that have been completed in there, so you'd be following in very august footsteps. Um, your question is how to find the right agent, as opposed to the best agent. Is there another one? Mai, you want to?

Audience Member: Yeah, um, when you say—by completed manuscript do you mean third draft, fourth draft? What does it mean—

Quang: Hmmm, Mai, sweetheart, really?

[laughter]

Dorian: Bring it as far along as you can bring it on your own. Don't leave it at a point where you're like: I know I still need to work on the dialogue there, I know I still need to cut, and uh, I just don't want—Take it as far as you can yourself, and then a fresh pair of eyes is great. They'll come in and hopefully, inevitable, they'll want to do certain things to tweak it. But it's up to you to take it as far as you can.

Quang: Right. Another one? We got time for three quick questions and then we're done. So, in the back?

Audience Member: A query letter in which the writer talks about work they've had produced in either theater or film—Number one, what's the best way to present that, and number two, is that—does that say: Oh, this is a dilettante or is that more interesting as someone who works exclusively in prose?

Quang: Right. So, I guess, do other credentials and accomplishments in other art forms help?

Dorian: Depends how significant the accomplishments are.

Ira: Well said, well said. No, I think you raise an interesting question because I know I get a little like, ambivalent when I see, oh my god, he's done this, he's done that. But if it was a play that was nominated for the Pulitzer, well, we know you know how to write. Um, but if it's marginal and we're not going to know what it is, don't bother, because then we will think you're a dilettante.

Quang: Okay. Another question? Yeah, with the glasses.

Audience Member: How common is it for an editor to ask a writer to submit directly to the publisher?

Sloan: When they can get their hooks into you, very common. If they can avoid going through an agent, and they're impressed by your work, they'll often do it. But the flipside to that is that I have a number of clients who were referred to me by editors who wanted to buy their book, and they would prefer to do the professional part of the business with an agent.

Quang: Good. Okay, who's got the most brilliant question because it really is the last one. So, if you're feeling really confident, raise your hand really high. Alright, there you go, you're up.

Audience Member: What's a fair cut for an agent?

Quang: Oh, the money question! What's the fair cut for an agent? Are we all at 15%

Ira: The standard is 15%.

Quang: 15% for the fee.

Ira: 20 for foreign.

Quang: 20.

Audience Member: Do you get paid in advance or do people get a cut of what you make, or if it sells—

Ira: I'm sorry I didn't—

Ayesha: Never pay an agent in advance.

Dorian: An agent only gets paid if you get paid.

Ira: Right, right. If someone wants money from you, they're not one of us, they're not legit. Reading fees—we don't charge reading fees. There's a whole, there's a whole like, underworld of—[Sloan: Shady] Yeah, shady people taking advantage of writers and you know, you live in New York, it's like, you shouldn't—that's for like, the people in the Midwest. [laughter] You know, the industry is here, it's legit, you know, you're fine.

Quang: That's good. Another plug—and I'm sorry we didn't get to your question. If I could ask the agents just to stick around for a few more minutes afterwards and then they can come up and talk to you individually and get your emails and your assistant's name and things like that. We're doing a big event, you know, there's a PEN World Festival that launches tonight, and Orhan Pamuk, who's a wonderful Turkish writer, is down at Cooper Union with Margaret Atwood and Salman Rushdie, but it's an entire week of fantastic events, which are listed in your blue book, and we're doing one of them on Friday, which is a panel about women writers. It's going to be five writers and it's going to be an amazing panel, I think. And also, if you ever want to take writing workshops, you know, I always feel like this is the helpful thing, too, you know, to try to get feedback from peers and just kind of be in a supportive environment where people are reading your work and understanding it, because you really want more than—you really want a lot of eyes to see your manuscript before you certainly send it to any agents. Alright, so just make sure to find a way to get that feedback, and we're a place for it, open to more than just Asian American people, but you know, there are a lot of writing outfits in town that you could look to for support. And the last thing, I just want to always remind writers that the publishing business needs you just as much as you need it. You know, they can't sell anything if you don't write it. So, in some sense, you're actually in a wonderfully powerful place to do what you really want to do, and I feel like good writing is based on a lot of sincerity??Okay, how about a wonderful round of applause for these hardworking, intelligent people.

[applause]

Quang: Okay, they're gonna hang around for just a few minutes. Please, if you brought your manuscript, do not give it to them, it's just weird, and we'll hope to see you back here at the Workshop, okay?

This event was co-sponsored by Poets & Writers Magazine. Thanks to the staff at P&W and Pimpila Thanaporn.