Hi everyone,
Last week ended up being a bit of a blur. I track my daily progress in certain areas, and there were big crosses all over my spreadsheet. Exercise? Nope. Word count? Zero. Newsletters? Not a single one. Progress on my indie books that I’m getting ready for relaunch. None at all.
But you know what did happen?
We got offers of representation for the memoir I’m co-writing!
So, for those of you keeping track at home, I parted ways with my literary agent of five years in February. I started querying new agents almost immediately for my novel and had requests for the manuscript within days (12 out of the 23 agents I pitched asked to see the full manuscript). Offers started coming in mid-March, and by the end of March I had signed with a top agency in New York for my fiction.
I’d started thinking by this point that I needed to get the ghostwriting project out, and so I sent the queries around 2am one night and went to bed, and by the time I’d woken up the next morning, less than twelve hours later, I’d had SIX requests from agents to see the full proposal. More requests followed over the next week or two, and last week the offers started coming in.
Yesterday, I emailed the agent we’ve decided to go with and we did a virtual happy dance together. I haven’t signed the papers yet so can’t tell you who it is, but it’s a big agency in London. (You know I like to diversify internationally.)
I’m highly aware that this is not the normal trajectory for writers when it comes to finding literary agents.
It is not typical to get so many requests for manuscripts. (I write excellent query letters.)
It is not typical to get this many offers. (I believe my books are excellent.)
It is not typical to have separate agents for fiction and nonfiction (I’m excellent at knowing what I want and negotiating for it.)
And it is certainly not typical to get representation from two top agencies, one in New York and one in London, within three weeks of each other.
I don’t do typical. But you already knew that.
In every piece of advice I’ve read about pitching and signing with agents, the writer is advised to play small. Instead of treating it like the business partnership that it is, between two equals, writers are encouraged to do everything they can to impress agents, be grateful for any offer, and treat every bit of advice that comes from an agent as gospel.
I don’t play that game.
I play a different game.
My game’s called “My Business, My Way.”
And if you want, I’ll teach it to you.
I’m thinking of putting together a low-cost course called “The Agent Game” and I will teach you everything I know about querying and signing with agents in a way that puts you, the writer, at the center of this important decision, and therefore helps you get not only multiple offers, but the right ones, so that it’s the perfect fit for everyone. And of course, being me, I will talk about something not a single other course on agents talks about: The things you’ll need to do differently as a minority or international writer.
Interested? Hit reply and let me know. If enough people want it, I’ll make it.
More tomorrow.
Cheers,
Natasha