We’ve been talking about literary agents this week—what they do, what they don’t do—and my friends at Books & Such Literary Management can tell you a lot more about that than I can.
In this post, Janet Grant lets us in on a secret: in spite of what you may think, an agent’s list is never full. Or, that is, “most agents are always open to new clients; it’s a matter of being the right kind of client” at the right time, she says.
An agent’s list might be “full” in that he has as many historical novelists as he thinks he can place in the current market. Or his list might be “open” if he is aggressively looking for more memoirs.
Agents are clear on their websites as to what they represent and don’t represent, but within those confines, an agent can decide to ramp up the number of clients in a category that’s growing or to slim down clients in a genre that’s not getting much traction with publishing houses. But that does not constitute a full list, by any means. Only the agent is likely to know the ways in which she wants to shift her client base.
Grant lists four reasons why an agent’s list might be closed (or open), and ends with the admonition that you should never assume an agent’s list is full … until he tells you it is. Good advice!
Tweet: Here’s a little secret: in spite of what you may think, an agent’s list is never full.
Tweet: Advice about literary agents FROM an agent!
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