Anatomy of a Successful Author-Agent Relationship
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- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- Literary agents Jessica Faust and James McGowan discuss what makes for a successful relationship between authors and agents, including what boundaries should be set, transparency, and trust.
BookEnds is dedicated to making publishing a book traditionally a more transparent process, and it starts with these videos!
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Jessica Faust’s love for books is what first brought her to open BookEnds Literary Agency. It is her desire to be an advocate for all authors that pushed her to create her blog, the BookEnds RUclips channel and to maintain a vibrant presence on Twitter.
Jessica is proud to have grown BookEnds to an agency that represents authors of all genres for children and adults, allowing her to reach more readers and help more authors and illustrators achieve their dreams.
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James McGowan is a Literary Agent at BookEnds and writer for children. He began working with the agency as an intern in the summer of 2015, and basically never left. He represents a talented group of authors and illustrators working in everything from board books to middle grade graphic novels. He also works in adult nonfiction, and adult mystery and suspense projects. James is the author of GOOD NIGHT OPPY, which is available now.
Connect with BookEnds!
Twitter: bookendslit
Instagram: bookends_literary
Website: www.bookendsliterary.com
Connect with Jessica: bookendsjessica
Connect with James: jmcgowanbks
Thanks for the look behind the curtain of literary publishing !
Bravo Jessica for keeping your weekends personal time. Having worked for companies where the boss calls at 5am on a personal phone I LOVE that you have humane boundaries ❤
So, the agent is the author 's only constant in the publishing journey! That's a mighty tight bond!📚
Thanks for these videos. They are super helpful.
I keep agreeing out loud with Jessica, 100% relating. 😄 Not sure if it's personality or generation but love this.
Also really helpful for me to hear right now… did not have the best conversation with my agent a couple weeks ago, then she went abroad and we haven’t spoken since, so I reached out last week & am awaiting a reply. I feel an honest conversation needs to happen soon so we can clear up any lingering ill or awkward feeling and miscommunication before the year is over. Honesty is truly probably the best policy..
Perfect timing! Have an agent for only 2 weeks. Want to be an ideal client.
You already are!❤
amazing wish I had an agent
Very informative
Awesome, thank you for your input 💡
Great to know. Here's hoping to get my first.
Hi! Love your channel. Could you do a video on the process for requesting fulls? I’ve seen quite a bit of discourse on Twitter about agents ghosting on fulls (some for a year or more) and I’m very curious about this. Why wouldn’t they just reject? And in QT you can see Agents with very low sub reply rates. What’s your take?
Glad you've enjoyed our channel! I can add that to our list of potential video ideas!
Thanks for the video! You've touched on a lot of this, but I love the elaboration. Quick question- in your opinions, during the initial conversation when choosing to partner with an agent, is it "ok" to ask how many clients they have and if so, do you have any input on what that number range "should" be or any red flags for authors along those lines? Seems like an agent could take on too many authors and that could be an issue? Thanks!!
Hi! You can certainly ask them, but their answer might not tell you what you actually want to know, which is presumably whether they have the bandwidth to take on clients and how they keep track of everything. Since a lot of agents might have many largely inactive clients, their lists might seem big but they might only be actively working with a couple of their clients at any one time, which means their workload is actually quite small. So, we would recommend focusing your questions on communication and organization instead, and using client references to get a sense of how overworked or focused the agent seems! We did a video called "How Many Clients is Too Many" which elaborates on this topic more :)
Hello! I'm back with another question :) if you consulted with an authenticity reader (i.e. for neurodiversity) while writing your book, should you mention that in your query or only if you get a full request/an agent asks? (It's not obvious from the pitch that some characters are neurodiverse)
Hi! You can mention it in your query letter if you'd like :) But also, depending on the content, there's a good chance it won't even come up until you're at the stage of doing revisions with an agent or an editor, unless you offer the info up on your own!
Are you agents? Can i hire you to promote my book?
Ridiculous that people don’t like phone or zoom calls. It’s the most effective way to communicate. Nothings lost in translation.