I was totally on fire after my first book, The Skater Chronicles, was written in 2002. I joined Writers Market.com and queried a bazillion agents, and the rejections started pouring in. I started calling my submissions ‘boomerangs’ because I knew when I sent them out they would probably come right back to me.
I gave myself one year to find an agent. If I couldn’t find one after a year I would look into self publishing. As the year went on and the rejection pile grew, I felt that I wouldn’t make my one year agent goal. But, to my great surprise, I got a phone call on December 29th from an agent who wanted to represent me.
I screamed, yelled,did backflips, I was over the moon. I found this agent on Writersmarket and he was in the Writers Digest Book of agents, so I thought this is it, I’m gonna hit the big time, baby.
The next step was the contract. That took a few months because the contract that was sent to me was photocopied and hard to read. We went back and forth about it, and finally my new agent said, “You just write it and send it.” Lucky for me, it just so happened that an editor/lawyer team spoke at a Sisters in Crime meeting that month. I contacted the lawyer and got the contract thing reworked and sent it off. Contract signed.
This agent didn’t require me to pay anything upfront, but I did have to reimburse for postage and copying, which I later learned was a red flag.
I knew agents were busy, so I didn’t call the guy often, maybe once a month. He rarely returned my calls, if ever. Once in a while I would get a rejection forwarded to me by his office, along with a billing statement with all of the places he’s sent my manuscript, but I really had no idea where my project stood.
On this went for…three years.
Then I joined a critique group. After running my manuscript, and agent story by them I realized my manuscript had errors that a writing 101 class could fix. I started to realize that no quality publishing company would publish my book in its current state which was basically a first draft.
I started to wonder if it would be better to not have an agent at all, then to be in the dark about my own project.
Fast forward a couple of weeks. I was in the bookstore with a friend and I picked up the latest edition of Writers Digest to check on my agent (check his client count, etc.), but he wasn’t listed. Went online to Writers Market, he wasn’t listed. Emailed Writers Market explaining I signed with the guy and want to get the 411, the response was something like ‘we have certain standards for the professionals we list, he’s no longer listed, you do the math.’
Then I checked the Predators and Editors site. My agent was listed as ‘not recommended.’ Super
I terminated the contract, thanked him for his time, and went on my way.
But what was learned here? Was it all a waste? No way! Here’s the deal. Although that author/agent relationship went south, it gave me hope for that period of time. It may have put me back at square one in terms of being an unagented writer, but I became a lot wiser and honestly, I don’t regret it.
Got a weird agent story? I wanna hear it!
C
No comments:
Post a Comment