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Over the past 23 years, I& #39;ve had and lost 3 literary agents... 1/16 (tagging some writers in case anyone thinks worth sharing @Jacopo_della_Q @gabehudson @alex_segura @denishaughnessy @Gabino_Iglesias @ericsmithrocks @mjseidlinger @chantelacevedo @JoshuaIsard) #WritingCommunity
...After months and months of querying, I got an agent for my first novel LOST around 1998. She loved the book and sent it to some editors/publishers. No acceptances the first round but I was hopeful we& #39;d get lucky with the second round of submissions... 2/16
...Then she quit agenting and I found out I was her first client. She was an agent& #39;s assistant, which she had not told me, and very young/inexperienced. She decided publishing wasn& #39;t for her, left industry. I was blindsided and no longer had an agent for the first novel... 3/16
...A few more months of querying and I ended up getting a new agent, but after a while I suspected it was at least borderline scam. She wanted me to pay monthly photocopying/mailing fees and didn& #39;t seem to have editorial contacts that would be helpful... 4/16
...Also, she was only vaguely familiar with the Internet (it was around 1999, so near the beginning of Amazon). That& #39;s when I decided to self-publish LOST in 2000, a much less common thing to do than today... 5/16
LOST got a great review in the Philadelphia Inquirer and I re-self-published in 2019... 6/16
http://scottsteinonline.com/books/lost/ ">https://scottsteinonline.com/books/los...
http://scottsteinonline.com/books/lost/ ">https://scottsteinonline.com/books/los...
I never got an agent for my second novel MEAN MARTIN MANNING. It was satirical, impolite, quirky, political, didn& #39;t fit neatly into a genre--I queried but wasn& #39;t surprised that no agenting offers came... 7/16
Eventually it found a home with a small press and got coverage/reviews in places like the Philadelphia City Paper, Philadelphia Inquirer, American Spectator, Reason magazine... 8/16
http://scottsteinonline.com/books/mean-martin-manning/">https://scottsteinonline.com/books/mea...
http://scottsteinonline.com/books/mean-martin-manning/">https://scottsteinonline.com/books/mea...
For my third/new/latest novel THE GREAT AMERICAN DECEPTION, I spent around a year and a half querying before finally signing with an agent at a big agency. She wanted to sell the book as YA because she thought the robot narrator and jokes would appeal to that audience. 9/16
Also, she thought selling it as YA made it possible to get a deal for a series. I had never thought of it as YA, but I did know that my 13-year-old (back then) laughed the whole way through reading it, so I believed she was on to something... 10/16
She said it did not need major revisions to work as YA. We then spent a year making those not-so-major revisions that became more major... 11/16
Months into it, I was asked to turn my hardboiled adult detective into a young teenager so it could sell as YA. I did so half-heartedly and ended up with a teenage detective who talked like Humphrey Bogart. It wasn& #39;t working. We went our separate ways... 12/16
It was for the best. The agent and the book were not a good match. I thought THE GREAT AMERICAN DECEPTION, while entertaining for teen readers too, would appeal to adult fans of Douglas Adams, P.G. Wodehouse, The Naked Gun. She didn& #39;t know editors who wanted that... 13/16
Eventually THE GREAT AMERICAN DECEPTION found a perfect home with @TinyFoxPress and was published in 2020. Got a starred review in Publishers Weekly (which named it a book of the week) and was recommended by Kirkus. I& #39;m now writing the sequel... 14/16 http://scottsteinonline.com/books/the-great-american-deception/">https://scottsteinonline.com/books/the...
I am currently agent-less. I still like the idea of having an agent--someone rooting for my book, seeking opportunities (need a movie deal!), giving advice. I recommend writers try to find one. But I guess the points, if there are any, would be that... 15/16
