I’m delighted to say I receive a lot of emails from readers of this column. One of the recurring themes is the belief that all the doors to the literary world would open if only they could find an agent. When I started out as a writer, I believed that too. I can remember the feeling of elation I experienced when I gained representation with my first agent. Euphoric doesn’t even come close. I was so high on excitement, I felt as though I needed lead weights on my feet to stop me from floating skywards. This was for my first children’s book and I’d been lucky enough to be taken on by one of the UK’s top children’s agents. She loved my book and I loved her. This mutual admiration society lasted until she had exhausted every publisher on her list and none of them had felt the same affinity with my novel as she had experienced. We parted company a year later: I to lick my wounds and she to continue her success with those authors whose work she was able to place. Years later, my second agent fell in love with the same book – and achieved the same results as the first. Fortunately, by this time I was wiser in the ways of the publishing world and accepted this outcome with more fatalistic resignation than the first time on the merry-go-round.
I’m not alone in having this experience. Several extremely successful writers I know have only gained book deals when with their third agent! Others have remained with the first, but have had to turn out several novels before ‘the one’ lands on the right desk at the right time. Still more have parted company with their agents and gone on to secure book deals themselves. Louise Mangos, author of Strangers on a Bridge and The Art of Deception, offered the following advice: ‘Here’s the schedule we should prepare for when we’ve finished writing our first manuscript: ‘Read the novel to yourself out loud ‘Edit the novel for the eleventy billionth time ‘Send off to agents ‘Use first rejection slip as a coffee coaster ‘Wait for the ping of incoming mail with the nervousness of a pregnancy test ‘Frame the first rejection slip ‘Receive second rejection slip ‘Advance to gin for the coaster thing ‘Re-edit the novel ‘Send off to more agents ‘One agent asks for the full ‘One agent offers representation ‘It takes one person to fall in love with that novel, your baby ‘But…
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June 2019
 
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