Sarah Negovetich knows you don’t know how to pronounce her name and she’s okay with that.

Her first love is Young Adult novels, because at seventeen the world is your oyster. Only oysters are slimy and more than a little salty; it’s accurate if not exactly motivational. We should come up with a better cliché.

Sarah divides her time between writing YA books that her husband won’t read and working with amazing authors as an agent at Corvisiero Literary Agency. Her life’s goal is to be only a mildly embarrassing mom when her kids hit their teens.

3.1.2015

Part 2: I am a mythical unicorn

I am a mythical unicorn. A majestic creature who prances on sparkly rainbows and grants author wishes with my magic horn. I sleep in a bed made of dollar bills and form rejection letters. I make my coffee from the tears of writers who will never sell their work. I am a literary agent.

Or, you know, I’m just a woman in her mid-thirties who loves books and makes a small pittance helping talented authors find the perfect publisher for their work.

Too many authors think literary agents live behind some veil of mysticism. They know they want an agent, but don’t really have a clear idea of what it is that we do. So allow me to pull back the curtain for a minute.

A lot of folks confuse agent with editor. It can be confusing since an agent often edits their clients’ manuscripts, but they are distinctly different jobs. As an agent, I sell books to an editor who works at a publishing house. The editor then works with their entire team of publicists, designers, and editorial staff to take that book all the way through to production. In fact, once the book is sold, the agent has very little to do with the process unless there is a problem or dispute that needs ironing out.

Most of my work comes on the front end.

I spend the majority of my time working with my existing clients. We work together to decide what projects they are going to work on next, go through edits to make their work stronger, and decide how we are going to position the novel. Research also consumes a good amount of my time. I am always looking at what editors are buying what kind of projects. What is selling? What isn’t selling? What is on book shelves right now and what will be there tomorrow? Where is there a hole or gap that one of my clients can fill? It’s my job to understand the market for the types of books I represent.

I take all that collaboration and market info and do my best to pitch my clients’ books to editors I think will be the most interested.

Does this all sound familiar? It should, because this is the same process you should be using for your own work (though on a smaller scale).

As an author, you should know what books have already been published in the genre you want to write in. Know what the trends are so you don’t write yourself into a book that has an oversaturated market. When it comes time to pitch your book to agents, you should do some research. Find out what agents are actively looking for your type of project. Pitch the ones you think will be most interested.

While the details are different, the basic process is the same. And guess what! After the book sells to a publishing house, they do the exact same thing. Their marketing team is looking at where your book fits in the market. How will they design the cover and layout to make your book stand out? Which bookstores might be interested in carrying this? How will they pitch it so those stores make room on their shelves? And ultimately, how do we convince readers that this is a book they want to read?

Agents have a very specific role and there is a skill set needed to be a good agent, but at the end of the day, our goal is the same as any author’s goal: Get amazing books into readers’ hands. When you stop aggrandizing agents as book gods and see us as people who love books, just like you, the process of finding an agent becomes a lot less scary.

Still not sure you believe me that we aren’t secret rejection ninjas? Believe it, because I’m an author, too. I went through the query trenches and got my own agent.  But that’s a story for another day.