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Ask an Agent: September 2024
In this monthly column, we check in with one of our resident agents to answer those questions you’re too afraid to ask for yourself. This month, Laura Bennett of the Liverpool Literary Agency tackles questions asked by BFS members in our dedicated Discord channel.
Name: Laura Bennett
Agency: Liverpool Literary Agency
Specialism: Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Location: North West England
Follow: Threads: Losbennett / Twitter: Losbennett
Read more about Laura in her BFS member profile, here.
We start this month’s column with a deep-dive set from one member who wanted to know what it’s like to be an agent.
Q: What is it like? Representing a book or author you believe in and putting yourself out there to try and get it sold?
It’s … a lot. It’s thrilling, and invigorating, and VERY rewarding. It’s also stressful, heartbreaking, and involves a lot of patience. The passes maybe don’t hit as hard because it’s not my work as such, but I still get a little down whenever I get one. Especially because I only take on authors and projects that I really believe in, and really love. I’m incredibly proud of every one of my authors and try to do my best for them – I’m so privileged that they are willing to work with me and to take a chance on a new agent! It’s very hard, but I couldn’t imagine doing anything else now. I absolutely adore helping people to make their work the best we can make it and then getting to talk about it to other people! It frustrates me that I have all of these amazing books, though, and I can’t share them with absolutely everyone because they’re not in book shops. It’s such a wonderful thing to be able to read these brilliant works. It’s all a rollercoaster, but an amazing one.
Q: Do you have to do a lot of barcon / socialising to make all those connections on both ends?
Sort of, but not really. I’m probably doing it on Hard Mode – being up in the north, I’m not close to most publishers (distance-wise). At first I got a lot of “next time you’re in London, pop by…” and I had to say – “I’m never in London. Have you seen the train prices? Also, I have a small child”. That said, I’ve been to FantasyCon, to the London Book Fair, and to WorldCon and been able to attend some parties (and I was SO EXCITED to be invited!), and meet people in person so I actually feel incredibly fortunate. But I’ve found just about everyone that I’ve contacted in the industry to be very welcoming, and very willing to chat via online calls. I love socialising and meeting people though, so it barely feels like work. It definitely helps to meet people face-to-face and have that extra connection.
Q: How well do you have to get to know editors before you’ve got a good mental rolodex of who might like something one of your authors has written?
Fairly well. It depends. A lot of them have wish lists that you can read, but finding them can sometimes be tricky. Some are on websites, some are a bit harder to find. I’m very lucky and I’m on a Discord server with some other agents, and we share wish lists and editor info. I have a massive spreadsheet of notes about every bit of information I get from editors. But sometimes, just like readers and agents, they don’t know what they’ll like until they read it! I have a handful who have liked just about everything I’ve sent, too, as our tastes are very similar. You definitely build up a profile for people though, depending on the feedback they give to your projects.
Q: What prompted you to become an agent, and to launch your own agency?
I needed a job.
No, seriously. This is actually a really long story and I’ve told it on a few podcasts and things, but in short – my qualifications are in writing and teaching, but my work was mostly in education due to the lack of publishing career opportunities outside of London. I started working with Clare (the Director of our agency and the one who launched it) as an editor around the time of the pandemic after leaving my teaching assistant job due to stress. When she decided to make it an agency I jumped at the chance to become an agent. I’m so glad I did, too, as I LOVE it. I’m so glad I can work in this industry and get to stay in the north.
Q: Blink twice if you need us to call someone for you?
Only sometimes!
Q: I have a question, and hopefully this doesn’t sound totally barmy! Do any agents just represent subsidiary rights? That is, the author has a book published via an indie press in US and UK and it’s doing well, so the author wants a wider audience in other countries where similar books are doing well, as well as getting access to audio books and/or other media opportunities. I’ve seen a few agents who seem to do this, but I wanted to see if that’s a rarity before I start contacting agents about this. Thanks!
Not barmy at all! I think it’s becoming increasingly common as self-published books do well and more authors go that route, and indie presses the same. As long as you hold the rights for where you want to sell it and/or in which format, then it’s possible! However, a lot will depend on how well it’s doing, when it was sold, and what rights are held. Obviously the better it does and the more rights the author still has, the better. And it’s harder to sell a book into more territories if it’s an older one, but still totally possible. It’s worth checking agent websites to see if they do subsidiary rights but there’s no harm in submitting work anyway even if it’s not stated.
Q: As someone trying to finish my first novel, most everywhere/everyone says to get it into as good a shape as possible before querying agents. However, I was recently told by someone who is a published author that there are agents that prefer to get involved at an earlier stage. Is that something you’ve come across?
It’s so hard to even find an agent that I think you want to give yourself the best chance possible. That means getting your manuscript to the best you can. You don’t need to pay for editing or anything like that but you should at least do a couple of drafts and ideally have other people do a read through. Once you have an agent, then they might be happy with an earlier draft to work on with you, but for querying it really needs to be your best work. There will always be improvements that an agent and editor will spot. Sometimes agents will take on projects that need a lot of work because they see the potential but that’s going to be the minority. (I’ve done it myself but probably wouldn’t do it again unless it REALLY blew me away.)
Q: Similar to that, at what stage would a book be agent-ready? Does it need to be typo-free, or just all the words in the right order spelled mostly right?
As polished as you can get it. We totally understand that mistakes happen and can go un-spotted even with multiple read throughs by multiple people, but a lot of mistakes will make me think that the person has rushed the process. And especially if it’s basic grammar or spelling stuff, I’m not going to have the time to fix everything on a line-by-line level. I’ve also got to be confident that an author’s writing standard is there and suitable to send to publishers. If a manuscript is more or less small-mistake free, I’ll be more confident.
Q: I read one article talking about the best months to query in, but I got a bit of a whiff of clickbait blog-filler with questionable statistics. Does the timing matter in the slightest?
Short answer: no.
Long answer: sort of, but it’s actually more to do with going on submission than querying. Publishing basically shuts down over the summer holidays (parents have kids, people go away), around Christmas time (from Thanksgiving in the US) and around April in the UK (London Book Fair and Easter hols), so we don’t tend to put things on submission then. But honestly, everything takes so frickin’ long anyway that it doesn’t really matter. If an agent is open to queries, just query them whenever.
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