Reminder: Newer agents are golden opportunities for new writers because they're likely building their client list; however, always make sure your work is as perfect as it can be before submitting, and only query agencies that are a great fit for your work. Otherwise, you're just wasting time and postage.

About George: Prior to joining the Doug Grad Literary Agency as an associate agent, George was a sales and marketing veteran of over twenty years at Warner Books, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and HarperCollins. (Previously, I blogged about the opening of the DGLA. See that post here.)

Seeking: Bick is actively looking for narrative nonfiction, business, science fiction, horror/paranormal, thrillers, military, comics and graphic novels, diet/self-help, memoir, pets/animals, romance, science, humor, pop culture, and travel.

How to submit: "Query by email letter first at query@dgliterary.com.  Please do not send more than a brief letter explaining your book--no sample material unless requested.  And your patience is greatly appreciated.  The agency is receiving over 100 queries a week and our time is limited--our first priority is to our clients and their books."

Want more on this topic?

• For other posts about graphic novels, click here.
  
• Confused about formatting? Check out Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript.
  
• Read about What Agents Hate: Chapter 1 Pet Peeves.
• Want the most complete database of agents and what genres they're looking for? Buy the 2010 Guide to Literary Agents today!

Agent Interview by
contributor Ricki Schultz.

"Agent Advice" is a series of quick interviews with literary and script agents who talk with Guide to Literary Agents about their thoughts on writing, publishing, and just about anything else.

This installment features Emily Forland of The Wendy Weil Agency, Inc. Emily is in her twelfth year at The Wendy Weil Agency, Inc. In addition to representing her own list of authors, she also handles the agency's foreign rights. Originally from Texas, she has a B.A. in English from the University of Chicago, an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and an MFA in Graphic Design from the School of Visual Arts in New York.

She seeks: The Wendy Weil Agency, Inc. represents fiction and nonfiction for the trade market. We work with literary and commercial fiction, mystery/thriller, memoir, narrative nonfiction, journalism, history, current affairs, books on health, science, popular culture, lifestyle, and art history. We do not handle screenplays or textbooks. See full submission guidelines here.

Emily Forland

GLA: How did you become an agent?

EF: By accident.  I needed a summer job after my first MFA year at Sarah Lawrence College. I met Wendy Weil and became an intern, which means I spent a summer reading manuscripts at the agency, answering the phone, and dragging packages to the mail truck. This was just after Wendy had been profiled in Poets & Writers sounding like herself, an approachable agent who champions writers. This resulted in a huge flood of submissions and it was my job to go through those manuscripts. Out of that unwieldy stack, I hit upon one that stood out, and that became an Oprah Pick, Mother of Pearl by Melinda Haynes.  It was tremendously exciting to watch that happen. I got hooked. It was supposed to be a summer job, but it is 12 years later, and I am still here. 
      I like writers, and I like working with writers. I think having a bit of a writing background makes me empathize with the vulnerability of writers and what they go through in putting their work out into the world.
      Also, lunch is a nice thing.

GLA: What’s the most recent thing you’ve sold? 

EF: In fiction, a transfixing debut called Stiltsville by Iowa MFA grad Susanna Daniel. A love song to Miami, this episodic novel follows the life of a marriage, starting in the 1960s and ending in the 90s. It will be published by Jennifer Barth at HarperCollins next summer.
      Nonfiction: Playwrights at Work, by Rosemarie Tichler and Barry Jay Kaplan, a lively collection of interviews with great American playwrights of the day, to Northwestern University Press.

GLA: What are you looking for right now and not getting?  What do you pray for when tackling the slush pile?

EF: I’m looking for a distinctive voice. That can mean a lot of things, but I look at every submission wanting to be gobsmacked on the first page (and those that follow!) by original, compelling, well-crafted sentences.  I like character-driven stories. Humor helps, though it isn’t a requirement.

GLA: Within commercial fiction, can you tell us about two or three manuscripts you recently agreed to represent and what grabbed you about each to the point where you knew you had to represent them?

EF: I guess I tend to be most interested in commercial fiction with literary qualities.
      I took on a novel that made me laugh out loud on pretty much every page, at the same time that every sentence is so polished as to almost be some kind of perfect haiku. The structure is idiosyncratic, and the subject is an extremely timely take on the spiritual estrangement of contemporary culture. I was wowed by the writer’s originality and craft.
      One novel is set on a hardscrabble subsistence farm in the Australian outback during World War II, beautifully and slyly told in the salty first person narration of the main character, a farmwife named Gin Toad.  It is extremely accomplished.
      Another novel follows an immigrant Russian family with three daughters of marriageable age.  The writer’s approach is playful and original.  She pokes fun at her characters, but she handles them with real affection. The dialogue is fizzy and hilarious. That dialogue got me. It jumps off the page. 

GLA: Specifically within the thriller genre, do you prefer any particular subgenres, such as legal, psychological, or supernatural thrillers, etc.? 

EF: I like a psychological novel. I have a knee-jerk reaction against the fantastical and supernatural (my own limitation) that I can get past when the story is grounded in strong writing. 

GLA: Where do you notice most nonfiction book proposals fall short?

EF: Voice again.  I want a proposal to be thorough, meticulously researched, well-organized, etc., but it also needs to be a compelling argument for the subsidized existence of this particular book. And the most convincing way for an author to demonstrate that is by being good company on the page.  Also, there is that whole thing about platform (groan).

GLA: One area of nonfiction you seek is journalism.  With the Internet pushing us toward an increasingly paperless society, many see the world of journalism as changing.  Do you think printed newspapers and magazines will be obsolete one day?  What should a journalism proposal look like in order to stay current with the times as well as catch your attention?

EF: I like paper and the tactile nature of books and magazines and newsprint.  That said, I do read most of my news online. It is hard to deny that the magazine and newspaper business is heading that way.  Ultimately, though, I suppose the story is what’s important and the medium of delivery is secondary.
      Because of the way a publishing timeline usually works, a journalism book proposal should anticipate where the news is going and what we’ll be interested in a couple of years.  The writer needs a solid platform, an area of expertise, to have done the research, and to convey it in a lively manner that convinces me I’m interested in a subject I didn’t necessarily previously know I wanted to read about. I once heard a nonfiction editor say that a journalistic book should either be the first book on a subject, or the last (definitive) book on a subject.

GLA: Is there a particular angle to explore or avenue to attempt for writers without celebrity status who wish to break into memoir?

EF: It depends on what you mean by ordinary people. If you mean a non-celebrity, yes definitely. But if you mean a common experience written in unextraordinary prose, probably not. What makes a successful memoir is a distinctive story, or else a distinctive take on a common life experience, combined with highly readable prose.  And I’ve found that you really need both. Both the story and the voice. It doesn’t work when you have just half.
      An example of a memoir that really worked is Jennifer Traig’s Devil in the Details (Little Brown). It tells about the author’s girlhood as an obsessive-compulsive religious fanatic.  Books had been written about OCD, but at that time nobody had written about the disorder called scrupulosity. And Jenny’s writing is sympathetic, smart, and FUNNY. She has the distance on this period in her life to render it an insightful and very enjoyable reading experience.  
      Another was Margaret Sartor’s Miss American Pie (Bloomsbury), which, through compelling, moving, and sometimes unintentionally humorous diary excerpts, traces the author’s evolving girlhood, which was rife with romantic, identity, and spiritual crises in 1970s Louisiana. The authenticity of her voice crackles on the page.

GLA: Would you say your MFA in Graphic Design influences your acceptance of art pieces?  For example, are you more interested in graphic design books?  As well, what topics are you drawn to most in this category?  Least?

EF: I am a visual person with an affinity for visual texts (art and design books, picture books, graphic novels, etc.) but have represented very few. Art books can be expensive to produce and challenging to get published, but I am always open to being wowed by a project.

GLA: Best piece(s) of advice we haven’t talked about yet?

EF: In terms of submitting material, we always talk about the importance of writers putting their best foot (feet?) forward.  Because we’re all (editors and agents) inundated with reading, we don’t usually have time to see potential in work and nurture it until it becomes a polished finished piece (which isn’t to say that there isn’t some editing, and there are always exceptions). It is always a good idea for writers to ask another trusted reader to take a look before sending out their materials. It is to authors’ advantage to make sure their work is far along when it is goes out into the world for consideration.
      In terms of writing, I once heard Tony Hillerman give a talk at the Taos Writers Conference and he spoke about how each person is the world’s expert on their own life experience (whether it be following the crime beat as a news reporter in the Southwest, or something else). He talked about the breakthrough in his own writing when he decided to mine the territory in which he was the world’s smartest.  I guess that’s not new advice, but I thought it was a good way of thinking about it.

Agent Interview by
Contributor Ricki Schultz

"Agent Advice" is a series of quick interviews with literary and script agents who talk with Guide to Literary Agents about their thoughts on writing, publishing, and just about anything else.

This installment features Diane Freed of FinePrint Literary Management in Manhattan. Diane has been in the book publishing field her entire career, and with FinePrint since 2006. She owned and managed an independent publishing services company, edited reference books for U.S. News & World Report, and has coordinated book promotional campaigns for Time-Life Books.

She is seeking: Diane is looking for nonfiction projects in the categories of advice/relationships, spirituality, inspiration, health/fitness, memoir, narrative nonfiction, popular culture, lifestyle, women’s issues, the environment, and humor.  Her fiction interests generally are commercial and literary fiction, including women’s commercial fiction. Diane accepts e-mail submissions only. See full fiction submission guidelines here and full nonfiction submission guidelines here. 

Diane Freed

GLA: How did you become an agent? 

DF: I’ve always loved how reading a book can transport you, so this sparked my fascination with books as a kid. Each submission, fiction or nonfiction, is in some way a new idea, and it’s satisfying to be part of getting new ideas into the marketplace. Day to day, I like the process of working with an author to help develop and organize a manuscript and/or proposal. In turn, I value the relationships that develop with my authors. For 15 years, I worked in publishing houses (Time-Life Books, U.S. News & World Report Books, Prentice-Hall, Addison-Wesley) in editorial and production positions. Then I owned and managed my own full-service book packaging company for 10+ years. In each capacity, and now as an agent, I’ve enjoyed bringing books to fruition.

GLA: What’s the most recent thing you’ve sold?

DF: My most recent sale isn’t typical of what’s on my list, but I’m really excited about it. It’s Sammy in the Sky, a children’s picture book, to be published in late 2010 by Candlewick Press. It’s a touching and uplifting story about the death of a family’s pet dog. On a whim, author Barbara Walsh called Jamie Wyeth—knowing the Wyeths are a family of dog lovers—and asked Jamie if he’d read her story and consider illustrating it. He loved it and, to her amazement, agreed! He’s working on the sketches now.

GLA: What are you looking for right now and not getting?  What do you pray for when tackling the slush pile?

DF: I’m looking for a fiction submission that knocks my socks off—I start reading and then put everything aside because I’m so excited about the writing! I’m open to all kinds of commercial fiction and commercial women’s fiction, but am especially taken by character-driven stories that explore relationships between people and ultimately give the reader insight into his or her life in some way.

GLA: One of your areas of interest is memoir. Given your experience, is there a particular angle to explore or avenue to attempt for an ordinary person to break into memoir?

DF: Memoir is a tough sell because readers apparently love celebrity stories, either written by the celebrity or by someone who knows a celebrity well. Otherwise, editors want memoirs by people who have lived in the extreme in some way (as in waaay out there). I do get these, but they have to be jaw droppers and well-written, and all too often submissions don’t meet both criteria.  For a regular guy to break into memoir, it would help if the story fits nicely into the current cultural or political climate. As one example, we’ve been hearing lately about hidden alcoholism among mothers of young children, and I have a submission from a mom who tells just this story about herself and her play group friends. I perk up when someone’s story matches the zeitgeist.

GLA: You also seek “baby boomer trends.”  To give writers a better sense of where to start, can you be more specific about what qualifies as a baby boomer trend?  Also, are books in this category best left to writers who are baby boomers themselves?

DF: I suppose the word “interest” is a better word to use than “trend.” Boomer interests would include their concerns about how they’ll leave their “legacy” in some way now that they’re in their 50s and 60s; being caregivers to their parents while still raising their own children; unique ways that they are dealing with retirement (or lack of it) in this economy; women, and men too, coming into their own after years of raising children. Just about all of the baby boomer stories I consider are written by boomers themselves. Stories written by boomers and for boomers have particular appeal—they’ve all been there, or are heading there, in some way.

GLA: At the next month's Writer's Digest Conference, you will be on a panel discussing self-publishing and mainstream publishing. Other than impressive book sales, what are a few things in the query of a previously self-published book that might gain your interest in representing it?

DF: Such things as: The book won a contest. The first book I sold that was originally published as a POD book, Bufflehead Sisters by Patricia DeLois, was notable because the story won a contest through a writers’ website. The author’s “prize” was the site sponsor publishing it as a POD book. She was also out giving readings in the New England area, so I was impressed that she was out promoting it.
      The author must have lots of energy and passion for the book. I recently sold two book journals, originally self-published, to Sourcebooks: Read, Remember, Recommend (adult version, teen version) by Rachelle Rogers Knight. The author researched, designed, typeset, and had them printed (in China); they were striking in content and design. I almost passed on them, but the author was persistent and sent me the books so I could see for myself. She won me over.
      The book must appeal to a wide audience. Many people self-publish a book because they want their family story in print, which is just fine, but for a commercial publisher to consider it, the book has to speak to an audience beyond immediate family and friends. The same goes for self-published books with only regional appeal; some are only of interest to readers who live in or are familiar with the geographic setting of the story.

GLA: What is the number one problem you see with queries that come across your desk on a daily basis?

DF: For fiction, some writers don’t check our agency website to see that we want a synopsis and the first couple of chapters in the body of the e-mail. For nonfiction—and I’m seeing more and more of this—some writers don’t prepare a proposal to accompany their sample chapters or manuscript. A proposal is part of a nonfiction package; it shows that the writer has done his or her research on the project and is a tool for the agent in making her decision. And with memoir, the story should be complete and have a proposal before querying.

GLA: Concerning another area of interest for you, adult nonfiction, what are three topics you would classify as overdone in this subject?

DF: Depressing misery lit; memoirs comparing themselves to Eat, Pray, Love; and diets to end all other diets.

GLA: Will you be at any upcoming writers’ conferences where writers can meet and pitch you?

DF: Other than next month’s Writer’s Digest “Business of Publishing” conference, and I’ll be at the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance pitch session this winter. These sessions are fun and worthwhile; it’s great to meet new writers one-on-one. But e-mail submissions do the job, too; after all, it’s a writer’s story that begins the relationship between author and agent.

GLA: Best piece(s) of advice we haven’t talked about yet?

DF: Know how to write a winning query letter. Face it—this is your ticket in the door. Too many writers don’t realize the importance of presenting themselves as professionals. In the query, you’re presenting not only your writing, but yourself as a potential client as well. The agent wants to get the impression that you’d be a reasonable, mature person to work with. Also, in your query, be sure to explain who your audience is and why you’re the best person to write this book.

Want more on this subject?

• If you're interested in FinePrint Literary Management, check out previous interviews with FPLM agents Ward Calhoun and Janet Reid.
• In this WD article online, Diane and other agents talk about what to do when taking a self-published book and trying to give it a second life.
• Confused about formatting? Check out Formatting & Submitting Your Manuscript.
• Read about What Agents Hate: Chapter 1 Pet Peeves.
• Want the most complete database of agents and what genres they're looking for? Buy the 2010 Guide to Literary Agents today!

"How I Got My Agent" is a new recurring feature on the GLA blog. I find it fascinating to see the exact road people took that landed them with a rep.  Seeing the things people did right vs. what they did wrong (highs and the lows) can help other scribes who are on the same journey.  Some tales are of long roads and many setbacks, while others are of good luck and quick signings.

• See all the posted stories of writers finding agents.
• Do you have a good story about how you found your agent? E-mail me at literaryagent@fwmedia.com and we'll start a dialogue.
• Check out my tips on writing memoir: Part I, and also Part II.
• You Don't Have to Be Famous is a great book all about how to write your life story.

As author Bob Mayer wisely put it, writers' first books tend to be blood-lettings.

What that means is writers compose stories about their own lives (memoirs or life stories) - for catharsis, or to just tell their story because they need to tell it. Month by month, I continue to see that everyone wants to write a memoir or life story, even though such things don't sell well and are often written like a diary, not a book. (That said, agents will be hesitant to take on anything that's a tough sell.)

Just today at a book signing in Tennessee, a young writer came up and said she was writing a life story about her uncle and wanted some advice. I wanted to recommend some good memoir and life story books but couldn't think of anything off the top of my head. After we finished talking, I brought the subject up with some other writers and asked for some good recommendations. These are the three they immediately came up with:

      1. The Color of Water, by James McBride
      2. Angela's Ashes, by Frank McCourt
      3. Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom

Bottom line: "Personal story is dead," as agent Chip MacGregor said in a previous post. However, if you are determined to write yours, make sure you are reading excellent memoir writing. The three books above seem like a good start.

For more on personal story writing as well as when it might actually be beneficial to self-publish such a book, see this previous post.