"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.

Recently, two medium-sized agencies in New York merged into one agency - The Peter Rubie Literary Agency and Imprint Agency have now formed Fineprint Literary Management. GLA is pleased to share an interview with agent Gary Heidt of Fineprint, who represents both fiction and nonfiction. I had the chance to meet up with Gary at the Midwest Literary Festival in Aurora, Ill.

GLA: What are some recent things you've sold?

GH: 100 Girls, by Adam Gallardo and Todd Demong, a graphic novel about a girl (actually, 100 Girls) who is/are the product of a government experiment intended to create a superweapon. Another is Secret Places, Hidden Sanctuaries, by Stephen Klimczuk and Gerald Warner. Two Knights of Malta - one a globalist businessman, the other a Scottish Lord - explain some of the world's greatest mysteries.

GLA: Recently, your boutique agency (Imprint) merged with another agency to create Fineprint. How will this merger help your - and everyone's - efforts?
 
GH: Well, we are able to pool information, contacts and resources amongst a larger group. We are doing this in a very 21st-century, high-tech manner. Everything we learn about any editor or publisher's desires will be pooled for all of our agents to access.

GLA: You represent both "history" and "military nonfiction." With so many books already written in subjects such as these, what must a nonfiction book proposal have to get you interested?

GH: There is no end to history. All of history will never be written. Anything that has a great story and great characters and profound conflicts will be of interest in history. With military nonfiction, we're looking for novelistic, action-filled narratives of battles, famous or heretofore neglected, with emphasis on the characters of the combatants, and lots of detail.

GLA: If you were teaching a course on writing nonfiction book proposals, but only had 60 seconds to talk, what would you say?

GH: 1) Spill the beans. Don't try to tantalize and hold back the juice. 2) No bullshit! We learn to see right through bullshit, or we fail rapidly. 3) Write for local publications and small publications first; why does everyone want to pole-vault from being an unpublished author to having a big book contract? It makes no sense. You have to learn to drive before they'll let you pilot the Space Shuttle.

GLA: It appears as though you gravitate toward nonfiction, but you also represent literary fiction. If you're reading a requested literary fiction manuscript, what are you looking for in the first 20 pages?

GH: There was a great first chapter of a Chuck Palahuniak novel that started out with a woman in a burning wedding gown firing a shotgun down a flight of stairs. How can you stop reading something like that?

GLA: What's another piece of advice you can pass on to writers that we didn't already cover?

GH: Get published small.  Local papers, literary journals, Web sites, anything.  The more credits you have, the better. And list them all (although not to the point of absurdity) in your query.

GLA: Will you be at any conferences in the future where writers can meet you?

GH: Probably. Although meeting in person isn't all it's made up to be. A really good query with some good prior credits will do just as well.

Gary Heidt of Fineprint Literary Management represents both fiction and nonfiction. Contact him at gary@fineprintlit.com.
      He is currently seeking nonfiction only - history, science, true crime, pop culture, psychology, business and military. 
      Gary was a John Jay Scholar at Columbia University and General Manager at WKCR-FM. Upon graduating, he returned to the nightclubs as a gigging musician; the Village Voice called his first album a "masterpiece." He is a published poet and columnist. His librettos for composer Evan Hause's Defenestration Trilogy earned praise from Newsday, Opera News and the New York Press, and his musical comedies (he has written several in collaboration with Gary Miles, including The Feng Shui Assassin and American Eyeball) were described by The Onion as "strangely funny." Originally from Texas, he has lived in New York City for a decade and a half.

Gary Heidt

"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 literary agent Nancy Love of the Nancy Love Literary Agency. Nancy is a member of the Association of Authors' Representatives as well as the American Society of Journalists and Authors. She specializes in nonfiction. 

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

NL: How Your Child Learns Best, by Judy Willis, to Sourcebooks. She's a noted neurologist and middle school teacher who tells parents how to use the latest revelations about the brain to help their children overcome the rote memorization in today's classrooms and engage in creative thinking and discovery.

The Management Company, a California-based agency focusing on film and TV scripts, recently changed their submission guidelines. Here are their new guidelines:

How to contact: Submit by e-mail only (tmco@mail.com), with the e-mail subject line reading "Writer Query Letter." Have a clear, one-sentence log line in bold type and include 2-4 short paragraphs summarizing the story (i.e., what would be on the back of a DVD).

This agency will contact writers by phone for more information, but only if interested. Queries that do not follow these guidelines may not be read. This agency is actively seeking "studio-quality, high-end action scripts with great characters, as well as really good comedies." No horror please.

Address queries to Tom Klassan, The Management Co.