I lost the original, but this is an important topic.
I think that most people wrongly believe that the ultimate thing in hooking an agent is them liking you, and you liking them. After all, you’re going to be working together, right? Not so fast. You didn’t even impress on them why you should be working together. But… they even ask you for a starting paragraph introducing yourself… and they know best…? It is the the star around which my cover letters revolved. And to be clear this topic is mainly about cover letters.
It’s easy to see where this myth comes from. We live in a social society after all. When you go for a job interview, what does it mean to put your best foot forward? Did you dress right? Do you make good eye contact? What is your handshake like? Do you show a good sense of social understanding with an understated yet profound chit-chat? Then comes the interview. They ask about you. Where did you work prior? How do you solve problems? Then… what makes you perfect for this job?
What? Isn’t that backwards? Well… yes, in a way… but the way humans physically interact determines the order in which we assess data. Trust must first be established. And so we present our bio first. So then, when people create cover letters, they are still treating it like a physical interaction, as an interview. But, in writing, trust cannot be established the same way. So the most boring and useless information is the bio. In fact going in bio first has more of a me, me, me, me affect in writing. It’s not pretty.
I also want to be clear, it is not my intention to mock, nor talk angrily about agents. There are a great deal of good agents who know what they are doing. But I have sent hundreds of cover letters, to just as many agents, so I want to teach you some things I’ve learned in that process.
A lot of agents (not all) have no idea what a writer expects from their website. And writers submissively accept what they find, because there is a power differential. One I’m sure agents are aware of, without ill intent. I’ll tell you what I want first and foremost, and I doubt I’m alone in this. What I want to know, is… do you represent my age, religion, fiction/non-fiction, and what genres do you represent?
More specifically, I will skim all of the other information, without absorbing it, until I find that you represent what I write. Then, if you represent what I write, I’ll read your bio, to see if you’re the type of person with whom I should work. So, please, before you go into your bio, list first and concisely… what it is you represent. Not yet who you represent, not yet how long you’ve been representing, not yet what books you have represented. Just… what you represent.
If a lot of agents don’t know what we want… I thought, maybe they don’t all know what they themselves actually want. Perhaps they are, many just, blindly following industry standards in an effort to look professional. I mean, I don’t blame them, after all… that’s what most writers do.
To be clear, I’m not telling you to blatantly disregard the rules on literary agent websites. That will likely get you insta-rejected. But I think there is often room for interpretation of the rules.The thing is, I used to write the absolute most sterile rule following cover letters that you have likely ever seen. Why? Because agents (nearly all) make a huge stink about following their rules to the letter. But I believe this is aimed at the people who don’t create something even vaguely resembling what they asked for as a cover letter. You know: pink paper, purple text, talk about themselves but never get around to the book, insult the agent, assume they are talking to an intern when they’ve actually reached the agent. That’s not the sort of rule interpretation I’m advoacting.
Now I view the rules more as guidelines. They ask for a paragraph opening the letter about yourself? Blech, I don’t even want to read a whole paragraph about me. Let’s make it a sentence or two and put it at the bottom of the letter. Mostly they ask about the book. Maybe open with either the hook or that banger of an opening sentence. Then go into a paragraph describing the book. Give some bullet points concerning things like genre, word count, and comp titles.
In other words, I’m telling you to entertain them first, then once you’ve thoroughly impressed them, tell them a little about you. The idea is to entertain them into reading your novel. Since you cannot establish physical signs of being trustworthy, you must establish trust as a great writer.
The ultimate thing in writing a cover letter, is therefore not how much the agent likes and connects with the writer… it’s how much they like and connect with the writing.
I hope you enjoyed and got something out of this blog. Feel free to ask me questions. Check out @advice_writing for more concise writing tips on twitter.
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