I know I don’t usually blog on a Tuesday, but I just read an interview with veteran agent, Molly Friedrich, and was very impressed by her and her attitude. What a shame she doesn’t rep s-f romance! Her perspective is straightforward and honest and, as a result, witty and charming, and she dishes great advice to would-be authors. For example, on voice:

First of all, is there anybody out there who doesn’t know that the easiest thing to sell is plot? But the thing that everybody wants is an original voice. And the thing that’s kind of stuck in the middle is character … Now, what is an original voice? Well, think of it like this: Go to Bonfire of the Vanities and close your eyes and pick a page and have someone read you two paragraphs. If you can’t identify those paragraphs as the rhythms and cadences that belong to Tom Wolfe, you’re finished. I’m convinced that eight times out of ten, with Melissa Bank, you could do the same thing.

On what you should have done when you begin shopping for an agent:

First of all, I don’t think an author should approach an agent before they have a manuscript … If I met every person who wanted to just have a chat before they sent their book, I’d go out of business.

Some great potential questions to ask a prospective agent:

You are fully within your rights to ask an agent whom else he represents. You are also within your rights to ask an agent to tell you about a couple of authors whose books he’s sold recently. You can’t live on your laurels and sit around bragging about your top five best-known clients. “What have you sold recently, and how’d it go?” And maybe ask, “What did you love that you weren’t able to sell?” Everyone thinks I sell everything I touch. Wrong, wrong, wrong. There’s loads of stuff I take on and don’t sell. It’s extremely painful. So I think it’s fair to talk about these things. I think you want to see what kind of a match you are. Can you talk with this agent frankly? Do you feel comfortable?

And (sigh) the fiction market:

Fiction is being published less and less. The stakes are higher. All editors say the same thing to me. They say, “I’ve got money to spend. I’d really love to do business with you. I’d love to buy a book from you.” That’s code. What they mean is they’d love to buy a book, for which they can possibly overpay, that is big in obvious and immediate ways. And most books are not big in obvious and immediate ways. They simply aren’t. Something has to change.

I have sold books for many millions of dollars and I have sold books for two thousand dollars and pretty much everything in between. I have experienced the fantastical joys of selling books for a whole lot of money. It is a joyous moment. But it isn’t necessarily the best thing in the world. It isn’t. Perhaps it’s blasphemous for me to say that. But if you sell a first novel for a million dollars, you are putting so much pressure on that book to perform at a certain moment, in a certain season, at a certain level. And most books don’t perform immediately. Something, I think, has to give.

That’s not to say I agree with everything she says. For example:

If they have a book and they are sending it out, they should always say in the letter if they are doing multiple submissions. That is common courtesy. I would also say that I want to know the circumstances under which I am reading something. Have you sent this to ninety-five other people? Have you sent this to one other person? Do I have this exclusively? Because if I push aside my own reading, which is the tyranny of all our lives, in order to be fast, at least tell me what I need to do. The other thing is that the author should agree—if the author is playing consumer here and sending it to five agents who want to read it—that he’s not going to make a decision until he has heard from all five people. You should respect an agent’s time. Do we get paid for our time? No. Respect a busy agent’s time. The thing I want to kill someone for is when I read something over the weekend and I’m about to pick up the phone to tell them it’s the most wonderful book since War and Peace, and they say, “Oh, sorry, I’ve signed on with Joe Blow who called on Sunday morning.” No. No, no, no, no, no. That is really wrong. Be fair. If you are going to put us on the spot, give us all a fair chance.

Of course, the situation she relates is tragic. And if I ever hypothetically signed with an agent, I think it would be common courtesy to inform all the other agents to whom I’ve sent queries/partials/fulls about the change in that manuscript’s status. To me, that’s just good manners.

However, having said that, I’m not about to blurt out in a query to Agent Sarah Schmooze that she’s one of 489 agents I’m querying. Or that I’ve received 203 rejections so far and she’s the 204th one on my list. Lord knows there are flimsy enough reasons for agents to reject queries (they get so many of the damn things), without me giving them a loaded rifle to shoot down mine.

But that’s a minor quibble I think. For the full interview (and do take your time with this; even if she wasn’t an agent, Molly Friedrich would be a terribly interesting person to read about) go here.