BONUS NUMBER 18: MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF LITERARY AGENTS
(Did You Sleep With the Models?)
On March 16, in my “Second Letter to Subscribers,” I promised — threatened? — to reveal, in a three-part bonus series, secrets about agents, editors, reviewers, and others I’ve dealt with in a career that includes writing books and also writing for magazines. I promised a take-no-prisoners recital. Well, here it is. Think of it as “Things I Promised Not to Tell.”
This is the first in that three-part series. Part Two, “Editors as Heroes and Villains,” will run next Wednesday, June 14, and Part Three, “The Bonfire of the Book Reviewers’ Vanities,” on Wednesday, June 21.
I’ve been asked since joining Substack why I did so rather than continuing to publish books in hardcover and paperback. And why I celebrate my liberation from agents, editors, publishers, reviewers, and their many aides-de-camp as if it were the fall of the Bastille and I a jubilant escapee. These questions have come from authors at various career stages and at work in many genres. I know, of course, that a number of my Substack readers are published writers — of books, magazine features, online posts. Others are on the threshold of a writing career and sometimes wonder how to enter — and survive — the strange world of publishing, which seems mined in equal measure with rewards and frustrations.
Why did I give up on literary agents? This picture suggests an answer.
I don't possess a roadmap to publishing success, nor does such a document exist. I can, however, recount my own experiences — downbeat, euphoric, bizarre, and otherwise — so that you may at least avoid some of the dragons ready to spring on the unwary.
In this first bonus section I will discuss literary agents. In subsequent posts I will whisper secrets about book and magazine editors, and in a final installment I will subpoena guilty book reviewers for cross examination — the kind of reviewers, for instance, who skip the book and review from jacket copy. If you think I’m exaggerating, just you wait.
Alfred Lowman, who would become my first agent, phoned me in 1986 after reading in Publishers Weekly my interview with Leonore Fleisher, a writer who specialized in novelizations of hit movies. She also wrote popular biographies of Joni Mitchell and Dolly Parton, YA novels, hetero erotica, and she would put her hand to anything that brought in a buck. For years she wrote a weekly shopping column called "Getting and Spending" for New York magazine. Leonore, a quintessential New Yorker, was a wit, an animal lover, a voracious reader, a mensch (the Yiddish word means roughly "someone admirable and of good character"), a boulevardière, and a friend.
We stayed in touch after that 1986 interview, and years later when I was writing Born to Be Hurt: The Untold Story of "Imitation of Life," I persuaded her to talk about Lana Turner. Why? Because Leonore ghost wrote Turner's 1982 autobiography Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth.
Leonore, speaking off the record, insisted that I disguise my informant. So, in my book, Leonore became “Eleanor Fletcher.” I’m sorry to report that Leonore died in 2009; perhaps it's now all right to reveal her identity in this brief tribute.
When Al Lowman called, he identified himself as owner of Authors and Artists Group, a literary agency. "I just wanted to tell you," he said, "what a swell job you did with Leonore. Anyone who knows her will say the same." After a short chat, he added, "If you ever decide to write a book, give me a call."
Three years later, I did.
His client list included Suzanne Somers, John DeLorean (remember his peculiar, other-worldly, short-lived car?), Shelley Winters, and Zsa Zsa Gabor. My first book, the novel M.M. II: The Return of Marilyn Monroe, appealed to him because of the celebrity angle. That’s because Al Lowman had more stars in his eyes than there are on the Walk of Fame.
He unwisely held an auction of the book, which is risky unless the author is widely known or has a brand. I wasn’t and I didn’t. Although the auction fizzled, he sold the novel to Donald I. Fine, Inc., and it was published in hardcover in 1991 and in paperback the following year.
I soon learned that Al Lowman was a devoted agent — until distracted by something new and shiny. He stayed with my book only because he imagined it as a movie with a big option fee and an even bigger purchase price. His Hollywood connections, unfortunately, were not the front office kind. An offer came from an untried young "producer" who hadn't produced and who had scraped up two thousand dollars. I turned the offer down, much to Al Lowman's chagrin. His agent’s fee of fifteen percent would have been $300.
He was wildly enthusiastic about my next novel until a couple of editors turned it down. Although Al remained my agent, on paper at least, I began looking for a new one. Not long after venturing into this strange coterie, I felt like an unwary tourist who had strayed into James Cameron’s Avatar. My first unworldly specimen was Laurens S., who filled our interview with details of suing his wife for spousal abuse in the form of a broken arm — which he displayed as if to a chiropractor. He yammered on without coming to my manuscript. Mr. S. led the cavalcade of wackos who appeared to do everything but sell books.
Another one, Harold K., sat on my manuscript doing nothing until finally I withdrew it. “Life intervened,” he sighed. Then, in a directory of literary agents, I came across one called Peregrine who, despite the masculine forename, turned out to be a woman. On the phone, her British accent held for five minutes, then started to fade like silk interwined with polyester. Her tale became more and more unlikely: Peregrine was actuallly her father’s name, she said, he had founded the agency, returned to London and left her in charge, she had taken over his name with the business, etc. Not a believable word in her spiel. The conversation was like a weird pop-up from public access TV or a surreal misfire on The Howard Stern Show. I stayed on the line until the accent morphed to some place in the borough of Queens…Flushing, perhaps, which is what I did with her phone number.
Cheerio, Peregrine. Keep your pecker up, as they say in dear old Blighty.
After that, I didn't write another book for nine years, one reason being that travel magazine assignments took me to several dozen countries. With Al Lowman, my half-hearted agent, I discussed a few projects. But his attention span was that of a twelve-year-old and if a couple of agents demurred, he too lost interest. In the late '90s I sent him the proposal for All About "All About Eve: The Complete Behind-the-Scenes Story of the Bitchiest Film Ever Made."
“No market for such a book,” he said.
So far it has sold more than 50,000 copies and it's still in print. In our last conversation, shortly after St. Martin's published the book, Al said, "I wish I hadn't rejected it." I tried not to gloat. By this time I had a new agent.
Prior to publication, Vanity Fair ran a long excerpt that led to a film option. Once more the producers were not ideal. They paid slightly more than two thousand dollars for the option, and I insisted on the stipulation in our contract that I write the screenplay adaptation and retain all rights to it if a film was not made. Their project went nowhere; the screenplay remains on my computer.
Meanwhile, I made it my mission to learn as much as possible about the inner workings of the publishing industry. Two books served as my de facto seminar: How To Be Your Own Literary Agent: The Business of Getting Your Book Published (2nd edition, 1984) and Beyond the Bestseller: A Literary Agent Takes You Inside the Book Business (1990), both by the agent Richard Curtis. A word of caution: the first title is misleading; you cannot be your own literary agent. In traditional publishing, except for rare exceptions, no editor worth knowing will respond. What the book teaches, however, is how to find the best agent for your work and how to keep from getting screwed. Perhaps the most important lesson of all from these books is this one: how to read a publishing contract, what constitutes a contract that's favorable to you, the writer, and the kind to avoid at all costs.
Many writers sign whatever their agent sends them. Big mistake. I scrutinized every contract, I made changes, I told the agent where I would compromise and where I wouldn’t. By the way, the average agent has no legal training, although they would like you to believe they do. Learn what’s in the Richard Curtis books and you’ll gallop ahead of the pack.
My second agent was Jim Donovan. Unlike Al Lowman, he stuck with a book through many rejections. All About “All About Eve,” my first one with him, was turned down by several dozen publishers before St. Martin’s acquired it. His agency, Jim Donovan Literary, was a happy fit for me, and he sold not only Eve but my next four books as well to St. Martin's Press. All remain in print in one format or another.
In 2014 I showed him the proposal for a book that I considered hugely important. He rejected it. (Next year you can read it on Substack.) I remained with his agency despite my suspicion that this rejection came not entirely from him. My misgivings were soon confirmed.
Nevertheless, when I became friends with Francesca Hilton, Zsa Zsa Gabor's daughter, and gained her cooperation on a biography of her family, I discussed the project at length with Jim. His enthusiasm seemed genuine. We had numerous discussions about structure, length, tone, and other elements that require planning. I made it clear that I intended to have fun with the Gabors -- Zsa Zsa, Eva, Magda, their indomitable mother, Jolie, and also their father, Vilmos -- while also revealing the pain behind the frou-frou public image cultivated by female members of the family.
There were also serious matters to discuss in the book: Zsa Zsa's bipolar disorder, her breakdown and involuntary incarceration in an asylum at the behest of her second husband, Conrad Hilton; Eva's bisexuality and her long, disheartening struggle to become a serious actress; the stroke that left Magda disabled; Vilmos, in ill health, trapped behind the Iron Curtain in Hungary and able to communicate only in code with his family in America; Eva’s dramatic attempt to smuggle her father out of Hungary during the 1956 revolution. Most harrowing of all: three family members -- Magda, Jolie, and Vilmos -- were Holocaust survivors who barely escaped when the Nazis invaded Hungary. They were destined for Auschwitz. The Gabors got out; many in their family did not.
Having followed the Gabors since childhood, corresponded with them, spoken by phone with Magda, and then become the confidant of Francesca Hilton, I considered my approach the correct one. Insofar as possible, I was determined to demythologize the Gabors while savoring their wit, their enormous energy, their refusal to be defeated, their outrageous hunger for publicity, and their unheralded charities that hardly chimed with tabloid notoriety. This would be my seventh book.
I sent Jim Donovan my proposal. Imagine my chagrin reading his reply, which began, "Melissa and I have read the proposal. There's lots of good, juicy material here, but it needs some work. Here are our thoughts." The letter proceeded to recast the book as a down-and-dirty quickie like something from the pen of -- well, you fill in the blank. I was incredulous. How could he, a fine agent up to now, a former editor, and a respected author as well, invent such a coo coo assessment? (And the word “juicy” should stay in Paula Deen’s kitchen.)
He disliked my title, Finding Zsa Zsa. "It might as well be Greek," he opined. "The title might be misconstrued as a quest for a little-known fraternity or sorority." Then, if I should come up with a cheapo title to his liking, his suggested subtitle was this: "How a Hungarian Countess and Her Three Beautiful Daughters Escaped the Nazis to America and Married, Co-Starred With, or F***ed Everyone in Hollywood."
There was more, but these are the juciest parts. Even the odd phrasing “escaped the Nazis to America” was unlike him. He was a model of concise speaking and writing, or so he had been up to now.
All of this sounded so strange that I stared in disbelief at the email. Then I guessed the source. Melissa, his associate. According to her biography on the agency website, she is Editor-at-Large and has written for Reader's Digest, among "many other publications." (I can imagine which ones.) She is also, hypes the website, author of a children's book, a memoir/self help book, and she is co-founder of Card Sisters, a greeting card line for women. Perhaps she was also Homecoming Queen.
Nothing in these inauspicious accomplishments suggests an inkling of Hollywood, classic films, star biographies, or any other subject in my bibliography. I considered her highly unqualified to pass judgment on my work.
My reply to him:
“After reading your email of March 24, 2017, I have decided to seek representation elsewhere. To begin with, I am uninterested in Melissa’s opinion since I never sought her as agent. I realize, of course, that colleagues consult. In this particular instance, however, since the style, tone, and vocabulary of your email is drastically different from any previous communication from you in twenty-one years, I can only assume that the writing, or at least the sentiment, is largely hers.
“Your opinion that the title Finding Zsa Zsa might be misconstrued as a quest for a little-known fraternity or sorority makes no sense. I am certainly open to criticism, but statements of this sort smack of an amateur, which you are not. As to that suggested subtitle: it’s embarrassing.”
I ended with: “I am grateful for your dedicated representation in the past, and regret that it could not continue. I sincerely wish you well in future.”
My third and final agent was Eric Myers. He sold Finding Zsa Zsa to Kensington, one of the last independent publishers in New York. Even before publication, the book was optioned by Amy Sherman-Palladino, best known as creator of the hit series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime Video and for the earlier Gilmore Girls on TV. The deal was “inked,” as noted in the jazzy lingo of Variety, by Eric and co-agent Matthew Snyder at CAA. It remains under option to Amy.
An option does not insure that a book will be adapted for film or mini-series. It simply gives the option holder exclusive rights to produce the work during a given period of time in exchange for fees paid at certain intervals, with renewals of the option as set forth in the contract.
Eric Myers fulfilled his duties as a literary agent, and as agent-of-record he receives the standard fee of fifteen percent on all sales for the life of the work and in all editions and formats, with a slightly higher commission on foreign sales. Owing to differences of opinion in several matters, however, we dissolved the professional relationship while remaining friends. One issue that divided us was an invitation from Fox News to plug Finding Zsa Zsa on one of its shows. I stated that nothing would induce me to appear on any of its disreputable slots. Eric’s point was that the show — I don’t recall which one — was not devoted to politics. I countered with, “I can’t imagine a viewer of the Trump Network reading anything but the Bible and possibly Mein Kampf.”
Eric himself is an author of several books, a fact that widens his perspective on the publishing industry. He is also a person of many interests, including opera. On that topic I’ll listen to his every syllable.
Before discovering Substack late in 2022, I queried several agents regarding the book currently running here, viz., Did You Sleep With the Models? You may well ask, How does one decide which agents to query?
Publishersmarketplace.com is the flesh market for every kind of agency: the relatively few top ones, the mid-grade, the boutique agencies, all the way down to the bottom feeders, buccaneers who’ll pick your pocket if you look away. That website is where I found most of those to whom I sent query letters, along with sample chapters, proposals, or whatever their agency’s website specified.
Almost every day of the year agents post their qualifications and the categories they represent on publishersmarketplace.com. A typical one goes something like this:
Agent X grew up loving books—going to the library was the highlight of her week. When her parents thought her tucked in bed asleep, she used a flashlight to read a book under the covers. Now she is equally enthusiastic while reading a manuscript. She is dying to fall in love with a writer's words.
After graduation from Squeers University with a major in creative writing and Sanskrit and a minor in yogurt making, she began her career at the Capone Agency. Among her clients there are the estate of William Shakespeare, Tokyo Rose, Xi Jinping, and Charles Manson.
When she isn’t falling in love with new manuscripts, she enjoys macramé, experimenting with bean curd recipes, alligator watching, and walking her shih tzu, Rosa Bonheur, across the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge.
She seeks books that will bring about world peace, end global warming, and shower happiness upon humankind, whether fiction that resonates with one’s deepest emotions or nonfiction that stops the heart and restarts the mind. She reads every submisison with greatest care and will respond in five years.
Well, I’ve exaggerated a bit — but you get the picture. The oldest cliché in the How To Be an Agent Book is the one about reading under the covers at night. It’s bullshit. I suspect they’ve remembered it from a YA (i.e., young adult) novel, meaning that their reading is primarily books for the twelve-to-eighteen-year-old age group. How long before one of them recounts feasting on a book under the duvet by candlelight and setting fire to the family home?
It’s true that agents are swamped with submissions — five hundred a month is not unusual — but the promise to read them all is seldom kept. The game they play is to bait unspecting writers, who spend hours perfecting their query letters and proposals. The agent, like a magpie, hopes to discover a glittery something or other in the slush pile.
If agents spent less time posting inanities on social media they might actually keep up with submissions. Judicious skimming would chop 450 from the monthly 500.
I suggest you avoid this kind of agent unless you love reading under the sheets by flashlight or with help from captive fireflies while the household slumbers — if so, contact Agent X today!
My final bizarre interaction with an agent took place in an exchange of emails with a person at Westwood Creative Artists in Toronto. In June 2022 I sent a query letter and proposal for Did You Sleep With the Models? to this agent, who claimed an interest in all things LGBTQ+. A month later I received this reply:
Thank you so much for sharing your proposal with me. Generally speaking, I don't represent a lot of memoir, because it can be such a challenging sell in this market. That said, you have a well-developed proposal here and an interesting CV, especially with your publication history. I'm certainly interested in your story, and I'm wondering if you can tell me a little bit more about yourself. Obviously, you've had prior representation, so I wonder why you are currently seeking an agent, and what you are hoping for in that relationship.
Thanks so much, and I look forward to learning more about you! If you have any questions for me you're welcome to send them along, and perhaps we can set up a phone call down the line.
How odd to read that memoirs were “such a challenging sell,” since the agent’s website solicited proposals in that genre. I replied promptly with the requested information, and I didn’t hear anything until October 2022. Then this chatty message:
Thank you so much for your patience. I apologize that it has taken me an absurd amount of time to get back to you. I am woefully behind in my query pile, and only just got back to this point today, believe it or not. Regardless, I appreciated your extremely detailed response, and before I proceed, I just wanted to ask if you are still seeking representation. I don't want to waste any more of your time than I already have! If you are still interested in working together, I will absolutely prioritize your query, and can guarantee that you won't have any more wait times like this. Thanks again.
I replied, saying that I was still interested in representation. I added that I had also tweaked the proposal, added a few paragraphs, and asked the agent to substitute the new proposal for the previous one. The response:
We're not quite at the stage yet where I'm ready to begin discussing next steps, but if you have updated drafts of your proposals, I would be happy to take a look at them!
Four months later I heard from this agent once more, the query having been “prioritized” in a protracted way:
I’m sorry but I won’t be able to consider your work.
Looking back, I should have suspected this agent’s professionalism. Most agents, on their webpage, have a client list that includes the client’s most successful titles and the publishers of same. This one’s clients, without exception, published with very small presses, almost categorizable as vanity publishers. Then, too, on every one of this agent’s emails was this peculiar confession:
I work on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Mississaugas of the Credit Indigenous peoples.
When I see such self-righteous and self-serving proclamations, my immediate thought is: If you are so unhappy on stolen land, give it back to the indigenous people. They would surely absolve you of guilt, and no doubt would utilize the turf better than you have done.
This agent, like many others, has a list of desired projects specified on wishlist.com. I sometimes visit that site for a couple of hollow laughs; it’s like Ripley’s Believe It or Not crossed with hallucinogenic mushrooms. I once came across the wish for “a gay romcom set in Afghanistan.” (Would you like that with or without Taliban torture?)
The Toronto agent has several dozen entries on the Wishlist website; among the desired topics:
Rich people problems, particularly if they come with a healthy dose of glamour
Descriptive food writing, and “zero-proof”/sober narratives
cottage-, clutter-, goblincore
traditionally feminine sports (think ballet, cheerleading, roller derby, gymnastics, figure skating, equestrian, etc.)
If you are writing, say, a book about Annie Oakley or Calamity Jane, there’s an agent in Toronto who will prioritize your query. But is equestrianism a “traditionally feminine sport”? Tell that to Roy Rogers. And Barishnykov might not agree that ballet fits Agent X’s narrow category. In fact, the list is oddly sexist.
Speaking of which: many agents on publishersmarketplace.com crave submissions in the genre of “women’s fiction.” By that they apparently mean novels that “protect” women from reality, that do not challenge them in any way, that create hazy veils of romance with declawed boyfriends, happy endings and that — surely unintentionally — return female readers to a place presumably vacated by feminism. Do such novels come with trigger warnings?
The “women’s fiction” category raises aesthetic questions as well as political ones. Are Jane Austen’s novels more suitable for women? How about the novels of Emily, Charlotte, and Anne Brontë? The fictions of Alice Munro, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2013? Part of the fun of reading is not being segregated from any category. That’s how readers decide what they enjoy and what they disdain. That is also one reason the current wave of book banning is so despicable.
Must girls and women be shielded from the sexy trash novels of Judith Krantz, Jackie Collins, and a plethora of others? Looked at closely, such protectionism resembles the hated history of…patriarchy! Isn’t it Victorian, and condescending, to establish a separate category for women, as if they are too fragile or too limited to withstand mainstream fiction? It’s like something dreamed up by the muck-a-mucks of fundamentalist religions…Books Approved for the Harem.
What do my female readers have to say on this subject?
If you’re a writer just setting out, be prepared for every kind of looney behavior on the part of literary agents. Perhaps you understand now why I call Substack “my happy home.”
This was very interesting. Thank you.
I'm a non-fiction writer and had the good fortune to have my first book, Broken Mirrors/Broken Minds: The Dark Dreams of Dario Argento published by a first-time publisher doing everything on the fly and hitting a bulls eye on every front. No agent--he found my number at work and called me directly. I supplied all the photos (I'd been collecting material for years because I adored the filmmaker), he persuaded the Quay brothers, highly-regarded animators of eerie art/nightmare films to do the cover. Near the end, a friend of a friend in the business came read over the contract with an agent's eye. When the Quays dropped out because a grant came through for them to make a new film (with a tight schedule and imminent start date). But out of basic decency (a rare thing) they stayed on long enough to find a replacement, an excellent Eastern-European artist who did the striking the first-edition cover. I lucked out at every turn and I know how lucky I was.