How To: Signing with an Agent
Introduction
Like so many topics in this How To series, I am not the first to try and tackle it. I will never be the first. So while I will list out the steps as usual to bring everything into a single guide, you’ll find that I will mostly be directing you elsewhere, namely to Sami Ellis’ brilliant Agent Adjacent Cheat Sheet.
Overview of Steps
Set up the call
Have the call
Nudge
References
Managing deadlines
Making a decision
Signing a contract
Announcing + after
Set up the call
An agent has gotten in touch to say they’ve read your book and would like to jump on a call—congratulations!! Sometimes these calls are R&Rs, so temper your expectations a bit, but often they’re offers of representation. Celebrate! Respond to the email and set up a call. Celebrate more! Then prepare yourself.
This call is a mini-interview, and while you’re definitely being evaluated, mostly you’re the one doing the evaluating. You should come up with a list of questions that are important to you. Here’s a resource from Aspiring Author.
Normally you’ll want to keep this whole thing a little hush hush. Tell your friends and family but don’t loudly announce it on social media. It may not be an offer, and you’ll be asked to keep a lot of secrets over your publishing journey, so being able to restrain yourself now will be good practice. No need to contact any of the agents considering your work at this moment; wait for the actual call
Have the call
Since you have that list of questions you prepared (here’s a link to Donne’s post again!) this should be a breeze.
Just kidding! It will probably be a bit nerve wracking, but at a certain point you should just be having a normal conversation. Listen to all the nice things the agent has to say about your work. Ask your questions. Take notes, but just be present in the conversation too. At the end of the day, you’ll be signing based on general vibes as well as the answers to your questions, so do try and be engaged!
Ask the questions that have meaning to you. You don’t have to ask every single one of them, but you’ll want to understand their working style. Any hypothetical situation that arises over the course of your relationship will hopefully break down, in the end, to the fundamentals of working style and vision. I asked many questions that meant little to me (how big a submission round do you envision? Okay, today that might mean something to me, but back then I didn’t know enough for the answer to matter).
I will say this: if the agent offers, they’ll set a deadline for response. It should not be less than 10 days. No one should be pressuring you into signing. 2 weeks is the standard and 3 weeks is very normal.
Two things I strongly believe you must at minimum ask for:
An agent’s references, i.e. the contact information for at least 2 clients.
An agency contract boilerplate so you can review the terms.
Nudge
Oh yay, the call went great and you now have an offer on the table! Time to nudge everyone considering your materials and let them know. Nudge them all, I mean everyone, even those who just have your queries. Even if they’ve had it for months and you’d mentally written them off. Honestly, I nudged people who I’d noted as closed no response (CNR) based on a no response means no (NRMN) policy if that policy hadn’t been in effect for too long. For instance, if an agent was no response means no after 12 weeks and we were at week 20, I nudged.
If it was NRMN and I’d sent the query 6 months ago, no need to nudge.
Okay, so, how do you phrase that nudge? Well, Sami Ellis has you covered. I’m endorsing all of her email templates. Change the subject line of the email (if the agent takes email queries) to OFFER OF REP — your book’s title.
References
Talk to an agent’s clients! Please, please! Ask the agent for references during your call, and then if you have a connection to a client who was not officially referred, talk to them too! Ask them about what it’s like to work with the agent. You can essentially ask them what you asked the agent in the call, but rephrased slightly. E.g., instead of “are you an editorial agent?” you can ask “is xyz an editorial agent?”
How do you phrase the outreach email? Oh would you look at that, Sami has a template for it.
Managing Deadlines
If you need an extension to consider your options, ask for it. Don’t be shy about it, the offering agent should understand. How do I do this? Sami has a template for that. Are you picking up on a theme?? Please do browse Sami’s entire database of emails.
Making a decision
One day I’ll make a little worksheet for this and come back and edit this newsletter. Today is not that day, so here is a list of guiding questions for making the decision:
Does their vision for your book align with yours?
Does it seem like their working style will mesh well with yours?
Do they have a track record of selling books and/or agency support/mentorship if they’re new?
Will they represent you long-term, or are they looking for a 1 book sale?
Do you like them as a person, based on your interactions?
If an agent doesn’t pass the test for these points, consider turning them down. Even if they’re your only option. No agent is better than a bad one. Why? A bad one can ruin your book’s submission chances, drain you creatively, damage your confidence, and set you back in your career.
How do I phrase my acceptance? Or my rejections if I have multiple offers? You already know the answer: Sami has a template for that. Sami also has templates for nudging agents who don’t respond to your initial offer of rep nudge.
Signing a contract
Before you actually sign, you should review the terms of a contract. A standard agent commission is 15% and 20%-25% for subright sales that the agency (not publisher) handles. Get friends who know more than you to review the clauses. Most key: make sure you own your work and can take it with you if you leave. This is critical: if you end up leaving the agent, can you take your work with you? Some agencies (like mine!) allow you to take unsold work to your next agency (sold work is a different story and that first agent will receive commission on it forever more, as they should since they sold it). Some agencies will try and stop you: I once saw a contract that stated if you and your agent worked on a book together at all they retained commission on it if you left, even if they didn’t actually sell it. Avoid!
Announcing + after
You made your decision, signed your contract after reviewing the terms, closed out everything you needed to close out—now it’s time to go public! Add your rep to your website bio and even your Twitter bio. Tweet about it, have fun! Celebrate! Celebrate more! You did it!
Figure out next steps with your agent including a revision timeline, and then bask in the relief of 1) getting through the potentially nerve wracking process of accepting an offer and 2) no longer being in the query trenches. You have a lot of work ahead of you going on sub, etc., but it was no small feat getting here. Proud of you!
Conclusion
I had 4 offers when I signed, and I will be honest with you, emotionally I was very distraught. Not at the fact that there were offers—I was amazingly lucky to get 4—but over having to make a decision. Having to line up my ducks. Suddenly receiving a bunch of rejections in a row in response to my nudges. What if I picked wrong? This is my one chance, what if I blew it? What was supposed to be just fun and joy was instead kind of miserable.
I know, cry me a river. But I’m just saying, you spend so long waiting for this moment that when it actually happens it feels unreal and unfathomably important. It’s alright if you get overwhelmed and don’t have a good time. But remember that whatever decision you make isn’t final. There isn’t a “wrong” answer between reputable agents, there’s just various shades of learning experience. If you survived the query trenches once, you can do it again.
—Kvita