The Nasty Uppishness of Jumped-Up Literary Agents

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There is a peculiar little habit among some literary agents that has nothing to do with books and everything to do with making sure everyone knows who is important.

Most writers understand rejection. An agent can't represent everyone, and sometimes a manuscript simply isn't right for them. Fair enough. The problem is the tone adopted by those who seem to believe that becoming a literary agent has somehow elevated them above the people who actually sit down and write the books.

A writer can spend two or three years writing a novel, usually in the spare room, after work, while the washing machine is making noises that suggest imminent death. They rewrite it, edit it, polish it, doubt it, start again and eventually summon the courage to send it off. Then, having done all that, they find themselves treated as though they have turned up at the gates of some exclusive London club wearing the wrong shoes.

It is rather odd.

The great literary velvet rope

There is nothing wrong with agents being selective. There is nothing wrong with understanding the market, knowing what publishers want or deciding that a particular book doesn't fit your list. That is the job.

What isn't the job is making writers feel small.

There is a difference between saying, "This isn't for me," and behaving as though the writer should be grateful for being permitted to breathe the same literary air. Some agents appear to have developed such an inflated sense of their own importance that you half expect them to arrive at literary festivals carried in on a sedan chair.

And then comes the jargon.

Positioning. Platform. Marketability. Commercial potential. Comparable titles. Discoverability.

Some of it is useful. Some of it is necessary. But occasionally it sounds as though a perfectly ordinary novel has been submitted for approval to the United Nations.

Perhaps somebody could just read the bloody thing.

The writer isn't applying for membership

This is the bit that gets lost.

The writer isn't necessarily an inexperienced amateur who has wandered in from nowhere. They may have spent decades reading, writing and thinking about stories. They may know precisely what they are doing. They may simply not know the right people.

And that, unfortunately, can sometimes matter rather more than it ought to.

Publishing is a small world. People know people. Agents know editors. Editors know authors. Authors know other authors. Festivals invite familiar names, panels feature familiar faces and before long everyone is congratulating themselves on discovering new voices while listening to many of the same voices they've been listening to for years.

Then some unknown writer from Newcastle, Norwich, Bradford or some other place safely outside the literary postcode sends in a manuscript.

How terribly inconvenient.

Rejection is fine. Uppishness isn't.

Most writers can cope with being told no. They may not enjoy it, but they can cope.

What grates is being made to feel that the person saying no possesses some superior literary authority simply because they happen to sit on the other side of a submission inbox.

They don't.

They have a job. An important one, certainly, but still a job.

A good agent can be selective without being condescending. They can understand publishing without behaving like the Archbishop of Literature. They can know their industry inside out without treating every unknown writer as though they've wandered into the wrong building.

That is professionalism.

The rest is theatre.

Remember where the books come from

The whole publishing machine ultimately begins in a rather unglamorous place: somebody sitting down and writing.

Not an agent. Not an editor. Not a publicist. Somebody writes the bloody book.

They write it after work, before work, at weekends, in bedrooms, kitchens, sheds and cafés. They write it when nobody knows their name and nobody has promised them anything. They write because they have a story they cannot quite leave alone.

So by all means be selective, dear literary agent. Say no. Say it quickly. Say it politely. Explain when you can.

But perhaps lose the velvet rope.

The writer isn't begging to join the literary aristocracy.

They're just asking you to read the book.