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A Good Problem to Have: Weighing Multiple Agent Offers

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Looking for a literary agent? Ever wonder what might happen if more than one of the agents you queried wanted to represent your book? Hey, it could happen, and it did for today’s guest blogger, Mike Chen. Mike is a very talented writer of sci-fi and someone you will be hearing more about soon. Check out his website and drop him a tweet @mikechenwriter.

Cork, Ireland - June 20, 2008: Old Fashioned Balance Beam Scale

When I started querying my latest manuscript, my critique partners told me that this was THE ONE. I didn’t believe them. After all, there was no practical reason why this would work out for me. Surely it’d result in more disappointment and heartache, along with the consolation prize of “Well, at least I learned a bit about plot and character.”

I was wrong. And they were right. I thought I wouldn’t even get one offer. I got multiple agent offers.

After getting over the shock of “this is really happening,” a new question took over all of my thoughts: how could I possibly choose?

Never, ever, ever in my wildest dreams did I think I could get multiple offers. Not only did I have multiple offers, several of them were from my top tier of agents. Turning one of those down seemed like something universally wrong, like eating nachos without jalapeños.

But I had to pick. And I had committed to a one-week turnaround to figure this all out. Here are the steps I took to whittle down my choices. To whoever is reading this, I hope you have this dilemma as well. It’s a pretty great problem to have.

Step 1: Consider your long-term genre plans.

First, I thought about the long term. I write cross-genre stuff, essentially commercial stories in a sci-fi setting. That led me to withdraw from one agent who was still reading, as she was purely a commercial agent with no sci-fi background. Another agent had cross-genre experience, but his primary strength was in literary fiction. Again, no pure sci-fi in his repertoire, and I knew that at some points in my career, I planned to dip more into genre elements. That crossed that agent off my list.

Step 2: See if you get along.

That left me with only agents with strong sci-fi backgrounds. I interviewed all of them and felt like I got along with each of them, so I couldn’t cross any off based on them being a jerk! All had good sales records; all worked for reputable agencies.

Step 3: Weigh their feedback on your manuscript.

So I went deeper. I looked at the non-SF material they represented and read. More importantly, I considered the different feedback they provided. I like to think I keep an open mind to all feedback, and during interviews, I made a point to not question or get defensive with any of the feedback, even if it didn’t feel right.

For the most part, I agreed with each agent’s feedback, and there was a significant level of overlap among them. But there were a handful of moments that made me scratch my head or didn’t sit right with me. I wound up weighing all of the different feedback, considering what mattered more and what was essentially a lateral move from my original vision.

That whittled the list down to two agents.

Step 4: Find the right fit.

This is where background and preference came into play. Outside of SF, the first agent worked with romance and cozy mysteries—two genres I didn’t read and certainly didn’t plan on integrating into my writing. The second agent used to work at Quirk Books, which supported SF crossover work, and as a published writer, his biggest influence is Nick Hornby—the same writer that had the biggest influence on my work.

Taking that into account, I was able to make my decision—those few things gave the second agent the advantage. And after a few days of pondering my decision rather than thinking about my real-life responsibilities, I accepted an offer of representation from Eric Smith of PS Literary Agency.

Now that we’ve gotten deeper into revisions, I can see that this was truly the right choice. Eric’s notes provide smart feedback while demonstrating a clear understanding of what I’m trying to do by blending commercial and SF. The fact that we can also talk about video games and being Corgi owners is just a bonus.

Could I have found success with the other agents? Quite possibly. However, by carefully weeding through deeper factors, I was able to hitch my work to an agent who understands both my influences and my future aspirations. I couldn’t have asked for a better fit—and it took a lot of careful consideration to get there.

selling your work

Drinking Muddy Water: Why Your Pitch Isn’t Working

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Recently, for reasons that aren’t important here, I found myself at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco with a gaggle of third-graders (a gaggle is six, if you’re unfamiliar with the imperial system of measurement). One of the most interesting items I saw there was Neil Gaiman’s original pitch to DC for Sandman. And yes, if you’re wondering who goes to the cartoon museum and gets excited about the pages with no drawings on them, that would be me.

Anyway, that made me start thinking about pitches in general and why so many of them are terrible. It’s true, and the simple reason is because authors are so wrapped up in their story, the world they’ve been living in for months or even years, that they can no longer articulate it quickly for anyone else. I think it was in Save the Cat! that the author described pitching screenplay ideas to strangers in line at coffee shops. If their eyes didn’t glaze over after 30 seconds, he knew he had a decent story. This is a great approach if you’re kicking around ideas and haven’t written anything yet.

If you’ve already written your masterpiece and are now trying to get it read by agents, publishers, or anyone other than your mom or your spouse, you need a slightly different approach. It’s fun, it won’t take much effort, and you might discover something about your story that you never knew before. Instead of the standard breathless paragraph embedded in a query letter, try to tell your story in a different format, preferably one with very strict rules.

My personal favorite is the 12-bar blues method, but you can also go with villanelle or sonnet, anything that makes you fit your ideas into a box with a new shape. I like the blues format because the lyrics have a lot of repetition, which can help simplify a complex story, or possibly add nuance to a simple one. Here’s a fine example of the AAB lyric structure, brought to you by the North Mississippi Allstars, who you should be listening to anyway.

[vimeo=http://www.vimeo.com/39640318]

How is this going to make your pitch better? Well, like the coffee-shop method, if you can’t sell yourself your idea using a formal structure, chances are no one else is going to get it either, and that’s usually because there’s a flaw in your story somewhere. You don’t have a solid plot, or you have too many subplots, or you’re not entirely sure who your characters are or what they want. If your story easily flows into a formal poem or song structure, it’s going to translate in any medium. I don’t recommend sending your final pitch to prospective agents in this format, but your ultimate presentation will be stronger for the process, and you may be able to save yourself a lot of revision time with the next project if you create a pitch first.

Give it a try. If you’re feeling noncommittal, by which I mean lazy, use the poetry magnets on your fridge and make a haiku out of your story instead. We all have them. Mine happen to be lolcat magnets, but anything works.