A Highly Relational Industry: An Interview with Literary Scholar and Data Scientist Laura McGrath on the History of Agents
"Only a fool would have himself for an agent”
When I told friends about my book deal, I got asked the same question again and again: did I agent it myself? It didn’t even occur to me to be my own agent! I know what agents do all day and felt it was wisest to keep those things distinct from my job as an author. While my instincts proved correct (and I am grateful for my own agent Meredith Kaffel Simonoff every day), I wanted the book to offer an understanding of the agent’s role beyond my own personal experiences and to get at what an author can reasonably expect from their agent and how to work best with one. I interviewed agents I admire, which was fascinating and fun, but one of my favorite conversations was with Laura McGrath, a literary historian whose job is to study us.
Trained as a literary scholar and a data scientist and currently an Assistant Professor of English Literature at Temple, Laura draws from the computational tools of sociology alongside the usual skill set of book critics to research how literary agents have shaped the form and content of the books we read. Her forthcoming book, MIDDLEMEN: LITERARY AGENTS AND THE MAKING OF AMERICAN LITERATURE will be published by Princeton next year. To research it, Laura interviewed dozens of agents and other publishing professionals, created large scale data sets while working at the Stanford Literary Lab and trawled the archives to study writers’ correspondence with their agents. (Do you want to know exactly how Andrew Wylie planned to rebrand Henry Kissinger from war criminal to eminence grise through positioning him as a China expert? Laura McGrath can tell you.) To get a feel for Laura’s work, check out her widely read piece “Comping White” or subscribe to her Substack “TextCrunch.”
I hope this interview is as fun for you as it is for me but life is short and attention spans are shorter, so only read this if you are interested in:
Book publishing history, including how agents came to exist and how their role changed over time
Why editors prefer to read submissions from agents rather than directly from authors (as explained by someone who is not an agent and therefore not benefiting financially from our current system)
How agents differ from editors and where they overlap
The scope of an agent’s work from someone who has interviewed and studied dozens of well-established and emerging agents, both active or long departed to the great auction in the sky
Yours with thanks,
Alia
Why and how did the role of the literary agent develop?
Literary agents first came on the scene in the UK in the 1880s, and in the US in the 1890s. Initially, they were employed by both publishers as scouts and authors as advisers. In this obvious conflict of interest, agents often pit publishers and authors against one another to their own advantage. This– and countless tabloid-worthy stories of embezzlement and long cons– earned agents a reputation for sleaze and scams that persisted for much of the twentieth century. But savvier agents recognized that they stood more to gain, financially, by aligning themselves with authors rather than publishers. Publishers controlled the means of production (printing, distribution) and set the terms of a deal, and often took advantage of writers. But agents understood that, romance of “getting published” aside, writers were supplying publishers with their chief product, and should have a greater share in the profits. Artists should be paid for their labor. The modern agent was born: then, as now, agents would dispense with industry expertise and ensure that writers be compensated fairly, taking a portion of the profits for themselves in the form of a commission.
Agents became truly powerful with the development of the book auction, allegedly invented by Scott Meredith in 1952—the practice of selling books to the highest bidder. (I haven’t been able to corroborate this claim– and conveniently, neither Meredith nor anyone who worked for him could remember the name of the novel sold in the first auction– so I chalk this one up to personal mythmaking and general swagger.) By the late-1960s, novelists and writers of high-profile nonfiction had all signed with agents as a matter of course, and Esquire placed agents at “the hot center” of the literary establishment. Contracts became more complex, and the financial stakes skyrocketed, when Hollywood came knocking, when the foreign rights market expanded, and when the chain bookstores began flooding the suburbs; a good agent became indispensable. By the 1980s, Writer’s Market was opining, “Only a fool would have himself for an agent.” And by the 1990s, the New York Times was calling agents “the biggest fish in publishing.”
What do literary agents actually do?
Typically, literary agents in films and TV shows are uncaring villains who scream at their assistants before throwing back martinis at lunch. They’re literature’s carnival barkers, or literary ambulance chasers. In reality, literary agents trade in rights and contracts. They represent the legal, financial, and literary interests of authors or their estates, primarily through negotiating book deals. While this may seem straightforward, in practice, the work of a literary agent is quite complex! Much of what an agent actually does can’t be reduced to a legal document like a book contract. An agent will advise a writer on their book proposal or their manuscript, long before the book is ever sold. They will give writers their industry expertise, helping a writer navigate a complex industry and guiding their careers strategically. (Or, if your agent is as fabulous as mine, she may give you advice on your skin care regimen or weigh in on a book party outfit!)1
While agents work for authors, they work in the context of a larger, highly-relational industry.2 They are gatekeepers and they are matchmakers3: they pitch publishers on quality projects and facilitate relationships between authors and editors. In order to do all of this well, an agent builds relationships with people throughout publishing—editors, publishers, publicists, reviewers, booksellers, and other cultural figures—to keep abreast of industry politics and market trends. The lunches and the parties have a purpose! All of the relational knowledge and equity an agent builds translates into (potential) negotiating power, provided the agent and her client have the experience and talent to deliver.
Why do publishers prefer to receive submissions from agents as opposed to directly from writers?
Think about it practically: there are hundreds of thousands of aspiring writers. Just today, I interacted with three at pre-school dropoff! By comparison, there just aren’t that many editors. If every potential novelist could query editors directly, it would take a small army of readers to sift through all the submissions. Agents act as publishers’ gatekeepers, determining which manuscripts are promising, and which writers will be able to deliver. They winnow thousands of so-so submissions down to the handful of good ones.
But, importantly, they also know where to send them. Agents are matchmakers. They know what editors want, and how they work. A submission from an agent is not only more likely to be good, but it’s more likely to be a good fit for a particular editor or publisher. And a good fit makes for the best possible book—the top priority for all involved.
After making a match between editor and author, agents can facilitate and smooth collaboration. When agents first came on the scene in the U.K. in the 1880s, publishers feared that they would disrupt the relationship between editor and author; publishers called agents “cankers” and “parasites” and “middlemen.” But in fact, the opposite happened: because agents handle the “dirty work” of finances and contracts, authors and editors are free to focus on the writing. When problems arise—say, an author doesn’t like the jacket design, or needs more time to complete the manuscript—an agent can intervene and preserve the working relationship between writer and editor.
Has the role of the literary agent changed over time?
Historically, the role of the agent has changed in terms of the materials they represent. The earliest agents in the U.S., in the 1890s and early 1900s, functioned like today’s scouts on behalf of British publishers. In the 1910s and 20s, they were mostly placing stories in magazines (for astronomical sums– think $500k for a single F. Scott Fitzgerald story). As the U.S. book publishing industry developed (thanks to the adoption of robust international copyright laws) and as magazines consolidated and then crumbled, agents moved into the book market, where they’ve remained ever since.
Agents have also become much more important in authors’ lives than they once were. Once upon a time, editors like Max Perkins (praise be) would develop lifelong relationships with writers like Thomas Wolfe. But those special relationships are relics of a bygone, pre-conglomerate era. Now, editors often move. The editor that buys a book may not be the editor who ends up working on a book or seeing it through publication. And authors also change publishers for a variety of personal and professional reasons. Agents are different: ideally, an agent works with the author over the long haul, representing her book after book, becoming the more consistent presence in an author’s writing life. Agents are confidantes and counselors, privy to fears and doubts, hopes and dreams.4
Agents have also come to serve a more literary purpose, rather than dealing strictly in finance. And this is the part that I think tends to get lost for people outside the industry. Nothing matters more for an agent than taste. The ability to spot a promising client from the hundreds of thousands of would-be writers requires good taste and a good eye. Within the industry, agents become known for their taste. And the most successful agents—those with very successful clients—become known as tastemakers: they have built reputations for finding and developing talented writers. Aspiring authors compete to work with them, and powerful editors compete to acquire their clients’ books, because it comes with their stamp of approval. Though once viewed as optional outsiders (at best) and interloping crooks (at worst), agents are now respected within the industry for their literary knowledge and taste.5
How is an agent different from a book editor?
I like to think of agent, author, and editor as three corners of a triangle. There are three sets of individual relationships, as well as one collective relationship. The roles of agent and editor have become a little fuzzy over time. Agents also edit; editors also sell. But there are important, fixed distinctions between agents and editors—like when they get involved with a book, and who they work for.
The majority of the agent’s work takes place before a manuscript is sold6. The editor then works with the author to prepare the manuscript for publication, doing both developmental and line-editing; their vision for the book trumps the agent’s. The agent and author will work closely before a sale in other ways too— developing a proposal, brainstorming about submission lists, discussing the author’s long-term career goals. But once the sale is complete, whether via an exclusive submission or a mega-auction, the agent’s role becomes less pronounced and the author’s primary point of contact is the editor. They work with all of the other in-house teams—marketing, publicity, design—to turn the manuscript into a product that can be purchased in a bookstore. An agent may still be involved with the process, perhaps advocating for an author or simply serving as a sounding board (or shoulder to cry on), but their primary work is done. At least, until the author is ready to sell her next book.
Agents and editors also have different interests. The agent works for the author, therefore, their interests are aligned: the agent’s job is to help the author publish the best book, in the best way, possible. They don’t make any money until the author makes money, and they don’t succeed unless their clients succeed. This means that agents are fearsome champions and advocates for their writer. Editors, by contrast, work for publishers; they succeed when they make money for their publishing house. Of course, editors care deeply about literature; they want the books that they acquire to succeed—a spot on the New York Times bestseller list or a nod from Reese Witherspoon is good for everyone! But they work for someone else.
As someone who has spent so much time researching agents, why do you think we remain such a mystery?
This is such a great question, and one I think about a lot. I think agents remain so mysterious for a few reasons. The first is that agents choose to remain a mystery (or, at least, they have historically). Their goal is the author’s success, so they constantly redirect the spotlight onto their clients. When I first started my book in 2016, I sent out around 30 invitations for interviews and only 4 agents actually agreed! There’s a real hesitation to talk.
I also think agents are a mystery because, with a few notable and high-profile exceptions, the most influential agents are women. This has been true throughout the history of the profession– Elizabeth Marbury, Flora May Holly, Jenny Bradley, Candida Donadio, Lynn Nesbit, Marie Brown, Amanda Urban, Esther Newberg– I could go on and on. So much of the work that agents do is feminized (what sociologist Arlie Hochschild would call “emotional labor”), and women’s work is routinely devalued in US culture. It’s no surprise that the same goes for agents7.
I was shocked to find, as I worked on my book, that agents don’t seem to talk to each other very much, either. At least, not about the ins-and-outs of their work. There’s a great deal of “folk wisdom” passed down through the profession, and around publishing in general, but very little big-picture data to support any of these received ideas.
All of this silence is a real problem: on the one hand, we have the agent’s desire for privacy and undocumentable work; on the other, a desperation for knowledge on the part of aspiring writers and a whole lot of untested industry assumptions. The result is an information vacuum, where wild speculation and bias flourish. An information vacuum isn’t good for writers, it’s not good for the industry, and it’s not good for books.
My research is meant to fill that vacuum– not only documenting an untold history, but looking at the data as an outsider. Examining the big picture to understand how hundreds of individual decisions made by individual agents every day add up to something like a literary trend, a literary marketplace, or, even, a literary canon.
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I did not tell Laura to share this, but it’s true that if you sign with me, you’ll receive access to my skincare Google doc. (And unlike with my mother, all this advice was solicited.)
I love this phrase and it’s so true. I’ve always loved writers who depict complex social worlds—Austen, Dickens, Wharton—and I often think reading those books at a formative age helps me navigate publishing.
Yet another reason my all-time favorite novel is Emma.
Laura is describing the ideal case, though sadly, sometimes not the actual one. However, you should seek out and prioritize an agent who expresses an interest in a long-term relationship.
Again, she said it, I didn’t.
Or in the case of nonfiction, the proposal.
I love this point and it rings true. Many an agent will tell you that a good portion of our day is spent as unlicensed therapists, hand holders and cheerleaders. I’d also love Laura to research how the amount of care work an agent does differs by gender.