I’m not Kate but I’m also an agent and have irrepressible opinions, so HERE I AM.
As a human being, I hear you on how excruciating it is to make yourself vulnerable and share your work, only to have to wait interminable weeks for a reply. As an agent, however, I know that slowness (on everything not absolutely time sensitive, such as a c…
I’m not Kate but I’m also an agent and have irrepressible opinions, so HERE I AM.
As a human being, I hear you on how excruciating it is to make yourself vulnerable and share your work, only to have to wait interminable weeks for a reply. As an agent, however, I know that slowness (on everything not absolutely time sensitive, such as a contract deadline) is a sign of an agent’s *competence.*
It’s important to remember that our job is not exactly customer service; it’s business, a business partnership with each of our clients. Which means our most important duty is not so much to make our clients “happy customers” in the moment so much as it is to invest meaningful expertise in order to give them the best chance at industry success. What that looks like is generally not emails. It generally involves dozens to hundreds of uncertain, iterative editorial development on both of our parts over the course of many, many months. And the mindfuck is that we can never be certain how long that will take, or what it will take. Sometimes it involves many drafts. Sometimes it involves something completely outside the scope of our work, such as the client releasing their white knuckle grip on their drafts and ending a problematic relationship or gig that’s triggering perfectionist, controlling, art-killing impulses. And this is all very hard to communicate around, especially if we need to prioritize our time in the hard thinking vs communicating. Again, it’s our duty as your business partner to prioritize this.
In an ideal world, agents could articulate this up front. But it’s not always possible. It’s cool to find an agent who CAN articulate this up front if you need that emotionally. But if you take nothing else away from this, trust me on one thing: you do not want an agent who treats a proposal like an assembly line product or open IT repair ticket. The work is a lot more amporpjous than that.
I'm generally in favor of irrepressible opinions. ;)
The point of my inquiry is that what is excruciating for most of us isn't the "vulnerability"- it's the black hole of communication. :) We're business people too (I manage a multimillion dollar budget, several teams of staff, a raft of large projects, and strategic planning for a $100+M government agency. It involves tech knowledge, but it's mostly business management :) ). Katy's comment made it clear that what the publishing industry considers "normalized timelines and practices for business communication" is significantly different than what most of us experience. I've worked in government, Fortune 500, small business - and publishing is definitely the outlier. :)
Because so many of us writers "come from elsewhere", so to speak, our assumptions and expectations around communication are very different from the assumptions and expectations I see in agents' comments on communication. And that difference in assumptions on both sides seems to be the largest part of frustrations (from writers waiting for query responses to agents who howl on Twitter because someone dared to send a follow-up inquiry at less than 6 months), and panic attacks (like the folks who are terrified that their agent is ghosting them because they didn't answer a message within a reasonable-in-every-other-industry time frame).
In any other industry - the way agents communicate is *terrible business etiquette, and those long silences would be *cause* for panic and concern over the relationship. :) So - the point of my question was to ask "what is the norm for an agent" - so we're equipped to assess your responses according to *your industry's norms rather than our own. Cuz it seems like understanding one another better would avoid a lot of heartache - and panic attacks!
I’m not Kate but I’m also an agent and have irrepressible opinions, so HERE I AM.
As a human being, I hear you on how excruciating it is to make yourself vulnerable and share your work, only to have to wait interminable weeks for a reply. As an agent, however, I know that slowness (on everything not absolutely time sensitive, such as a contract deadline) is a sign of an agent’s *competence.*
It’s important to remember that our job is not exactly customer service; it’s business, a business partnership with each of our clients. Which means our most important duty is not so much to make our clients “happy customers” in the moment so much as it is to invest meaningful expertise in order to give them the best chance at industry success. What that looks like is generally not emails. It generally involves dozens to hundreds of uncertain, iterative editorial development on both of our parts over the course of many, many months. And the mindfuck is that we can never be certain how long that will take, or what it will take. Sometimes it involves many drafts. Sometimes it involves something completely outside the scope of our work, such as the client releasing their white knuckle grip on their drafts and ending a problematic relationship or gig that’s triggering perfectionist, controlling, art-killing impulses. And this is all very hard to communicate around, especially if we need to prioritize our time in the hard thinking vs communicating. Again, it’s our duty as your business partner to prioritize this.
In an ideal world, agents could articulate this up front. But it’s not always possible. It’s cool to find an agent who CAN articulate this up front if you need that emotionally. But if you take nothing else away from this, trust me on one thing: you do not want an agent who treats a proposal like an assembly line product or open IT repair ticket. The work is a lot more amporpjous than that.
I'm generally in favor of irrepressible opinions. ;)
The point of my inquiry is that what is excruciating for most of us isn't the "vulnerability"- it's the black hole of communication. :) We're business people too (I manage a multimillion dollar budget, several teams of staff, a raft of large projects, and strategic planning for a $100+M government agency. It involves tech knowledge, but it's mostly business management :) ). Katy's comment made it clear that what the publishing industry considers "normalized timelines and practices for business communication" is significantly different than what most of us experience. I've worked in government, Fortune 500, small business - and publishing is definitely the outlier. :)
Because so many of us writers "come from elsewhere", so to speak, our assumptions and expectations around communication are very different from the assumptions and expectations I see in agents' comments on communication. And that difference in assumptions on both sides seems to be the largest part of frustrations (from writers waiting for query responses to agents who howl on Twitter because someone dared to send a follow-up inquiry at less than 6 months), and panic attacks (like the folks who are terrified that their agent is ghosting them because they didn't answer a message within a reasonable-in-every-other-industry time frame).
In any other industry - the way agents communicate is *terrible business etiquette, and those long silences would be *cause* for panic and concern over the relationship. :) So - the point of my question was to ask "what is the norm for an agent" - so we're equipped to assess your responses according to *your industry's norms rather than our own. Cuz it seems like understanding one another better would avoid a lot of heartache - and panic attacks!