Accurate Portrayal

"Same here. But mostly because of that publisher-wannabe-woman who 'advices' him. 'Too many adjectives'. I say that's a really weird advice. I bet she didn't read a page and was a hoax. On her second visit she even says something like 'some improvements on whatever I criticised the last time'. And the guy really took it for real..."

The agent in question was an agent with the Ashley Grayson Agency, for about ten years. Grayson is a legit agency, albeit small; they have a couple of very successful clients (they used to rep a friend of mine, and sold one of her books, but she wasn't happy and found new representation). I suspect, though, that Denise there was never a particularly successful part of the agency--a search on Publishers Marketplace turned up one deal for her, and it was the book of a fellow Grayson agent, which sounds like a gimme to me--and I really, really wonder about her appearance in this film. It did not present her in a good light. I wondered if they made her say some of this stuff, because the things she said didn't sound like anything any publishing professional I know would say.

Honestly? I suspect, from what she said and from doing some digging, that she was a *very* junior agent who never got the training she should, or wouldn't listen when it was given to her. I'm just not buying it. She mentions in the film that Andrew Fox is one of her most successful clients; no offense to him, but she was unable to sell his novel (that she repped; he may have others) to a major house and it ended up with a small (albeit respectable afaik) press which does not require agented submissions. Worse than that, if a blog post I found is to be believed, Denise did not actually submit the book there; the author basically submitted it himself.

It's not just "too many adjectives" that gives her away. Almost every word out of her mouth told me that she's not a publishing professional with real experience.

Let's start with her visit to his house (the fact that she was there at all was a red flag, frankly, but I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and guess she'd visited because they'd asked her to for the filming). She mentions having given his book to one of their "readers, who is a retired college professor."

1. Some agents do use first readers, but those first readers are generally their assistants or interns, trained carefully to look for certain things. For her to act like books are just randomly handed to people is odd.

2. Being a college professor isn't impressive in publishing, or rather, it's not a credential anyone in publishing cares about IN THAT SENSE. The fact that a reader is a retired professor means nothing in terms of their being able to pick publishable work from a slush pile.

Then she says that after six or seven pages, the reader told her to "buy it," because "people who liked THE DAVINCI CODE will love it." And that impressed her so much that she came to talk to him.

1. Six or seven pages? No WAY, sorry. Decisions--or rather, decisions that aren't rejections--are not made based on six or seven pages, at least not for people with no prior credits. A ms can be rejected after a couple of lines or pages if the writing is obviously horrible. That's the fate of most submissions, frankly. But a decision to accept isn't made that quickly. At all.

2. "Buy it?" BUY it? Agents do not BUY books. They REPRESENT them to publishers. If nothing else had told me already, I knew this woman was not a successful agent the second the word "buy" left her mouth.

3. "People who liked THE DAVINCI CODE?" That's not really a trad fantasy audience, in general, and the guy's book was clearly a trad fantasy. It's a silly comparison to make. It's even sillier for any agent to be impressed by it coming from someone who isn't a publishing professional. "People who liked THE DAVINCI CODE" is like "people who liked HARRY POTTER." It's what amateurs say.

After she's fooled him into being excited about that, she tells him one of the Big Lies Amateurs and Scammers Tell: "It's really hard for first-time authors without credits to get published. So you need to build a platform. We want people who'll do book signings and go on talk shows, you have to be a movie star."

1. No, it's not, if your book is good. If first-time authors can't get published, where do all those books in the stores come from? I was a first-time author with no credits the first time I got published. So was every single one of my published friends. Seriously, guys. Your book is all the credit you need. If it's good, you have a good chance at publication.

2. It's actually easier in many cases for first-time authors to get published, because they have no negative sales history, whereas an author with three failed books behind him or her is going to have a harder time.

3. "Platform" is for non-fiction, not fiction. And when they say "platform," they mean PLATFORM. *National* platform. A cable-access TV show in a small town or city really isn't a platform. (Yes, you do sometimes hear "platform" used interchangeably with "audience." The fact still remains that for fiction, while a strong "platform" may help you, a weak one will not hinder you. Finding your audience is the publisher's job, not yours. No publisher will turn down a great, commercial book because the author hasn't been on local radio or whatever. There's plenty of time between sale and publication to start building an audience.)

4. Book signings don't sell books. Really. Book signings (and book tours, and advertising, all the things people seem to think are so important) are really only effective when you have an established, popular author. A crowd will turn up at a signing for them. The ads will let their readers know they have another book coming out, and when. Other than that, book signings just aren't something agents or publishers care much about. (I've done a couple of signings, generally at conventions. They're fun. I've sold a decent amount of books at them. But it's nowhere near the number of books I sell just because my books are on shelves in stores.)

Seriously. When is the last time you bought a book by an author you'd never heard of, just because they sat behind a table with a pen in their hand?

"Too many adjectives," and the rest of her "writing advice."

1. "Too many adjectives" is not a criticism a professional would make, at least not in those terms and in this sort of case. (And did she mean adverbs, perhaps?)

2. Notice how cagily she's done this? She compares his book to TDVC, then slips in some nonsense about adjectives. Again, Grayson is a legit agency and the principals are AAR members; I haven't seen any specific complaints about this happening, but if it weren't for the Grayson name I'd bet dollars to donuts she's charging him for "editing services."

3. Notice, too, how she gives NO SPECIFIC FEEDBACK. She never says, "When Character X does Y, it doesn't make sense," or whatever. She throws out a generality or two, and that's it. (Granted, the scene may be edited for time, but...ugh.) She doesn't say anything about what she likes in the ms.

4. Which brings me to a major point here: This woman doesn't know what editing is. She doesn't know what editors--and agents--do. Editors edit, that is to say, they offer comments about the book in question's plot, characters, pace, and structure. The editorial letters I get from my editors (and from my agent, first, before the book is submitted) are not about the actual technical writing. They're about all of the other things I mentioned. They say things like, "I feel like it took a little too long for [Character] to understand what the bad guy wanted, can you find a way to work that in earlier?" or "[Character]'s relationship with {Character} seems to run hot-and-cold, and it doesn't feel intentional. Can you clarify this?" or "I'm not quite buying the reasons behind this scene."

NONE of those comments are about adjectives. If there are by some chance comments to be made about adjectives, they're not generally made in the initial edit. Those usually come in copyedits or line edits (not everyone gets both all the time, or rather, we always have copyedits but do not always get line edits). In a proper initial edit, in fact, it's not even usually notes on the actual ms; it is, as I mentioned, a letter or email.

Editing =/= line editing =/= copyediting. They're different things. Different skill sets. This "literary agent" doesn't seem aware of that at all. Because she's not aware, because she's not a publishing professional.

5. When she talks about the length of the ms, it's always in terms of pages. First of all, no. We don't discuss mss in terms of number of pages, because it's a meaningless number. Second of all, I know whats-his-name isn't writing the way he should--that is, in standard ms format--because if he was, his 183k ms would be closer to 800 pages, not 600. I suspect he's only single-spacing, or maybe space-and-a-half. Either way, number of pages is pointless.

He shows up at her place again to talk about the edits and again mentions a page number. She seems to have a big issue with the number of pages. I honestly cannot recall a single time my own agent has asked me how many pages one of my mss is.


So then they have a conversation outside at a table. She says something about having read the first 100 pages of his book, and she thinks it's "really really good" (fair enough, I guess, except later she says it isn't) and that he "managed to clear up" the things she had problems with, which, how does she know that if she's only read 100 pages? Remember, a proper edit is about the entire book, not just a page at a time.

Then she says she "had an appointment set up with the acquisitions editor at Del Rey," and that she talked up his book to that editor. She says she talked about how she has a new author who is a dungeon master, and that it's a trad fantasy with a female protagonist, and that they want it to be a series and that she was chanting "THREE BOOK DEAL!" in her head. And then she says she'll finish reading the book and probably ask for revisions. The guy leaves with his ms in a box and says "I have the greatest agent in the world."

*sigh*

1. Yeah, sure she had an appointment set up with 'the' acquisitions editor at Del Rey. Except there are a whole bunch of them. And they're in New York. Maybe she meant a phone appointment? Either way. Agents tell you WHO they've spoken to. They don't say, "I talked to an editor at Del Rey," they say, "I talked to Firstname Lastname at Del Rey." (And Del Rey, BTW, is one of my own publishers, so I would have loved to hear that name.)

2. What she's telling us here is that she *pitched a book she doesn't represent.* That's a no-no. She also misrepresented her relationship to the author ("I have a new author"), which is a no-no.

3. She seems to think that for an editor who acquires trad fantasy, an author who is a dungeon master is some sort of new and unusual thing, a real unique selling point. Forgive me, but...c'mon. An aspiring trad fantasy author who also plays D&D? WOW. That's like going to a record company and saying, "Wait til you hear this new rap artist I've found. He's *African-American* and grew up in the hood. Bet you never heard of THAT before!"

4. Agents bring up the possibility of a three-book deal after an offer has been made, unless it's a trilogy.

5. She sounds as if she expects an offer to be made without the editor even seeing the ms.

6. And this is the most important one: She's just pitched an editor (supposedly) a BOOK SHE HAS NOT FINISHED READING HERSELF. She's only read the first 100 pages. For all she knows, pages 420-500 are an extended coprophagic orgy scene. Or say "All Work and no Play Make Jack A Dull Boy" over and over again. Or, you know, they're just awful. Agents do NOT pitch books they haven't read. Not ever.

7. Why the frick is this poor guy carting his book around in a box? They had email when this was filmed. Track Changes existed.

8. Again, she's going to finish reading it and offer revision suggestions. *After* she's (supposedly) pitched it to Del Rey. What would she do if the editor had asked to see it immediately? She is aware that once rejected by a particular imprint the book can't be resubmitted there, isn't she? And that it's her reputation on the line with every ms she submits?


And no offense, but...I saw that excerpt on the screen. That's not writing that a reputable agent normally would have spent more than a minute on before rejecting.


Lastly, we have the final mention of Denise. She calls this poor guy up and, having apparently finally finished reading the book, says she can't represent it. She uses the word "hate," though I really wish I knew in what context.

So she shows up at his house and says she was told his book was akin to THE DA VINCI CODE. She offers editorial suggestions. She pitches the book to editors, calling him one of her authors as she does so. All of this she does without having read most of the book herself.

And then she calls him up and tells him it's all over.

You guys, this is not how real agents work. It's not how real publishing works. I promise it's not.

She strung this poor man along, knowing that his book wasn't publishable. Now, whether she did it because she was being filmed or for publicity or what I don't know, but she did in fact string him along. He doesn't appear to have really learned anything about the craft of writing at the end (which isn't surprising given the quality of her editorial advice; "too many adjectives," FFS), so it was really wasted time. Had she not come along he might have been forced to do something else, or to actually study writing. He probably wouldn't have gotten involved with the whole cable-access-show silliness.

I don't know if she was financially compensated. Again, Grayson is AAR, which means they adhere to a code of ethics, but she herself was not AAR (she didn't have the sales to qualify). I'd think working for an AAR agency would put her above the scamminess. And to be fair, maybe it did/does. Maybe she was coached on what to say, and not given a choice, though were it MY name and reputation I wouldn't let anybody convince me to act like I didn't know how the business I'm in works.


I hope this long-winded little analysis has helped somebody out there. :-) I was just hopping mad after seeing this last night, I really was. You should have seen me yelling at my TV screen. So I had to vent somewhere! (And I figured my own blog isn't the place.)




I'm new, please be kind!