January 2, 2023
Why and How I Made Up a Literary Agent
Quite a provocative title, you must admit. It’s true, I essentially made up a literary agent when I couldn’t find one. The problem is, it worked… sort of.
Much of our existence – as creators and generally – is ambiguous and self-contradictory. People are complex beings, there are no simple answers. And so, though I’ve generally disowned my past as a published author, at the same time I still use the designation on Amazon, Goodreads, and such platforms. I also use it in the introductory pages of my books. It’s supposed to be some sort of sign of merit.
This is all bullshit, of course.
I’m only playing a part doing that; it’s the persona of a writer selling a book. I don’t really believe being a published author means anything in terms of quality. By the way, I also mention I have a PhD in English literature, but I don’t think that means much either.
It’s all a performance; theatrics.
Which is the topic of today’s story, too: Why and how I made up a literary agent. This is something very few people know (perhaps as few as three: the “agent”, the publisher, and myself). I’ll talk about the why’s and how’s, as well as the aftereffects. This should reveal to us a few things about the publishing industry.
I Made Up a Literary Agent to Address a Made-Up Problem
So, a good 20 or so years ago, when I was young(er) and stupid(er), I didn’t question anything. I knew I wanted to write, and I (thought I) knew I wanted to sell many books. The whole process seemed kind of simple, in the sense it seemed well-defined: You need to find a literary agent, and all your troubles are over: You find a publisher, you get published, hurrah! you sell lots of books.
Anyone who’s tried querying literary agents knows what a momentous task it is. It’s real hard to grab their attention, and harder to accommodate the onslaught of rejections – especially when you’re inexperienced, unable to think outside the box and see the bigger picture. I mean, just read about the rejection of my first book and you’ll see what I mean!
And so, in this context, after the umpteenth time I was told I sucked (that’s what it feels like; that’s what you hear), I had an idea: What would happen if I made up a literary agent? What if I had someone I knew and trusted approach publishers?
I even had the perfect candidate for the job: an auntFull disclosure: The word "aunt" is used metaphorically. who worked as a PR specialist and, naturally, had excellent social skills. I explained the situation, and she was game.
I felt real smart, coming up with a solution to the problem. Of course, it was a fake solution to a fake, made-up problem.
Worse still, it worked.
Are You Serious?
The book we pitched was shit. I disowned it long ago. But apparently it was marketable, and my aunt made a good case, because the publisher wanted me onboard. Indeed, he wanted me to sign a 3-book contract at the same time.
“Are you serious?” I remember asking. Apparently they were. Of course, I told them I’d be happy to.
It was at around that point that my aunt had a suggestion that, just perhaps, might have changed history as we know it (quite the hyperbole…)
She told me I should come clean about the trick before signing the contract. That would be the fair thing to do, she claimed. I remember resisting the idea, but in the end I had to acquiesce – I did feel weird about the deception to begin with, and by that point I felt like the worst sinner.
So, I told the publisher. What followed was, shall we say, pretty interesting.
Assumptions Right and Left
The immediate reaction was thoroughly anti-climactic. The publisher chuckled and said something – I don’t recall the exact wording – like “Well, now it makes sense, your aunt was more dedicated than a bodyguard. She defended your case passionately.”
No other graspable change followed in terms of their behavior. We did sign that contract, and a lawyer friend who was in the know told me that the terms were all pretty standard. “Unfair but standard”, is what she called them. That made me naively think that the ploy had worked: Making up a literary agent meant I was granted an entrance into the industry, and wasn’t taken advantage of.
Both assumptions were wrong.
Starting from the latter, I was taken advantage of, in the sense that I didn’t receive enough remuneration for my efforts. Would a real literary agent have made a difference? Based on my understanding and what my lawyer friend said, likely no. New writers aren’t exactly high priority, and unless they prove to be goldmines, are quickly forgotten.
But I think the other assumption, getting my foot in the proverbial door, eventually proved false too. More importantly, I think my trick did hurt me in that regard.
Would have things been different without the trick? Impossible to say. Plenty of the things I experienced made me think the publishing industry is a world not suitable for who I am. But I think the trick at least accelerated the process.
In particular, I think the publisher didn’t trust me after that; he felt deceived. Well, who could blame him? It was true: I did deceive him. No wonder he couldn’t trust me (though I didn’t have any tricks left).
From Passive Aggressive to Breaking Up
(Apologies for these hilarious exaggerations, but I can’t take this whole thing too seriously. It’s been so long, and I’ve moved on).
And so, in retrospect, I suspect the publisher decided to cut me loose already then. That would explain several things that followed immediately after the book was published, namely a rather lackluster effort to bring the book to the marketPerhaps it would be more fair to call it “a rather inconsistent effort”: The book made it to the stands of international airports, while at the same time – puzzlingly and maddeningly – friends and acquaintances said they were desperately trying to find it in bookstores, only to hear (by friendly bookstore owners) that the publisher’s representative hadn’t included it in the batch of the newly published titles…, some discrepancies in figures, and an overall not very active desire to collaborate. At least that’s how it felt from my perspective.
As I’ve mentioned before, talking about my publishing past, I experienced quite a bit of hypocrisy and deception – people promise you one thing and do another. Of course, the irony is that I would’ve been a vile hypocrite myself not acknowledging that the entire cooperation began with deception; my deception.
To continue the relationship metaphor, it’s like a marriage beginning with an affair: There’s this blot in the past which will eventually come back to haunt you with its what-ifs.
Still, I felt the publisher’s reaction was disproportional to what I’d done.
Writing book 2/3 of that contract, I was told they’d schedule it for the following spring (something like half a year ahead). After we’d finished editing (I remember being particularly accommodating, following the editor’s suggestions even against my authorial instincts), I was told they wouldn’t publish it after all. It wasn’t a good fit, they said.
I was quite devastated, because I expected it would patch things up. I immediately started writing book 3/3 – fun fact: This book is actually Dreamflakes and Soulcrumbs; read more about this twist of fate here . A few months later, when I sent it, they told me right away they wouldn’t look at it and immediately gave me a piece of paper saying I was no longer bound by a contract.
And that was it. It took me almost a decade to write fiction again.
Lessons Learned from Making Up a Literary Agent
Hypothesizing what might have happened if I hadn’t pulled that trick is a funny but ultimately pointless exercise. Funnier still is to wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t followed my aunt’s advice, divulging the secret. I suppose it would’ve emerged sooner or later.
In any case, none of this matters.
What matters is that the entire experience (and the many years in literary self-exile that followed) taught me that one shouldn’t blindly follow rules or we’ve-always-done-it-this-ways. Perhaps my decision to invent a literary agent was silly, but:
- it served its purpose in the short run;
- it’s sillier still to link writing-as-art to finding a literary agent (or nowadays, in the era of Amazon KDP, even a publisher).
In the end, I don’t think things would’ve turned out much different. As I said, regardless of my own trick, the industry (much like any organization with hierarchies, dinosaurified rules, and admittance filters – such as the academia, of which I also have bitter experience) is quite much based on hypocrisy and appearances. That’s why, in the short run, my deception worked; I fought fire with fire.
Regardless of the final outcome (we’re not examining that now), the fact that a made-up literary agent served exactly the same primary purpose as a “real” one (getting me a 3-book contract with “unfair but standard” terms) precisely underlines how much the entire edifice is based on appearances rather than substance, networking rather than merit, marketability rather than art.
It’s simply not a place I could enjoy for long.
And, in a funny twist, my deception was perhaps what made the whole thing valuable as an experience. It was my chance to offer a practically meaningless, but conceptually important expression of revolt against the system.
And I’m glad I did it.
4 Comments
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I did the whole ‘submitting’ thing (perfect name for a horrid process) with my first finished novel, a mystery set in a Physics Dept. graduate school – for too long a time. I kept getting notes such as ‘Try us next time.’ Then the idea for Pride’s Children fell in my lap, whole, and the mystery series died in the middle of the second book I was writing, which I may go back to some day and bone-pick.
But the PROCESS had soured me – so I decided not to do it again (too much adrenaline followed by disappointment) – and many years later I just published myself, but I made up a publisher, not an agent. I thought maybe agentry had a secret handshake or master list (instead of being the cuttroat ‘industry’ that probably exists), but figuring that Trilka Press sounded no more and no less than a small publisher, and making my own logo, and still use it. It’s more the desire to fill a hole than a desire to deceive anyone, though I’m happy with using KDP’s ISBN, and I don’t believe Trilka Press is what comes up when you do that. And don’t care: it looks pretty on the books, has a story (like a yin and yang symbol, but in color and with the three primary colors each representing one of my enmeshed characters, and the lettering done in my own personal handwriting font), and who knows – may some day publish someone else and/or get the full legal treatment of a separate corporate bank account. The IRS doesn’t care (as long as I report the income and send them the 1099 MISC Amazon kindly provides). And I’m not writing about anyone in such a way as to require the protection of creating an LLC or whatever.
I see many such small presses – I can’t be unique in it just being a name, not an actual legal entity – and, as I said, it looks pretty on the books (they’re my books – TWO now – and I can say that). I consider it part of the FUN of self-publishing. I assume a vanishingly small number of READERS care. Or notice.
I admire your gumption at actually creating a real live fake agent, and getting a contract! Your Aunt must be a sweetheart. Sorry it didn’t result in megadollars and continuing fame – and at how disastrous ‘standard’ contracts are – but congratulations at fooling a publisher.
It’s what’s inside the book covers that you want to count. We’ll see – it’s taking longer to get to a new order, because of the pandemic, but traditional publishing is now a house of cards itself, pretending.
“Making up a publisher” the way you describe can also be considered part of the creative process, not unlike creating a cover or deciding what to write in the introductory pages. The logo, the name, everything you describe, is part of that. Fair game, I’d say.
About my own adventure, here’s another funny piece of trivia (and you’ve got to love the symbolism!): When I got the phone call about the book getting published, I was in a bank. I still remember the surreality surrounding me; I kind of walked away from the queue, then out of the bank. I honestly don’t remember what I did next, did I go back in or leave. I don’t even remember what I’d gone there for.
Thanks for your comment!
Please ask through my ghost agent….
Félix Bruzzone, pool cleaner and pool chlorine salesman, writer only in his spare time, interviewed by Eterna Cadencia, Spanish-language publisher. Translated to English by me.