1. Choosing An Agent

In choosing someone to shepherd your career as a writer, we think you should take at least the same care as you would choosing a college or a lover (maybe more care in terms of the latter).

Some books or on-line articles suggest you should focus on finding an agent with a track record for sales, footnoting that you have family & friends for emotional support. We only partially agree. With the number of emails and phone calls you will have with your agent, we feel you definitely need to trust their judgment and, ideally, enjoy their company. You two are going to spend a lot of time together, discussing the very personal matters of your creative work.

We know we have rejected good writers and good projects because we felt the writer would drive us crazy.

You and the agent are looking for a fit.

Any agent that charges to read or critique your work is not a good fit. Any agent that has fees more (or less) than the industry standard of 15% (20% for foreign sales) needs to explain their variant policy.

And don’t be so star struck by visions of your impending career that you go running to the first agent willing to represent you. If the admissions director for Flatland Community College had been the first to contact you, saying "We are very impressed with your transcript," would you choose them over Princeton or Cal Tech?

We like to think of ourselves as the Grinnell or Reed College of literary agencies; a really good independent.

2. Are We Right For Each Other?

Max & Co. represents a variety of writers & subject matters. Broad categories would be narrative nonfiction (where how it is told is as important as what is told), memoir, info-tainment (reference books that are fact-filled but told in an amusing fashion), humor, visual books that have either a strong narrative or humorous foundation (i.e. not pure art books), and a limited number of fiction titles.

Our fiction tends to be dark and twisted, often with one or more heroin addicts. At the very least, the fiction we seek favors the eclectic over the mainstream.

We are only interested in the hard subjects of science, history, business if the manuscript is driven by narrative voice or offbeat angle. Purely prescriptive or descriptive work should be placed with another agency.

We do not represent these genres: fantasy or science fiction, mystery or thrillers, romance or chick lit. We do not represent children’s books nor young adult.

When seeking an agent, we believe you should try to retain one where they as a reader represent your core audience. This way, their editorial suggestions and positioning points will be based upon an intimate knowledge of the market (themselves) and not upon mere assumptions on what they think the marketplace wants, The agent will also, ideally, have built up a network of appropriate editors to whom to submit your writing. If Max & Co. was to take on a YA project and Cecile, the one (1) YA editor we know, said "No," we’re out of bullets.

3. If We Do Seem Right, How Should You Submit Your Work?

Every agent or agency is different. Do not take our wishes as your guide. Most agents do not want your writing submitted as an attached email file. We do.

The best way to submit to Max & Co. is to send in email a cogent synopsis of your work, then your bio, and most importantly, a few finished chapters. Your opening should always be included as one of those chapters.

A word of warning: we physically recoil when a proposal starts to read like a back cover filled with blurbs. If your manuscript really is the best. the funniest, the most innovative, tear jerking, or side splitting, your actual writing should carry that message.

We love clarity and cogency (at least in others).

4. Getting a Response:

In most cases, we will respond within 2-3 days. However, that quickness is most often because the answer will be a quick "No." The agency receives, on average, 20-25 queries a week. With the number of current clients and works-in-progress, we are, quite frankly, looking for the fastest way to "No" in order to get back to the work already at hand. Too many more clients will stretch us too thinly and we will ill-serve one and all.

However, we will forever be open to what we call The Suddenly From Across a Crowded Room Moment. No matter how busy, we are always willing to fall in love with a new writer’s work.

If more than 2 weeks have passed without a response, write again or call. Email was never intended to carry the burden we all now place upon it. Stuff gets lost in the ether.

5. What If We Reject You?

First off, try to realize that our rejection is simply an opinion....personal, subjective, and ultimately indefensible. If you ask ten agents to read your manuscript, you’re likely to receive twelve different responses. As Max himself has said, "It’s largely gut instinct and personal taste. Personally, I fail to see anything appealing about Lindsay Lohan or Cameron Diaz. Anything. But, Frances McDormand and Illeana Douglas are absolute goddesses," You are looking for an agent that feels about your writing the way Max feels about Illeana Douglas.

If we aren’t excited by your writing, you are better off without us. There are a number of famous stories of rejected book proposals. Harry Potter was rejected 12 times before the daughter of Bloomsbury’s editor, Nigel Newton (i.e. not Nigel), offered the opinion that it was a great book. James Joyce was rejected 22 times before The Dubliners was published. Jack Canfield’s Chicken Soup for the Soul stacked up 33 rejections. And Robert Pirsig may hold the record. His signature best seller, Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was rejected 121 times.

If we reject your proposal, please consider us barely literate nitwits and move on to more astute agents.

We will suggest three ways to find "the right" and more astute literary agent:

(a) Reference Guides:

There are several annual books or on-line sources that list literary agents. We think WRITERS’ MARKET is the most thorough and accurate of the books. WM breaks down agents by areas of interest and often annotates which ones are actively seeking new clients. As per on-line sources, we love www.everyonewhosanyone.com as a resource. The site doesn’t provide much more than the contact information and link to the agency’s website (plus some rare but entertaining snarky commentary), but the site’s thoroughness and up-to-date accuracy is unparalleled. We wonder what Gerald Jones does for a living to stay this on top of all the personnel moves & changes.

Note: Blogs are not reference guides. We’ve read some blogs from supposedly insider agents that spew information no more insightful or accurate than FOX news.

(b) Acknowledgments:

We strongly suggest checking the acknowledgment pages in books you consider most like your work. Many authors will thank their agents (we feel any author worth a damn), thus providing you with a roadmap to an agent that is shown to be kindred to your type of writing, and accomplished, at least as far as selling this one book.

Stick to books published in the last few years. I’m certain Edith Wharton had a lovely agent, but the likelihood of her agent still being alive and accepting proposals is slim.

(c) Writers’ Conferences:

A good writers’ conference is worth its weight in gold. We think you should choose one where you’ll get one on one time with editors or agents. Michael Murphy here at Max & Co. attends the Words & Music Festival each November in New Orleans. At that conference, each attending writer gets an individual session with both an editor and an agent. Both editor and agent have read their work prior to the conference.

Following the most recent conference, Michael signed up two of the writers with whom he met. One, Peter Neofotis, was signed in December and sold to St. Martin’s Press in January.

While we don’t think Winston Churchill was addressing writers aspiring to be published, we embrace and often need to live by his quote:

Success is stumbling from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.