Guest Talk: Literary Agent Sandra Bond

A few weeks ago, we had the pleasure to meet with Sandra Bond of Bond Literary Agency. She gave us some wonderful information about the publishing industry, and what we as young writers should be doing and working towards. Here are some of the highlights of her talk (some answers have been edited and/or condensed for reading ease):

Society of the Silver Pen: To start with, what would be some basic advice you would give us?

Sandra Bond: Let me start out by saying that it's fantastic that you're in a writing club in high school, because it's super important to be hanging out with other people who love to write, and it's very supportive, and you guys can talk about issues and problems. If you go on writing, I would encourage you to always be in some kind of writing club, or as you get older, a critique group, because the writers who aren't get very isolated and just don't have the support of other writers which I think is hugely important. So, I think this is awesome that you have a writing club.

The people who really end up being successful are the writers who can't not write. The people who only want to do a single book aren't usually successful. You have to write, and write, and write, and write. A lot of times, when I take on a client, they have already written (in fiction) three or four or five books, and they are all in the drawer because they weren't quite where they needed to be. Then they just kept writing, and starting a new project, and got better and better as they wrote, and finally they got an agent and got published. Because they've been writing. But there are people who approach agents all the time who have written very little, and think they're just going to sit down at the computer and write a book, and it's not that simple. They're a bit unrealistic about it.

The publishing industry is a unique industry. It is not like any other business, I think, in the world, except maybe music. It's really kind of a goofy business, because we're all doing something artistic that we love, except it's a business. They almost sometimes seem at odds with each other. The publishers are trying to put out wonderful books, but they're also trying to make money. Everyone's trying to make money. And hopefully the writer will also make money from writing, but it does take a while to build your audience. That's why if you just keep writing, you get better and better and better at it. You have to keep studying the craft of writing. Again, we have people coming to us all the time who just sit down at the desk and think they're going to write a book, and they haven't studied the craft of writing. It is a craft. And you have to keep writing; your very first book is probably not going to be as good as your tenth book. Everybody grows as writers. There are exceptions. There are those people who write a debut novel and it becomes a bestseller, and you hear about it. That's the one you hear about in a million, two million. It just doesn't happen that often. Oftentimes when you hear about something in the industry that becomes such news, it's the exception to the rule, it's not how it generally goes. But that's not to say it doesn't happen.

About self-publishing. There is a general thought among a lot of writers that it's a good thing to self-published if you're looking for an agent and want to get picked up by a big publisher. People think that self-publishing helps you. It's exactly the opposite. It's the worst thing you can do. If you really want to be traditionally published, and be published by one of the mainstream publishers, do not self-publish your book. When you do self-publish, you have a published product, you have an ISBN. The book is available. So, if you're going to do it, you have to show huge sales numbers if you want an agent or publisher to pick you up. If you have bad sales numbers, no one is going to pick you up because you've essentially proven that you don't have an audience. Now, it doesn't really prove that you don't have an audience, because you've self-published and how are you going to get your book out there? How are you going to rise above the noise? There are hundreds of thousands of books being published a year now. How are you going to get noticed? It's extremely difficult to get noticed. If you self-publish, you're most likely not going to have good sales numbers. You've just hurt yourself. There are lots of good reasons to self-publish, and there are lots of bad reasons. You really have to think it through. You have to really think about what it is you want in the end.

SSP: Have you ever self-published?

SB: No. But there is actually a client I have now whose book I could not sell. Everybody turned it down; they're absolutely crazy. She really needs the book to come out at the end of September, and there's no more time. She has to get this book into production now in order for it to come out then. So she is now going to self-publish. But it is totally last resort for her. So no, I haven't self-published, and I haven't helped a writer self-publish before.

A couple of times I've taken on clients who have self-published before. One I took on because he had done absolutely everything right. He paid to have his book printed, and sold about two thousand or three thousand copies in a couple of months, which was really good. That was pretty amazing. I loved his books, and so I took him on and was able to get him published by a big publisher. But again, the reason why they agreed to take him on and publish his books was because he had proven in a couple of months that he would have an audience.

I've just done something really difficult, and I'm having some trouble with it right now. I just met a writer, whose novel was published by a very, very small publisher in the south. It had done ok, but not great. I read it, and the novel is just stunning. Her contract with the small publisher was about to expire. She had to decide if she wanted to renew the contract with the publisher so he would keep publishing her book, or if she should take the rights to the book back and have an agent try to sell it. I took her on as a client, but I'm having a really hard time selling it. Maybe it would have been smarter for her to keep it in print. But I think she just wanted to give it a shot. I'm not going to give up on it.

SSP: Can you tell us a little more specifically about what you do for writers?

SB: Sure. So, as an agent, I represent writers. I try to get their work sold to big publishers and then published. I represent the author's rights. I'm like any other kind of agent: sports agent, talent agent. We're literary agents. We represent books. We take on clients whose work we think is fabulous and wonderful, otherwise you're not a very good salesperson. It's very very difficult to sell books to publishers. There are thousands of agents, and we're all submitting work to editors at the big publishing houses. They're getting inundated with work from agents. Most of the big publishers do not want an author to approach them without an agent, because they're getting enough as it is through agents. If they had open submissions for writers, then they would be absolutely overwhelmed. So in a lot of ways--and some people really object to the way this is said--we agents do act as a kind of filter. We do try to filter out the not-so-great stuff from the great stuff. Not everybody's a great writer. I'll keep repeating this, because you can't understand the number of people who do it, but those who have never studied writing just sit down at the computer and think they can write a book. It's astonishing. They want us to filter out those people, and the people who haven't studied writing, and those who aren't super serious about their writing career. We are filters, but at the same time it is a subjective business. We don't all like the same books. Agents take on what they like. Just because one agent turned you down, doesn't mean another agent won't absolutely love it. It's very subjective. I think that helps. We're submitting a wide variety of talent and writing and works, because we're all taking on somewhat different things. What I like is not necessarily what someone else likes. For instance, I seem to take on really wacky, off-the-wall stuff, and that's not for everybody. A lot of agents won't take wacky, off-the-wall stuff. I don't represent romance or science fiction, and a lot of agents do. It's just all different. So, for big publishers, they need an author to have an agent. Then there are thousands and thousands of small presses. Writers can submit to them themselves, because a lot of agents aren't submitting to small presses. There just isn't very much money involved.

Agents work on commission only. If we don't sell something, we don't make a dime. We don't make a penny if we don't sell something. The standard commission is 15% of whatever the author makes on the book. We're kind of the business piece of the writing machine. Really, agents and authors are partners; one is the creative side and we're the business side of it. A publisher signs a contract with an author, but all the business of it goes through the agent. I negotiate the contract, watch out for what's going on through the whole publishing process, if there are any problems between the writer and the editor I step in the middle and mediate. Sometimes there's a tense situation about something, and the agent steps in and handles it, because you want the writer and the editor at the publishing house to have a great relationship. The writer actually doesn't really discuss business with the editor, they only talk about the creative work. Even the money goes through the agent. The contract is between the publisher and the writer, but the publisher writes the check to my agency. I put it in a client's account, then I take the commission out, and send the balance to the writer.

We really look at representing the writer's career. Hopefully it's not just one book, hopefully it's a lot of books. I talk a lot with my clients about what they're working on next, what makes sense. A lot of times writers have too many ideas in their heads rather than not enough ideas, and they need someone to talk to about that. What's the next project, what do we think is going to be the most sellable to a publisher. There are a lot of different things that we talk about in that case. It kind of helps to have somebody in the business just to talk to about what to do next. We also usually have sub- or co-agents who represent film and television rights, and also foreign rights. If you sold with one of those, the co-agent and primary agent split the commission.

SSP: What kinds of books do you represent?

SB: I have a wide variety. A lot of agents represent very specific books; there are some agents who represent totally romance or only science-fiction. Or they only represent fiction and not non-fiction. I have a really broad list, and I represent both non-fiction and fiction. I represent a lot of adult fiction. I really gravitate towards literary fiction, but that's harder to sell to publishers because it's a smaller market. I also represent commercial fiction, and I also represent a lot of mysteries. That just happened. So I have a lot of mysteries, and that's actually kind of fun, because mystery readers like series. I don't represent romance or science-fiction, as I said. I've always wanted to do young adult, but I had never really found the right client until about four years ago. I'm also trying to sell my first middle grade right now. I love it, and we'll see what happens because it's not been easy, but hopefully I'll be able to sell that. So I'm getting into YA, middle grade, but I don't really want to go any younger than that. On the non-fiction side, I have business books, I'm looking for a great science book, and I have a lot of history. So I have a really broad list, which just happened. Not necessarily the smartest thing to do. If an agent focuses on just, say, adult fiction, then you've really honed in on those publishing houses who acquire that. Because my list is so broad, I have to be in touch with a lot of different editors. On the other hand, it's really fun because I'm not just doing the same kind of book over and over again, so it's a lot more interesting to have a broad list.

SSP: What specifically do you look for when you receive a query letter or manuscript?

SB: Writers have to send a query letter to an agent first. You can't send a manuscript; an agent has to request it. Now, writers are looking for very specific agents who represent quality writing, and it's not easy to get an agent, but then the agent's doing the same thing with an editor. We're trying to find exactly the right editor for the project. Authors have to write the query letter to pitch the book to me, and I have to write a pitch letter to pitch the book to a publishing house. So they're tricky. They need to be short. They're basically need to be three paragraphs: an introductory paragraph, maybe introducing yourself or just launching into describing the book. It's very short, and like the jacket copy on the back of books. So you should be looking at jacket copies and really studying how those are written. You should be able to describe your book and make it sound super interesting in about five to six sentences. It's hard to get it exactly right. Then you want to have a paragraph that's about you. Who you are, any writing credentials that you have, any awards, anything that's been published. I know you are in high school, but you can still put down that you've been in this writing club for your high school career. That's helpful. And some of you are old enough to try and get some short stories published in online or print magazines, things like that. There are probably thousands of different online magazines you could submit to. So anything like that, which could give you writing credentials, you want to do. That's the paragraph about you, and again it's not going to be that long. It's not about how old you are, but you could say that you're a senior in high school, sophomore in high school. It's just brief, just a sentence that gives us somewhere to start. So that's your query letter. The most important paragraph is the one that describes your book. It's not a synopsis, you're not trying to sum up the book, you're trying to give a general overview and make it sound really, really interesting. You want to make it intriguing, and make someone want to read it.

If an agent is interested because of the query letter, they will contact you and ask for extra materials. Since pretty much everything is done electronically now, I normally ask for the full manuscript if I'm interested. If I'm not hooked after a couple of chapters, then I just don't finish reading it.

For non-fiction, you submit a book proposal. Memoirs are different, they're sold more like fiction. But other non-fiction books, like history or science books, are submitted with a book proposal. Book proposals are carefully formulated, because there is a specific kind of information the agent and publishing house wants to see.

When you query an agent, you really want to be ready. For non-fiction, the book doesn't have to be written but the book proposal does. That way, if you've intrigued someone and they say they want to see the book proposal or the novel, you can send it right away. It doesn't work to still be editing. If we're interested at the moment, you want to get it in right then.

You want to target agents specifically. Again, I don't represent romance. So when I receive a query for a romance novel, I know that that writer has not done any research on me. She got my name somewhere, and just plugged it into her form letter without doing any research. That's a waste of everybody's time, and it's a little irritating. All agents have information out there. All agents have websites, and on their websites it says what they represent, what they're interested in, and you should really research that. The other thing that's on the website is how they want to be approached. How you should submit to them. There are still some old-school agents who want a mailed in, hard copy query letter. There aren't very many of them, but they are still out there. So if they say, "no email queries" and you email a query to them, they're just completely irritated. Most of us accept email queries, and some of us say that the writer can submit the first few pages of their novel in the body of the email below the query letter. It's always in the body of the email, never an attachment unless specifically requested. It's however the agent wants it done. So find agents who represent work similar to yours, and is legitimate. There are people out there saying that they're agents, and they charge reading fees to look at your work. Those are not legitimate agents. We don't make a penny unless we sell your book to a publisher.

SSP: How many submissions do you receive monthly?

SB: A lot. Hundreds. Specifically in a month, probably between a hundred and two hundred. I have a big enough client list now that it was impossible to even look at those any more. I have an assistant who goes through the queries. It just couldn't be helped. For a year or two, a lot of queries went unread in my inbox because I didn't have time to look at them. I was too busy with current clients. And that's the other thing, writers who really get along well with agents are the ones who understand that there are five million writers who think they should be published. That's a lot of writers. They have to understand that the agent's first order of business is working for the clients they already have. That's a full time job. We're busy doing that, but then we're also trying to look at all of the queries coming in if we want to and can take on new clients. You reach the point, though, where you can't take on new clients. A lot of agents put on their website that they're not taking on new clients at that time. If they’re not, there's no point in querying them. I brought in an assistant, who is also an associate agent, and she's taking on clients as well. She goes through all of my queries for me, and she has taken on some of her own clients in the last few months. It's a way for the agency to keep taking on new clients.

SSP: So of those, how do you pick which ones you want to represent?

SB: Again, it's so subjective. Back to the query letter, that is also your opportunity to demonstrate that you're a good writer, that you can structure a sentence and put two sentences together and put together a paragraph. It sounds ridiculous, but you would be incredibly surprised if you saw some of the query letters that we get. They're so poorly written, and that's an immediate no. I can't think that their work will be any good if they can't write a decent query letter. But it's also subjective. If it really sounds interesting to me, than I'm likely to request more material. I might turn down something that doesn't sound very interesting to me, but someone else might find it very interesting. For instance, my associate agent, Becky, just took on a husband and wife writing team writing middle grade. We both read the manuscript, and I thought it was pretty good but I didn't absolutely love it. I was going to pass on it. But Becky absolutely loved it and wanted to represent it. That was her first client to take on. So you read it, and you either just absolutely love it and devour it, and that's someone I want to represent, but if I find as I'm reading it that I'm bored, or my mind is wandering, or the structure has a problem, I'm more likely to pass on it and say it's just not right for me. Sometimes if I love the writing but the book itself has problems, I might take it on and try to help edit the book and make it better.

SSP: What is the timeline for publishing?

SB: It moves so slow it's ridiculous. It moves at a snail's pace, but there are reasons for that. Now if you've published electronically, it can move quicker, because it's easier to do. But for print publishing, first the editor edits the work and works with the author, and they perfect the work until everyone's happy with it. That's when the manuscript is accepted. Then it goes to the copy editor. Then there are proof sets made, and those are sent to proof readers and also the author, and they check for any mistakes. Then it goes into production, so that takes a while. They want to have advanced reading copies printed at least four months before the publishing date. Those are sent out to reviewers, and you have to send them out four months before the pub date so they can have a chance to write a review. Now remember, every publisher in the country is sending these books to the same reviewers, so the reviewers are all getting inundated with books as well. Not every book gets reviewed, but you're all hoping your book does. More and more papers and magazines are getting rid of review sections, too, so the review space is even smaller than it used to be. So it usually takes a year from the time an author signs a contract to the time the book comes out. It's at least a year, and it's often eighteen months. There are just so many pieces to put together to get to that pub date.

SSP: Any final thoughts?

SB: Just keep writing, and follow your dreams. If you persevere and you're serious, than it makes things happen. It's not easy but you just have to keep after it. Write because you love to write, not because you're expecting to get published. Write because you love to write.

We just want to thank Ms. Bond once again for her time and for giving us such amazing advice!