Agenting explained, part one: An overview

Today is #AgentsDay on Twitter. In honor of the occasion (and in honor of the fact that a lot of writers have asked me this question lately), I wanted to write my What I Do All Day post.

When I tell people I’m a literary agent, the ones who know what I do immediately start telling me about the novel they’re working on. The ones who don’t ask me what I do all day, and here’s how I explain it: I work in book futures. Agents are not salaried; we live on money paid out from the 15% our agencies take from our clients’ earnings. When we sign a client, we do so because we believe that we will make a return (money) on our initial investment (time and energy and phone calls to editors) in their property (their book). We believe that our investment will pay off because…