Just Written Vol. 24: Laura Usselman
Welcome to Just Written, a weekly newsletter on the craft of writing and the business of publishing.
Today, we're talking with literary agent Laura Usselman. Laura works at Stuart Krichevsky Literary Agency representing adult fiction and non-fiction. Before working at SKLA, she earner an MFA in fiction from Virginia Tech University and worked at Cambridge University Press for three years.
What are the tools of the trade you can’t live without?
Becoming a literary agent finally made an ebook reader of me, and I now take my Kindle pretty much everywhere. I do my serious editing with pen and paper, but first drafts from clients and new submissions go straight to my Kindle. The note function is super clunky, so if I particularly want to remember a passage, I just highlight it and hope that I will remember whatever brainwave I had when I go through the manuscript later. I actually think it’s very helpful to do a first read in a way that prevents you from doing much editorial markup, so you read as a reader, and not as an editor.
Being a literary agent is sort of a mysterious job to people who haven’t gone through or worked on the process of publishing a book. Can you talk briefly about what you do on a more granular level?
The thing that came as the biggest early revelation for me when I joined the agency is that an agent isn’t involved only in the parts of a writer’s life that lead up to the sale of a book – they advocate for and advise on all elements of an author’s professional life. Selling books to publishers is the bread and butter work of an agency, and the thing that keeps us financially afloat, but my day to day is much more varied than I anticipated.
For example, the things in my (physical) inbox right now include: a set of deal terms for a television deal we just wrapped up for a book that was published in the mid-90’s; estate documents for the backlist titles of an agency client who recently passed away; cover mockups for the mass market paperback edition of a book that is already out in hardcover; two magazine pitches from a client who is under contract for a nonfiction book that will be out in 2020, but who wants to build her portfolio of short work in the interim; a speaking agreement for a client whose book is being widely read on college campuses, and who is visiting a number of universities for talks next year; a close-to-final draft of a novel I hope to sell early next year; and a pile of magazine articles from an interesting writer I just met for coffee, who might not be ready to write a book for another two years. That is a real, honest-to-goodness list of the stuff sitting on my desk, but it’s also a good indication of the long life cycles of books, and the many points at which an agent might assist a client.
My day is also divided between things I do for my own growing list of clients, and things I do for my boss’s clients. Young agents and young editors assist more senior agents and editors for years at the outset of their careers – often, until their own lists are quite well established. This is very helpful – it gives you the opportunity to tackle all sorts of unusual one-off challenges that you might not encounter for years on your own list, and you get to watch a talented senior agent work – and can be pretty thrilling, since it’s a great way to work with authors who are at the top of their fields.
Also, you get a lot of networking lunches in publishing, so there is a lot of good lunchtime conversation. I haven’t gotten over the happy fact that I like almost everyone in this business.
Tell us about your path to becoming a literary agent. What advice would you give to someone who wants be a literary agent?
I took a roundabout path to trade publishing – I got an MFA in fiction first, and then worked in textbook publishing for three years. I liked both of those things, but I didn’t like them anywhere near as much as I like this job. If you want to be an agent, go for it – find an internship, hopefully one that pays you, and do really good work, so that the people you work for will be eager to help you find a full-time gig. If you have a good editorial nose and are excited by the “business-y” elements of book publishing, it’s the best job in the world.
When you’re reading a proposal, what are you looking for? What’s the ratio of reject to accept?
The rules for querying at my agency dictate that authors send a query letter and ten pages of a manuscript or proposal. That’s enough, in my mind, to prove two early points – that the writer is serious-minded and professional, and that I like spending time with their voice on the page. To be honest, a dismayingly low percentage of queries make it past that first read, and even fewer end up becoming clients, but I do sign people out of the slush pile! The first two books I sold were from unsolicited queries.
How do you pair the right publisher/editor with the right author? What factors are you going through to come up with a list of who would be right for each manuscript?
If I’m selling a literary novel, there is some process of elimination that happens just on the basis of category and genre – some imprints only publish nonfiction, some only publish commercial fiction. Over time, I think that you accumulate a good intuitive knowledge of the type of publishing that every imprint does well, and you build a sub list of imprints that you think would not only want to acquire your author’s novel, but would do a really good job of putting it out into the world.
In terms of choosing editors, this is where all of that lunching comes in. Reading is super subjective, and when an editor acquires a book, they are committing to an outlay of company money for an advance (and thus staking a small part of their professional reputation on a project) and they are committing to spending a lot of time with a book. They kind of have to be in love to sign on to being a book’s cheerleader for the forseeable future. When I meet with people, I try to get a good sense of the particular elements that make an editor fall head over heels for a book or a writer, so I can send them the right things down the line.
And then, of course, there is the waiting, hoping, praying element. I wish we could just assign books and editors to each other at will, but any time you send a book out into the world, you’re just keeping all your limbs crossed and hoping that a handful of the people you shared it with love it as much as you.
What gives you hope about the publishing industry? What fills you with despair?
I am confident that people will continue to want to read. We like stories; we always have.
I feel pretty down when I consider how some publishers seem to be following the “Hollywood” model of book publishing, particularly in fiction – they make a massive investment in a small number of projects, some of which pan out and some of which don’t, and they increasingly seem skittish about making a more modest investment in a talented writer who might need to write two or three books to climb onto the bestseller list. Long live the midlist, I say – and there’s a reason all the good writing and creative storytelling is happening on TV these days, damn it.
But because I’m an optimist, I think they’ll come around. These things are cyclical, right? (Right?)
What advice would you give to someone pitching a book?
Don’t get overly hung up about the form you think a pitch is supposed to take. Read a lot, and try to speak authentically about the project you’d like to share. Have a good sense of who is writing books like yours. Don’t compare your work to someone who died 40 years ago. Don’t get nasty when you experience disappointment; if someone takes the time to write you a thoughtful pass, write back, because they’ve done you a small kindness. Accept feedback from smart readers. It might take more than one try before you find the right first book.
Thanks for reading - in case you missed it, check out last week's Just Written with Ruth Graham. For more interviews, visit our archive. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, just hit reply to this email. See you next week.