Christine Estima on Rule Breaking
Words Count | "When it comes to getting a literary agent, if you play by the rules, you’ll never get anywhere."
When it comes to getting a literary agent, if you play by the rules, you’ll never get anywhere
There are very few gatekeepers left in most artistic disciplines. Gone are the days when you needed your fledgling band to tour dinky dives across the country before getting a record deal. Now you can record an entire album from home, upload in seconds to Spotify, and become an instant chart-topper. It's the same for the theatre, where a tiny play submitted to the Toronto Fringe Festival became the international TV sensation Kim’s Convenience.
But in literature, barring the unlikely event that you’ve penned the next 50 Shades of Vampires (or whatever) and garnered millions of fans online, you still need to play the game. No, you can’t just submit your manuscript to Harper Collins or Penguin Random House yourself. They only take solicited submissions. So before you can even break beyond the Big 5 gate, you need to get yourself a literary agent to solicit on your behalf. A quick look at the Binders Seeking Literary Agents Facebook group reveals post after post of hopeful writers waiting months just to get a reply from overworked agents, or receiving positive feedback but no offer of representation. In arguably the most competitive industry, where book deals trade hands for fortunes, getting that all important agent may seem impossible these days. So perhaps bending the rules is the only path to success.
I have had two literary agents in my career (currently still with the latter), both of whom I secured through unorthodox means. Taking the famed advice of Marilyn Monroe, “if I’d observed all the rules, I’d never have got anywhere,” I applied that ethos to getting an agent, refusing to go the traditional route.
Even figuring out how one is supposed to acquire a literary agent has historically been one of great mystery. When you’re a teenager with dreams of writing the great Canadian novel, or even just wanting to get your YA novella into the hands of a publisher, you will be disappointed to learn that when your school holds a career day assembly, this vocation is ruthlessly left out. Writing, much like the other arts of acting, dance, music, and visual art is often something a hopeful enters into with a lot of gumption, and a hell-or-high-water attitude. That means, hustling to figure it out.
Before everything was on the internet, one would have to go to Chapters Indigo and ask the staff to even figure out that there was a book published every year called the Canadian Writers Market which would list alphabetically all of the literary agents, publishers, newspapers, magazines, and journals that were accepting submissions. When it came to agents, they would list their contact information, what to send them, and what genre they might be on the hunt for. It was almost like a Lonely Planet guidebook for starry-eyed authors. And details included could quickly become out of date, obsolete, or were simply untrue.
For me, my luck in getting my first agent was simply because I unapologetically and indefatigably talked all about my career aspirations to anyone and everyone would listen. That’s how in the late aughts, I found myself at a house party as the guest of a friend, not knowing anyone, but willing to talk about my writing career as if it were existent rather than non-existent. The host of the party ended up telling me that she was actually interning at a literary agency, and asked me about my manuscript.
I will admit to being skeptical, and to having grandiose dreams of signing with a huge international agency rather than some small local boutique agency I’d never heard of. So when she asked me to send her the first 50 pages of my manuscript, I balked and only sent 15.
That, my dear friends, isn’t how these things are done. To get an agent, not only should you send exactly what they ask (sometimes it’s the first 50 pages, sometimes it’s the first three chapters, and in addition to that, you are quite often required to include a cover letter that lists your potential audience, other like-minded books on the market, and even a marketing plan).
Very quickly, the head of the agency asked to meet me for coffee. After chatting over coffee, and then him reading my entire manuscript and offering editorial notes, I accepted his offer of representation. My first agent – obtained from a house party.
After a few years with this agent, I noticed he just couldn’t sell my manuscripts and that perhaps it wasn’t the best fit, prompting me to look elsewhere. I had big dreams and big stories to tell, and I had an agent who wasn’t even reading my manuscripts, to say nothing of my emails. I thought getting an agent would mean I had “made it,” and I had big plans and big designs for my illustrious literary career. But of course, that old saying applied: “If you want to make god laugh, tell him your plans.”
I’d never done the query-wait-manuscript-wait-edit-wait-wait-wait route. So once again I decided to bend the rules a little. This time, I was going to leverage the social media following I had spent way too much time curating to get myself a new and better agent.
Before X (formerly Twitter) became the current hellscape that it is, it was a wonderful place to network, support other artists and working professionals, and have interactive conversations with others in the field. I had been following one literary agent for a while, and while we had DM’d a few times to say hello and offer our best wishes, nothing about representation had ever come up.
So I decided to break the first cardinal rule of getting a literary agent – I DM’d him on Twitter. Today, I can imagine that would rub a lot of literary agents the wrong way and might ruin anyone’s chances of representation before their manuscript is even read. But this was circa 2015, and I figured, “no guts, no glory.”
He wrote back and agreed, yes, it was unorthodox, but still encouraged me to send him my first 50 pages. Upon reading them, he said the manuscript was great and agreed to meet with me secretly. So at a Starbucks located far away from where my first agent might see us, we clandestinely grabbed a coffee, and he offered to represent me on the condition that I terminate my contract with my other agent pronto.
So I went home and emailed my first agent, letting him know I was out. “I’m sorry I couldn’t sell your books,” he wrote back (the first time he answered my email within five minutes. Usually, they just were ignored). And that was that. I had pulled it off almost like a scene in Ocean’s 11. Recon work, secrecy, and playing a part led to securing the bag. My second literary agent: obtained via Twitter DM.
It was my second agent who brokered the deal for my first book, THE SYRIAN LADIES BENEVOLENT SOCIETY, published by House of Anansi Press, which was named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the CBC. He has also brokered the deal for my second book, LETTERS TO KAFKA, due out in 2025, also with Anansi. What a dream it is to not only have an agent who believes in your work (and actually reads it), but to also support it to the point of publication. I’d never had that before.
Not everyone is so lucky. In 2023, the New Leaf Agency scandal rocked social media when it was revealed the literary agency dropped many of the authors on their roster over email, many of whom had manuscripts on submission or were negotiating book deals. The drop came unceremoniously, without warning, and at two hours to midnight before a long weekend, leaving many authors out on a limb when they should have been enjoying their holiday. What’s worse, the agency also dropped their own agent who was repp’ing these authors after she had already left her for holiday, forcing her to issue a statement that, no, it wasn’t agreed upon or amicable.
This sparked a conversation online about the hurdles writers must endure not only to get an agent, but also to keep one.
In an industry where the marketing department ultimately has final say over the editorial department, and every book tearing up #BookTok seems to just be a derivative copy of the next, authors with big dreams and big stories to tell often do not even get the benefit of consideration in these business decisions. Maybe breaking all the rules is the only power move left. If you want the agent and the career you deserve, with no waiting, it might be time to do as Elizabeth Taylor once said: “Now is the time for guts, and guile.”
Christine Estima’s essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times, the Walrus, VICE, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, the Observer, New York Daily News, Chatelaine, Maisonneuve and many more. Her debut book THE SYRIAN LADIES BENEVOLENT SOCIETY (House of Anansi Press) was named one of the best books of 2023 by the CBC. Please visit ChristineEstima.com for more.
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