Thread by @LitAgentKelly

With all the questions and tweets from last night, I figured it might be helpful to do a quick thread on agent acquisition tendencies and statistics. This thread in no way is meant to represent other agents or even a majority of them, but it meant as an explanation. ❤️

Most agents acquire what they believe is marketable and also something well written and something they’re passionate about. Before I go into this, some agencies give free reign over what agents acquire and how many they’re allowed to acquire. Others DO NOT have free reign and

Need to ask their boss, get second reads, present a marketing profile to their coworkers, etc., before being “okayed” to acquire a project. Some agents have to meet a quota of sales, which is easier achieved with a higher number of clients. Many agents don’t have to meet a quota

But still need money to live off of. This is your friendly reminder that most agents are paid commission only, not salary. Only a select few agents are paid a salary and they are usually those that have to live in NYC and can’t afford their rent on that salary alone. Perfect time

To also remind you that though we all love agenting, most of us are required to work a second and third job in order to live, survive, etc., and be able to argue that this is still a valid career to our families and that we’re good at our jobs to our bosses. With that being said,

ALL OF THIS goes into account when we’re deciding which authors to offer on and how many authors to offer on. So now, getting to those three points.

Point 1: Marketability. Do we think this can sell and sell well? If it does sell, will it warm us enough money to possibly pay our

Rent for a month? Or maybe to be able to just put an extra couple hundred dollars into our student loan payments once in a while? Or will it help us pay off our car? Or maybe help us buy an extra gift for our kids or family? REMEMBER: agents usually get no more than 10% of the

Money paid to authors. Most get less, with the other 5% or more going to the agency and not the agent. Now, looking at this, if your book signs and some miracle (I say miracle because getting editors to see the same marketability and vision for a manuscript, then get it approved

By their higher ups to then create and present marketing and sales statistics to their marketing teams/boards is A MIRACLE in its own right) Let’s day your book miraculously gets an average-ish children’s advance of like...$40k...only $4k of that is going to your agent, spread

Out over the advance at signing, the acceptance of manuscript, and possibly a few other check points the publisher designates. So maybe that’s $2k with signing and another $2k spread out over the ne t two years...that’s not a lot. And if you’re lucky enough to get a sale once per

Month at that rate (which DOES NOT HAPPEN unless you’re very well known in the industry and have established yourself and your career over many years) you might bring in about $50k per year...might...DONT forget taxes and paying for insurance because we all have to do that too...

Going back to marketability, we have to make sure it’s marketable enough for us to sell, for editors to sell, and for publishers to sell. This narrows our options down INSANELY. So even if we like a manuscript so much it made us cry, if it’s not marketable, that means our kids

Holiday presents might not be under the tree this year, or we can’t afford to even fix our car and have to put money down on a 10 year old junker to hold us until we get a better deal.

Point 2: WELL WRITTEN manuscripts COUNT. Many people ask why we can’t take things that need

Some editing they think we can do, and this is for a few reasons.
1. We don’t have time to do the editing needed on your manuscript. We’re trying make deals, send emails, meet editors, work two other jobs, go through thousands of queries and hundreds of submissions and raise a

Family. When would you like us to put aside our entire lives for a week to teach you how to edit your work? We have to make sure that any notes we give our clients are heard and applied well and quickly. We need someone who understands our editing talk and can apply it. So when

We give you notes, that’s time we took out of our lives to try to help you along to the next step in your career. That’s us cheering you on from the sidelines. Apply them. Have friends read them. Send them back. Make sure the notes are well done because we’re trying to HELP YOU.

2. Editors jobs are no longer to just edit. Due to shortages in publishing and money in the business, many editors are being forced to be editors, assistants, sales and marketing, and still find time to somehow acquire their own work (because everything they’re doing during work

Hours is for their higher ups and other teams. On a 30k per year salary.) They don’t have the time to edit the way they used to. They barely have time to eat everyday, let alone do more work. Does it make everyone frustrated? YES. But is it the editors fault? NO. It’s the

Industry, and this is the reality of it. None of us have time to help you edit your work, and we don’t get paid to do so either, which is the really crappy part for all of us. It sucks, and I wish we all could help a lot more than we do, but when we’re choosing between books who

Don’t need editing and ones that do, we’re going to go with the ones that don’t need as much for monetary and time reasons.

Finally, Point 3: if we’re not passionate about the project, why are we even doing this at all? We have to love this project more than life itself and

Believe in it’s ability to sell and change lives in order to effectively SELL it to editors and marketing and our own teams too. Because when it comes down to it, we’re not here for the money. We’re here to help and inspire readers and writers. To make others dreams come true.

We want to be able to sign everyone and help everyone, but we can’t. And if we’re not passionate about your work, then we’re not the right person to sell it, and even sometimes if we are passionate, we still can’t sell it. Sales are RARE. This business is HARD. We’re here for YOU

So I hope this answers a lot of your questions about acquisitions and numbers. They vary for every agent and agency. There is no set number. Some sign 30 per year and purge a bunch who don’t sell. Others sign a few and keep them forever. And some sign none. It’s their choice.

And when you’re feeling especially low about the numbers, remember that there’s hundreds of agents out there, so even if we all only signed 3 clients per year and there were only 100 agents out there, that’s 300 of you signed per year! Don’t give up. Find your agent/person!