On getting an agent
(not really) (but kind of)
In November of 2023, I made a decision that did not change my life at all. By that I mean I had one of those choices in front of me that I could feel even in that very millisecond could change my life, and I decided not to take it. It wasn’t until last Friday morning, chatting on the phone with a friend, sweating to death and weeding a garden bed, that I realized why.
What my Author (best) Friend and I had been discussing was, as is semi-usual, the state of publishing in our corner of the bookish world. Mostly it was about bad people behaving badly, and good people facing shit luck and worse odds. You might find the conversation familiar even at this altitude - a mutual malingering on the general “euughh” of it all.
Good authors and their good books getting forgotten by the algorithm or straight up repressed by it. Others meanwhile writing objectively bad books, but with all the right ingredients for a fleeting consumerist success. TikTok, of all god forsaken places, drives (in most ways that feel real) what’s popular, and to some extent, what gets publishing attention. Much of reading, writing, and publishing are utterly rotted through with consumerism.
(I can’t even move forward without a quick aside that I see people that I used to trust recommending viral books that, I shit you not, have some of the poorest quality writing - and I mean basic grammar and sentence structure - that I have ever read. What is going on!!)
Anyway, this isn’t news to you, dear reader, if you’re hanging around my substack. Shit has been twisted for some time now. And since 2023, I have all but quit instagram (and a budding review account with, at its peak, over 50k followers), cancelled every book box subscription, and gone analog in every way I could manage.
I felt that I was not only participating in, but significantly contributing to, a terrible trend toward totally mindless consumption. Which in turn, drove terrible books and terrible products up the algorithmic ranks because we consumers were attributing capital value to (what should really be) art, but with no care or consideration to what we were peddling. Many books went viral on the back of the influencer and the convincingness of their performance in video they recommended it in (and not much else).
(of course, many very good books got their flowers as deserved, too - but we’re not talking about those ones right now)
I say all this because in 2023, before NaNoWriMo was exposed for all that it was and rejected en masse, I decided that I wanted to participate. I’d written plenty of nonfiction, but I’d never even dabbled in fanfic (a gateway drug for many budding writers) and I was working with and befriending authors more and I wanted to know what it felt like.
The goal was innocent and simple: to answer the question, “Can I write a book?” followed by its parts: Can I have an idea (yes), can I plot it out (no), and can I write it (spoilers, also no). I legitimately think it was a good idea, and it still rattles around in my mind, and someday I may return to it. I think it was fresh and told an interesting story and I also think it was aligned with what was and would continue to do well online, too.
My followers certainly thought so - they were fairly vocal the few times I shared about my endeavor. My author friends were lovely and supportive and probably got a real kick out of my reactions (“this fucking SUCKS!” “why do you do this” “how do I know what to do” “do you do the three acts thing?” “this is torture” “who’s this guy with the archetypes?” and on and on). (My brother (rightly) told me to give up and write a history book because it was so dry and straight forward)
One other Important Person thought it was a good idea too. They emailed me and said they saw I was participating in NaNo, and that they’d be really interested in seeing what I had written so far, if I would be willing to share it with them.
I googled them and realized: they were a publishing agent (!!) with a firm that represented authors that I was very well aware of. An agent from a firm of that caliber, reaching out to me, because my idea and my little drafty blurbs must have enticed them. Holy shit. I’m the voice of my generation! I’m writing the next great American novel! I’m ….. just a micro-influencer on bookstagram that comes with 50k followers and an obvious willingness to market myself. That’s it.
It wasn’t the strength of my ideas, or my writing, or my voice in my content. I’m sure that stuff didn’t hurt, but we all need to be very honest about why I was being contacted, and it was because that was shaping up to be a winning strategy. I’m compelled to emphasize here that I am not in any way bagging on influencers-turned-authors. I think what they did and have done is near universally impressive, and I know a lot of them have written genuinely great books and have a wonderful connection with their fanbase and fellow authors alike.
So whatever shade you might think I’m throwing, spin it around, and point it back at me - because that is who I’m throwing shade at. My writing was TERRIBLE and I knew it and it should have been, because I had literally never written fiction before.
I was experiencing a privilege unlocked by other, stackable privileges - some inherited and some earned - but it had absolutely nothing to do with my writing. Which, for the record, I think amounted to maybe four typed pages and something that vaguely resembled a plot map across a few notebook spreads that would get me committed on sight alone. I can write (and enjoy writing) essays and blog posts, but a novelist I am not.
I’m here telling you all about this experience because in talking to my friend, I realized that I was smelling the start of all that rot I was talking about earlier. I did not know then how sick it all already was, but I do think a part of me knew this was a sign of something not quite right, because that was a golden ticket I chose not to use. I’m not saying it would have been right or wrong to take it… I’m honestly not sure either way. But I do know I made the choice I could live with and I’m still not sorry because that closed door opened others in art that I’m so glad I got to walk through.
And also to my friend’s great point, someone needs to hear that it really is happening just like that, probably even still. O even, if it was that egregious in 2023, what is it like now? I’m specifically talking about this wild behavior of selecting books for publishing on the basis of built-in market saturation (have you published too much?) marketability (will you make endless tiktoks?) content fit (is it on-genre? fanfic?) and of course… does the end user already want it?
Please note my ham-fisted use of end user and not reader. I’ll make too fine a point with it. So much of this is truly just a ceaseless content engine and not at all a process of distributing your hard-wrought writing to a reader’s eager eyeballs. Amazon needs a cut of whatever Ingram didn’t take, after all! TikTok needs you to keep posting videos to go between ads and Meta needs your captions to train its AI! SeNd Me ThiS pOsT 👈🕊️ !!!!!!
In summary: please give yourself some grace if you’re in the doldrums of it all right now. I know less about publishing than one of those little red bugs on an old copyright page. But I do know and love a lot of authors and I’ve been in orbit of the publishing world for a while now and I know that a lot of the ways things are shaking out right now are just straight up unfair. There’s bad actors in every corner making decisions with the future of their wallet at heart and nothing else, and you and your manuscript are certainly suffering for this unbalance.
I guess for me, when I saw the “matrix” of it all, I couldn’t barf up the pill*. I had to step away because I knew I couldn’t force myself to participate in it anymore. So if that’s you too, you’re not alone, and I look forward to seeing what you accomplish when the pendulum swings back around.
xoxo, Charlie
Thank you for always writing things we need to hear.
Gah, I feel this in my BONES. Thank you for sharing 🫶