246. Get Signed

Literary agent and author Lucinda Halpern discusses her book Get Signed and the do's and don'ts when searching for an agent.
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*GIVEAWAY*
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Lucinda Halpern is a literary agent with over 15 years' experience securing book deals with Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, Macmillan, and the author of Get Signed: Find an Agent, Land a Book Deal, and Become a Published Author. She represents a range of New York Times and internationally bestselling authors in the categories of business, health, lifestyle, popular science, narrative nonfiction, memoir, and upmarket fiction. Her classes and coaching programs have been taught to hundreds of writers worldwide. Learn more at lucindaliterary.com or download Lucinda’s free author training. Follow Lucinda Halpern on Instagram and Twitter.

Transcript

Jennia: Hello. I'm Jennia D'Lima. Welcome to Writing and Editing, the podcast for people who write, edit, read, or listen. Our guest today is author and agent Lucinda Halpern. This is Get Signed, episode two four six of the podcast.

Jennia: So excited to have you here.

Lucinda: Thank you!

Jennia: Mind getting us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?

Lucinda: Absolutely. So, hi, everyone. My name is Lucinda Halpern. I am the owner of Lucinda Literary, which is a literary agency based in New York City. I've been running that for over 15 years now, or rather, I've been in the industry for over 15 years. But I started Lucinda Literary about, over a decade ago. And my career has pivoted from working in publicity for authors, starting with the very now famous Freakonomics campaign at Harper Collins. I moved over to Scholastic in a marketing and sales role, where I learned quite a bit about online marketing, which has become so important. I then reunited my passion of managing the careers of authors with editorial, which, turns out there's a job called a literary agent, and that had my name on it. And I've been doing that again for over a decade, representing largely nonfiction, popular science, narrative nonfiction, big idea books, self help. But we always do look for fantastic new fiction writers and represent those books as well. So that's what I've been up to. And then, of course, to my great surprise and honor, a couple of years ago now, I was given a book deal myself, and it was acquired using the very method, the six step method that I had been teaching to writers in online courses I developed during the pandemic, when I found that there was just this real hunger for true information directly from an industry insider. So I began teaching this to hundreds of students and seeing so many success stories of students getting signed with agents that I decided to write the book and got a book deal and became a published author. So it's been a very meta, very eye-opening experience.

Jennia: Yes! You've seen both sides now, so you really, do have that extra input where you can see what it's like on the other end.

Lucinda: Yes, that's exactly right. For better or for worse.

Jennia: I would definitely say for better. It probably helps build a better understanding from their side and what they're going through and every step of the process that might trip them up or feel overwhelming. And now you have that first hand experience.

Lucinda: That is so absolutely right, and it's helping me really write the playbook for how to hopefully successfully publish and market a book, which is the other end of the equation once you query an agent and get a book deal, right?

Jennia: Oh, exactly. So, for being an agent, are there any stereotypes that you think are prevalent throughout the media? Or maybe that agents get pigeonholed into just doing one task, but really, there's more to it?

Lucinda: Yeah. Thank you for raising that. It's such a good first question. I guess the thing to say is that agents are people. We're humans. We are running these busy lives. I'm a mom of two young kids, and I'm running a company. And there isn't this notion of agents being on a perch or on a pedestal and therefore not being able to attend to an email or seeing any writer as, we should be seen. And the way I see writers is potential talent, right?

Jennia: Oo, I love that.

Lucinda: Versus a slush pile writer. Like, to me, there is no such thing. Every writer has a shot or really should be heard. I think the reputation of agents, unfortunately, has been sort of that they're slick salespeople, that all they do is broker deals. Right? And worse, if they can't get you a deal, that they drop you like a hot potato. In reality, this is not the kind of agent I am, and it's not the kind of agents I work with or my colleagues. We take a deep care in honoring the editorial vision of an author managing their careers, being a strategist and an advocate.

Jennia: Mhm.

Lucinda: There are all of these points at which we get involved, which I can summarize very briefly. We sign you, and then we act as, really, your editor, your first and primary editor, to get your book proposal or your manuscript in the shape that it needs to be to sell to an editor. Then we make that deal for you. In making that deal, of course, we're hoping for the highest advance, but we're also really closely looking at what rights are you giving away?

Jennia: Right, yes. So important.

Lucinda: Quick example: Many of the fiction and memoirists listening to your, podcast, don't give away film rights. Don't give away dramatic or film rights to your book. Those are yours to keep. If you don't have an agent looking out for things like that, it can be pretty, devastating later on when the book is successful. So we're looking after those, interests in your contract, then we are managing the publishing relationship. Not a small task. And for new writers, we're navigating you through this incredibly bizarre and foreign terrain of, like, what do they mean, a galley? And when do I get a publicist? And all of these sorts of things. And then we're just having conversations with you. How does this book fit into your larger career strategy? When do you want to write the next book? When should we sell the next book? So it's really this kind of 360 and lifelong relationship.

Jennia: Yeah, it's a bit like being a wedding planner almost, but for a longer period of time. Making sure that all those little snafus that come up are dealt with, maybe before the author even realizes that something's happened.

Lucinda: That's exactly right. Wedding planner is such a nice way to put it.

Jennia: So as an agent, how many submissions would you say that you receive on a regular basis?

Lucinda: Right. So keep in mind we're a small agency. At any given time, we'll have three to five agents working with us. And even then we probably get about ten submissions a day to my personal inbox, which means that the other agents are also getting that. So you could be receiving hundreds of queries in a week. And again, this is a small agency, so you can just imagine for larger agents, larger agencies, what they might be receiving.

Jennia: And this goes into some of the items that you touch on in your book. But what makes one of those manuscripts or the query stand out? And what are you looking at first?

Lucinda: Sure. Oh, I like the. What am I looking for first? Because, of course, I've developed, a very fast eye to assess material. There are so many things I could say here, but voice is going to get me, time and time again. A query letter, and you'll hear this, I do a lot of interviews in my book, get signed with editors at, the major houses who've been working with new writers forever and ever as well. And they'll say that the pitch letter and the proposal should contain the voice and the sensibility of the author. So something I see a lot of is this kind of, like, third person front. They're speaking about themselves in the third person. It feels very formal. I want to be in an intimate conversation with a writer. Very tough to do with little real estate, but I can tell in an email if you're a talented writer. So your query needs to sort of exude, that writing talent, which is something that people might not think about because they're so concerned about presenting, right?

Jennia: Yeah, I completely agree.

Lucinda: What I call the big idea, which is really a combination of being timely and timeless. Again, I talk about this quite a bit and Get Signed because how do you strike that perfect balance? But consider it's a super crowded market. Six million books published each year, not including—excluding the self-publishing market. We are just talking about a ton of books. How do you stand out in a crowded market? You are riding the coattails of a current conversation, something that is—so right now, order of the day is inclusivity. What are the voices that haven't yet been heard? What are those stories? Who's not been given a spotlight before? What's a little known universe we can explore that we haven't heard time and time again? So that's the sort of timeliness aspect that publishers need to see to understand that there is media appeal.

Jennia: Right.

Lucinda: Because media is not going to get behind something that feels like everything we've heard before, just in the way readers aren't. But then there's the timeless aspect, and this will apply to nonfiction and fiction and memoir alike. It's: What are those perennial themes? Is it the underdog? Is it like a David and Goliath sort of story? Is there the—is it the hero's journey? What's the transformation?

Jennia: Mhm.

Lucinda: There's transformation at the heart of every good book. So it's sort of understanding that there's something timeless, because publishers are looking for books that are going to sell for five years and beyond. They are not looking for a flash in the pan success.

Jennia: Well, which only makes sense when you think about the financial investment that they're backing it with. I mean, not just financial, but even the people that they're employing to ensure that every step is completed to satisfaction.

Lucinda: That's exactly right.

Jennia: That's a huge amount of work, and then to not see it pay off in the way that they hoped for—it all makes sense that they'd be looking for something that's not going to just be a flashy trend one day and then gone six months later.

Lucinda: Thank you for that compassion and understanding on the publisher side because it also applies to agents. The compassion one should have for an agent is that we are working speculatively. We are working on spec to develop something with you that we really believe in, and we don't even get compensated if it doesn't sell. So we have real equity in what we're creating, a real passion for it, and we're putting in enormous work. So I think all of that deserves appreciation. And the publishers I work with, thankfully, are also in the author care business. There's a, reputation about publishers, like, they don't care and they're not doing anything. That's not been my experience, fortunately. They’re very invested and very collaborative.

Jennia: Where do you think some of those ideas come from? Or why people have some of these beliefs?

Lucinda: I think that, unfortunately, just because the numbers are so competitive. Recently I've been thinking about this like getting into college.

Jennia: Right.

Lucinda: You don't get the interview without the application. So it's just the numbers are coming at you in droves of people who are, crowding your inbox don't have a connection. Which, by the way, the first bit of advice I'd give someone in terms of breaking into the industry is like, do anything you can to get that sixth degree of separation connection to someone in the industry. So it's coming at you so hard and fast, and I think so many, authors are demoralized by the fact that an agent isn't even taking the time to respond.

Jennia: Uh-huh.

Lucinda: I get why there are sort of haters and then there are actual horror stories. I meet with authors all the time who say, I didn't hear back from my agent after we signed for like ten months, or I never heard from them again, or it was five years, or they tried to sell it, and then I don't know actually who got it, what happened, but I never heard back, we never went out with it again. And that does happen. I'm not going to sugarcoat that that is a common experience. It's not the way that I do things or teach our agents to do things, but it happens.

Jennia: I mean, it's daunting even just thinking about receiving that many emails a day and then figuring out how do you prioritize the order in which you're going to answer them? And then how do you go through this many manuscripts in a reasonable time frame just in order to write a reply? And I think that this is one of those cases where that extra education about what it's like on the other side is beneficial because it's helping them see the immense workload that you have on a daily basis.

Lucinda: If I can give another recommendation in terms of how to break through in that first pitch.

Jennia: Mhm?

Lucinda: You'll always hear me say that, publishing is a lookalike business. It's Hollywood. It's: What does this book look like that has been successful in the past? The more that new authors can do that work for us, which we call comps—comparative titles—it can be a stretch, right? You can say that your novel is the next "Where the Crawdads Sing," and it may not quite be there. You can say your memoir is the next "Educated." One wants to be realistic, but, um, sort of getting us excited about what that book could be based on, on just the package of it, because that's how readers make decisions.

Jennia: Yes.

Lucinda: You know, your pitch is your movie trailer. So, uh, you've got to really hook us quickly in terms of what's in it for us as readers? What's the enlightenment value or the entertainment value, or both?

Jennia: Mhm.

Lucinda: And I think that that is just so important to keep those comps in mind, because it's literally how agents and editors speak.

Jennia: Yep.

Lucinda: This is the x meets y. This is, you know—that's how we talk, and that's what gets people excited. So it's the best thing that a first time author can do.

Jennia: Are there any comps that you think maybe are overdone or comps you would steer an author away from using?

Lucinda: Yes, thank you for mentioning that. I mean, it used to be J. K. Rowling and Harry Potter, that people would use all the time. In the non-fiction space, we see a lot of Glennon Doyle "Untamed" wannabes. So, I would say let's no longer, you know, think about that as our only comp, because there are other versions of that that could be more accurate to your particular profile as a writer. Sort of every big book, you name it. But there does need to be a convincing aspect, and this is harder to create as a formula that I can just prescribe in an interview, but once you read the pitch and you see the comps, as an agent, you might actually say, oh, this actually makes sense—

Jennia: Mmm.

Lucinda: —I see why they are using those comps.

Jennia: That's really a good point to be making too, with the comps, because I think people also get it in their head, well, I need to only do comps that are within my genre. Or maybe they get too narrow in what their comps are or should be. Is that something that you see come up often or not really?

Lucinda: All the time. And, the easiest way to avoid narrow comps—overly narrow comps—this comes up, particularly in book proposals, more so than a pitch. But if they are academic, published, published by small press, very small press, or self published, an agent who works largely with major publishers and is working towards six figure deals is not going to see that as having the same value, perceived value, if you're choosing just very small books that no one's heard of. So I'd err on the side of bigger and better and hope that the proposal or the manuscript has that potential.

Jennia: Mhm, that makes a lot of sense. So when you're talking about, just for people who might not know the difference between a pitch and a proposal, what the differences are between the two?

Lucinda: Thank you for bringing that up. So, a, pitch is your query letter. It's essentially an email that is, intended to be very brief, that is pitching your book. If an agent is interested, and you are a non-fiction writer, sometimes a memoir writer as well, you could go this route: You will need a book proposal at the ready to send them. And the book proposal is more like a roadmap for the actual book. Many writers will tell you it's harder than writing the book because—you're nodding. You definitely know about this.

Jennia: I've heard this a lot!

Lucinda: So 50 pages, give or take, with a sample chapter, with a marketing plan, with a bio of who you are, with a table of contents, with chapter summaries. And I've given that sort of in a funky order, right? The way that we think about book proposals is never by template. It's sort of like leading with the strengths. If an author has a really great marketing platform, why don't we put that first right after the bio? If the sample chapters are really where it sings, let's move that more to the front end of the proposal. So the proposal is like this, again, this package of all of your greatest hits.

Jennia: I love the way that you phrased that, because in a way, it's kind of like social media and picking out what we're going to post there. We're going to post the strongest and the best photos, not the one where, like, one eye is half closed.

Lucinda: You know, funny about social media, it's like, the less glossy, the better. Right?

Jennia: Uh-huh!

Lucinda: We might worry about how our hair and our skin looks, but people really want to see you waking up in bed in the morning with bedheads.

Jennia: We want to see the real version. We don't want to see three filters applied to the one photo.

Lucinda: That's so true.

Jennia: So if you have blankets tossed on your couch in the background, show it.

Lucinda: I couldn't agree more. It's like that vulnerability and that authenticity piece that is human and that makes people want to read you. It's as much about the author now as it is about the masterpiece, which is really something that's new and different about publishing.

Jennia: Right. I see that a lot too with memoir, and I wanted to see if maybe you feel the same way that it used to be, that you almost had to have some sort of monumentally unique event happen to you, or you had to be a celebrity to write a memoir. But now we're seeing a lot of memoir from just so called everyday people. Is this something that you've notice too, or a trend in that direction?

Lucinda: Interesting. I mean, I'd love to hear sort of a book that you're thinking about that you have in mind so I could comment on that more. I think that the memoirs that I'm personally seeing sell or I'm interested in acquiring, are those really by diverse voices, or I would say diverse experiences that haven't yet been covered. So going back to the writer—

Jennia: I think you just answered the question, really.

Lucinda: Okay, right. Yeah, that's exactly right! No, that's exactly right. So it doesn't need to be that some, you know, insane sort of thing happened to you. I think everyone has suffered trauma. How do you talk about that differently?

Jennia: Mhm. How does that impact which manuscripts that you end up acquiring or offering, "Yes, I'll be your agent"? What is it about those that makes them stand out to you?

Lucinda: So if we're, again, sticking with memoir, I think the humor piece is incredibly important. So right now, the market is all about escapism in both books and film. So if we can't be, like, laughing through the trauma and the tragedy while relating to it, it's unlikely to find a readership if it's feeling too dark and heavy. So the book that every editor I work with is looking for right now is the next "I'm Glad My Mom Died."

Jennia: Oh, my gosh. Yes, that one was really good.

Lucinda: With that said, it's like that dark humor, um, you know, the laughing is so cathartic. So we have to be going after catharsis if we're writing a memoir about trauma or affliction.

Jennia: Mm, If If we switch gears a little bit, then what would it be that would need to stand out for you? If we're looking at fiction?

Lucinda: Same thing—little known stories, diverse voices, diverse experiences, but surprise twists. Again, this is not going to be different than it's been in all of time for any book that you can think of that you love. It's like, what did I love so much about the novel? Oh, the surprise element. But it's a great sort of point for those writers who are listening and still working on their manuscripts, who are listening to this interview, to really grill themselves, step outside of the ivory tower and say, what is surprising about this? I think that that's really important. And to convey that surprise in the pitch letter.

Jennia: Mm, yeah. In your book, you talk a little bit about deal breakers, and so we've talked about what works, so then what doesn't work?

Lucinda: Sure. Yeah, I mean, we talked about, like, no escapism, um, no, catharsis for the reader, or humor, is going to be problematic because you just think of any successful book on the market, and there is an aspect of either or both of those things. Entertainment value. If a pitch doesn't immediately exude entertainment value, or if you're writing self help, enlightenment and education, how I'm going to do things differently? That's a deal breaker. Pitches that are overly long on synopsis that still leave me saying, like, what happens in this book? Right? I think the trap of new writers is to overly characterize in the writing of their book and then in the writing of their pitch. What it is they're trying to do or what this character is like, without telling us what it is that is happening.

Jennia: Yes.

Lucinda: Right? It's the old show and don't tell. It's been said—it cannot be said enough. And frankly, when I wrote my book and my editor said to me, we just need you to show and not tell, I almost laughed out loud as I cried. Wow, I am getting a taste of my own medicine. And I embraced it, but it was difficult, right? You think of yourself as an expert in the trade, and then you hear these things that just kind of—I kept likening it to the editor-author relationship to being a patient on the doctor's table, lying naked and being told, what's wrong with you?

Jennia: Right?

Lucinda: It's that brutal!

Jennia: Yes. I can definitely see that.

Lucinda: Something else. This doesn't have to do with the pitching, but it's one of my best strategies I've learned, um, in writing Get Signed before I even sent this to an editor. So your writers can think about this in terms of sending things to an agent. if they really want to put their best foot forward, they can think about it in terms of sending it to an editor if they already have deals or working on published books, is the readers committee.

Jennia: Mmm.

Lucinda: So I chose about twelve to fifteen people. Different sort of like—the audience for the book, right? They could be in the industry. They could be new writers. They were students of mine. They were clients of mine. No mothers allowed, no family and friends. This is only your target reader. And you get them to read the book, and instead of giving them sort of a long markup that they're tasked to doing, or, you know, writing you some flowery letter and then getting into the critique, or worse, not critiquing you at all—I created a little Google form survey. Had about ten questions on it that were very pointed. Here's exactly what I want to hear. I want to hear, is it repetitive? Is it boring? Is it—where'd you lose interest? What was the most interesting insight? And it sort of forced them to just get very, clear with me and critical with me about what was or wasn't working, saving themselves the preface of writing me some nice complimentary thing, because that's not what I was interested in, right?

Jennia: And it's not going to help you, really, either. I mean, it might to an extent just to see what's working, but a lot of this part of the process is finding out what's not working and how can I improve it?

Lucinda: That's exactly right. And then if your writers did that before they send their finished manuscript to an agent or, um, their editor, I just think it would be taken up ten levels. It's just going to be so much vastly improved based on that feedback. A common myth is that agents don't really care who you are, they just care about the writing. And I think I've debunked that now by saying that the author is now just as important as the book itself as we become more visible on social media and everywhere else. But I think that if you do have something relevant and strong to share about yourself, we want to sort of know that up front. We want to know who you are. Sometimes I recommend including a little bio below your signature to break the read.

Jennia: Hmm, that's a great tip.

Lucinda: It's all about making email reading easy, right?

Jennia: Yes. Well, that's a perfect segue into our last comment, which is that as a special extra for our listeners, you're giving away three copies of your book.

Lucinda: I am. Oh, I would be so delighted if people, read it and, if you're inclined to, wrote a review—but even just wrote me a note to say what you thought, if it helped you, ways that I can continue to help you, what I didn't cover. There hopefully will be future books.

Jennia: So even as an editor who has worked in this industry for a long time and attended webinars on pitches and listened to other agents speak, I found it extremely valuable and new information presented that I hadn't seen before. So I already recommend it.

Lucinda: Amazing. Thank you so much.

Jennia: You're welcome. So, to enter the giveaway, you can just send me a message at the email that will be listed in the show notes and just put Get Signed either in the email title or the message body. And then I'll be using a random number generator to choose the winners and I'll contact them with further details

Lucinda: For those that don't, because we have a limited quantity of, books we're giving away, if they do enter for the giveaway and they don't get a book, if you want to shoot me their email, we'll make sure they get some other free resource that we offer.

Jennia: Oh wow! That's extremely generous of you. Thank you.

Lucinda: Absolutely, my pleasure.

Jennia: Thank you again for being here. This was fantastic.

Lucinda: Thank you. Really appreciate it!

Jennia: And that's all for today. Thank you for listening, and please check out the show notes for more information. Next week I'll be talking to Veronica Kirin who is the co-founder of an arts and literary journal, and who will be talking about imposter syndrome. Please join me.