{"id":1685,"date":"2022-07-12T19:27:59","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T23:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=1685"},"modified":"2022-09-08T19:10:18","modified_gmt":"2022-09-08T23:10:18","slug":"lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/lessons-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
What I wish someone had\u00a0done to me last year.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I share all my good writing news here, so I figured I should share some of the crummy news too in case someone can learn from where I went wrong.<\/p>\n

So. In the spring of 2021, I got the authorial\u00a0Holy Grail: an offer of representation from a literary agent. That was the good news.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The not-so-good news was that she wasn\u2019t an experienced agent. She’d never worked with an agency before opening her own. But she had one big-money sale to a major publisher as well as an editorial background. OK, the one big sale was for a notorious TV celebrity rather than an awesome writer, but still; at least she actually had<\/em> a big book deal to her name. And I wanted an editorial agent.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed my phone call with her. She had great ideas\u00a0for how to get my manuscript into submission shape. She didn\u2019t ask me for a dime for representation. It was a tough decision, but I figured the big book deal, the editing background, and her enthusiasm for my book\u00a0were enough for me to give her a chance. Also, the contract terms made it super-easy for me to end the relationship if it came to that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So that’s how I justified\u00a0signing with someone while ignoring the obvious warning signs like the lack of agency experience and the lack of other\u00a0sales.\u00a0I saw the red flags. I signed anyhow.\u00a0That’s on me. But never again will I sign with any agent if I feel like I’m taking a chance on them. While there’s no guarantee that even a high-powered, experienced agent will be able to sell my manuscript, I should be absolutely\u00a0certain that they\u00a0can\u00a0<\/i>do it.<\/p>\n

She sent me a ton of edits last summer, and it took me a long time to get them done because my brainspace was completely occupied by Tidepool\u2019s<\/i> release and the aftermath.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But while that was going on, she was signing a lot<\/i> of new clients, which made me nervous. How on earth could she represent all these people effectively? She added a couple of associate\u00a0agents to her\u00a0agency, but they had even less experience than she did. In addition, she hadn\u2019t made any new US sales since I signed with her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After she reviewed my revised draft, we had a phone call earlier this year. She sounded really enthused\u00a0about\u00a0sending my MS on submission. As\u00a0she talked through some strategies with me, I got all excited.\u00a0Maybe\u00a0this gamble I’d taken was going to pay off.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And then\u2026nothing much until last Friday, when I (and every other client) got an email announcing that she was shutting down the agency.<\/p>\n

Oh.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t say I was all that<\/em> surprised, but I felt pretty foolish anyhow. I\u2019d signed with her somewhat against my better judgment, and now my better judgment was dancing around hollering \u201cSEE, I TOLD YOU SO\u2014HOW COULD YOU BE SO DAMN STUPID?\u201d My brain is very rarely on my side in these things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Let me be clear: I don\u2019t think she was a scammer or a crook. I don\u2019t hate her and I\u2019m not even that mad, though I think the abrupt notice last week was not too cool. Mostly, I suspect she\u2019s just one of many people who thought agenting would be easier than it is and didn\u2019t know what to do when it wasn’t.\u00a0She’s not the first, and she won’t be the last.\u00a0I see more agencies like this springing up all the time, and I suspect they will all eventually\u00a0come to similar ends.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So don’t do what I did. Don’t sign your hard work over to someone unless you’re certain\u00a0they’ve got the experience to represent it well.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

All told, I got off pretty easy. My manuscript\u00a0was never on submission, so I haven\u2019t burned its chances with anyone. And to give my former agent credit, I do think the edits she suggested made my\u00a0book a lot stronger overall.\u00a0I signed with her in part\u00a0because of her editorial background, so\u00a0that, at least, paid off.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The biggest blow was to my ego. I\u2019m now someone who signed with a schmagent<\/a>\u00a0(I pretty much could have written that question even though it’s from before my ex-agent was active),\u00a0and that knowledge smarts even if it doesn\u2019t leave a long-lasting mark on my career. By now, I wanted to be more savvy than that. I will definitely<\/i> be a lot more careful and thoughtful going forward.\u00a0And humble.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I finally talked a little about what happened on Twitter and was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from writers and agents. Even if people were thinking “Well, what did you expect, dummy?”, they were kind enough not to say it. I truly\u00a0appreciate that. And I’ve made a whole new crew of writing friends among the other abandoned agency clients, so that’s cool.<\/p>\n

But man, it hurt<\/i> to open up Querytracker again. If I had a tail, it would have been between my legs as I loaded that website for the first time in almost two years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So that happened. Back to the grind.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I share all my good writing news here, so I figured I should share some of the crummy news too…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,4],"tags":[118,120,119,5,19,41],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1685"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1751,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions\/1751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}