TLDR: Be born to a wealthy family
Mar. 28th, 2026 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingTake It from Me: An Agent’s Guide to Building a Nonfiction Writing Career from Scratch
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734107/take-it-from-me-by-alia-hanna-habib/
This book is an approachable and interesting read, but it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. There’s no secret sauce, unfortunately. I think a lot of this translates to fiction writing as well. But essentially, this is how you get an agent:
1. It is very important to agents that you have a “platform.”
2. This “platform” doesn’t necessarily mean having a lot of social media followers, but it entails being famous or respected in some way.
3. You can query all you want; but, 999 times out of 1000, an agent is going to get in touch with you if they’re interested.* Querying agents isn’t a complete waste of time, but most agents aren’t finding their clients through queries or book proposals.
* This has been my experience, by the way. Almost all of the nonfiction work I’ve published (including my book) has been directly solicited or commissioned by an editor. In contrast, most of my unsolicited pitches go unanswered.
4. The best way to attract an agent’s attention is to be a celebrity in a field that has nothing to do with writing.
5. If you’re actually a writer, the best way to attract an agent’s attention is to publish a steady stream of shorter pieces and hope that something wins an award or goes viral.
6. There’s a lot of “word of mouth” buzz in the industry, so it can be extremely helpful if you know somebody who knows somebody.*
* This has also been my experience. Most editors have gotten in touch with me because someone recommended me by name. I suspect that, usually, that “someone” was their first choice who happened to be busy at the time, but I don’t let that bother me. I also try to be that “someone” for other people when I can.
7. This is why it’s super useful to do an MFA, the process of which will help bring you into industry circles. Do you not have $100k to spend on an MFA? Sorry, friend. The world is unfair.
8. If you can’t do an MFA, it can be a decent alternative to do writer’s conferences. Very strong emphasis on can be, though. Writer’s conferences are infamous for being hectic.
9. Another alternative is to do a PhD. PhD students are funded (ie, given full tuition, a salary, and access to research grants), so this is what I did. I wouldn't recommend it, though. This is the devil’s path.
Basically, though, it all boils down to “platform.” In other words, the agent has to know who you are beforehand. So good luck with that.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734107/take-it-from-me-by-alia-hanna-habib/
This book is an approachable and interesting read, but it didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know. There’s no secret sauce, unfortunately. I think a lot of this translates to fiction writing as well. But essentially, this is how you get an agent:
1. It is very important to agents that you have a “platform.”
2. This “platform” doesn’t necessarily mean having a lot of social media followers, but it entails being famous or respected in some way.
3. You can query all you want; but, 999 times out of 1000, an agent is going to get in touch with you if they’re interested.* Querying agents isn’t a complete waste of time, but most agents aren’t finding their clients through queries or book proposals.
* This has been my experience, by the way. Almost all of the nonfiction work I’ve published (including my book) has been directly solicited or commissioned by an editor. In contrast, most of my unsolicited pitches go unanswered.
4. The best way to attract an agent’s attention is to be a celebrity in a field that has nothing to do with writing.
5. If you’re actually a writer, the best way to attract an agent’s attention is to publish a steady stream of shorter pieces and hope that something wins an award or goes viral.
6. There’s a lot of “word of mouth” buzz in the industry, so it can be extremely helpful if you know somebody who knows somebody.*
* This has also been my experience. Most editors have gotten in touch with me because someone recommended me by name. I suspect that, usually, that “someone” was their first choice who happened to be busy at the time, but I don’t let that bother me. I also try to be that “someone” for other people when I can.
7. This is why it’s super useful to do an MFA, the process of which will help bring you into industry circles. Do you not have $100k to spend on an MFA? Sorry, friend. The world is unfair.
8. If you can’t do an MFA, it can be a decent alternative to do writer’s conferences. Very strong emphasis on can be, though. Writer’s conferences are infamous for being hectic.
9. Another alternative is to do a PhD. PhD students are funded (ie, given full tuition, a salary, and access to research grants), so this is what I did. I wouldn't recommend it, though. This is the devil’s path.
Basically, though, it all boils down to “platform.” In other words, the agent has to know who you are beforehand. So good luck with that.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-29 11:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-03-29 01:24 pm (UTC)And I don't even mean that ironically!
I wish discoverability weren't such a major issue, though. In a perfect world, I'd be able to find reviews of genre fiction novellas (to give an example) in a magazine or on a website instead of having to scour Amazon myself in between bouts of skimming the lit blogs on Substack that pop up like mushrooms and fade just as quickly. But almost all of the pre-pandemic magazines and websites have closed here in 2026, and indie publishers aren't doing much better. Meanwhile, a lot of indie bookstores are just smaller versions of Barnes & Noble, which mostly seems to sell toys these days.
I can't help but wonder where all of this is headed, you know?
The gossip I've been picking up (via Comics Beat staff conversations on Slack) is that, at the behest of JK Rowling herself, agents are scouting Harry Potter fanfic writers directly from AO3 with the intent of publishing a wave of "wizard school" stories on the back of the new HBO series. I suppose I understand the short-term thinking behind this kind of cross-media convergence, but a business model built on a foundation of employing teams of "book doctors" to file the serial numbers off fanfiction seems incestuous and unhealthy in the long run.
I'm holding out hope that the pendulum of culture will swing away from that kind of nonsense eventually. Now that Millennials are now in their 30s, the prime book-buying demographic is larger than it's ever been, and all this talent has to go somewhere.
Sorry for writing a mini-essay in response to your comment 😅 but good luck to all of us! If nothing else, one self-published werewolf romance novel is worth a hundred Harry Potter knockoffs published by Hachette.
no subject
Date: 2026-03-29 09:43 pm (UTC)Don't even get me started on the crossover between fic and trad publishing, especially when it comes to HP. The fact that they're promoting it as such grosses me out. Fanfiction is safe because we DON'T make money off it. With HP especially, we know where JKR is putting that money and I want no part of it, so I avoid authors who I know are doing it. (I'm a little better with stories based on Reylo fic, a la The Love Hypothesis, because we all know it's Reylo but also that wasn't how it was marketed, and the book can stand alone without the original fandom backbone.)
It's so hard to get the word out there, though. I keep screaming about my books but no one notices, especially if you don't have an advertising budget. It would be great to find a place for reviews that we all trusted and wasn't just a scam, which is what I find happens waaaay too often these days.