Your Career on the Line
WRITERS AND AGENTS DISCUSS “THE CALL”
Writers and agents discuss “the call.”
IF THERE is one milestone in a writing career capable of launching a thousand daydreams and anxieties at once, it’s when a literary agent calls to discuss representation. Known among writers as simply “the call,” this phone conversation could potentially change a writer’s life by leading to representation and, if all goes well and the stars align, a book deal.
The call has attained such mythic importance that authors who have experienced it can often recount, with perfect clarity, where and when it all went down. I fielded my first agent call for my novel, Body of Stars, published in March by Dutton, during my lunch break at work, where I reserved an entire eighty-person conference room to ensure I’d have privacy. Vera Kurian, whose debut novel, Never Saw Me Coming, will be published in September by Park Row Books, invited two writing friends to her apartment so they could listen in on her end of the conversation. “Like we were in middle school and I was talking to a boy,” she recalls. And when Julie Carrick Dalton, author of Waiting for the Night Song (Forge Books, 2021), received her agent call on Halloween, she fixed her gaze on a bowl of Kit Kats to ground herself. “It felt like the earth was moving under my feet for a few seconds,” she says. “It felt like all my dreams might really come true.”
As momentous as this call might seem, a lifetime of literary dreams is a heavy burden to place on a single phone conversation. In practice the call is not about a godlike agent plucking a writer from obscurity. It’s a conversation, a way for both parties to determine whether they have the professional chemistry and shared vision to establish a productive working relationship.
“When I’m setting up a call to reach out, it’s with an eye to talk more about the writer’s work—to tell them what I love about the manuscript, get a sense of their vision and expectations, go over some editorial thoughts, and gauge our general compatibility,” says Sonali Chanchani, a literary agent with Folio Literary Management.
So how do such calls come about? The process usually goes like this: A writer gets a manuscript into the agent’s hands, whether through a query, referral, solicitation, or by connecting at a conference. The agent reads the manuscript (or the proposal, in the case of nonfiction), falls in love with it, and contacts the writer to set up a phone call. If the chat goes well, the agent may offer representation right there on the phone. Hooray! At this point, aside from celebrating, the writer takes some time to contemplate the offer while informing other agents in the mix to give them a chance to consider the manuscript too. If additional agents are interested, the writer might end up
with multiple phone calls and offers of representation.
Not every call leads to representation, however. The agent’s editorial vision might not align with the writer’s, or perhaps the call was more exploratory to begin with. Regardless of the outcome, this phone call is not a unilateral process or a test for writers.
“Don’t enter into the call thinking you need to impress me,” Chanchani says. “It’s more about compatibility, seeing if we have a shared vision, and mutual respect.”
Still, some nerves are to be expected during these conversations. In fact I’ve yet to speak to a writer who wasn’t nervous when taking the call.
“I was sweating buckets,” admits A. Natasha Joukovsky, author of The Portrait of a Mirror, published in June by the Overlook Press. “Because the agent offer is the first official step [in publishing], it felt of titanic importance.”
Joukovsky prepared for her calls by researching each agent thoroughly and preparing questions. First on her list was to ask how each agent would position her novel, which she says straddles the literary-commercial line. “As writers we’re focused on the editorial side, but publishing is also a business,” she says. “How your book is positioned is going to determine whether it reaches the readers it will resonate with the most.”
Joukovsky received several offers of representation and narrowed her decision down to two agents. While this is an enviable position, fielding more than one call can bring its own stress and challenges. She says her decision came down to something intangible: instinct. “Both agents I spoke to were amazing, and I’d be super lucky to have either of them,” Joukovsky says. “A friend told me that finding an agent is like dating. Ultimately you have to just trust your gut, and it’s usually right.”
Her instincts led her to Sarah Fuentes, a literary agent at Fletcher & Company. When I spoke to Fuentes, she recalled reading Joukovsky’s manuscript for the first time in one sitting. Then she read it again.
“I was that excited about it and Natasha’s writing,” Fuentes says. “I was just excited to get on the phone and talk to her, to hear about her inspiration, and to gush about how much I loved the book.”
Just as Joukovsky was anxious for this phone call, Fuentes had some butterflies of her own. “When I’m on the phone with a writer I really want to sign; I feel those same nerves. So just know you’re not alone with that,” she says. “It’s such a personal relationship, and you want to be sure you’d like working together. My hope is to communicate in a way that shows I am the right partner for the book. I want [writers] to feel that sense of trust and security.”
While Fuentes often initiates a phone call after falling in love with a polished manuscript, she sometimes calls writers at earlier stages of the process as well.
“For nonfiction it’s really the idea we’re talking about. A lot of those calls are speculative more than anything else,” she says. “I’ll get on the phone with writers to hear ideas or hash them out together, even before they have a proposal. I find that having that initial conversation is a mutually valuable experience. It gives writers the chance to ask some questions about the publishing process, and when the manuscript is finished, hopefully I’ll be one of the first agents to read it.”
In an ideal world, the call leads to not only an offer of representation, but also a long, successful partnership. In reality these relationships might not last forever. Agents retire, authors explore new genres, or artistic visions diverge. In any case it’s not unheard-of for authors to seek new representation, which means going through the call all over again.
Amin Ahmad is one of those authors. Earlier in his career Ahmad secured representation and a two-book deal for his crime fiction. Eventually his agent for those projects moved to a new agency, and he began working on a more mainstream novel that signaled a departure from his previous work. Then it was time to find a new literary agent.
“The first time, I just wanted an agent,” he admits, “but this time I was a little pickier. I’d been exposed to the industry and knew how it worked. I started going to conferences and meeting with as many agents as possible.”
Ahmad developed a relationship with Erin Harris at Folio Literary Management, with whom he eventually signed (full disclosure: Harris is also my agent). Before he made this decision he fielded additional phone calls with three other literary agents, a process he approached with methodical preparation. He researched each agent by reviewing their past deals listed on Publishers Marketplace and looking up their interviews online, and he came to each call with the following list of questions:
How would you position my novel?
What are your editorial suggestions?