I Signed With an Agent!

For those hardcore readers of this blog (bless your hearts), you may remember a post months ago saying how I submitted a book proposal to an agent. Well that submission paid off. This week, I signed with my new literary agent: Sorche Fairbank of Fairbank Literary Representation.

Sorche is top notch; she's based just outside of Boston and handles a variety of fiction and nonfiction subjects.

I want to write more about this, but it's late and I have to get to sleep. Hope you enjoyed all the late night posting tonight.

2/20/2008 Update: Thanks for all the kind comments. It's exciting. Without going into too much detail, I can say that the book is nonfiction with a focus in film/theater. If Sorche can sell it, that would be awesome, because I was recently named the founding editor/writer of Screenwriter's and Playwright's Market, a new screenwriting/playwriting directory at F+W Publications due out at the end of 2008. They tie in together nicely.

So how did this happen? Like a lot of things: kinda by accident. Up to this point, I've done a lot of magazine writing, business writing, playwriting and nonfiction book writing that's fairly small in scope - meaning that I didn't write anything that truly required an agent. In the future, I'd like to write both juvenile books (picture books, YA, etc) and screenplays, so I figured an agent was down the line, hopefully. I met Sorche at the Midwest Literary Festival in Oct. 2006, where I was moderating a panel of agents, and she was one such agent. One audience member asked if book ideas ever came from book publishers themselves? (Good question, by the way.) An agent said yes, and that publishers often had ideas for books and would contact agents who would then try to find a writer they rep to pen the commissioned book. Sorche spoke up, saying that not only did publishers have ideas, but agents also come up with ideas as well and try to find the best writer for the project.

Later, Sorche and I were talking and she mentioned that she had a book idea in mind in the film/theater category. After the conference, I e-mailed her saying that I would be a good candidate for the film/theater book she had in mind because of what I've written and my passions, etc. Three months later, she replied, saying "Let's talk." We had several phone conversations throughout the following months fleshing out what exactly needed to be in the book proposal. That took a while, but I finished the proposal last summer and submitted it.

Because of Sorche's workload, it took a while for her to get back to me, but she was happy with everything and asked me if I wanted to move forward. We crossed paths at the San Francisco Writers' Conference and talked about a plan for the book. She passed along a contract. And that's basically it. Nothing too exciting, but once again, it shows the value of writers' conferences. I've heard more success stories about people finding agents at conferences that I can remember.

I will blog now and then about the agent process as we go along and share any helpful tips.