What do Literary Agents REALLY Want from Writers?

+ What my podcasting corner ACTUALLY looks like

Hello Protagonists! In this post, you’ll find:

🇩🇰 Me in Denmark!

🤓 Interview with Super Agent Thao Le

🤩 New perk: Submit Questions for Podcast Guests

🎥 Behind the scenes: What my podcasting corner REALLY looks like (a.k.a. Glamorous author life is fake!)

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🇩🇰 Event Announcement: Denmark!

I am so pleased that I’ll be a Guest of Honour at the Danish Fantasy Festival in Esbjerg, Denmark (September 14 - 15, 2024). Past Guests of Honor have included Jim Butcher and R. F. Kuang, so I am really honored to be one this year!

I know there are some Danish members of CREATIVE. INSPIRED. HAPPY, so I hope I’ll get to meet you in person and autograph your books!

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🤓 Interview with Literary Agent Thao Le

Literary agent Thao Le and Evelyn Skye meeting for lunch in Del Mar, CA in June 2024

I am so happy to have my agent, Thao Le, here today. A great literary agent wears many hats—book whisperer for their clients, matchmatcher for authors and the right editors, savvy contract negotiators, and talent scouts on the hunt for emerging writers. Without a doubt, Thao is all of these.

I met Thao in 2017, when I was on book tour for The Crown’s Game and The Crown’s Fate series. Except I didn’t know who she was, because she wasn’t my agent at the time, and she came to The Mysterious Galaxy bookstore incognito—as a reader and fan of my work, not as an agent. (I was represented by a different agency for my first 4 novels.)

A couple years later, I decided to seek new representation because I wanted to shift from writing YA to writing fiction for adults. I queried a handful of agents and received several offers, all wonderful. But I chose Thao because she really got my work. She had an intuitive understanding for what I wanted to say in my story, as well as a vision for how she could take my career to the next level, and that vision matched exactly what I imagined, too.

It’s been fire and magic since I signed with her. Since 2019, she’s landed me contracts for eight more books:

• Three Kisses, One Midnight (YA Halloween rom com co-authored with Roshani Chokshi and Sandhya Menon; published in 2022 by Macmillan/Wednesday Books)

• Princess Private Eye (2-book middle grade series—think The Princess Diaries meets Nancy Drew; book 1 published in 2023, book 2 TBD by Disney Books)

• Damsel (Netflix literary/film collaboration, including a movie starring Millie Bobby Brown, Angela Bassett, and Robin Wright; book published in 2023 by Penguin Random House/Random House Worlds)

• The Hundred Loves of Juliet (women’s fiction, published in 2023 by Penguin Random House/Del Rey)

• One Year Ago in Spain (women’s fiction, published in 2024 by Penguin Random House/Del Rey)

• Two more women’s fiction books that are secret and haven’t been announced yet, to be published in 2025 & 2026.

But that’s enough from me. Let’s get to the interview!

Evelyn: I want to start with one of the most interesting stories I’ve heard about you as a talent scout—that you discovered Ali Hazelwood (now a #1 New York Times bestseller and household name) in a Star Wars fan fiction forum (Reylo, to be exact).

What is it that you’re looking for in emerging talent?

What is that essential something that makes you sit up and think, Yes, I could help build this writer’s career, and we are a good match?

Thao: I’m always looking for that bingeable quality in the writing. I want to fall in love with characters and their dynamics.

When I read Ali’s fanfic, I felt like she took something I thought I knew and made it feel completely new and different and I was swept away with her characterizations.

Evelyn: Now I’d love to back up to the very beginning of your career. How did you get started as a literary agent? Did you always know that this was what you wanted to do?

Thao: I didn’t start out thinking I would be an agent! My background is in economics and finance, and I joined the Dijkstra Agency as an assistant to subrights and royalties. I then became the agency’s royalty manager for 8 years.

But I’ve always been a reader, and with the encouragement of my colleagues and boss, I took on some projects from the slush pile and realized I could sell them! I started selling so much that it became clear I needed to do so full time. It was quite scary to leave behind a guaranteed salary and go commission-only, but it’s also exciting and really scratches my creative itch to work with so many amazing creators.

Evelyn: Your agency, Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, is based in San Diego. Once upon a time, agents needed to be in New York City where all the editors and publishers were. But technology has made that a relic of the past. How do you network with editors and keep track of what they’re looking for?

Thao: I’ve only ever been to NYC once and that was maybe 9 years into my career. Technology, as the pandemic has shown us, has made remote working really possible.

Even before then, a lot of my connections and networking happened online, via email, socials, etc… I also grew up in a time of live journal and then tumblr and twitter (I refuse to call it X), so I’m very used to creating online relationships and I think that just worked naturally for me.

Some of the best people I know I met online and a lot of the editors I work a lot with are in the same fandoms as me. I love getting tv/film recs and such from them and then matching them with a project that shares those same fun tropes. 😄

Evelyn: When one of your clients has a new book ready to go on submission (i.e., pitch to editors in hopes that they will read it, fall in love, and offer a contract), how do you decide which editors to submit to? Or put another way, as an author-editor matchmaker, how do you determine what would be a great fit?

Thao: I have a lot of conversations with editors and I take a lot of notes. So when I have a project, I usually already have a preliminary list of people I think might like the story for various reasons.

I of course also do my research in finding out what editors have acquired in the past, I keep track of MSWLs (Manuscript Wishlists), and I also share with editors my client list which describes the sort of books they write and make note of any early interest.

Evelyn: And finally, I know you are closed to queries right now, but do you have any parting advice for writers who are looking for a literary agent—whether it’s their first or third (like when you and I found each other)?

 Thao: I think the magic is when you find someone who shares not only the same editorial vision, but the same business strategy. And you should find someone who fits both those criteria.

Book publishing is the intersection of both creativity and business, so you need a partner who shares your vision in both to be successful.

So don’t be afraid to ask questions and make sure you’re both on the same page. No agent is better than having the wrong fit.

Thank you so much for hanging out with us today, Thao! I loved hearing about how you work and think, and I know my readers appreciated it, too.

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🤩 New Donor Perk: Submit Questions for Podcast Guests

Scholarship donors (a.k.a. paid subscribers) have a new perk! You can now:

• find out who my upcoming podcast guests are, before the recordings go live, and

• submit questions for those podcast guests. For each episode, I’ll choose a few of your questions to ask the author that I’m interviewing!

You can find this in our Creativity VIP chat space, where you can also:

• ask for writing advice from other writers

• share what’s got you smiling recently (this is one of my favorite parts of the chat group—sometimes we just post photos of cute dogs or the view from the window on a Sunday morning, or I pop in with the latest crochet thingie that Tom made).

So come hang out with us! The chat is available on the web or via the Substack app.

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🎥 Behind the scenes: What my podcasting corner REALLY looks like

Glamorous author life is fake (with the exception of that one time I actually walked on the red carpet. That was incredible.)

But usually, it’s just a person in pajamas, writing at a small desk in the corner of their bedroom.

In this case, it’s where I film my podcast episodes and our book club meetings. Here is what it REALLY looks like:

Have I shattered all the magic for you? 😂

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🎉 $500 Substack Emerging Talent Awards

Do you write on Substack? Two awards of $500 are available to support your writing—for childcare, to pay bills, as extra income, whatever you need to use it for.

Application deadline is Thursday, August 22, 2024. More information here!

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✍🏼 $1,000 and $2,500 Scholarships for Aspiring Writers

CREATIVE.INSPIRED.HAPPY is also pleased to sponsor scholarships for writers to further their writing education. Applications now open! More information here.