Hi, I'm Beth Phelan, I'm a literary agent, and welcome to Office Hours.
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The way I've described my job in the past is sort of like a sports agent,
except it's with authors.
We find publishers to publish their books and
from that point on sort of help navigate their careers with them.
I focus primarily on middle grade and young adult books.
When I started reading I was in middle school, and
that's how I fell in love with books.
As I grew older, I found that I still loved reading those middle grade novels,
and I loved reading YA novels.
And when I got to college, I didn't really have any interest in reading
the adult books, I found them kind of boring.
I don't have other passions, my passion is books.
I have a lot of anxiety as a person.
I was an anxious kid growing up, books really gave me a sense of belonging,
and a place to escape to, and characters that felt like my friends.
So as a literary agent now, I love that I can be one of the first people
to find that story in that sort of safe space for other readers and
other kids that are like me, who are super anxious,
find a place where they can feel safe and feel like they belong.
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I spend my day working at my laptop, reading whenever I can set aside a nice
chunk of time, tweeting publishing advice or about my hair journey or
my mental health or just random things that come to mind.
My Twitter is a little bit of industry stuff and a lot of just me.
I think what excites me the most about being a literary agent is that thrill of
discovery when you first read a book by an author who will end up being your client.
And just falling in love and
having all these ideas of which editors you want to gush about it to.
And editorial notes that you might have.
And picturing what the book cover is going to look like.
Also what's exciting is when an author writes other books.
It's hard enough to write a first book, never mind a second book and a third book.
So I'm very excited to get to work with a lot of authors who
have been very successful in writing a ton of books.
I mean, I work with Catherine Ormsby, who has one, two, three,
four, four middle grade novels, and two more in the pipeline to publish.
And then, one, two, three, and four YA.
So, I'm really lucky, I have a lot of authors who are making this into a career,
and I get to work with them over the long term, and
be there with them on their journey, and it's really exciting.
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Since we're in a pandemic, I don't go out very much, and even when I was able to I
didn't do more than work in coffee shops just for the change of scenery.
Now going out mostly means walking my dog, Beefy, in my neighborhood.
I'm really lucky to have her around so it doesn't get too lonely working from home.
And now that it's getting colder, she's become especially cuddly.
I think some skills that make for a good agent, first,
I think hustle because most agents work on commission.
We don't have a salary, many of us don't have benefits.
You're often working late into the night and on the weekends and over holidays.
And for a long time I didn't take a vacation because there
just wasn't any time if I wanted to stay on top of all my work,
and sign more clients, and make deals, so that I could pay my rent.
You have to be confident in your reading skills and your taste.
The job is taking a book and
trying to convince other people that they should also like that book.
You need to be able to communicate that to an editor and
get them to believe it as well.
You need to be a good advocate for your clients.
For my authors, I certainly can be protective and
I'm willing to go to bat for them.
So I think agents need to be ready at all times to step in and
maybe get their hands a little bit dirty sometimes.
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DVpit is a Twitter pitch event for marginalized authors and illustrators.
I started it in 2016 and there have been two events a year.
Up until now it's going to be once a year now.
I started DVpit because as an agent,
I knew that I wouldn't have much control over anything else but my own list.
And I knew that my impact as a single person would be pretty small.
So I wanted to create a platform that would allow other agents to get
involved and change the industry in a bigger way.
If everyone together was diversifying their list and looking for
marginalized voices to support and to publish.
The response has been really great, I feel like a lot of people in
the industry are aware of DVpit, they know what DVpit is.
A lot of people show up to every event, authors and the agents and the editors.
A couple of years ago we started DVart which is specifically for illustrators,
whether that's picture book or graphic novel.
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I think there are some people who just love books and
they want to be the person who connects an author with a publisher and makes their
dream come true because they think the job is just a gatekeeping position.
When really it's making those strong connections between your author and
the right publishers for them and
then also guiding them through their career beyond that.
So it's not just about that initial submission hey, I have your email address,
I'm gonna send you this project and it's great.
It's also, do I have the experience to understand what the terms mean and
how to negotiate better terms.
What are the industry standards?
Is this a fair contract?
Is this a good publisher?
How do I help them navigate what next book they should write or
if they want to switch to a different category or to a different genre.
Understanding that the job takes a lot more than just a love of books,
although that is super important.
I think what I'm most proud of in my career so
far is that I've just been able to develop such a great list of authors.
I am totally fine with bragging about all of them, because they're so fantastic and
I think it's just, my god, I'm gonna cry a little bit.
[LAUGH] I'm just very proud of all of my clients.
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