By Pramudith D Rupasinghe

Simply put, a literary agent’s role is to sell your manuscript to publishers and negotiate favorable terms for your book’s future. They have a creative understanding of you and seek to support and nurture your writing career. Agents work on your behalf to promote your book, negotiate deals, and mediate with publishers. They handle the worrying, leaving you free to write.

In broad terms, an agent’s responsibilities can be categorized into three areas: creative, business, and people-related.

To be effective, agents must understand their writers’ creative aspirations and help develop manuscripts to their highest potential before presenting them to publishers. When offered representation, you’ll acquire a dedicated supporter for your book and creative vision. Agents may work with you on various manuscript iterations before sending it to commissioning editors who may be interested in bidding for your book rights. Your agent will give you honest feedback if rewriting involves improving character arcs, adding more ‘heart’, or restructuring for a faster plot. The writer must trust and let go of their book to be guided by someone who has their best interests at heart and knows what editors are seeking. Prior to reaching out to an agent, it’s essential to have a good understanding of the genre and where your book would be placed in a bookstore, and an agent can provide expertise in that area. Consequently, they will strive to elevate your work to a market-ready level before sending it to commissioning editors.

An agent’s creative support merges with their business acumen in their overarching appreciation of publishing as a commercial enterprise. Agents always stay informed about the deals being made. This guides their strategy in dealing with potential buyers of a manuscript and determining negotiation limits. Naturally, everything must be legally bound, and an agent’s attention to detail in contracts is advantageous for their writers. Agents are responsible for addressing contractual inquiries and ensuring authors receive appropriate recognition for their writing.

A literary agent’s third attribute enhances both the creative and business aspects of their role. In the Arts (and other fields as well), having good interpersonal skills is very important. The business aspect of their job relies heavily on building strong contacts. Understanding commissioning editors’ preferences is essential. Often, in formal and infomal meeting settings Agents build professional rapport with the commissioned editors; In these moments, they can present manuscripts by planting a seed about their unpublished client’s book or by proclaiming that a book is ready for an editor to read. As an unpublished writer, this, as far as you’re concerned, is the primary role of the agent; to pitch your book right that an editor is compelled to put everything else aside and read it. In-person or via email, an agent’s ability to convey their enthusiasm for your project is vital and will lead to opportunities for your book.

It’s not just about being a good salesperson for authors, but also about being able to connect with people. There’s a huge difference in approach between chasing royalty payments or interrogating the terms of a publishing agreement. The way an agent handles what brings out the best in authors is a true test of their emotional dexterity.

In the modern publishing landscape, if you are not rightly wired, your work would neither get the due recognition, nor the right payment. Top of all, your writing time will be stolen by things that you are not supposed to do. An agent not only protects the author, but also create space for your writing and helps you to lauch your career in the right path. Thus, you will have your representative to deal with the worries, and all you do is “Writing” .