My Agent is Awesome

My agent, Jonathan Lyons of Lyons Literary LLC, is a good guy. We've been together since, uh, 2004? Originally Jonathan represented a novel I wrote titled Knocking Over the Fishbowl, but after a full two rounds of rejections (by rounds I mean it went on so long new editors appeared and were submitted to at the same publishing house) we had to let go of Fishbowl (a comedic literary novel I still really like) and move on with The Suicide Collectors. And that only sold after a year of submissions.

Agents typically make 15% of what you make, and since I've made barely anything so far, Jonathan has somehow subsisted on 15% of almost nothing. I suppose he views me as a long, long, long term investment, and I truly hope I pay off for him. I'm just glad he has a full and lucrative client base to draw on and let's me along for the ride. I think the secret is to find an agent when they're young and still full of hope, just like you are as a writer, and only bother them when it's ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.

Here's a recent seven question interview Jonathan did for Writing Raw (note: it is a pdf file).

2 comments:

Ramy said...

I love you for labeling that pdf. More people should be like you.

David Oppegaard said...

Thanks Rami! I think that all the time, too (:

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