Speaker 1: Here is the best way to get your book published. Perhaps you have a glimmer of a book idea. Or maybe you've already written the first two volumes of a trilogy, but don't know what to do with it. All you know is that you have a strong desire to see your work get published. Well, what is an aspiring writer to do? Well, before I offer my advice, I want to tell you about the dumbest thing I ever said in public. Many years ago, back in the early 1990s, I did an interview on CNN about how book companies choose which submissions to publish. I was a young editor working at Random House at the time, and I thought that my colleagues were doing me a big favor by giving me TV exposure. In the course of that interview, I casually mentioned that I'd be glad to read any submission for 15 minutes. Well, a few days after CNN aired that interview, the packages began to arrive. Within a week, I was buried in boxes. For months, the submissions kept coming, hundreds of them, all because of a passing comment I'd made in a brief segment on cable TV. I read all those submissions for about 15 minutes each, but I did not find the next Stephen King. Back then, the editorial assistants had a word for those unsolicited manuscripts. They called it slush. If you were an editorial assistant, there was always slush to read. Where would you find it? In the slush pile, which was both a metaphorical description and an actual stack of packages that did tend to pile up. We would gather in the conference room every month and open the packages. I'll never forget the one in which the writer listed Jesus Christ as his co-author, and I wondered whether the author expected us to include Jesus in the book deal. Eventually, many of the major publishing companies stopped accepting unsolicited submissions. Usually, if a book proposal or a manuscript has commercial or literary potential, it is represented by a literary agent. Literary agents are the talent scouts of the publishing world, the people who are most likely to jumpstart your career because they know the people who are acquiring the books. That's the agent's job, to meet the editors and publishers, understand their personalities and tastes, and submit the right projects to the right people. So, if you want your book to be published, the best advice that I can give you is get a literary agent. But how? If you don't know anyone in the literary business, getting a literary agent might seem as far-fetched as getting cast in a movie. Literary agents work on commission, which means that they have to believe they can sell your work in order to make it worth the investment of their time and energy. One of the reasons publishers listen to literary agents is because the only way literary agents can earn a living is if the work they're representing has some value. An agent's career and professional reputation depends on having good judgment. So, you may be wondering, how do I find a literary agent? Well, there are numerous ways. First, there are several helpful websites. Publishersmarketplace.com has a daily list of book deals and has an online directory of literary agents. There's a subscription fee, but the database here is easily searchable and will give you an excellent overview of which agents are representing and selling particular kinds of books. The Association of American Literary Agents has a list of agents who are willing to consider submissions in various categories. There are numerous books about how to get a literary agent, including The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published by Ariel Exted and David Henry Sterry, The Literary Agent's Guide to Writing a Book Proposal by Andy Ross, How to Land and Keep a Literary Agent by Noah Lukman, and one that we've published, The Poets and Writers Complete Guide to Being a Writer. The most important aspect of finding the right literary agent is to approach people who are on your wavelength. And the best way to do that is to find agents who have represented books that are on your wavelength by authors whose work you admire. Most authors thank their literary agents in the acknowledgments of their books. Some agents are listed on the author's website. Sometimes all you have to do is google the author's name and the agent is referenced. If you find the right agent to represent you, that will only be the beginning of your relationship. Often your agent will be an editor, a business advisor, and a psychologist. One of the reasons I think agents are so valuable to the publishing process is because they're an independent voice, mediating between the publisher and the author. There will be times when the author and the publisher do not agree on a course of action, and a good agent can often mediate and help to reach a satisfying resolution. I will conclude with my favorite story about a literary agent. He was trying to sell me the sequel to a memoir and he wanted a lot of money for it. I repeated the conventional wisdom that all publishers have about sequels, which is that the second book usually sells about half as many copies as the first book sold. The agent, however, did not want to accept this theory. He didn't want us to pay half. In fact, he wanted us to pay at least twice as much as what we paid the last time. So I asked him, name me one author whose sequel has sold better than his original memoir. And without missing a beat, the agent said, Proust. Well, that didn't end the negotiation, but I appreciated his sense of humor. And that is the word according to Karp.