Interview with an Agent: Sara Megibow

So excited to share today’s interview with you, featuring Sara Megibow of Nelson Literary Agency. I’ll see you on the other side.

KV: How did you get into agenting?

SM: Let's see--I worked as the literary assistant here at Nelson Literary Agency for four years before becoming an agent. My job during that time was to read all the query letters, sample pages and full manuscripts that came in to the agency. I marked "YES" on anything that I thought Kristin should read and passed on the ones that weren't quite right for us. That's how we found Jamie Ford (New York Times Bestselling author of HOTEL ON THE CORNER OF BITTER AND SWEET) and Sherry Thomas (PW Best Book of 2008 for PRIVATE ARRANGEMENTS).

I started taking on my own clients last year and am now in the process of shopping these manuscripts to publishing houses myself.

KV: How would you summarize your personal agenting philosophy? Are you more brainstormer, more editor, more business manager--or all of the above?

SM: Nelson Literary Agency tends to rely on the team approach in terms of covering all these bases. For example, we have a marketing director on staff here at NLA (Lindsay Mergens out of our NY office), so I rely on her expertise for book promotions. We definitely do work on editing manuscripts before submitting them to editors, but I find that I tend to leave a lot of space for the writers to have their own feedback in this process. Overall, my personal philosophy tends to be "pick projects that I REALLY, REALLY love" and that way I feel great about fighting for them on everything from finding a great editor to negotiating a great contract.

KV: What client work do you have coming out soon? What drew you to those writers and/or projects?

SM: I have five clients, all new. They are all out on submission right now and I'm very excited to find out where they end up being published. I will have updates listed on my Publishers Marketplace site (www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/SaraMegibow).

As to what drew me to these projects--overall, it was a combination of superior writing and unique concept in each case. I read 30-40,000 query letters each year and 1200-1500 sample pages. I can honestly say that these were the best five projects that I saw in 2009 and I am so excited to be working with each of these writers.

KV: What genres do you represent? What genres do you definitely NOT represent?

SM: I represent romance (all subgenres except category romance and inspirational), science fiction, fantasy, young adult, middle grade, commercial fiction, women's fiction including chick lit and literary fiction with a commercial bent.

I don't represent horror, thrillers, mysteries, self help books (or any kind of nonfiction really), gift books or illustrated children's books.

KV: What query pet peeves should writers avoid when querying you?

SM: I'm not overly picky in a query letter. Basically, any well-written query letter for a project in a genre that we represent will get a fair read. I don't prefer sample pages or synopses in the query. Also, I don't click through on weblinks and don't open attachments, so those can be left off. Personally, I don't need quotes ("my aunt Martha is a published author and she says this is a great book") and I don't need market statistics ("romance is a huge genre and I know women are clamoring for more vampire romance"). Other than that, I DO look for a query letter to be short and to sound like the back cover of a novel. We have resources listed on our website (I like to recommend WEbook.com and evileditor.blogspot.com) and we have sample query letters posted there too (www.nelsonagency.com/faq.html#7).

KV: What are you looking for in a manuscript right now?

SM: I would love to sign my first romance author (I love everything by Pamela Clare and Sherry Thomas). Also, my favorite genre of all time is probably fantasy so I would love to see more well-written fantasy queries. Finally, I would love to read (and to rep) more multicultural fiction--both for adults and young readers.

Thanks again, Ms. Megibow, for these insights. And for anyone interested in querying her, you may send a one-page e-mail query, with no attachments or sample pages, to query@nelsonagency.com. Also, just to ensure your e-mail successfully navigates their spam-detecting force field, include the word query and the title of your work in the subject line.

P.S. Don’t forget to include any questions you might have for agents in the comments below. See, I’m serious about this whole I’m-gonna-interview-me-some-agents thing, so you should get in on this, too. I can’t guarantee every question will make it into the interview (this isn’t a Supreme Court nomination hearing, for one thing, and for another, I need to maintain SOME amount of control), but I’d love to get your feedback. Power to the people--or at least the ones who read this blog:)