The Book Publishing Series: Key Questions to Ask At Every Stage – literary Agents

In our first blog post of this series, we began with Book Publishing: Key Questions to Ask At Every Stage Series: The Marketing Team, where we addressed all of the questions you should know before the marketing stage of your book release. We next covered the key questions to ask when beginning the publicity of your upcoming book release: Book Publishing: Key Questions to Ask at Every Stage: The Publicity Team. Today we are wrapping up this series by dialing into all things literary agents and questions to ask to form a successful partnership between you and your agent. 

So, let’s take a sneak peek behind the scenes into the book publishing world and the key questions to ask to find and connect with the right literary agent for you.

1. How long have you been an agent? Tell me about your path to becoming an agent.

2. How many clients have you represented?

3. How many new clients do you usually take on per year? 

4. Describe your ideal client.

5. What do you like about my writing?

6. What makes you want to represent me?

7. What books have you sold in my genre?

8. Can you tell me about a few recent sales you’ve made?

9. How often do you like to communicate, and what is your communication style?

10. Will you be the one handling my work, or will it be someone else on your staff? 

11. How many non-agent support staff are at your agency?

12. Which publishers are you considering for this project? 

13. How do you plan on positioning my book to publishers?

14. How does your agency handle subsidiary rights, including film and foreign rights?

15. How close is my book to being ready for submission? Do you foresee much editing and rewriting before it’s submitted? Will you be working with me on this?

16. When do you anticipate going out on submission with my book?

17. Where do you see this book sitting on bookshelves?

18. What will be the immediate next steps after signing with you?

19. What happens if my book doesn’t sell?

20. Can I chat with a current client?

These questions will help you to have a clear understanding of your expectations throughout the process and enough information about this literary agent to make your decision to move forward or continue to look for the right fit for you. Have more questions about working with literary agents? We have the perfect resource for you; Choice’s Founder and CEO Heather Adams sat down with Curtis Yates from Yates and Yates literary agency to discuss How To Form A Successful Author/Agent Relationship on our Make Me Known podcast. This is a two-part series where they walk through what Curtis says are the key ingredients to every great book, what a literary agent looks for in an author and the best questions you should be asking when considering hiring a literary agent yourself. Click here to listen! 

Curtis Yates is a hugely successful literary agent, attorney, husband and father. He began practicing law and serving authors as their literary agent in 2000, an avid book reader and baseball enthusiast; he is a graduate of Westmont College in Economics and Pepperdine Law School (Law Review). Curtis has launched more than 40 New York times best sellers through his partnership at the Yates and Yates agency; they have garnered more than $130 million in publishing contracts in the last 17 years, working with major publishing houses across the industry.

Related Links:

Yates and Yates

Author Coaching

Yates and Yates on Instagram