Yesterday I wrote a defense of agents who take the time to blog. But what do you think?
Would you want an agent who blogs? Does an agent blogging make you more or less inclined to work with them? If you had a choice between agents, would it matter in your decision?
There is a poll below, and you’ll need to click through to the post if you’re reading in a feed reader or via e-mail.
Hi all,
Turning off anonymous commenting due to a troll. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I'd be more likely to work with a blogging agent simply because, through their blog, I've had an opportunity to get to know them. Agents talk about their pet peeves, their preferences, what they're looking for, what they're seeing and a great deal of their personality comes through.
In the same way an agent might be more likely to take on a client they know, I'm more likely to first approach an agent I've "met" through their blog.
Blogging agents are the reason that I know what I know about the world of publishing. I would rather work with a blogging agent, because they are obviously more into helping out authors than anyone else.
Maybe I am wrong in thinking this way, but I have to give credit to the people that got me this far. Thank you blogging agents and writers.
It wouldn't matter to me either way. If they're the best to represent me and feel passionate about my book and present themselves in a professional manner, I don't care if they have a blog or not. 🙂
I agree with Matthew Rush–I like to "go to know" agents if I can before querying them. I voted that I would be more likely to go with an agent who blogged, but I have also been turned off by agent personalities on their blogs. These are agents that are professional, and very capable, but whose personality (I get the sense) would not be a good match for me. So, I am both more likely and less likely to query an agent who blogs. 🙂
Yep, agree this poll would have more merit if it appeared prior to the post in support of agents who blog. 😀
My opinion is – an agents blog would not affect my choice of having them as a business partner in my career.
My priority is the professional attention and effort an agent makes on my behalf. My side of this relationship is understanding my work is a fraction of my agents actual workload.
I wish my agent DID blog, then I could see what is sort of going on, but she doesn't, so I am often left in the dark.
I don't guess it really matters one way of the other, as long as they do their job.
No one looks at my blog, so I often wonder if it really is worth it. Then again, I can blog stories and erase those I don't like.
Blogs are only as usefull as people make them, business or personal.
In my perfect (imaginary) world two agents offer representation. Both are charming, wonderful people who sells lots of books. Agent A does not blog. Agent B has an informative, clever blog and a few hundred loyal followers. I'm going with B!
Oh, to have to make such a choice! 🙂
I don't see blogging as inherently good or bad in itself. An agent could be blogging because he's really savvy at social media and building an effective platform for himself and his authors, or he could be blogging to procrastinate. Likewise, the reasons for an agent not blogging could range from being so popular and well known that he's drowinging in submissions even without a blog, or it could be that the agent's completely clueless about all things digitial and will totally screw up all your erights. It all depends on context.
Who cares? Everyone and their grandma blogs these days. Though it wouldn't affect my decision to work with them, agents who blog are great because of all the additional insight they've given us writers. Got something to say? Blog away!
(and should I be worried that my word verification is "doeatus" – sounds like the start of a horror story if you ask me)
Blogs tell about the blogger. If it's an agent, then you have some additional knowledge of a prospective agent. Don't know why that would be a bad thing.
This is probably your most unscientific poll yet. Obviously, all the people here are reading your Blog which is mostly about writing and publishing, and you used to be an agent. Therefore, it stands to reason that most people here would probably be interested in working with a blogging agent. In addition, you have many new writers here trying to learn about the publishing field and willing to work with any reputable agent, including those who blog. Your poll today is almost like polling people online with the question, "Do you use the Internet?" or calling people on the phone and polling them to ask, "Do you own a telephone?"
I'm saying more likely based on the fact that I'm more likely to query agents I feel would best like my work and guess we would work well together. Blogs help me find that information. Therefore if I'm more likely to query an agent who blogs I'm more likely to end up signing with an agent who blogs. It's not that I want to penalize those who don't, but when all I know about an agent is what genre they like and their address it's hard to really target them. If they have similar information in another form (Twitter, website, what have you) it has the same advantage to me. But a web presence definitely helps in my book.
anon-
I think most people have accepted at this point that there is no such thing as a scientific poll on the Internet.
Whether or not an agent blogs doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is whether or not their blog is dumbed-down (bad sign for authors writing books to have an agent who feels a need to dumb down their blog). And, much more importantly, it matters to me how many book deals the agent has made, how high the advances were for those deals, and the literary quality of those books. Anyone can blog. Not everyone can negotiate lucrative book deals for high-quality books.
A blog itself wouldn't sway me either way. I would want an agent who's familiar with technology, though, and uses email rather than relying on snail mail for everything. As social media becomes more important, I'd like an agent who at least has an understanding of that as well.
Nathan,
Actually, it is possible to have a scientific poll on the Internet. It depends on the question and how the sample of subjects are randomized. Most social science experiments, for example, are conducted on college students, but are done in such a way that it's assumed the test is scientific enough to represent a larger population of people.
anon-
Entertainment/informational purposes only. I think it goes without saying that this is a poll of this blog's readership and therefore is going to represent the views of this blog's readership. If you want to do a scientific study I'd be happy to link to it.
It is absolutely impossible to conduct a scientific poll on the Internet.
Nathan,
I'm not interested in doing a scientific poll about this question, but the results will prove nothing other than what was already discussed yesterday. It won't prove or disprove the point about whether or not most writers value blogging agents. Chances are, however, that it will influence readers here on this Blog to think that blogging agents are better than the agent who made a statement against blogging – kind of group-think process that goes on constantly within Internet groups. It seems to me that writers, if they're really serious about writing, ought to be processing information in much more thoutful, nuanced types of ways. Just my opinion.
Anon @1:26 PM,
It isn't really. Here's an example of a study that could be conducted scientifically on the Internet. If you had a scientific question such as, "Will people on the Internet vote for or against the same issue if the background is varied to show friendly or frightening images?" and you kept all other variables equal, then took the vote, you could analyze the voting results statistically.
That question is unclear as an example so I'll leave that alone but the problem with conducting a poll on the Internet will always be ballot-stuffing. We've seen it on this blog. About two years ago, an anonymite – like ourselves – posed as different responders and essentially had a conversation by him/her/self.
Not unless the polled willingly give their ID numbers – which would never happen – would a poll begin to be scientific.
As an aspiring author I love love love agents who take the time to share their knowledge with those of us who find it so valuable. When I'm ready to start looking for agents there's no way I'm going to hold blogging against them. At the same time it wouldn't bother me if they didn't. Everyone's gotta do what works for them to get the job done
It is absolutely impossible to conduct a scientific poll on the internet. One of the most obvious reasons for that is people can vote multiple times if they have more than one computer. You also can't control the sample.
For example, who are these hundreds of voting but non-commenting people? We don't know if the people voting are writers, agents, editors, publishers or someone else entirely.
When colleges send surveys to their student population, the sample is controlled and contained. When you're dealing with millions of people on the internet, who can vote multiple times under multiple identies, you have absolutely no control over the sample.
I also think someone really needs to relax alittle. If this agent has negotiated 6 figure deals for debut authors, I think this poll is not going to cause hordes of writers to run fleeing from that agent's offer of representation.
Although, I will say I thought at the time for a non-blogging agent to make a negative comment about blogging agents was not a good idea, and might be something to think about for the future.
On the other hand, this is a really interesting conversation, so as far as I'm concerned, it's all good.
Nathan – ok.
This is an interesting discussion.
Anon @1:55 PM,
So cool to be discussing statistics and scientific polls! Yeah, I realized my question wasn't spelled out scientifically, just wanted to give a general example quickly. Especially for political elections, poll designers have started designing scientific Internet polls. The key to making Internet polls scientific is a population sample that's large and random, as in regular science experiments. I would think you could even use large randomized samples from multiple Internet groups created by the person conducting the poll and presented to subjects as separate groups, as this would then represent real-world behavior of Internet groups. Presumably, the same number of people would be voting multiple times in each group and random selection from all groups would balance out the effects of this problem. What do you think?
– Anon @1:35 PM
It's not the existence of the blog that forms my opinion of an agent, wise Jedi, but how the agent portrays themselves on a blog that matters to me.
I've sometimes been amazed that so often, aspiring writers are told to be careful that they don't portray themselves unprofessionally or in a negative light online- and then the people who preach that message turn around and do it themselves. Writers don't corner the market on the ability to make themselves look bad! Maybe this is what causes some to say they take blogging agents less seriously when they just need to seek out agents with a different personality.
There are so few agent blogs I follow anymore (if I hear one more 'awful query' story my brain may implode) but there are wonderful ones out there and I meant to post yesterday that I am eternally grateful to blogging agents (yourself, especially for all that you wrote while you were still agenting and beyond- you didn't leave us behind, and we love you for that!) because I learned so much, so fast, about the industry.
Though it was a really rude awakening (so naive, I was…) frustrating and confusing and caused me at one point out of sheer proximity to despair to write a piece comparing the agent blogosphere to the mad tea party, I am grateful to all blogging agents for helping me realize a lot about myself and the path I need to take as a writer to be happy. Being happy is far more important than being published.
So thank you, blogging agents one and all. I am thankful for your time, and your internet presence. It's a rich tapesty. . .
~bru
The thing for me is that a blog can give you an idea of an agent's personality and how s/he works. An agent I probably wouldn't have considered otherwise has gone to the top of my submit list for my next project because I could see we'd probably get along well by her Twitter posts.
You actually ended up on that list after I started reading blog posts as well. Too bad neither of my projects were finished in time. lol
Blogging wouldn't affect me either way, and in fact, it might be better because I could get to know the specific likes and dislikes of that particular agent before sending him/her something. I'm still wary of Twitter, however. I mean, the agents who are twittering on about how many TV shows they are watching…I know they have a life, but come on, when they are 3 months behind on their partials and fulls?
If an agent blogs, a writer is able to get a sense of the agent and his/her personality which goes a long way to discovering, even before the query process, if the agent would potentially be a good match for the writer.
I think agent blogs are incredibly helpful, so it wouldn't bother me at all and it actually helps me know more agents and what they are looking for. That said, it wouldn't bother me if an agent didn't blog.
I enjoy reading agent blogs (like yours) that are informative and helpful to writers, but whether or not an agent blogged would not affect my decision to sign with him/her or not.
My agent doesn't blog, but she is wonderful, dynamic, and personable. She's a person of integrity who works for a reputable agency, has great contacts, looks out for my interests, and is willing to discuss my options at each step of my career. If she decides to take up blogging, I'll be happy for her to do it, and if she doesn't, I'm equally happy for her not to.
On the other hand, when I was querying, it was much easier to tell if an agent was a good match for me and my work if he or she had a blog.
@ 155 –
I don't want to steal any focus from Nathan's original blog subject. He did weigh in and say he wasn't really trying to be scientific and that his blog and today's subject in particular are akin to what you suggest in terms of a randomized Internet sample strained through the minds of the good folks who populate this space. So, we're wandering a little off topic.
That said, that's the one thing the Internet can offer, that quick near-instantaneous random large sampling, via blogs, via the assorted social media. In fairness to thou, I was thinking along the lines of this blog and its numbers, though Nathan has pulled in tremendous numbers before. If we're talking millions or thousands or perhaps hundreds of people – hard to get that kind of a poll turnout, I think but maybe not impossible in the future – it may be easier to conduct what one could call a scientific poll. I still believe in order for it to be scientific in the way we use that word, science, that social media and voting and feedback itself will have to converge with identity and identification, with a click or two bringing C.V. and demographics along with it (and somehow protecting the voter from being found out, especially if the poll is a private one, while merging the sense of anonymity and therefore honesty with safety from recrimination and weeding out trolls and computers generating profile after profile).
And, yes, it is cool to be discussing this, and nice to dialogue with you about it. Sorry, Nathan, back to your regularly scheduled programming.
I'm actually a little curious about something.
I noticed it's pretty much even between those who would prefer to work with a blogging agent as to those who said it wouldn't make a difference. Huh?
I can see why virtually no one voted in the other category. It would be ridiculous to hold something against an agent who blogs. But I'm a little amazed that people, potential authors, not people wearing name tags in fast food restaurants, didn't vote that it wouldn't make a difference either way by a landslide.
Because…clue…it really doesn't matter either way. Agents who blog are just as proficient as agents who don't.
I found these results fascinating. And now I'm starting to see why agents complain about the queries they receive.
Oh, and if we use the word 'science' and its classical definition, to try and know a little more than we did before, to get a very very very general sense of what persons think, even if it is only right now, at this specific juncture in their day and via this specific site, then the blog is somewhat scientific as would any poll be, no?
I would definitely prefer a blogging agent – to me it says that they are capable of the same web promotion that most ask their authors to do.
However, just like writers who are silly enough to bitch about agents on their blogs, an agent that complains too much about writers and the industry is a turn off.
btw (and I'm sure I'm only the millionth person who's said this), but it's super awesome of you to keep blogging about this stuff even though you are no longer an agent.
I don't think there's anything wrong with blogging agents or blogging editors or even a blogging president for that matter. But given that you probably want to choose an agent who is a good match, a blogging agent wouldn't be my first choice. I tried blogging and it sucked up the only writing time I have in a day. So while I would never begrudge anyone a blog, I would be better suited to someone who understands my limitations in that way and accepts them.
I would be more likely to work with a blogging agent, but not for the smart "it shows they are savvy" reasons. Basically it's branding. When I read an agent's blog, I feel like I know them a little more, and am therefore more comfortable querying them and working with them.
It's the same reason Coke or Pepsi, rather than a generic brand. The drinks are basically the same, but having a familiar name–one we trust–makes us believe the brand name is better.
Whether or not the name lives up to that trust is another matter, but it doesn't change my answer. My top agents are (almost) all blogging ones.
Dear Nathan,
I'm surprised that you felt the need to defend this position. There is such a simple equation at work here: word of mouth is elusive. YOU have a tremendous platform and credibility. Ergo, each of your clients enjoys a bump from even the briefest congratulations on this blog, which thousands read.
Besides- the counterargument is like saying you don't want Atul Gawande to be your surgeon, because you're afraid he'd be too busy writing intelligent & nuanced articles for the New Yorker to perform your procedure.
Give me the smart guy who knows how to express himself any day.
I thinki t's great. We're all interested in blogging, or we wouldn't be so involved with this blog. An agent who blogs understands what's happening in the world and in the industry and hopefully, that can only help his or her clients.
When my full ms was out with 6 agents, 1 got back to me very quickly and asked if I'd like to work together. I knew the others were very interested, but because I liked our banter via email and phone and because she was very established (major best-sellers), I agreed to meet her. At the end of the meeting, I told her I'd be making a decision quickly. One of the agents I was considering is a frequent 'tweeter'. I'd been waiting for her to get back to me re. my ms, which she's had for (if I remember correctly) about two weeks. I kept reading her tweets and growing more and more annoyed. When I told her I'd accepted representation she seemed genuinely disappointed and a maybe even irritated that I hadn't given her longer to consider my work. Had I not been privvy to her tweets, I might have been more open to a conversation about how much time she needed etc. I am very pleased with my agent. And these days, I waste a lot of time perusing blogs and social media instead of starting number 2 project. If my agent were blogging, I'd be even more distracted/obsessed. Ditto for editor.
It all depends on what they blog. An agent who is always blogging about the stupid things people do won't be on my list if I'm looking. If the agent gives interesting advice, shares successes and their own 'face desk' moments as well as some from authors, I'll keep them on my list.
Nathan, don't you think you have kind of a skewed sample for this poll? You're asking people who read agent blogs to vote on whether they'd like to work with a blogging agent. Isn't it the people who don't read agent blogs who would be most likely to object to them?
I think that a blogging agent would be more communicative than a non blogging agent. Plus it's great insight to their thoughts on publishing.
Anon @4:52 PM –
I've been feeling the same way as you. Only a few commenters have mentioned that they want an agent who negotiates really great book deals with huge advances for authors, or that they even look into that part of an agent's background. It sounds more like most commenters here want a friendly, popular agent, whether or not that agent's actually the best person for their career. Popularity doesn't always translate into publication deals or book sales.
RLS –
I feel the same way as you. I decided against several agents based on their sarcastic tweets and blog posts.
I voted, it wouldn't affect my decision either way. And in fact, it didn't.
I've been extremely happy with both my blogging former agent and my non-blogging current agent.
I would add what to me are the most important things: that you and your agent share a vision of your books and your career.
I don't understand. Why does anyone feel they are entitled to an opinion? How do I feel about an agent who jogs? Who drinks Pepsi instead of Coke? Who hates the Cowboys? Who watches Dallas reruns on Sunday nights? Honestly! Who are we to have an opinion on what a person does with their time? The very thought would offend me if I were an agent.
Nathan, I don't where all this negativity is coming from about agents who blog. I've never seen anything like this. Could it be coming from inside the business? When I first landed on this blog, I was very excited to see someone like yourself so uptodate and savvy and obviously so ambitious for your clients and yourself that I immediately wanted you for my agent. It can only appear impressive to see someone going that extra mile to not only further careers but to give advice to those who need it. It's a win-win situation.
I think an agent's blog is a very good way to tell whether they'd be a good fit for you. You can get an idea of his/her style and personality, to see if working together would even be a possibility before you send in your query. It's a wonderful way to get to know a person before you trust them with your project!