Not So Secret Agent Man

On July 21, the Sewanee Writers conference was visited by George Borchardt of the Borchardt Inc. agenting house. I admit that I looked forward to this panel, since prior to the conference I had only a peripheral idea of what book publishing entailed—and I was not disappointed. Though Borchardt Inc. is small—six total employees—they manage many impressive writers, including Claire Messud, Ian McEwan, Tracy Kidder, T.C. Boyle, and David Guterson, and in the past have represented—among others—Robert Coover, John Gardener, Stanley Elkin, and Samuel Beckett (they first sold the rights to Waiting for Godot for $200, and were thrilled to get that). And while Borchardt’s talk wasn’t exactly a nuts and bolts run down of the agenting process—don’t worry, that was covered in a future lecture—it did give perspective on what, exactly, agents do all day. The answer, as you might expect, is: quite a bit.

Borchardt said that in the past week he had met for a picnic lunch with a Norton editor where they had beginning discussions about a novel project; conversed with an author about publishers to target for his recently completed book; fielded offers from someone involved with Anne Frank’s legacy who wanted one of the agency’s authors to write commentary for recently discovered Anne Frank letters; lunched with an editor from Smithsonian; and attended an advance screening for the upcoming film version of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which was also attended by various publishers. Borchardt said that despite the guilty thrill of seeing a movie on a weekday afternoon (a first in the agency’s history) this last activity was especially productive, as it gave him opportunity to network ongoing projects and maintain industry contacts.

The rest of the talk involved Borchardt discussing how they get clients (author referrals, mostly, which was disheartening) and that they take on roughly six new clients a year, drawn partially from the six to ten unsolicited manuscripts per day they recieve. Assuming 2,000 manuscripts per year, that means they take on 3/100ths of a percent of the people who approach them, if that many. But while these were no means comforting numbers I think there is great value in knowing the realites.

Posted by Alan Ackmann - Jul 27, 12:14 PM.
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