The First in a Yearlong Series Inside Publishing
THE LITERARY AGENT ASSISTANT
is a contributing editor of Poets & Writers Magazine.
SAY you’ve written a young adult novel and you think Emily van Beek is the right literary agent to represent your work. You’ve read her bio on the website for her agency, Folio Literary Management in New York City, and studied her recent book deals on Publishers Marketplace. You have assiduously followed her guidelines for unsolicited submissions, but what you may not realize as you press Send on your query letter is that van Beek will likely never see it unless her assistant, Elissa Alves, thinks the book is right for her boss.
Such is the quiet power of literary agent assistants, not just at Folio, but at most literary agencies, where these unheralded individuals handle the unglamorous but essential tasks of answering office telephones, tracking royalty payments, proofreading contracts—and, in many cases, vetting their boss’s unsolicited submissions.
For assistants like Alves, who is a recent graduate of Drew University in New Jersey, this last task can require a form of readerly ventriloquism as she sets aside her own literary sensibilities to find submissions that will fit well on van Beek’s list.
“I really have to
