Blogs

I have been thinking a lot about blogs of late, especially agent blogs.

When researching for an agent, a blog is a very helpful tool in understanding a potential agent. If there are regular posts to the blog, you can garner a lot of information about the ideas and view points of the agent that you can’t get from other sources, including (and especially) their websites.

You can learn something of their personalities and quite a few of their pet peeves. (There is one agent whose blog I read who doesn’t like for a writer to end a query letter with “Thank you for your time.” The agent reasons that the writer’s time is just as valuable as the agent’s. While I think it is only polite to say Thank you, the agent does make a good point.)

From their blogs, you can learn what’s new in the business. You can learn about their commitment to and passion about their clients and about the business. And most importantly, you can learn something about their attitude toward new and unpublished writers. (There is an agent blog I was reading today that mentioned use of the passive voice query letters. In general as a writer, I try to avoid a passive voice but it creeps in often.)

That is why it is important to read agent blogs as much as possible. An aspiring novelist like myself can learn a lot about the industry that would be difficult to know otherwise.

So, here are some (and only some) of the agents who have blogs that I read (in no particular order):

Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management
Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown Ltd.
Kristin Nelson of Nelson Literary Agency
Jessica Faust of Bookends, LLC A Literary Agency

I will talk to you again next week.

Thanks for reading and remember, keep writing!