A Conversation with Literary Agent Lucinda Halpern
Lucinda Halpern, literary, lecture, and PR agent.
I recently had the pleasure of connecting with Lucinda Halpern, owner of Manhattan-based literary management firm Lucinda Literary, and I wanted to introduce her to you. With more than 15 years of publishing experience, on both the corporate and agency sides of publishing, she has a deep understanding of the industry and what it takes to publish big, meaningful, and bestselling books.
Her roster of authors includes New York Times bestselling authors Susan Peirce Thompson (Bright Line Eating), Chris Bailey (The Productivity Project; Hyperfocus), Cait Flanders (The Year of Less), Paul Jarvis (Company of One), the new work of Nicola Kraus (The Nanny Diaries) and Jake Wood (Once a Warrior). In a marketing and publicity capacity, Lucinda has worked with New York Times bestselling authors Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt of Freakonomics, Gretchen Rubin of The Happiness Project, Ben Mezrich of Bringing Down the House and Busting Vegas, and many more.
Today we talk about the value of traditional publishing in an increasingly self-published world, how to stand out as an author, what’s trending in books, and what she does (and doesn’t) want to see more of in her slush pile.
Now that self publishing is a legitimate option for authors, why should they still consider finding a literary agent and traditional publisher, which can be time consuming and difficult?
Surprisingly, we are actually now, more often than not, in the position of convincing authors why they should go the traditional route versus the self publishing route. It is just such an interesting and new position for an agent to be in.
If you do have a thriving online audience or speaking schedule, you might question what a traditional publisher can lend to the equation. We definitely believe in traditional publishing. I think self publishing can certainly work for people who have either a very niche and small audience; or conversely, for those who have a huge audience, a popular online course or podcast but aren’t really interested in crafting a masterpiece. They’re more interested in having a product or tool to sell their business than in having a book lives on shelves and gets reviewed in the New York Times or gets featured on NPR.
I think that if you are someone who has a large existing audience, you should always have a conversation with an agent. There are often options for you in the traditional publishing space, which offers the financial benefit of an advance, possibly even a significant one, commensurate with your audience size.
Beyond that, publishers provide decades, if not centuries, of book selling expertise. They bring professional marketing, design, editing, and production elements that you would otherwise have to invest in and hire on your own. So if you self publish, be prepared to do that as a part time, if not full time, job and do it really well.
Also, be prepared, if your book doesn't sell while self-publishing and you find yourself eyeing an agent or a traditional publisher down the road, they're going to scrutinize those sales.
Most of all, the biggest reason I recommend that authors with an existing audience try the traditional route first is that publishers offer global distribution.
And distribution is more than just having a distributing partnership, right? I know a lot of places that help people with self publishing will say, “we're distributed with Ingram,” implying they have the same distribution as a traditional publisher. Can you explain the difference?
Yeah, it's not the same. Penguin Random House, for instance, has relationships with Amazon, with Books-a-Million, with Barnes and Noble. They have actual relationships with the accounts that are distributing their books in bookstores and online. They’re investing in that and paying for Co-Op. [Co-op, or cooperative advertising, is money publishers give booksellers to promote books, often including things like front-of-the-store placement or publicity in their newsletter.]
That kind of distribution and visibility is a marketing investment on the part of the publisher. When you publish with a self-publisher or a hybrid, you don’t really know what level of distribution and visibility you’re getting.
Even if you’re distributed by Ingram, readers still need to find your book. Usually, a traditional publisher’s big marketing arm helps you get noticed more.
You’re saying, just because a bookstore could order your book through Ingram, it doesn’t mean they’re going to put it on their shelves, promote it on their website, or even know it exists. Getting it on bookstore shelves or front tables is something publishers pay for.
Yes, it’s a combination of organic editorial selection, relationships with booksellers, and co-op.
You talked about the importance of sales numbers with self publishing. If someone has already self published a different book in the past, should they mention it in their query, and does it help or does it hurt?
I am personally of the belief, and other agencies may be different, that you really need to be upfront and honest and not hide important details in your query letter, even in that first conversation. That doesn't mean you need to be overkill about it, right? Like if you parted in an amicable way with an agent, you don't need to get into that whole history or bad publishing experience. What you definitely don't want to do is hide information and have us find out about it. That leaves more work for us to do.
I think the most beneficial way for aspiring authors to approach low sales numbers is to say, “I self published. The sales were modest. But this next book is poised to do differently and here’s how.”
For prescriptive nonfiction, most agents want to see a book proposal, and for fiction, the entire finished manuscript. But memoir seems to be a gray area, with some people wanting one or the other, or both. What do you like to see from a memoirist? And why?
I love this question because I get it so often, but I’ve never been asked this in an interview. There really are two options. If you’re more confident in your marketing and author credentials, then develop the proposal. If you’re more confident in your writing, then develop the manuscript. Essentially, your platform gives you leeway to submit a smaller package, in the form of a 40-60 page proposal, to an agent or publisher (but always check their guidelines first).
Generally, to write a memoir and get it published by a Big Five publisher (or Big Four as it may soon be!), you really need to build up your marketing and author credentials to prove that there’s a wide audience for your life story. If you're more confident in that, as a memoirist, I would do a book proposal.
If you're more confident in your actual writing, and how beautifully written, how lyrical, and how moving the story is, then I'd actually lean more heavily on the sample material than on the marketing material. That doesn't mean you won't want to include details about your marketing plan, bio, or other things that a publisher is going to weigh. Essentially it means that you can go in one of two directions really, depending on where your strengths lie.
So if you had a well written memoir that you were more confident about than your platform, you would finish the whole thing and then query?
Yes, but it’s interesting: If I were in the shoes of a memoirist, I’d think heavily about getting the sample material (one to three chapters) beautifully polished, but then turn my attention toward the submission package. I might recommend taking that sample material, along with an overview and author bio, as a proposal to agents before fleshing out the entire manuscript. Ideally, you’ll want to get an agent involved on the ground floor, if possible.
With memoir, in my position, it's more often that I'm finding the talent... A perfect example is Michelle Dowd: a cult survivor, who wrote a beautiful piece for Modern Love. I was one of many agents who contacted her about that piece and said, “Educated is the book of the moment. You have this fascinating story and you're a beautiful writer; have you thought about doing a book?”. Michelle and I then came together and created a proposal from the ground up. That is more often the magical way in which memoir will happen for our agency. Another agent at Lucinda Literary, Connor Eck, has a wonderful story about a memoir he developed called Be Straight With Me.
Very interesting. It’s funny because the way I got my second agent was after a Modern Love column, but I hadn't considered that you would be finding the majority of your authors that way. That you’re going to them. Fascinating.
Well, it depends. Right now the market is looking at your Instagram platform or your television show—that’s what will move the needle in terms of your getting a book deal for your memoir. So short of that, be present in the right places, like Modern Love, New York Times Magazine, the Times. Try getting your idea and your life story out there in a place agents and publishers can find it.
When you mention Instagram, what are some numbers that would actually move the needle or make you look at an author? Because people have such wildly different ideas of what you would be expecting.
This differs agency to agency and publisher to publisher. For our agency, we like to say 10,000 followers on any given social platform as a benchmark, because the first thing an editor or an agent is going to do when they're seriously considering your query is Google you. They need to know that you are present somewhere and have an audience you're engaging.
Even if you're not on Twitter and you hate Instagram, but you're on Facebook, you want that number to be strong. More than that, you want to demonstrate engagement, showing that people are commenting and interacting with you. If that isn't going to be apparent, remember that you’re speaking to a very skeptical reader. Agents and publishers are recipients that get slammed with submissions all day long. So if you feel like your platform is going to be a weakness, get out in front of it and say, “My Facebook following is modest, but I have a private Facebook group where I've got 2,000 engaged people.” Or “I have a newsletter list that I speak to regularly that looks forward to having me in their inbox.” However it is you can characterize that engagement is going to be most important to editors.
That's so helpful. Now, you became a literary agent after working in publicity and marketing at HarperCollins and Scholastic. Can you tell us about the relationship between marketing and book acquisition? Some of this we've already touched on, but since you’re known for big-idea or thought-leader books, which should be breaking new ground, I’m especially curious about that challenge – if marketing departments only want to acquire what they've already been selling, how do you take chances on books that are bold and original?
Great question. I think there has always been a natural interplay between marketing and content, and that is how I founded my agency. I came from a marketing background. I knew in my heart of hearts that I wanted to develop the careers of authors and that I was more an editorial person. So I tried my hand at being a literary agent on the basis of no track record or revenue, but just knocking down agency doors and finding someone who would give me their letterhead and a shot. I started doing that while bringing my marketing and publicity expertise to bear. This was the time of Gretchen Rubin, who became a client of mine, and when the blogosphere and the Twittersphere were taking off. Everyone wanted a blog to book phenomenon in the Gretchen Rubin vein, and I just knew that there was a void to be filled for a representative who understood the internet and how to navigate it.
In terms of how publishers are conceiving of big-idea books—no idea is a new idea, as we say, right? It’s just like the music industry, where something is popular and proven, but there's a new twist.
I think that publishers need to see from authors those media hooks, and they need to see those at the level of your pitch, which, fortunately, is coming from your agent if you're going the traditional route. But if you're starting out and need to approach agents, you can be thinking 10 steps ahead to say “what is the media going to find new and exciting about this?” What I recommend authors do is exhibit being well versed and well read in their category. If you're writing the next Jen Sincero book, then tell us what you’re contributing that she hasn’t, but that her readers want more of.
I think that's great. And talking more about marketing, when I asked my newsletter subscribers what they wanted me to ask you, a lot of people mentioned trends. What’s in, what’s out. Just how much do trends affect what publishers are buying in general?
I'll use that to answer another question that you had asked over email in regards to the call for more diverse voices in publishing, which is definitely the trend at the moment. Publishers have always been the vanguard for giving voice to important issues and ideas. And right now, the focus of the moment is underrepresented communities and voices that we want to give the spotlight to. I hope that that is a trend that sticks around, and certainly it’s an important part of our mission at Lucinda Literary.
In terms of other trends, I can say that the minimalism trend has been going for some time. That's sort of part and parcel of the Marie Kondo effect, so decluttering but also financial minimalism, early retirement, and personal finance. We did a book called The Year of Less, which was a major bestseller that was about the author Cait Flanders’ year-long shopping ban. The reason that that was so exciting to publishers when we sold it, several years ago, was that it was just catching on to a trend that they sensed was like going to light fire.
Publishers want to be there at the moment that match is striking. I think that trends are important to the extent that publishers are looking for timeliness and also timelessness. Does the book have frontlist appeal to reach the media, and does it have backlist appeal to sell for years and years to come?
The trend aspect is great and catchy for the media, but it has to have perennial themes that resonate on an individual level to really sell for years on the backlist. That’s what every publisher ultimately wants.
On the topic of positioning yourself and your book, if your goal is to sell your first book, and you don’t have a million followers or a regular platform, what are the smartest things you can do in the next 12 months to make that happen?
The first is to establish a personal website and an engaged online presence. For fiction writers, this may simply mean publishing short stories, essays, journalism to get your name out there.
Second, connect with publishing insiders, and attend conferences or workshops (like the programs Lucinda Literary offers). Get any connection you can to an agent or editor, perhaps through an author friend who's published, even if that person's work is entirely different. A generous introduction can set you on the right path.
Lastly, make sure your query letter and proposal is top notch—clarity above content—and that you’re approaching the right people for it based on your research of their particular lists and successes.
In terms of authors pitching you, what book topics do you never want to see in your inbox?
We tend to get a lot in the health, wellness, and lifestyle space. We receive many submissions in the realm of happiness and self-worth, with messages about how to reclaim your “authentic path.” It’s such a crowded shelf, and full of huge names that dominate it… so if there's no new spin, distinct point of view, counterintuitive argument, and no existing audience behind it, it's a very quick pass.
What do you want to see more of?
I was excited to speak to this. Smart, big-idea books grounded in science, which typically means they're written by a PhD or MD or journalist.
But I also really want to see more narrative writing. At Lucinda Literary, we've become best known for practical nonfiction, but this is my year of taking on writers who are just beautiful writers. That’s sort of what I got in the business for… I want to see novelists, memoirists, and journalists with truly unique, otherworldly stories to tell and an audience to support them.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today.
Where to learn more about our guest:
Lucinda Halpern is the President and Founder of Lucinda Literary, representing authors writing in the categories of business, health, lifestyle, popular science, narrative nonfiction, memoir, and upmarket fiction. She regularly shares publishing insights and motivation for writers here and hosts both live and online programs for aspiring authors here.
