We get asked about literary agents constantly. Authors email us, pitch us at events, and corner us at bookfairs to ask: what do you look for in an agent? The question usually means something slightly different than what it says on the surface. They’re really asking: what kind of agent will you work with, and what kind of agent should I try to get? I appreciate the question, and I have opinions.

Before I get into specifics, I should explain why literary agents matter to a small press like ScrollWorks. Some people assume that small presses only publish unagented work, that agents are strictly the province of the Big Five. That’s not true. We acquire books from agents regularly. Not as often as the large publishers, because agents naturally target the publishers who can pay the biggest advances, but often enough that our relationships with agents are an important part of how we find books. A good agent sends us manuscripts they think are a fit for our list, and over time, we’ve built relationships with agents whose taste aligns with ours. When certain agents send us something, we read it immediately because we trust their judgment.

So what do we look for? The first thing, and I think the most important, is taste. A good literary agent has a coherent, identifiable aesthetic. You can look at their client list and see a through line. Not identical books, but books that share a sensibility. Maybe the agent gravitates toward voice-driven literary fiction. Maybe they specialize in narrative nonfiction with a social justice angle. Maybe they represent a mix of commercial and literary work that all shares a certain intelligence. Whatever the specificity, the point is that the agent’s taste tells you something about how they read and what they value. An agent whose client list looks random, a thriller here, a self-help book there, a poetry collection somewhere else, with no apparent connecting thread, makes me nervous. It suggests they’re acquiring opportunistically rather than building a coherent portfolio.

This matters to us as publishers because an agent’s taste is a filter. When an agent with great taste sends us a manuscript, we know it’s already passed through a high bar. The agent has read it, loved it, and chosen to invest their time and reputation in it. That recommendation carries weight. It means we can prioritize that submission over the hundreds of unsolicited manuscripts that arrive in our inbox. The agent is, in effect, doing part of our acquisitions work for us, and that’s only valuable if their judgment is consistently good.

The second thing we look for is editorial skill. The best literary agents are also excellent editors. They don’t just sell manuscripts; they develop them. They work with authors on revisions before the manuscript goes on submission, sometimes through multiple rounds of editing that can take months. By the time a manuscript reaches our desk from a strong editorial agent, it’s already been significantly improved. This saves us time and resources, and it means the book we’re considering is closer to its final form. We can evaluate it more accurately, which makes our acquisition decisions better.

Not all agents are editorial. Some are primarily dealmakers: they find promising manuscripts, send them out quickly, and negotiate the best terms. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, and some very successful agents operate this way. But from our perspective, we prefer working with agents who’ve already put editorial work into the manuscript. It signals that the agent is invested in the book’s quality, not just its saleability. And it tends to produce manuscripts that are further along in development, which matters when you’re a small press without an army of in-house editors.

The third thing is professionalism, and by this I mean a specific set of behaviors that make the business side of publishing work smoothly. A professional agent responds to emails within a reasonable timeframe. They provide clean, properly formatted manuscripts with clear metadata (title, word count, genre, comp titles). They give realistic timelines for responses. They don’t play games with exclusivity or try to create artificial urgency. They negotiate firmly but fairly, understanding that the publisher needs to make money too. They honor agreements and don’t try to renegotiate after the deal is done.

I’m listing these things because you’d be surprised how many agents fall short on basic professionalism. I’ve dealt with agents who take months to respond to offers, agents who misrepresent manuscripts (overstating the word count, exaggerating the author’s platform, or describing the book in terms that don’t match its contents), and agents who make demands that are wildly inappropriate for a deal of the given size. Every publisher has stories like these, and they erode trust quickly. An agent who is difficult to work with once is an agent we think twice about working with again.

The fourth quality, and perhaps the most underrated, is what I’d call author advocacy. A good agent genuinely cares about their clients’ careers, not just the current deal, but the trajectory. They think about where this author should be in five years, ten years. They advise on everything from which projects to pursue next to how to manage social media presence to whether a particular speaking engagement is worth the travel. This kind of holistic career management is rare, and it’s what separates a good agent from a great one.

We can see the difference in how authors behave during the publishing process. An author with a strong, engaged agent tends to be more confident, more organized, and more realistic about expectations. They ask better questions. They push back when they should and defer when they should. They’ve been prepared by their agent for the realities of publishing, which means there are fewer surprises and fewer conflicts. An author whose agent is disengaged, on the other hand, often seems adrift. They don’t know what to expect, they don’t know what questions to ask, and they sometimes make demands that suggest nobody has explained how the process works.

I want to talk about what we don’t look for in agents, because there are common assumptions that I think are misleading. We don’t particularly care how big the agency is. A solo agent with 15 clients can be more effective than a large agency with 300. Size doesn’t correlate with quality. Some of the best agents we work with are one-person operations running out of their apartments. They’re responsive, their taste is impeccable, and they fight hard for their authors. Meanwhile, some large, prestigious agencies have agents who are coasting on the agency’s reputation without doing the work.

We also don’t prioritize agents based on their social media presence or industry profile. Some excellent agents are practically invisible online. They don’t tweet, they don’t do interviews, they don’t appear on panels. They just do the work, quietly and effectively. An agent’s value is measured by how well they serve their clients, not by how many followers they have. The industry sometimes confuses visibility with quality, and that confusion can lead authors astray.

For authors seeking agents, here’s what I’d recommend based on everything I’ve observed from the publisher’s side. First, research the agent’s client list. Are the authors on that list writing the kind of work you write? Are their books published by houses you’d want to be published by? This is the single most important piece of due diligence you can do. An agent who represents literary fiction and you write commercial thrillers is a mismatch, no matter how prestigious they are.

Second, talk to the agent’s existing clients if you can. Ask them what the agent is like to work with. Is the agent communicative? Do they give editorial feedback? How long did the submission process take? Were there surprises? Most authors will be honest if you ask directly, and their answers will tell you more than the agent’s website or their Publisher’s Marketplace profile.

Third, pay attention to the business terms. Most agents charge a 15 percent commission on domestic sales and 20 percent on foreign sales. These are standard. If an agent charges reading fees, upfront costs, or commissions higher than these, walk away. Legitimate agents make money when you make money. They don’t charge for the privilege of reading your manuscript.

Fourth, trust your instincts during the initial conversation. When an agent offers representation, you’ll typically have a phone call where you discuss the manuscript, the agent’s vision for it, and the submission strategy. This call is, in some ways, a first date. Do you like talking to this person? Do they seem genuinely enthusiastic about your work, or are they going through the motions? Do they ask smart questions about your manuscript, or do they seem to have only a surface-level understanding? Do they talk about your career or just this one book? The answers matter. You’re choosing a business partner who will represent you for years, potentially decades. Chemistry isn’t everything, but it’s not nothing.

Fifth, be wary of agents who promise specific outcomes. No agent can guarantee a sale. No agent can guarantee a particular advance amount. No agent can guarantee that your book will be published by a specific house. An agent who makes promises like these is either naive or dishonest, and neither quality is desirable in someone managing your career. The best agents are honest about the uncertainties of the market. They’ll tell you what they think is realistic, share their submission strategy, and be transparent about the range of possible outcomes.

From the publisher’s perspective, the ideal agent-publisher relationship is collaborative rather than adversarial. Some agents treat every negotiation as a zero-sum game, fighting for every dollar and every clause as if we’re opponents. I understand the impulse; they’re advocating for their client. But publishing works best as a partnership. The agent, the author, and the publisher all want the same thing: a successful book. When the agent trusts the publisher to do right by the author, and the publisher trusts the agent to be reasonable in their demands, the result is a smoother process and, usually, a better book. The adversarial approach can extract better deal terms in the short run but damages the relationship in the long run, and relationships are the currency of publishing.

I should note that not every author needs an agent, particularly in today’s market. If you’re self-publishing, an agent has no role to play. If you’re submitting to small presses that accept unsolicited manuscripts (we do, by the way), you can submit directly. Agents are most valuable for authors targeting the larger publishers, where having representation is essentially required, and for authors who want someone to manage the business side of their career so they can focus on writing. The agent’s value proposition is expertise and access. If you don’t need either of those things, you don’t need an agent.

One final thought on the agent question. The publishing industry is changing quickly, and the role of the literary agent is changing with it. Some agents now help clients with self-publishing strategies, managing the production and marketing of books that bypass traditional publishers entirely. Others have expanded into film and television rights management, recognizing that the screen adaptation market is often more lucrative than book sales. A few have started their own imprints or consulting firms. The agent’s job in 2023 looks very different from what it looked like in 2003, and it will look different again in 2033. The best agents are the ones who adapt to these changes while keeping their core mission intact: serving the author’s interests across a long career.

But if you do need one, choose carefully. The wrong agent can be worse than no agent at all. A bad agent will misrepresent your work, alienate the editors who might have loved it, negotiate poorly, and leave you worse off than if you’d submitted on your own. The right agent will make your career. They’ll improve your manuscript, place it with the right publisher, negotiate a fair deal, and guide your career with a long-term vision that you’ll be grateful for ten books from now. The gap between a bad agent and a great one is the widest gap in publishing, and for authors, it’s the decision that matters most. More than the publisher. More than the cover. More than the marketing plan. Get the agent right, and the rest tends to follow.