A Quote by Richard Thaler

I have an agent, John Brockman, who is an agent to many academic authors like Dan Gilbert and Steven Pinker, and he's very good at conning academics into writing books. He pulled this trick on me.
Anuj Bahari has always been a really good literary agent for me. What a good agent does is that he manages many of your business aspects so you can keep your time free for writing.
In researching literary agents I did what the books tell you to do: I looked at the acknowledgments page of a book that was similar to mine. Happily, that author thanked his agent. I looked up the agent on the web and found out that he not only represented authors writing books similar to mine, but I knew some of his clients! So, I sent in the manuscript, and they decided to represent it.
If you haven't taken a writing class, take a writing class. I took every class that was available in my area. I went to conferences inside and outside my area to network with people. That's how I got my agent. I found my agent through another agent who was at a conference.
If you're very serious about writing it's helpful to find an agent. It's becoming more and more competitive to have your manuscript even looked at by an editor. Many companies don't accept unsolicited manuscripts anymore, so they'll pay more attention to something that comes in through an agent.
I was very lucky to befriend many authors before even signing with an agent, and they were all so supportive of me when I told them I was in the middle of my first book.
I've tried to make a book that's accessible to the ordinary, intelligent reader. Very often books that cover this kind of subject are written by academics, for academics. But I am not an academic.
I think having a good agent is key. I've been with mine for ten years now, and she's very honest with me. There are a lot of times I've sent her books that were not so good because I was tired of writing, or panicked about money, and she's told me flat out, "You don't want this to be your next book. Trust me."
I tried for years to get an agent because I was told you needed an agent. The agent-hunting process was grim indeed.
It took me ten years and seven books to bag an agent - it took me that long to start writing good.
I sold 'Hattie Big Sky' without an agent but quickly realized a writing career required an agent.
When I wasn't working, I put the blame directly where it belonged - I blamed my agent. When I didn't have an agent, I spent time looking for a new agent so I would have somebody to blame.
CBS fought very hard on this because it believed and believes that there's a principle at stake here. The principle is that Dan Rather doesn't work for the police, and that people that speak to Dan Rather understand that he's a journalist and not a police agent.
Get an agent. Seriously, submitting stuff unagented means it will end up on the slush pile. An agent is the first quality filter, and a good agent is worth his or her weight in gold, as they'll often know the editors on a personal level and will be able to talk to them directly about the project.
I didn't have an agent until I got 'Hairspray.' I had to get a Broadway show without an agent to get an agent.
My father was a writer, so I grew up writing and reading and I was really encouraged by him. I had some sort of gift and when it came time to try to find a publisher I had a little bit of an "in" because I had his agent I could turn to, to at least read my initial offerings when I was about 20. But the only problem was that they were just awful, they were just terrible stories and my agent, who ended up being my agent, was very, very sweet about it, but it took about four years until I actually had something worth trying to sell.
It wasn't exactly a cattle call. I had an agent, and they were seeing people for the parts, so my agent said, "Here's the script, see if there's anything that speaks to you." And I did, and I called my agent and said, "I think this character Data is kind of interesting," and she said, "Well, okay, I'll get you the appointment with Junie Lowry." I had to read with the casting agent first, 'cause nobody really knew me then. Then after that, I had, I think, six different auditions for the role. And finally it was me [on Star Trek].
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