Melissa: I’m looking for higher concept contemporary fiction, like Jay Asher’s 13 Reasons Why or Gayle Forman’s Should I Stay. Me: What are you looking for right now in contemporary fiction submissions and not getting? Are there any subjects or genres that are near and dear to your heart? And on the flip side, what are you getting too much of? I can deal with a few typos but when it’s clear from the beginning that the writer doesn’t understand certain key grammatical rules, then I’m out. This all needs to be used very sparingly. Same goes for overused or badly conveyed dialect trying to set the story in a certain time or place. Second, cliché dialogue or dialogue that doesn’t ring true for the age of the characters. Melissa: First, too much exposition up front and not just getting us into the action of the story or the narrator’s head right away. Me: What are three things that elicit automatic rejections from you when reading the first 50 pages of a manuscript? I represent fiction and non-fiction, so in any given day I’m working on a cookbook, a YA novel, a memoir, etc. I’m never going to inherit a project someone else took on and left, the way editors often have to. I enjoy being on the agency side of the business because I can essentially choose the types of projects I work on. With all the agencies I worked at, I worked closely on the foreign rights for their books so I am thrilled to be at my new post at Folio Literary Management, where I’ll be the co-director of international rights while continuing to represent my own authors and projects. I began working exclusively with Elizabeth Kaplan, who I had already been assisting, and did that for a few more years. A few years in, I began representing my own clients and selling my own projects mainly in the areas of Young Adult fiction, cookbooks, business books, memoir, health, and more. It was a crash course in agenting – working on numerous genres and seeing the different types of agent styles. So I got a job assisting three separate agencies that shared office space. I also didn’t want to work in one of those really tall, hermetically sealed buildings in midtown. I was drawn to the lit agent side of the business because I wanted to work closely with authors in developing projects both fiction and non, and be a part of their exciting careers from the very beginning. A few years into the magazine gig I realized my heart wasn’t in it and I really wanted to work with books. I studied journalism at BostonUniversity and then moved to New York to be an editorial assistant at a national women’s magazine (ok, fine, this was preceded by a few years of waitressing in the EastVillage, interning for a magazine and a literary agency). Melissa: Like everyone in publishing, I grew up reading everything I could get my hands on – books, magazines, newspapers. Today, we are kicking off the official start of our agent interview series with Melissa Sarver, of Folio Literary Management.
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