1. Do you do career management? Some agents don’t do this, and I knew I wanted an agent who was willing to think about how to position me and my work and how my proposed projects fit with that.

2. Do you do editorial work? Some agents don’t want editorial involvement, but I knew I wanted an agent who would, if I wanted her to, give me that feedback.

Most of all, I wanted an agent who would give me her honest opinion and not just take a project and try to sell it. In all my discussions with potential agents, I listened to their answers very carefully to get a sense of that.

There are some agents who will rep a project to the death (or until the author pulls out), and there are some who lose enthusiasm for a project after a certain amount of time or rejections. It is always the best business decision to stop repping if the enthusiasm is gone, but I would want to know up front if that is their philosophy. I would not want to be surprised.

– where do you see it fitting in the marketplace?
– do you represent books like this already?
– what recent books does it remind you of?
– what did you like about it?
– is it ready to go out now?
– what’s your plan for this book?

I signed with Jessica a year or so back and her answers to those questions were a lot better than mine, truth be told. There were a number of other agents interested, none of them seemed to like or understand the novel as much as she did.