Prepare for Publishing with Insights from Literary Agent Lucinda Halpern

Literary agent Lucinda Halpern prepares us to navigate the industry and prepare for publishing. With her insights, we’ll position our project—and ourselves as authors—to pitch agents and get noticed.

She reveals what literary agents are really looking for when it comes to platform and clears up the concern about how much or how little to share of your book’s ideas on social media. And if you’re wondering what to really focus on when crafting your book proposal, Lucinda’s got insider info to help you make decisions.

After listening to (or reading) what she has to say, you’re going to feel more confident than ever as you prepare to pitch.

Lucinda says publishers are looking for books with “perennial potential”:

Publishers are trendcasters. They are futurists. They have to think about books from the perspective of what is going to sell when the book publishes in two years and then for five years after that, because they’re interested in books that backlist….So writers should be really savvy to what are the sort of trends that are happening in the media or on podcasts or Netflix series.

She urges writers to network.

See if you can discover the connection you have to someone in the industry. She says, “I always say get that six-degree-of-separation connection to an agent.” She continues, “There are so many blind submissions coming at [agents], better to have an ‘in’—a step up—if you can.”

Writers in my platform membership often ask how much they can share about their book idea—how much they can write or teach the topics—without giving too much away, so I asked Lucinda her opinion. You might be surprised (and relieved) by her response:

The rule of the day is the more free content, the better. And one of my authors, Paul Jarvis, had a really wonderful way of putting this: Teach everything you know…I believe in that so much. And editors believe in it, too. Because again, if they see that audience clamoring for your ideas…that’s a huge draw…It almost doesn’t matter that they’ve seen it before. It’s better they’ve seen it before.

When we discussed platform for nonfiction authors, I asked her for that magic number of how many subscribers or followers publishers (and agents) are looking for. She gave us the number, but not before offering an important disclaimer:

It differs for category and for the particular author that you are. So someone who’s a PhD or a doctor or finance professional or psychologist, there are a number of sort of more private industries where an editor is going to recognize your life has not been tweeting…

Whereas if you’re a journalist, it’s going to be how many bylines have you accumulated and what sort of publications and what is your Twitter following? How many people actually know who you are?

I just want you to know if you’re a business person and you’ve run this successful company, maybe again, you’re not so active on social media, but you have a YouTube channel that gets views and you also have a massive email list which publishers are more interested in than social media numbers.

I’m just giving you a sense of the diversity in the nonfiction sphere alone that we’re evaluating platform on. There is no one number.

I begged a little for the number.

Thankfully, she told us.

You want to know the number she’s looking for?

Listen, watch, or read the transcript below. (That specific answer is around the 17:56 mark.)

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.

Ready to get your book noticed? Get Lucinda’s essential guide for writers: The 6 Things Every Book Pitch Needs — click here to receive your guide: www.lucindaliterary.com/subscribe

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