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How to Get a Literary Agent: What Most Writers Get Wrong About the Publishing Process
by Writing Workshops Staff
2 months ago
Here is the problem nobody warns you about. You spend two years, maybe three, writing a novel or a memoir or a book of nonfiction that represents the best thinking you have ever done. You revise it until the sentences feel inevitable. You hand it to trusted readers and they confirm what you hoped: the book is ready. And then you sit down at your computer to find an agent, and you realize you have no idea what you are doing.
The manuscript is finished, and you are suddenly trying to master a second discipline entirely. You need to write a query letter, which is nothing like writing a novel. You need to condense three hundred pages into a single persuasive paragraph, which is nothing like revision. You need to identify the right agents, research their preferences, understand what comp titles mean in a marketplace context, and present yourself as a professional in an industry whose conventions you have never been taught. The craft of writing and the craft of getting published are two separate skill sets, and the second one is almost never addressed in workshops, MFA programs, or craft books.
This is the gap that costs writers years of wasted effort, hundreds of misdirected queries, and, in the worst cases, the slow erosion of confidence that makes them abandon a publishable book.
The Professional Skills Nobody Teaches
Think about what a literary agent sees on an average Monday morning. Dozens of query letters, most of them making the same mistakes: vague comparisons to books that sold a decade ago, pitches that summarize plot without conveying voice, opening pages that take too long to establish stakes. The writers behind those queries may be enormously talented. Their manuscripts might be superb. But the materials they send fail to communicate that talent, because the skills required to pitch a book are specialized knowledge that most writers have never had the chance to learn.
This is not a matter of talent or dedication. It is a knowledge gap, and it is fixable.
That conviction is what led us to build the Literary Agent Seminar Series with Mark Owen Gottlieb, a vice president and literary agent at Trident Media Group. Each seminar in the series addresses one specific professional skill that writers need to move from finished manuscript to signed deal. These are not vague overviews or motivational talks. They are targeted, practical sessions led by someone who is actively making deals, reading submissions, and representing bestselling authors right now.
Why Trident Media Group Matters
A quick word about why the Trident Media Group pedigree is significant here. There are thousands of literary agents in the United States. The difference between an agent at a small boutique agency and an agent at the top of the industry is not just prestige; it is access, infrastructure, and leverage.
Trident Media Group has been headquartered in New York City since 2000, representing authors who have won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Booker Prize, and the Nobel Prize in Literature, among many others. The agency operates a full suite of services that most literary agencies simply cannot offer: a dedicated international rights department that secures deals in dozens of foreign markets, a book-to-film and television division, an audiobook rights team, and in-house digital media and marketing support.
When Mark Gottlieb teaches a seminar about the submissions process or the elevator pitch, he is not speaking theoretically. He is drawing on daily experience at one of the most active agencies in publishing. He has represented numerous New York Times bestselling and award-winning authors, optioned books to film and television production companies, and previously ran Trident's audiobook department and worked in their foreign rights division. Before joining Trident, he worked at Penguin Books. He studied writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College, where he founded the Wilde Press and served as founding president of the Undergraduate Students for Publishing Club. He has lectured at the Yale Writers' Workshop, Cambridge University's MSt in Creative Writing program, and the Columbia Publishing Course.
In other words, this is not someone who read a blog post about querying and decided to teach a class. This is someone who reads query letters and submissions for a living, and who can tell you exactly what separates the ones that work from the ones that don't.
"My writing career never would have advanced as fast or as far without Mark's help."
— James Breakwell, bestselling author
Seven Skills, Seven Seminars: What Each One Actually Teaches You
The series is designed so that each seminar stands on its own. You can take one, or you can take all seven. But together, they form a comprehensive education in the professional side of publishing. Here is what each seminar covers and why it matters.
Your First Page Is Your Audition
Before an agent reads your query letter, before they look at your synopsis or your bio, they read your opening page. Sometimes they read only your opening page. If it does not immediately establish voice, tension, and a reason to keep reading, the submission goes into the rejection pile, regardless of how strong the rest of the manuscript might be.
The Art of the First Page: Hooking Agents and Readers is built around this reality. The seminar analyzes what makes a compelling opening, from the first sentence's hook to the way character and stakes are established in the initial paragraphs. You will study successful first pages, identify common pitfalls, and workshop your own opening with direct feedback from Mark. The goal is practical: by the end of the session, you will know how to make your first page impossible to set down.
This matters because agents and editors are not being cruel when they stop reading after a page. They are responding to a signal. A weak opening suggests the writer has not yet developed the editorial instinct to know what a reader needs in those first moments, and that instinct is exactly what agents are looking for.
The Query Letter: Your One-Page Case for Representation
A query letter is roughly 250 words. In those 250 words, you need to accomplish what might be the hardest writing task of your career: convey your book's premise, genre, word count, comparable titles, and your own credentials, all while making the agent want to request the full manuscript. It is a form with strict conventions, and violating those conventions, even out of ignorance, signals to an agent that you have not done your homework.
Writing an Effective Query Letter opens with strong examples of query letters that generated agent interest, then breaks down exactly what makes them work. The seminar moves from analysis to practice: you will draft or revise your own query letter during the session, with Mark providing individual feedback through direct Zoom chat. This is a rare opportunity, because it simulates the actual experience of having your query land in an agent's inbox. Mark can tell you, from the receiving end, what works and what falls flat.
One former student captured the value of this seminar concisely: the class opened their eyes to submission mistakes that boiled down to two crucial elements they had never considered before.
The Elevator Pitch: Thirty Seconds to Sell Your Book
Imagine you are at a writers' conference. You step into an elevator, and standing next to you is an agent you have been researching for months. You have the length of the ride to describe your book. What do you say?
Most writers freeze, or they launch into a rambling plot summary that loses the listener by the third floor. The Art of the Elevator Pitch and The Hook teaches you to construct a verbal pitch that is concise, compelling, and confident. The seminar covers not just the content of a pitch but the delivery: body language, pacing, and the rhetorical structure that makes someone lean in and say, "Tell me more."
This skill extends well beyond the literal elevator scenario. Every conversation with an agent, editor, or fellow writer at a reading or festival is an opportunity to talk about your work. If you cannot articulate what your book is about in a single, sharp paragraph, you will struggle at every stage of the publishing process.
Ready to learn the professional skills that get manuscripts in front of agents? Explore the full Literary Agent Seminar Series with Mark Owen Gottlieb of Trident Media Group.
Browse the Literary Agent Series →Comp Titles: The Skill That Positions Your Book in the Market
Of all the professional skills in this series, comp titles might be the one most writers underestimate. "Comp" is short for comparative or competitive titles, and it refers to recently published books that share audience, tone, or subject matter with yours. When an agent or editor asks for comps, they are not asking you to name your favorite books. They are asking you to demonstrate that you understand where your book fits in the current marketplace.
This is a business question disguised as a creative one. The right comps tell an agent that your book has a viable readership, that it fits on an identifiable shelf in a bookstore, and that you have done the work of understanding what is selling right now. The wrong comps (books published fifteen years ago, mega-bestsellers that set unrealistic expectations, titles in a different genre entirely) tell an agent that you do not understand the market for your own work.
Rising Above the Competition with Comp Titles teaches the correct methodology for assembling two to three comp titles that strengthen your submission. The seminar covers how to research current titles in your genre, how to frame comparisons that feel specific rather than grandiose, and how to use comp titles as a strategic tool rather than an afterthought. In the second half, participants share their own books and receive feedback on their comps from Mark and the group, with the goal of sharpening every participant's positioning before they submit.
The Nonfiction Book Proposal: A Different Game Entirely
Fiction writers submit finished manuscripts. Nonfiction writers, in most cases, submit proposals. The difference is enormous. A nonfiction book proposal is a standalone document, often twenty to fifty pages, that must persuade an agent or editor that your idea is marketable, your platform is credible, and your writing is strong enough to sustain a full-length book. It includes a hook, an overview, a competitive analysis, a detailed chapter outline, and an author platform section that demonstrates your ability to reach your target audience.
Most nonfiction writers underestimate the proposal. They assume the idea is strong enough to carry itself, or they treat the proposal as a formality rather than a sales document. Pitch Perfect: Crafting a Compelling Nonfiction Book Proposal breaks down every component of the proposal and explains what agents and publishers are looking for at each stage. Whether you are starting from scratch or refining a draft that has already been rejected, this seminar gives you a framework for building a proposal that stands out.
The nonfiction proposal is, in many ways, a harder sell than a novel query, because you are asking someone to invest in a book that does not yet exist. Mark walks you through how to make that case persuasively, drawing on his experience evaluating proposals at one of the most active agencies in publishing.
The Submissions Process: Building Your Target List and Managing the Wait
You have written the query. You have your comps. Your opening pages are sharp. Now what? The submissions process itself is a skill, and getting it wrong can burn bridges you cannot rebuild.
Mastering the Submissions Process covers the mechanics of how to assemble a list of target agents, how to research their submission preferences, and how to manage the painful, protracted waiting period that follows. The seminar addresses questions that most writers have never thought to ask. How do you handle simultaneous submissions? What do you do when an agent requests a full manuscript? How do you respond to an offer of representation when other agents still have your materials? What does it mean to sign an agency agreement, and what should you expect afterward?
Mark also covers something that almost no other resource addresses honestly: how to manage periods of silence from agents, and how to handle interest (or rejection) without making missteps that damage your professional reputation. The etiquette of the submissions process is unwritten, and writers who violate it often do so without realizing the consequences.
Demystifying the Publishing Process: The Full Picture
This seminar pulls the camera back and examines the publishing industry as a whole. For writers who are still deciding between traditional publishing, independent presses, and self-publishing, this session provides a clear-eyed overview of each path: the advantages, the limitations, the costs, and the realistic expectations for each route.
Demystifying the Publishing Process is the seminar Mark designed to combat what he describes as widespread misinformation about how book publishing works. When he was asked why he wanted to teach this class, his answer was direct: he sees too much bad information circulating on the internet about publishing, and he wanted to provide writers with accurate, current guidance from inside the industry.
The seminar covers the full lifecycle of a book, from manuscript to contract to publication, and addresses the questions writers are often embarrassed to ask: What do agents actually do after they sign you? How does the auction process work? What is a reasonable advance? What should you expect from your publisher in terms of marketing support? Understanding these realities before you enter the process changes the way you approach every conversation with agents and editors.
"It was my absolute pleasure to meet you virtually on Saturday! Thank you for the wealth of detailed information and on-the-spot, yet carefully crafted critiques you shared with each of us. The experience is treasured, and invaluable."
— Mica K., Workshop Student
What Makes This Series Different from a Blog Post or a YouTube Video
There is no shortage of free advice about querying agents. Writer Twitter is full of it. Blogs rehash the same tips year after year. But there is a fundamental difference between reading general advice and sitting in a small Zoom room with a vice president at Trident Media Group who is looking at your specific query letter, your specific comp titles, your specific pitch, and telling you what he would think if it landed in his inbox on a Tuesday morning.
The interactive component of these seminars is the differentiator. Each session includes time for participants to share their work and receive personalized feedback. In the query letter seminar, Mark reads your draft in real time and responds through direct Zoom chat. In the comp titles seminar, the group works together to strengthen each participant's positioning. In the elevator pitch session, you practice your pitch out loud and hear how it lands with both the instructor and your peers.
This is also why the Trident Media Group affiliation matters so much. Mark is not a retired agent reflecting on how things used to work. He is actively signing clients, making deals, and reading submissions. The advice he offers reflects the publishing landscape as it exists right now, not as it existed five years ago when the last edition of some publishing guide went to print.
Every seminar includes a recording for enrollees, so you can revisit the material and the feedback as many times as you need.
From the Wilderness to the Bookshelf
Our mission at WritingWorkshops.com has always been to bring writers out of the wilderness and into community. That mission usually focuses on the creative side: helping writers find their voice, strengthen their sentences, develop their instincts for structure and character and language. But the wilderness extends beyond the writing itself. Some of the most talented writers we have worked with over the past decade have finished extraordinary manuscripts and then stalled, not because their work was not ready, but because they did not know how to get it in front of the right people.
The Literary Agent Seminar Series with Mark Owen Gottlieb exists to close that gap. Each seminar targets a specific, learnable skill. Taken together, they form the professional education that most creative writing programs never provide.
If you have a manuscript that is ready (or nearly ready) to submit, and you want to approach the publishing process with the same seriousness and preparation you brought to the writing itself, this series is built for you.
Explore the full Literary Agent Seminar Series with Mark Owen Gottlieb of Trident Media Group. Each seminar is a one-time Zoom session with a recording included.
Browse the Full Series →Not sure where to start? If you are a fiction writer, the query letter seminar and the comp titles seminar are the two most immediately actionable sessions for strengthening your submissions. If you are a nonfiction writer, the book proposal seminar is essential. And if you are still figuring out your path to publication, the submissions process and demystifying publishing seminars will give you the broadest foundation.
You spent years learning to write. Spend an afternoon learning to publish.
WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
