Anna Branford

looking for an agent

I am one of those people who reads how-to books. My partner, A., thinks this is hilarious. When he goes to the bathroom at my place (where there is always a stack of library books by my bath because I am a bath time reader) he generally comes out and says something like, ‘Is it at all possible that you are thinking of planting a herb garden, Anna?’ or ‘Might you, by any chance, be interested in making your own spelt bread?’  Because there are about forty-two books in there with titles like ‘101 Handy Tips and Tricks for Herb Gardening’ or ‘Spelt Bread-Making: Common Traps and Pitfalls’.

So anyway, this was the approach I took to looking for an agent for my children’s writing too. My bathroom was stacked up to the ceiling with titles like ‘How to Find an Agent’ and ‘How to Get an Agent to Read Your Manuscript’ and ‘Everything You Need to Know about Agents for Children’s Writers’. And while this method usually serves me pretty faithfully (well, I have a nice herb garden – actually my spelt bread is rubbish) I don’t know that it was all that useful in this instance.

I suspect this is partly because there isn’t all that much to say about how to find an agent. Really, you just have to write your story, get it in the best shape you possibly can, carefully follow the submission guidelines provided by every agent and hope for the best. But of course, that is hardly a book’s worth of information, so in these how-to manuals you get lots of other stuff about good/bad times of year to send your manuscript in, the right sort of paper for your envelope to be made of, whether or not to include a packet of hot chocolate in your submission, whether or not to attempt humour in your cover letter – that sort of thing.

So in the end all I really took from the books was a list of recommended agents in Australia. I organised my top ten choices and started right at the top of my list, with Curtis Brown Australia. (Just for the record, I used an ordinary envelope, there was no special enclosure or  joke and it was July). Since the worst anyone in the children’s publishing industry really has time to say is ‘no’, I figured I might as well start with a dream agent! But I didn’t really think they would even get back to me.

Sometimes when I’m about to start a lecture, while students are arriving and there are still a few minutes to go, I check my email just to fill the time. And about six weeks after I sent Violet off I did just that. There, in my inbox, was just about the nicest email I’ve ever received in my life, from Pippa Masson at Curtis Brown. It said that she’d liked reading about Violet and asked if I could come over to Sydney to meet her.

I nearly exploded, right there in front of about two hundred students, all politely waiting for a lecture about Foucault. It was probably the worst lecture I have ever, ever given because all I actually wanted to do was run outside and jump up and down.

So after my lecture (and after quite a lot of jumping up and down) I booked some tickets for the mid-semester break and flew to Sydney to meet Pippa.