When embarking on the long, winding road to publishing success, it’s easy to feel intimidated. So most writers seek the help of a literary agent, someone who can be a guide, a cheerleader, and most of all, a champion.

Enter Zoe Fishman, literary agent and foreign rights director at Lowenstein-Yost Associates in New York. Zoe is everything you’d want your dream agent to be: smart, savvy (she’s got oodles of publishing, editing, and agenting experience), and best of all, she fights for her clients…in a nice way, of course.

 WordHustler sat down with Zoe to get the real deal on agenting, publishing, and the “next big thing” in the YA book world [hint: it’s not vampires but does involve the afterlife].

So sink your teeth into this juicy interview, and then get your work ready for some immortal success!

WordHustler: Zoe, how did you get your start in the publishing industry?

Zoe Fishman: I majored in English at Boston University, and then I took the 6-week magazine publishing course at NYU. My first job was the assistant to the Audio Publisher at Random House. I then moved to editorial assistant at what was Dell, which eventually became Bantam Dell. Then I wrote for a few websites. That was fun.

WH: Are you a writer?

ZF: I am a writer. I eventually came back to Simon & Schuster to work in foreign rights, which was a completely different thing for me but turned out to be really, really wonderful.

WH: And you do the foreign rights here at Lowenstein-Yost, right?

ZF: Yes. At Simon & Schuster I learned so much about business, selling and marketing. Of course, getting to meet people and travel around the world was great. I did that for about five years and got to the point where I missed the editorial a lot, so I thought I would try agenting. I’ve been at Lowenstein-Yost for almost four years.

WH: So missing editorial brought you back to agenting. Were you amassing writers and projects you were passionate about over the years of foreign rights? Did that also help lead you back?

ZF: You know, I have always been a voracious reader and have a lot of editor friends. I’d watch them when they were passionate about a book, and notice the difference between that and being stuck with something they didn’t really want to do.

So when I came in, YA had just started to explode and I love that. I love a good Young Adult novel…and I had some good contacts in that area. So I started with that, and then because I do the foreign rights, there’s not tremendous pressure on me to be a niche agent. If I love the book, I can represent it. And I don’t have a gigantic client list, which is okay. I like that better for both the writer and me.

WH: You represent both YA and adult authors. What draws you to YA? What about an adult book catches your eye?

ZF: I think it’s kind of the same thing: I’m drawn to excellent writing. I think for YA, there’s something about the perspective of a teenager when they’re so not sure of themselves and they have no idea who they really are, that’s compelling because you know all that is ahead of them. You’re rooting for them to truly be an individual.  What I love is when characters are written as ones who you really identify with and feel their struggles.

[Read more →]

Are you in the market for some holiday reading? Or looking for books to give the reader in your family? Look no further!

Publisher’s Marketplace put together best books of 2008 lists from Amazon.com (their top 25), the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, the Los Angeles Times, New York Magazine, the New York Times, the National Book Awards finalists, PW, Salon, Time magazine, the Washington Post, plus lists from critics Michiko Kakutani and Janet Maslin to determine the consensus picks from among all the lists (numbers in parenthesis correspond to how many best-of lists the book is on, hence the ties):



Fiction

1. 2666, by Roberto Bolano (Translated by Natasha Wimmer) (8)

2. Netherland, by Joseph O’Neill (6)


3. A Mercy, by Toni Morrison (5)


4. When Will There Be Good News?, by Kate Atkinson (5)


- Lush Life, by Richard Price (5)


- The Likeness, by Tana French (5)


7. Home, by Marilynne Robinson (4)


- The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski (4)


- Unaccustomed Earth, by Jhumpa Lahiri (4)


10. Serena, by Ron Rash (4)



Nonfiction


1. The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins (6)


2. This Republic of Suffering, by Drew Gilpin Faust (5)


- The Hemingses of Monticello, by Annette Gordon-Reed (5)


4. The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death in Order, by Joan Wickersham (4)


- The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals, by Jane Mayer (4)


- The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America, by David Hajdu (4)


- Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywood, by Mark Harris (4) 



Some interesting facts from Publisher’s Marketplace about the above titles: 


- Aside from Edgar Sawtelle, the only other title on the two lists above to hit No. 1 on a NYT bestseller list was Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth.
- The only two titles that didn’t at least appear for one week on an NYT extended bestseller list are The Hemingses of Monticello and The Suicide Index (this did not appear on any of the nat’l or regional bestseller lists tracked by PM).

- Of these 17 titles, only 4 of the 10 fiction titles and 3 of the 7 nonfiction titles were in the top 10 of an NYT bestseller list for at least one week.

Happy Holiday Reading (and Shopping)!

Do you have a future best-seller brewing in your brain? Why not send a query to Jhumpa Lahiri’s agents at Janklow & Nesbit Associates? They’ve gotten best-sellers published (many times) and maybe yours is next! Good luck and Happy Holidays from your fans at WordHustler!