A surefire way to determine an agent is the best fit for your manuscript/writing career is by learning everything you can about them. Such information is great when choosing who to query and deciding who you’d love to work long term with. As a site dedicated to guiding writers through the publication journey, we’ve put together awesome agent interviews for you!
Today, we’re introducing Ali Herring of the Spencerhill Associates!
- Path2pub: How did you become an agent?
I got my start in agency work through an internship with Gina Panettieri at Talcott Literary in Connecticut where I was living at the time. She’s amazing and was an awesome teacher! I’d been a stay-at-home mom at that point for about ten years, and was thinking about transitioning back to the workforce.
My background was in communications for a non-profit and inhouse magazine work, having come to them fresh out of school with a communications/journalism degree. I’d spent most of my free time while home devouring every book I could get my hands on and had even tried my hand at writing a novel. That’s how I even learned literary agents existed! I wasn’t having much luck in terms of finding rep and realized I was probably missing something—or a lot of somethings! That’s when I found the agency internship and was luckily hired. I learned a lot very quickly, and realized that I was much better at discovering talent than being the talent.
I was a much better editor than writer, and my background in sales that I had developed selling ad space for that magazine (and frankly watching my mom all my life who is one of the best salespeople I know) meant that I had discovered a new path. After that internship was over, we moved our family back to Georgia where we are from. I thought my pub life would be over at that point, because I’d moved away from the tri-state where so many agencies are headquartered. However, as luck would have it, a friend put me in touch with Spencerhill Associates and the rest is history!
• Path2pub: What genres do you represent and why did you decide ‘these are what I want to help bring to the world’?
I rep all genres in middle grade and young adult. I’m particularly interested right now in horror and fantasy in middle grade with series potential. And I’m starting to look for series that are more geared to younger readers say 8 or 9 year-olds +. In adult, I rep contemporary, horror (not gross-out), sci-fi, speculative, fantasy, paranormal (pretty much everything under the SFF umbrella), dystopian, thrillers, suspense, romance and women’s fiction, and as a Georgia-native, would love to see more southern fiction.
I do prefer women’s fiction with an element like suspense or adventure that makes it stand out, romance in every iteration, and Christian fiction. In the Christian market, I’m looking for women’s fiction and single-title romance, and single-title and category romance written for lines like Harlequin, Love Inspired and Love Inspired Suspense. I rep a wide variety of things because variety is the spice of life. And I like a lot of different kinds of fiction on a personal level.
• Path2pub: What instantly catches your eye in a query letter/manuscript?
The most important thing I look for in a query is a writer’s ability to write a concise elevator pitch with a strong hook and stakes that make me want to read your sample. I actually ask for this in a separate question in my Query Manager form that I think is labeled “one-sentence pitch” though I state you can make it a couple sentences. I’m looking for a plot arc (what results because of the story problem) and stakes (what your main character will lose or gain if they don’t/do solve the story problem) but presented in a way that screams YOU MUST READ THIS NOW!
Basically, this is your chance to get me excited and hook me fast. As to writing, a first page will tell me if an author understands how to hook a reader, if they can balance creating context with something innately hooky in the writing. I’m also going to be “listening” for voice in a first page. Voice can’t be taught but it’s like music. When they get it right, you’ll want to listen to them on repeat.
• Path2pub: What is that element that makes you know at once that a story is not for you?
If the hook isn’t strong or stand-out, I’ll pass. If the hook is strong enough, but the writing isn’t there yet, I’ll pass. If I get farther than that, then the story has to hold up from beginning to end, keep tension, keep building emotionally, the characters change and grow, characters are proactive and take initiative rather than let things happen to them, and character choices make sense (that place where you’re like, I’ll just let this slide and no one will notice… I’ll notice).
Also backstory (the stuff we don’t see on the page but informs the story) is strong. Basically, the characters will have strong internal and external drives, in part, because of this backstory.
• Path2pub: How hands-on are you editorially?
I’m very hands on editorially. However, I don’t take on work that needs a ton of editorial, so the manuscript you submit needs to be as polished and perfect plot-wise as you can get it.
• Path2pub: How submissions-ready do you prefer a queried manuscript to be?
The sieve that leads from author to agent to acquiring editor to sales and marketing to final acquisition is tighter and more daunting now than ever, so you need to feel like your book is as close to publication ready as possible before you submit to agents. You’re not just competing against yourself but every other author in my inbox.
You’ll have more wiggle room with a newer agent than an established one for the level of edits required, because often that’s how a newer agent will attract talent when competing with more established agents whose lists are full and don’t have as much time to commit to those level of edits.
• Path2pub: Do you have goals for how many clients you want to acquire in a year?
No I don’t. I just sign people when I feel like I have enough time to commit to a new person and also when their work moves me so much I can’t help but take them on. I’m generally not signing more than one or two people a year at this point.
• Path2pub: What is your favorite trope?
In romance: Enemies to lovers but I probably gravitate most to reunion romances. I love the established history there. It gives authors a lot to work with. For SFF and horror, I do love a good portal fantasy. I love going to new worlds.
• Path2pub: What are some books you think everyone should read?
I think people learn a lot from classics. For kids, Charlotte’s Web, Hatchet and The Boxcar Kids. For olders, I’m a big fan of historicals, though ironically I don’t read or rep a lot of historical: Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, The Count of Monte Cristo. For modern books, the best books I’ve read have been the Murderbot series, House of Salt and Sorrow, City of Ember, Across the Universe, The Percy Jackson series for middle grade and I can’t help but include my own author’s Blight HarborMG series including her titular book, The Clackity.
Finally, I think there’s so much craft evident in The Hunger Games series, with layered stakes, and it’s just an amazing story. People hate on Twilight, but I adored that series. The storytelling was engrossing. Finally, for craft books and author must haves, some books I adore: Story Genius, The Emotional Thesaurus and The Word Loss Diet for over-writers.
• Path2pub: If a writer could write a book specifically for you, what would you want it to be about?
I’ve been on the hunt for the next big hard scifi book forever. If you write as smart and sometimes as weird as Andy Weir, I’m on board. Or like a modern Dune kind of story, for real. I’m not just saying this because of the movie. Dune was my gateway drug to scifi. It’s a little Game of Thrones-ish, isn’t it? And I’m always in for stuff that has religious overtones as long as it isn’t sacrilegious.
• Path2pub: What is your favorite part of being an agent or an agenting experience you’ve had that you’ll always cherish?
My absolute favorite part is that first moment after I get an offer from an editor on a client’s book, and I haven’t yet told them. That moment of exhilaration and tension is epic!
• Path2pub: What advice do you have for querying writers?
Keep learning craft. Don’t write the next book in the series; write something new because if you don’t sell the first one, you won’t sell the second. I call this putting all your eggs in one basket. Don’t do it. By the same token, the likelihood your first manuscript will get you an agent is small statistically. Finish one and query it and start another. Rinse, repeat. Network with peers. Get critique partners. Read heavily in the genre you’re writing in. Develop an ear for voice by reading. Find your own.
• Path2pub: What are your non-publishing related hobbies?
I play piano and binge watch the random TV series. Currently obsessively watching Greys Anatomy with my oldest and trying to finish it before she goes off to college, and Resident Alien all by my lonesome. I listen to audiobooks as much as I can too. If I read paper copies, I end up editing them in my head, so that’s not as pleasurable anymore!
Ali Herring is a literary agent at Spencerhill Associates. She represents a broad range of upmarket and commercial fiction, including several adult categories as well as middle grade and young adult. She’s a graduate of Berry College where she obtained her bachelor’s degree in Journalism and was valedictorian of her class. If you’d like a better idea of her interests, you can find her on Twitter, @HerringAli, where she regularly posts #MSWL’s.
Her agency has a “response from one agent should be considered a response from all agents” policy, so please make sure to chose wisely by visiting: www.spencerhillassociates.com/submissions where you can find their agents wish lists and a link to Ali’s Query Manager form for submissions.
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