Literary Agents Turn Influencers, Selling Publishing Advice — and Themselves

Literary agent Kate McKean's newsletter "Agents and Books" has roughly 34,000 subscribers — and its name sits on the front cover of her book "Write Through It," just below her own. Since 2019, McKean has built a public business on candid advice about publishing, and she is far from alone. On Substack, TikTok and podcasts, agents are demystifying a notoriously opaque industry while building personal brands.

McKean hosts Q. and A. sessions at Liz's Book Bar in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, where aspiring authors ask how to make a submission stand out, how important a social media presence is, and when to query a manuscript. At an event this year, one writer reported nearly 800 rejections; another had submitted her manuscript to agents for years without success. McKean did not soften the message. Publishing is a business, she explained, and book deals happen because publishers need to make money.

"If you're mad at the system, I'm sorry," McKean said. "But you don't get a book deal because you deserve it."

What does this change for agents — and for writers?

The role is not entirely new. Agents have always coached writers as much as they brokered deals, though historically from behind the scenes. What has changed is the format and the scale: a decade ago agents offered advice on Twitter; now books, podcasts and paid newsletters reach more dedicated audiences and can be lucrative second lines of business for agents who work on commission.

Laura Zats, who founded Headwater Literary Management with Erik Hane in 2019 and co-hosts the "Print Run" podcast, admitted the spotlight sits uneasily. "It feels weird when the light gets shone on us, even if we're the ones shining the light, because it's not what the job is," she said.

The numbers show real money in it. Anna Sproul-Latimer, who founded Neon Literary with Kent D. Wolf in 2019 and writes its Substack newsletter "How to Glow in the Dark," said she spends about five to 10 percent of her week on it — and that its subscription revenue pays for most of Neon's operating expenses. Zats and Hane run a Patreon offering paid "premium episodes" of "Print Run," which is otherwise free, while keeping free monthly office hours open to any writer, subscriber or not.

"We're trying to work against the gatekeeper role," Hane said. "We can't help everybody by representing them. What we can do is spend an hour a month to talk you through a thorny situation."

Who benefits — and who should be careful?

Alia Hanna Habib, an agent at the Gernert Company, started the Substack newsletter "Delivery and Acceptance" in 2024, interviewing editors, agents, authors and booksellers. Her book on building a nonfiction writing career, "Take It From Me," was bought by Pantheon; a few months later she sold a client's book on the same subject — scholar Laura B. McGrath's "Middlemen," which studies how agents have shaped the literary canon since the 1950s. Both books appeared this year.

Habib framed her motives carefully. "The impetus wasn't primarily building a platform for myself, but rather wanting to demystify an industry to make it a little more inclusive and accessible," she said. "It's also to make the world of books not seem like it exists up on Mount Olympus."

The caveat comes from McGrath herself, who welcomes the transparency but warns: "Few writers can actually succeed at making a living as a writer. Writers need to be really cautious of the advice that they're getting, because there are so many people who are willing to monetize their desperation."

Sproul-Latimer voiced a parallel concern from inside the profession: "I want to make sure what I'm doing is not presenting myself as the talent versus the helper to the talent."

The advice demonstrably works for some. Writer Jessica Liese used McKean's newsletter to guide her submissions, collected 94 rejections, kept going — and recently signed with McKean herself. "If I didn't know how it worked and to expect that much rejection, I might have given up," she said.

Habib, having now published as an author rather than an agent, said the experience changed her view of the job: "It's made me even more empathetic to how vulnerable publishing a book makes you. I get that in a bone-deep way now that I probably couldn't have without having done it."

Whether the agent-influencer model widens access to publishing or simply adds another product to an overcrowded market is the question the next wave of subscribers — and their 94-plus rejections — will answer.