AGENT SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW WITH ALYSSA JENNETTE and QUERY CRITIQUE GIVEAWAY

Today I’m thrilled to have agent Alyssa Jennette here. She is a literary agent at Stonesong Literary Agency.


Status: Closed to submissions.PLease check the agency website to find out when she reopens to submissions.

Hi Alyssa! Thanks so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me! 😊

About Alyssa:

1. Tell us how you became an agent, how long you’ve been one, and what you’ve been doing as an agent.

My path to agenthood was not direct, although I’ve been lucky to either naturally possess or come to develop some of the necessary skills through school and internships. My degree is in Illustration, so I’ve always had an interest in narrative expression, and I’ve always been a natural editor. After college, a close friend trusted me to read two of his manuscripts and offer feedback; once I had, he told me that the literary agents he’d approached had offered him identical feedback, so why don’t I consider being an agent?

So, I emailed a bunch of agencies, lined up some interviews for internships, and ended up working with the lovely Jessica Sinsheimer (creator of Manuscript WishList) at Sarah Jane Freymann Literary Agency. I interned there for a year before interviewing with and accepting a job at Stonesong in 2015—it’s about to be my two-year anniversary here, although I’ve only actively been agenting for a year.

Since I came to agenting relatively late, and had a surprisingly quick track compared to the more traditional route, I’m still building my list and forming relationships with editors.

About the Agency:

2. Share a bit about your agency and what it offers to its authors.

Stonesong has been around for over thirty years—it started as primarily a book packager, and about fifteen years ago the agency arm of the business took the lead. It’s female-owned with an all-female team, which has been a real joy to be a part of. There’s a real feeling of collaboration and support in the office, and I know that if I need to bounce an idea off of my coworkers, or to ask for help or input, I have a ton of willing ears ready to help out. That means that all of our authors have access the same pool of knowledge: at the end of the day, a Stonesong author has a team of people working to help them succeed, not just one.

What She’s Looking For:

3. What age groups do you represent—picture books, MG, and/or YA? What genres do you represent and what are you looking for in submissions for these genres?

My list is pretty broad when it comes to age groups: I represent picture books, middle grade (my sweet spot), and some YA and adult. My taste across the board tends to run more literary, but I love to laugh—no matter what the “mood” of your writing is, I want to see cleverness. I want to be enchanted and outsmarted.

4. Is there anything you would be especially excited to seeing in the genres you are interested in?

I have been saying over and over again for months that I want a YA noir in the vein of Brick, Veronica Mars, and now Riverdale. Please, please, please, give it to me. Make it beautifully and intricately plotted, play with the traditional noir tropes, surprise your readers.

I would also love a romantic/coming-of-age plot that revolves around a Craigslist Missed Connection. I’m obsessed with Missed Connections and I read them for fun.

I’d also love an epistolary novel (text, emails, chats) about the decline of a best-friendship—think of it like a future anthropologist might if they came across some old hard drive and had to piece together the plot of some digital social media history.

That’s a lot of YA requests, so let’s talk about MG: I think MG has a unique opportunity for sophistication and complexity that other age groups don’t necessarily get. My favorite thing about middle grade is the opportunity to explore—in some readers’ cases, for the first time—the complexities of relationships, the realities of the world. This makes contemporary MG a natural fit, but I adore magic, witches, and mystery, too.

Across the board, I love cleverness. Give me some wordplay, some smart subversion of the world and society we know.

What She Isn’t Looking For:

5. What types of submissions are you not interested in?

I’m not your girl for traditional high fantasy or sci-fi, or for most historical novels. Also, I love romance as part and parcel of a novel, but I want to make sure there’s more going on in the narrative than pure “will-they-won’t-they.”

I’m very wary of books that Capitalize Nouns and Concepts to make them Important and Significant. Your word choice is important, and so are your naming conventions—don’t settle!

Agent Philosophy:

6. What is your philosophy as an agent both in terms of the authors you want to work with and the books you want to represent?

As an agent, my priority is to advocate for you. That means I need my clients to trust me and listen to me. Before I sign a client, I make it clear to them that I’m a pretty direct and determined person; if they have a hard time with hearing occasionally blunt—but helpful!—feedback, we may not be the right fit. I’m a collaborator, and I want to work with the author as closely and symbiotically as possible, so I need the author to work with me, too. I can’t work with someone who will constantly be pushing back and won’t hear my input.

I want to represent books and authors who are telling the truth in a way that makes me look twice. I want to represent authors who make that excitement well up in me when I read about their characters. I need that excitement in order to move forward with an offer. I will pretty much never dogpile on an author just because a lot of other agents are interested—if I don’t feel that spark, I won’t pursue it.

Editorial Agent:

7. Are you an editorial agent? If so, what is your process like when you’re working with your authors before submitting to editors?

I am definitely an editorial agent, but I can’t be the first person who sees an author’s manuscript. It is not my job to edit your work from scratch, and the manuscript needs to be polished before it reaches my inbox—that remains true whether you’re querying for the first time or you’re my client and this is our third book together. Once I receive a manuscript from a client I represent, I will read it and line edit as I go, plus make broader observations and suggestions for developmental edits. Once I return the manuscript to the author, they’ll address my edits and I’ll read it again. This usually takes about six months from start to finish (naturally this is a shorter process for picture books). Throughout this process I’ll be doing research here and there about which editor could be a good fit for the project, but I won’t hunker down and finalize the list until the manuscript is totally complete.

Query Methods and Submission Guidelines: (Always verify before submitting)

8. How should authors query you and what do you want to see with the query letter?

Authors should query Stonesong’s submission email and put my name in the subject line along with the word QUERY and the title of their book. As far as the query letter itself, I want to get not only a sense of the plot—the protagonist/s, the stakes, the basic facts—but a sense of the mood and style of the book, too. And, of course, I love to hear a little bit about the authors personally. Just try to keep your letter relatively brief—one page absolute max.

9. Do you have any specific dislikes in query letters or the first pages submitted to you?

“I’m writing in the hopes that you will consider representing my novel…” Yes, of course you are. Just dive right in with your query, whether you’re telling me the title and genre or opening immediately with the plot itself.

Your first ten pages should tell me a good chunk about what’s to come: who we care about and why, where/when we are, what the characters’ goals are, what obstacles they may come up against, basic relationship dynamics between the characters. Certainly the voice should be well-established, too.

Response Time:

10. What’s your response time to queries and requests for more pages of a manuscript?

Typically I’ll process a query within eight weeks—the policy at Stonesong is if you don’t hear back after twelve weeks, it’s a no. If I request a full manuscript, I try to keep to the same timeline—about eight to ten weeks to read and respond. If I take longer than ten weeks, I’m perfectly fine with an author nudging me to see where I am with the manuscript. Naturally, manuscripts that get an offer elsewhere will typically jump to the front of the line.

Self-Published and Small Press Authors:

11. Are you open to representing authors who have self-published or been published by smaller presses? What advice do you have for them if they want to try to find an agent to represent them?

I’m open to it, but generally speaking, it turns me off. A pre-published book basically has to be irresistible to me in order for me to take it on.

12. With all the changes in publishing—self-publishing, hybrid authors, more small publishers—do you see the role of agents changing at all? Why?

At the end of the day, agents will always be the author’s advocate. I expect we’ll just be required to learn how to negotiate contracts that include an ever-expanding list of potential new media and new technology rights.

Interviews and Guest Posts:

13. Please share the links to any interviews and guest posts you think would be helpful to writers interested in querying you.

https://www.bookhivecorp.com/blog/entry/interview-with-bookhiver-tallie-gabriel-s-literary-agent-alyssa-jennette-of-stonesong
http://www.adventuresinyapublishing.com/2017/02/agent-interview-alyssa-jennette-of.html#.WOgiSrvyvfY

Update on 3/192024:

Query Tracker

Manuscript Wish List

MS Wish List

Twitter

Instagram

Agent Spotlight Interview at PB Spotlight (08/2019)

Agent Podcast Interview with Cardinal Press (09/2020)

Links and Contact Info:

14. Please share how writers should contact you to submit a query and your links on the Web.

Please submit your query and first ten pages to submissions@stonesong.com; put QUERY in the subject line and address your query specifically to me.

Additional Advice:

15. Is there any other advice you’d like to share with aspiring authors that we haven’t covered?

-Don’t write for trends; by the time you identify a trend and start writing for it, it’s probably over. Tell the story only you can tell.

-When a character does something, ask yourself why until every single hole is closed up. All your whys should be airtight.

-Don’t rush it. Unless you have a deadline—then do everything you can to be on time. If you can’t be on time, communicate this ASAP!

Thanks for sharing all your advice, Alyssa.

Alyssa is generously offering a query critique to one lucky winner. To enter, all you need to do is be a follower (just click the follower button if you're not a follower) and leave a comment through June 10th. If your e-mail is not on your Google Profile, you must leave it in the comments to enter either contest. If you do not want to enter the contest, that's okay. Just let me know in the comments.

If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog, mention this in the comments and I'll give you an extra entry. This is an international giveaway.

Have any experience with this agent? See something that needs updating? Please leave a comment or e-mail me at natalieiaguirre7@gmail.com

Note: These agent profiles and interviews presently focus on agents who accept children's fiction. Please take the time to verify anything you might use here before querying an agent. The information found here is subject to change.

Last updated: 03/19/2023

Agent Contacted for Review? Yes

Last Reviewed by Agent: 05/24/2017