Middlemen: Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction

A revealing account of how agents have shaped book publishing and the literary canon from the 1950s to todayMiddlemen rewrites literary history from the perspective of one of its most important but least visible figures: the literary agent. Chronicling the story of agents in the United States from the 1950s to today, Laura McGrath uncovers their critical role in the making of American literature. From the famed three-martini lunch to the Frankfurt Book Fair, Middlemen takes readers behind the scenes to show how agents influence what we read. Along the way, it explains why many debut novelists never publish another book, why agents champion short story collections even though they sell poorly, how agents advocate for writers of color in a system that values whiteness, and why there are so many New York novels.Weaving together original archival research, data analysis, and interviews with scores of agents and other publishing professionals, Middlemen demonstrates that agents-eighty percent of whom are in fact women-are much more than "middlemen." As intermediaries between author and publisher, agents act as advocates, matchmakers, negotiators, and tastemakers, and they must balance a…