Acquisitions Today – Agent Panel – Tina Wexler

Fabulous Tina Wexler of ICM Partners tells us a little bit of her Super Agent Origin Story. ICM is one of the oldest agencies around with offices all over the place, Tina works at the NY office. She started there as an assistant 13 years ago and loves the brain trust that is her extended family of agents and staff.

Her list is mostly MG and YA, she's not really looking for picture books. She's excited for nonfiction YA essay collections and she also wants to represent diverse books.

TINA IS A CAT PERSON. She says that's probably all we need to know.

Lin asks what does a manuscript need for Tina to acquire it?

Tina says it's two parts, and very simple: Do I love it? Can I sell it?

As she's reading it and falling in love, can Tina start to think of names of editors she can sell it to? If she can't think of those names, Tina will pass on it in the hopes it is picked up by another great agent who can polish/position it in the way the manuscript needs to be to get that great sale and success.

Lin asks if Tina is an editorial agent: Tina agrees with the majority of the panel that she does (and most agents today do) tend to edit an acquired manuscript to be its very best before it goes out to editors (who will then revise even more). But Tina wants to point out that the author MUST first revise enough on their own until they are sure what they are submitting to an agent is at its absolute best. Don't be sending your work out in the hopes an agent will edit it into shape, you do that on your own.

Something Tina says we need to take much more seriously than we do are our buying practices:

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