Jessica Faust

1. You started as an acquisitions editor at Berkley Publishing, Macmillan, and Wiley. Was it something you always felt passionate about? If not, what did you want to do out of high school?

 

Like nearly everyone in publishing or publishing adjacent I grew up loving books and reading all the time. In school I studied journalism and really thought I wanted to be a reporter, but after college decided that wasn’t my career path. The only thing I knew at that point was that I loved words and wanted to work with words and eventually that’s what led me to book publishing. 

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2. What made you decide to go from an acquisitions editor to a literary agent?

 

I was bored to be honest. I wanted to try something new and was tired of being confined by the publishing houses I worked with (a house that only publishes nonfiction or fiction). I wanted to work on a variety of books and I think even as a child I was entrepreneurial so the idea of doing things my own way was really appealing. 

 

3. What inspired you to start your own literary agency?

 

I’m not sure I was inspired. It was really more of a hare-brained idea while riding the subway one day. I had just come to the realization that I could do the job I was doing by working on the other side and with my own rules. So on a whim I did it. 

 

4. What genre(s) do you represent?

 

Mystery, suspense, romance, book club fiction, upmarket fiction, speculative fiction

 

5. Who are some of your clients? 

 

Kia Abdullah, Ellery Adams, Amber and Danielle Brown, LIlli Sutton, Melissa Payne, Heather Webber, Krista Davis

 

6. What is your favourite part of being an agent?

 

Nothing beats the magic of two calls — the offer call and the call to tell an author the publisher is making an offer. I get to be a part of making someone’s dream come true and by default my dream of seeing these books out in the world is coming true. But also, knowing that I’ve fallen in love with a story and that thousands of people might later feel the same, might feel that joy that all book lovers feel when we fall into a book, is priceless.

7. If you sit down to read a novel, which genre do you gravitate to first?

 

Typically suspense or mystery, but I have a mission to read unintentionally which means I don’t overthink my books but pick up whatever I see and just read. It’s helped me to get out of my comfort zone, explore new genres and authors, and it actually bleeds over into my queries where I’m finding myself gravitating toward fun and different things. I also find when working with clients I get ideas to pass along to them from genres outside of what they are writing.

 

8. Have you ever published a novel or thought about publishing one?

 

NO! I have incredible admiration for authors. I cannot imagine spending months or years writing and editing a book. The writing would be hard enough, the editing and revisions would kill me. I don’t have that talent. As a former journalist I definitely am, at best, a short form writer, but definitely not fiction. 

 

9. We know it’s hard to pinpoint what drew you to a book or a character, or what made you connect with a story that you immediately needed to get that author’s book out there, and it’s one of those moments that you just know this is the client for you. But …what besides bringing more underrepresented and marginalized voices into publishing are you looking for when reading that query letter/synopsis/novel?

 

I’m looking for all the same things readers look for when wandering a bookstore or the library. I’m looking for a book that brings me joy, that I can fall into and never want to read. However, that answer doesn’t help writers know what to query. 

 

So on a more practical, helpful level, I tend to gravitate toward books with friends and family. While I always love a good dark suspense, I also like joy and laughter, and fun. I feel like we all need more of that in the world. While not all books need a social message, I do like those (although the message should be subtle). Things that make me stop and take a second look are food, magic, dogs, and mostly really great ideas that I don’t feel like I’ve seen before or want to see more of.

 

Comp titles that I want more of include a variety of different things—-The Push, A Bad Day for Sunshine, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches, The Dead Romantics, any Kevin Kwan, Yellowface, any Sarah Addison Allen, When Women Were Dragons, The God of the Woods, The Housemaid…. Ok, I could go on, but this is wide variety of books that inform my list. I’m probably missing some mystery and suspense in there. 

 

10. Are there any other social media links, websites, or other places to learn about you that we should add? 

 

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11. If you could give any advice to a new writer/author, what would it be? 

 

Keep going. You learn more from writing the next book than you do getting stuck into the depths of one book over and over again. Each book should be a step to the next book, the better book. Each query will be better than the last.