I Was in a Situationship… With a Literary Agent

The publishing industry dangles hope, unpaid labor, and broken promises

In 2016, 18-year-old Liza made a vow to never end up in a “situationship” again.

The modern dating world is complicated, and men are non-committal. They shower you with endless plaudits, tell you that there’s no one like you in the world, map out your whole future together on a single phone call, and keep you constantly in limbo, dangling your feelings from a string without any sort of formal promise to ever seal the deal.

At the ripe age of 18, I fell for one of these con artists. Needless to say that I did not come out of that “situationship” in positive spirits, and it took me months to recover from having my heart broken for the first time. You can forgive me for dragging out the whole affair—I was young, naive, and full of hope for something wonderful; I believed the promises about how we were going to shine together and how I was the smartest, most wonderful person he’d ever met. I didn’t even question that there was anything wrong—that I was never officially his “girlfriend”—until the spurious vision that he had laid out for us was second nature in my mind. In a word, I fell for a non-committal guy who was never serious about me in the first place.

As an engaged woman who has spent the past several years in a stable, healthy relationship, I never thought that I would have to feel that sort of pain again—the endless promises, the planning a life together, the assurance that I was the best thing in the entire world—until, at the age of 27, I found myself deep in a “situationship” once again.

Don’t worry, baby. I’m not talking about a secret love affair. I’m talking about my almost-literary agent.

For a young, inexperienced author, securing a literary agent can certainly feel like an unsolicited dating game: rejections, endless trial and error, a twisted numbers game, a headache the morning after a long night drinking—and “you only need one.”

Last December, I thought I found “the one.”

After 18 manuscript requests and three months of querying my novel The Lilac Room, I closed my literary agent spreadsheet tab for the very first time and resolved to shift my energies elsewhere. My novel was in the hands of almost 20 agents, and there was bound to be at least one who saw its potential.

And boy was there someone.

Not long after I had secured my final manuscript request of 2024, the following email landed in my inbox.

Liza -- I finished the manuscript of THE LILAC ROOM, and I did so fairly rapidly because the narrative held my attention. That happens with less than 5% of the novels or memoirs queried to me. You are clearly a significant talent with a distinctive style and a versatile mind.

I was elated.

The agent was one of the last to whom I had sent out a manuscript. He worked at a boutique literary agency with a killer reputation in literary fiction and a strong aptitude for book sales. He had finished the entire novel in just ten days—light speed for a literary agent—and requested to set up a call to discuss next steps.

The morning of our Zoom meeting, I put on my most lesbian-looking shirt (the more leftist, the better), brewed a cup of coffee, and paced around my apartment humming old Russian tunes under my breath to attempt to calm my nerves. I had spent the previous night reading every blog post under the sun about how to prepare for “the call” (which only really happened if an agent was serious about your work), and ran through my list of questions for the agent minutes before our Zoom, hoping that this would be a perfect fit.

None of the 47 blog posts that I had read could have prepared me for what happened next.

The agent raved about my book, claiming that I was the next incarnation of Henry Miller and that the entire manuscript felt like a “vivid and continuous dream.” I had a “very accomplished prose style” that kept him on the edge of his seat for the majority of the book and a bright literary career ahead of me.

“We’re going to make literary history together,” he declared, a toothy smile spreading across his face.

I leaned into my laptop screen. “So how can we move forward?” Given his positive ravings about The Lilac Room, I was certain that he was about to make an offer.

“I’m wondering if you might be open to a few developmental edits,” he went on. “I felt that the middle was somewhat slow, but the edits shouldn't take longer than six weeks or so.”

Sure, I was open to edits. Of course I was! Every novel went through some sort of agent-led revision process before being sent off to editors.

“I’d like to do the edits before we formalize our work together,” he continued. “But I feel very confident in your potential, and if everything checks out, we can send out an agency contract after we revise the draft.”

I nodded. That seemed perfectly all right.

“He’s a professional,” my dad assured me later that day over the phone. “He knows what he’s doing. These edits will be really good for your novel—he’ll help make it stronger, and then when you sign in a few weeks, it’ll be basically ready to go out to editors.”

Having prepared myself for an offer, I couldn't help but feel bummed out for the rest of the evening, but I thought my dad was right. The agent would help sharpen the book, and it would be on its way to publication before I knew it.

The following morning, I received another email from the agent with instructions about the editing process. A line at the bottom of the email caught my eye.

I won’t leave you too long in suspense.

After several more emails, we had transitioned to WhatsApp and were texting back and forth about his vision for The Lilac Room. Reviewing his first wave of edits, I was surprised at how little overhaul he had requested—there were a few typos he had pointed out and a few dialogues he wanted trimmed, but overall, he kept the structure of the book intact. Half of his notes, in fact, were not edits at all but nerdy little remarks on the psychology of my characters or the structure of my sentences. My protagonist was tender and pragmatic, my take on New York City was poignant and painful.

And while I found these observations quirky and endearing, I was somewhat taken aback by the overall structure of his comments—if he didn’t have any major revisions, why hold off on signing me at all?

After about another month, I sent back the revised version of my manuscript. There was one major change that he’d requested, which had involved writing a new chapter towards the end, but other than that, despite meticulously implementing his minor changes, my book looked virtually the same as when I had first sent it to him back in January. In fact, I wondered if he himself had realized about halfway through the revision process that he was wrong about the developmental overhaul it needed and decided instead to keep it more or less intact.

In the meantime, the agent had requested that I put together a marketing plan.

He wanted me to send him a survey of other Gen Z books on the market so that he could assess how to pitch the book to agents. I spent another week immersing myself in intensive research, skimming opening chapters of contemporary literature and reading plot summaries to get a sense of what other “Gen Z’ers” were publishing. I sent him back all of my materials at the end of March… and waited.

After another month, I followed up.

The agent apologized for his lack of responsiveness but assured me that he had been on vacation and would get to my manuscript soon. He sent me photos of his trip and responded in his usual conversational tone, reassuring me that we would make literary history together.

Another month passed, and still no contract.

I followed up again, letting him know that I had written a new novel. I asked if he was interested in seeing it.

The agent responded almost at once, serially avoiding my questions about the state of The Lilac Room while asking to see the new novel. I hopped back on the computer, emailed him the draft of my newest work, The Leverkühn Quartet, and waited.

Meanwhile, the agent had finally written me back addressing my initial questions about The Lilac Room. He wondered if I would be open to making further cuts.

I was frowning at my phone. Hadn’t he sent me all of the cuts that he had wanted already? And hadn’t I implemented them already?

I messaged him back letting him know that I would be more than happy to make further cuts but would be interested in formalizing our relationship beforehand.

The agent seemed on board with my plan. He would review my newest novel and “send [me] an agency contract” in the meantime.

I had done it! After six months of endless back and forth texts, marketing busywork, and revisions, I had done it! I had secured a literary agent!

A week passed by.

No contract came.

I followed up again. The agent responded almost instantly with further questions about how I envisioned positioning my novel in the Gen Z market.

I was puzzled. Hadn’t I sent him an entire overview of Gen Z literature several months back? And wasn’t that his job?

Nevertheless, I spent another night doing research and sent him some more information, including my robust Substack presence and social media numbers. Again, he responded very quickly—a supposed indication of his interest.

We will need to document these numbers… I’m thinking that yours should be essentially a personal letter to editors…

He was planning our literary future together!

Still no contract.

May came and went. I sent him some more detailed statistics about my Substack audience to help him understand what sort of people would be reading my novel. The agent responded with some more quips about Henry Miller and another characteristic emoji.

But still no contract.

By now I had caught on: he had no intention of signing my novel.

I decided to stop following up and never heard from him again.

It’s been almost five months since a literary agent broke my heart. I still mourn the days we planned our future together and those little notes he would send about my characters. I’ll still never forget his comment about making literary history together, but I played his games for long enough, putting together marketing plans for hours on end, and sending encouraging responses to his unsolicited vacation pictures just to get that contract. And by the time I realized that there was never going to be a contract to begin with, I was already in it too deep—I had already filled my daydreams with visions of waltzing into Barnes and Noble with a pen in hand, picking my book up off a shelf and gifting a signed copy to a stranger. I had already written that “personal letter to editors” in my head, and I had already begun to think of myself as a published author.

I was a “significant talent with a distinctive style and versatile mind.” I was promised a contract—in writing!

What had gone wrong?

To this day, I don’t have answers. I only know that I can’t be the only person who has been duped by an industry that runs on dangling hope, asking writers for endless unpaid labor, revisions, and marketing plans long before anyone will sign their name across a dotted line. We’re told that “this is just how publishing works,” but the emotional cost for so many authors remains invisible, borne entirely by tears piercing into inbox silence. Surely, this is no way to treat “significant talent.”

I am not sure whether the agent I was working with lied to me to begin with or whether he had a change of heart halfway through—I only know that I poured my heart into six months of extra busywork when I could have been using that same time querying my next novel or working on my next big project. And while I feel cruelly led on, I also know that I should have sensed the red flag from the very start—if he was ever intending to sign, he would have done it from the very first time we hopped on that Zoom call.

But, as they say, there is no use crying over spilled milk.

The vast majority of writers don’t speak up for fear of burning bridges. But I’m not interested in crossing bridges that were broken to begin with—I’m more concerned with getting real books published and real talent out into the world—and as William Faulkner tells us, sometimes you have to kill your darlings. So I’ll sacrifice this one relationship—and maybe many more—for the truth about the industry in the hopes that we can build a better future for all talented querying authors—so that no other writers find themselves in literary “situationships” again.

It turns out that finding a literary agent is like dating men after all. They come with the same set of red flags that innocent, inexperienced girls tend to ignore because, from the start, these girls are married to a vision. In my case, that vision was to see my book lining all the shelves—to witness my words not only printed on the page but imprinted in the thousands of hearts they would someday affect—to have my story reach a thousand minds and summon one thousand sets of tears in sympathy with my characters.

But 18-year-old Liza once dreamed of wedding dresses and getting married in a royal ballroom to a classical serenade. Crying in a bathtub, she vowed to find the man who meant everything he ever said to her—the man who would make those dreams come true.

This coming year, I’ll be putting on that wedding dress in a royal ballroom, experiencing a reality that surpasses any of the dreams that broken-hearted Liza could have ever conjured.

And soon enough, with the right agent, my bookshelf dreams will be reality, too.

Enjoyed this post? You can Buy Me a Coffee so that I’ll be awake for the next one. If you are a starving artist, you can also just follow me on Instagram or “X.”