Agent For Hire

August 16, 2010, Monday, two days after his audition at the ROH Factory, is the start of Tayaw's third week in his online tutoring job. Only two weeks away from the end of his contract with the company, just in time for the start of the school term.

This week, Tayaw is planning to really save as much as he can for future expenses. In his past two weeks, Tayaw had to tighten his belt to buy his laptop, guitar, digital camera, and his new IPhone4. It was a blessing that his parents already paid the deposit for his dorm, enough rent for two months.

Starting this week, as arranged by him and his employer, his schedule at work will begin at 1:00 pm. Reason being is that he will start looking for a literary agent for his book in the mornings. He himself will not be enough to walk around Ouigab and other cities to look for a publishing firm for his books, if he wants to publish his books as soon as possible.

Getting up from his bed at 5:30 am, he opened his laptop and started posting notices to various job websites. After posting, he also looked up if there's an office of Writer's Guild of Teungeb in Ouigab City. To his relief, there is. Ouigab is not only a university city, but also a hub of arts and music that is the go to place of artists and musicians from all over Teungeb, so finding a local office of the Writer's Guild of Teungeb is not surprising. Closing his laptop, he also double checked his manuscripts before shoving them in his backpack.

He already printed out the manuscripts of both pg-13 and general audiences versions of his Grimm's Fairy Tales. From his research on the internet, debut authors like him will usually get around 18000 bgc ($9000) as credit from the publishing firm, along with a 7% royalty from each book sold.

Regarding the 7% royalty though, a debut author will not get a share of royalty until after the publisher earns back the credit they gave the author. In Tayaw's case, if he was able to successfully sign a deal from a publishing firm, they will give him a credit of 18000 bgc, and offer him a 7% share. He will not earn from his royalty until his fairy tales will reach a sale of 18000 bgc. The sales of the books after that will give Tayaw his 7% share.

After showering, he headed to his go to mom-and-pop restaurant for breakfast. While eating, he was checking his phone to double check the notices he put out. He also slowly mulled over the difficulty of publishing a book. Even though he has excellent works in his head, it's no use if he cannot publish them.

At 8 am, Tayaw arrived at the Writers' Guild office. It took him almost 2 hours because he also had to buy himself a card for the subway which he will use to get to the Writers' Guild Office. It was too far from his dorm that taking a cab will be foolish. The reason he came here is to ask for a list of literary agents franchised and accredited by the Writers' Guild.

After stepping through the entrance, he saw that all the tables in the office are empty except for the one closest from the entrance, occupied by a lady busy typing on her computer. 'Nelly C. Ley, Secretary' Tayaw read what was written on the glass name plate on the office lady's table. With no one else present, Tayaw headed for her.

"Good morning Ms. Ley." Tayaw greeted the office secretary. The lady looked up from her computer screen to Tayaw, gave him a look from head to toe, curious what a kid is doing at the office. "Do I know you, young man?"

"No ma'am. But I learned of you from your name plate here." Tayaw replied. Understanding this, Ms. Ley asked "What can I do for you? Are you sure you're in the right place?"

"I'm currently looking to hire an agent for myself. I know this is the Writers' Guild, but I don't know where to look for an agent, so I came here hoping to get help to where to start looking." Tayaw replied.

The office lady raised her eyebrows at this. 'Either this young lad has written something good, or he's just too full of himself.' She thought to herself while considering entertaining Tayaw any further. Prompted by the sore feeling in her eyes, she turned off the screen of her computer to let her eyes take a break.

"So, which type of writer are you?" Ms. Lei asked.

"I would consider myself an Author, ma'am. So I'm looking for an agent to help me look for a publishing firm." Tayaw replied.

"I can actually give you a list of our contracted agents right now." Ms. Lei said to Tayaw's surprise. Tayaw was about to think this was easy when he heard Ms. Lei's next words.

"In exchange, let me take a look at your work. After all, I couldn't just give away names and contacts of agents if your work doesn't cut it." Tayaw found this request reasonable so he took out the envelope containing the children's' version, and handed it to the lady.

Ms. Lei opened the envelope and was disappointed at the title page "Grimm's Fairy Tales for Children – Vol. 1". Fairy tales in this world, although dime a dozen, are hard to write, and even harder to compete with the old fairy tales that already embedded themselves in the culture.

She knew it was unfair of her to judge the manuscript without reading its contents, but she also knew enough that fairy tales are nigh untouched in the literary industry. With low expectations, she turned to the next page.

'THE FROG PRINCE - Long ago, when wishes often came true, there lived a King whose daughters were all handsome, but the youngest was so beautiful that the sun himself, who has seen everything, was bemused every time he shone over her because of her beauty. Near the royal castle there was a great dark wood, and in the wood under an old linden tree was a well; and when the day was hot, the King's daughter used to go forth into the wood and sit by the brink of the cool well, and if the time seemed long, she would take out a golden ball, and throw it up and catch it again, and this was her favorite pastime.'

Reading up to this point, Ms. Lei's low expectations were almost nullified by the descriptive quality of the story. In all the fairy tales she read, the fairy tales were never this descriptive using words.

Most of the fairy tales she read are accompanied by pictures to set the scene of the story. Her interest piqued, she read on. As she read the story, she was again surprised with the emotion from the words, a quality she rarely found in fairy tales. Most fairy tales she read lacked the descriptive trait for emotions and the authors of those fairy tales relied on the adults who will read it to their children to put emotions into the story.

After reading the Frog Prince, she moved on to the next story, 'Cat and Mouse in Partnership'. 'Cat and Mouse in Partnership' was a story she liked better than the Frog Prince. Although it was bleaker, she found parallels of the Cat's cunning to the Mouse's naivety, with the reality of human society.

Tayaw on the other hand, just stood there, watching in amusement at Ms. Lei turning pages in silence.