The day in the life of a literary agent really varies. There are large and structured agencies, small independent operators and midsized firms. I work for a midsized work. We represent a lot of estates - the families of deceased authors. Our biggest is probably an award-winning author's estate. I also oversee all of our foreign rights. Some agents specialize in a genre, but all I specialize in is good writing.

9:30: I get into the office. I oversee all of my company's foreign rights. We often have foreign publishers requesting the right to publish something from an estate. I do about five foreign rights contracts a week, like giving a French publisher the right to republish a famous book. I usually spend at least part of my morning dealing with foreign publishers and drawing up contracts. This needs to happen in the morning because of the time difference.

11:00: I look at the rest of my e-mails that aren't from foreign publishers. I get a lot of e-mails from authors. Have you read the new draft? What about chapter 3? That kind of thing.

12:30: Time for a lunch meeting. I meet with an editor I know to try to sell her a manuscript. Whenever I get a new book, I sit down and think about which editor would want it. You can have the greatest book in the world, but it won't do you any good if you can't sell it. The agent usually makes the pitch right at the end of the main course; before that time, there's a lot of chitchat and catching up. The editors usually take the literary agents out to lunch - after all, they need to acquire new projects too.

2:00: I return to the office and return calls. One misconception of literary agents is that they spend their day reading. I never read in the office. I don't have time. I read at home in the evenings and on the weekends. I spend the afternoon negotiating deals with editors and talking to writers. One phone call can take an hour. Being an agent also means you have to be a therapist, especially when dealing with a writer. I have a lot of writers who live in California, and they tend to start calling about noon, when I'm usually out the door.

Editors can take a while to evaluate a project. But if I think a book is perfect for one particular publishing house, you can make an exclusive offer - you don't send it to any other houses - and tell them what you're looking for financially. The turnaround on exclusive offers is much faster.

7:00: After an afternoon of calls, I head out to a book party. In this new era of cost-cutting, only major authors at big publishing houses have parties thrown to launch their books. Some smaller houses will have a party to launch their fall line in its entirety, for example. And sometimes authors will have parties to celebrate their own books.