Erin Hosier endorses Betsy Lerner and the She Writes Live event October 6th.



It's no secret that Betsy Lerner is to me what Emerson was to Thoreau, de Kooning was to Rauschenberg, and what Rabbi Shmuley was to Michael Jackson. (Okay, maybe what Madonna is to Lady Gaga might be a more apt example.) I have often told the story of… Continue

Erin Hosier reconnects with an early influence...



Recently my favorite teacher from high school, who is now retired, contacted me via Facebook. I was shocked that she remembered me. I don't think I ever got higher than a C (maybe a B-) in either of her English Lit or Composition classes. She was really, really tough, but in the best way: challenging, dynamic, rebellious, a little kooky. And… Continue

Agent Erin Hosier answers the question inquiring minds want to know...



Someone recently asked me what I do for a living. I told the stranger that I work in publishing. What sort of publishing, he wanted to know. Book publishing, I answered. I work with writers, I allowed. So you’re an editor? Actually, I admitted, I’m an agent for authors. I’m a literary agent. “What’s that?” He asked, eyeing me skeptically.… Continue

Dear Erin Hosier,



My name is REDACTED and my memoir is titled Life's Not Fair. I grew up with a father who idolized Hitler and turned out to be a pedophile. As a child I blocked out memories that he molested me. When I was a teenager the police raided our home because he had child porn on his computer. My mother has paranoid schizophrenia and our father refused to let us see each other for about a decade. At school I was tormented by bullies and at… Continue

Leaving publishing's future to tk, by Erin Hosier.





I am pleased to announce that I found inspiration in Denver this weekend. It was my second visit in five years to the Lighthouse Writer's Workshop annual Lit Fest, but I feel like this time was different. I met all kinds… Continue

Just how much is an agent responsible for, anyway? Erin Hosier enlightens us.



"I just finished listening to the webinar you did with Amanda Moon on May 7th. I’ve published two books, and still, I learned a lot. You made a comment about 48 minutes in about the relationship between writers and agents, that sometimes the agent does all s/he can do… Continue

Erin Hosier is looking forward to not attending publishing's biggest trade show.



As Mia Eaton wrote about last week, this Tuesday-Thursday in NYC is the BEA (Book Expo America), which for the uninitiated is basically a giant trade show for publishers.… Continue

Erin Hosier's having a spirit attack



So I totally sold the book last week. I am so relieved for myself and thrilled for the author! Practicing The Secret, or my half-assed version of it—allowing myself only positive mental imagery related to agenting instead of the tendency to avoid my Depression-related-depression with hypersomnia—seemed to work.



All in all, I've been… Continue

Erin Hosier is very, very confident.

For two weeks now I have been practicing "The Secret," aka The Law of Attraction. After several years of being beaten down by publishers with a constant barrage of rejections and undependable, exceedingly disappointing excuses, I have decided to respond to the pain in a different way than that to which I'd become accustomed—crying, hitting pillows with a whiffle ball bat… Continue

Erin Hosier is trying to figure out how to deliver your soulmate every damn day.



A book is a relationship. Or at least it represents one for a lot of people, not just between reader and writer or writer and writer's significant other, but for all the other people involved in the "making-of" process. So it's no wonder that when we go about doing our jobs, agents and editors like to use and abuse the… Continue

Erin Hosier leaves town and contemplates favorite work retreats



I'm coming to you today from Memphis, TN. where I've been for the last five days meeting with the subject of an upcoming biography, taking some meetings, catching up on some delinquent reading. These are things that I do on the regular in my home base in NYC, but whenever I'm down south—in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Georgia, South… Continue

Erin Hosier muses on the importance of a memorable book title.



Titles are my life. I spend a lot of time thinking them up, judging other people's, debating them with colleagues, and ripping them off from song lyrics, catch phrases or some other piece of pop culture. The fact that you can't copyright them is very exciting to me. Sometimes you get a feeling as an agent that if you have the perfect title… Continue

Wherein sometime winner-at-snacking Erin Hosier bitches about all time loser at originality, The Penis Review



Men: they've come a long way, haven't they? Sometimes it's just nice to sit back and enjoy their successes, especially in publishing. Take the recent announcement that Farrar Straus & Giroux's favorite son, Lorin… Continue

The big news in publishing this week was the defection of Bob Miller from the experimental HarperCollins imprint HarperStudio in favor of running things over at Workman (also home to Algonquin and Artisan). The highly respected Miller shook things up two years ago by launching the imprint, whose innovation was to take an indie approach to profit sharing with its authors (a modest cash advance in… Continue