I am currently an intern for a literary agency, Ayesha Pande Literary and it has been an incredible experience. I get to read queries, draft readers reports, rejection letters and post on social media among other things. My favorite thing about the internship is reading the queries. I’m reading the first step in the entire publishing world. I read a query and see what makes it marketable and if it is something that my agency should explore representing.
At first, I was intimidated by the process. I mean, who am I to say whether something has the potential to be published or not? Eventually, I learned that after reading enough of the queries you sort of develop a nose for what works and what doesn’t. I’m nowhere near being able to locate a bestseller from the rough pages of a query but it’s still nice to perfect the skill. Another one of my favorite parts of the internship are the goodies I get: books galore or even just the opportunity to read books set to be published soon like Sheba Karim’s That Thing We Call A Heart which is set to be published May 9th and Lisa Ko’s The Leavers set for May 2nd.
