Agent Spotlight: Mary Cummings

 

Nov. 20, 2020

UPDATE June 2021: Mary Cummings has started her own literary agency, Great River Literary. Please visit her website to see her MSWL and submission guidelines.

We are excited to feature agent Mary Cummings, with Betsy Amster Literary, who represents picture books, middle grade, and young adult. Read about her wishlist and enter to win a Golden Query Pass using the Rafflecopter widget below (a Golden Query Pass puts your query at the top of her reading list).

Tell us about your background and how you came to agenting.

For many years I was Education Director at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. At the Loft I curated an annual festival of children's literature, with many publishing professionals serving as speakers and master teachers. I also selected judges from among the top children's book editors in the country for the McKnight Award in Children's Literature. These contacts formed the foundation of my editorial relationships when I joined Betsy Amster's agency to represent kidlit. (I had hired Betsy on numerous occasions to teach workshops at the Loft). 

 

What types of books are you looking for these days?

My website, cummingskidlit.com, supplements the agency website, amsterlit.com and has a wishlist plus submission guidelines. In a nutshell, I tend to favor books with a sense of warmth and optimism. I'm especially seeking fiction about friendships and family relationships, and lyrical nonfiction about the natural world and science. I love the mountains and the Western landscape and would love to rep a book with that setting. I've sold several #OwnVoices projects and am seeking more, to broaden the visions and stories available to young readers. Picture books and middle-grade novels tend to be what I'm most drawn to for representation. 

 

How would you describe your agenting style?

I'm an editorial agent. I like to work with both emerging and established writers and author/illustrators to help them polish their work to make it vibrant and exciting and marketable. 

What are some common mistakes you see in queries and sample pages?  

 

Common mistakes include blanket queries ("Dear Agent" or "Hello"), incorrect spelling ("Betty Amster," "Mary Cummins") and poor punctuation in both the query and the manuscript (this is an instant decline for me). Sometimes the query and sample pages arrive in 6 or 8 point type, making it more than a little difficult to read - which tends to hasten the project into my trash bin. Sample pages sometimes include an over-long prologue to a novel. It's not always evident in the first page or two what kind of book this is or what's at stake for the characters, and that's a big problem. Even if these things aren't fully revealed, the reader needs some strong hints through both voice and plot elements. 

 

What excites you most about a manuscript?

As to what excites me most in a manuscript, to add to what I've already mentioned, I would have to say the voice. The overall tone of the story, and the sensibility shining through that creates and captures characters in a world, has to strike a chord in me. 

 

What is something most people don't know about you? 

I'm wild about opera. 

 

What's the best way to query you?

Please follow submission guidelines on cummingskidlit.com when querying me. Be sure to avoid sending attachments, as your query will be deleted without being read. I always like a bit of bio info, including information on any experience you have with kids or teens, your writing background, occupation, where you live, platform data, etc. 

 

Mary Cummings joined Betsy Amster Literary Enterprises in 2008 to represent books for kids and teens. Among her sales are board and picture books, chapter books and novels by such authors as George Shannon, Elizabeth Verdick, John Elkins, Loretta Ellsworth, Ariel Bernstein, Angela Dalton, Hannah Voskuil, Joy Keller, Dawn Young and others to such houses as Abrams; Knopf; Henry Holt; Imprint; FSG; Feiwel & Friends; Philomel; Viking; Random House; L,B; HarperCollins; Walker; Wiseman S &S and Candlewick, among others. 

 

 

 

 

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