Welcome to Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books with Zivie. I'm the host, Zivie Owens. I am an author. My latest is blank,

pub date March 1st, a novel. I'm also a podcaster, obviously, a publisher, a bookstore owner,

and so much more. If you love books, you're in the right place. In fact, we call it the Zivieverse, or really, the L.A. Times called it the Zivieverse, and we're going with it. Go to Zivie Owens.com to learn more and follow me on Instagram at Zivie Owens. Lucinda Halpern is the author of Get Signed, Find an Agent, land a book deal, and become a published author. Lucinda is a literary agent and the founder of Lucinda Halpern is the author of Get Signed, Find an Agent, land a book deal, and become a published author.

Lucinda is a literary agent and the founder of Lucinda Literary, based in New York.

She has worked with all major publishers, including Penguin Random House, Simon & Chuster, Macmillan, Hachett, and Scholastic,

and currently represents New York Times and internationally best-selling authors

in the categories of personal growth,

popular science, narrative nonfiction, memoir, and upmarket fiction.

Her classes and coaching programs have been taught to hundreds of writers worldwide,

and it became the inspiration for her new book, Get Signed.

Welcome, Lucinda.

Thank you so much for coming on Mom's Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss,

Get Signed, Find an Agent, Land a Book deal, and become a published author. Hi. So good to be here. This is the book that so many people I need to just like hand it to them because everyone's always asking like, okay, well, I have this, I've written this, or I'm 40 pages in, or I have a draft, but I don't know what to do, and I'm like, well, you need to find an agent first, and they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, I don't know. Don't send it to me. No, I'm kidding. But you have all the answers. I'm kidding, not kidding. Okay, tell, give it the whole story, your whole story, the book, your background, jump in.

Yeah. So I'm a literary agent for Sinforma, so I'm that person that people are asking you about when they want to get published. What exactly is that person? And the way I put it is, especially for moms, we're like the doula when you don't trust the doctor. We're the person

who is your midwife sort of helping you birth this thing, which is nothing short of, you know,

of a labor, of a child that you've been incubating for so long. And we, you know, so mainly we're

known for brokering a publishing deal, right? We're helping you to get book advance, and we are looking out for your rights and your contract.

But agents are so much more than that, right?

We're your first champions, we're your therapists.

We are looking after your business affairs so that you can keep your relationships and your work creative,

which is a really

important part of the partnership. We're your first editors, so we're shaping your work with you,

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