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Middlemen rewrites literary history from the perspective of one of its most important but least visible figures: the literary agent. Chronicling the story of agents in the United States from the 1950s to today, Laura McGrath uncovers their critical role in the making of American literature. From the famed three-martini lunch to the Frankfurt Book Fair, Middlemen takes readers behind the scenes to show how agents influence what we read. Along the way, it explains why many debut novelists never publish another book, why agents champion short story collections even though they sell poorly, how agents advocate for writers of color in a system that values whiteness, and why there are so many New York novels.

Weaving together original archival research, data analysis, and interviews with scores of agents and other publishing professionals, Middlemen demonstrates that agents鈥攅ighty percent of whom are in fact women鈥攁re much more than 鈥渕iddlemen.鈥� As intermediaries between author and publisher, agents act as advocates, matchmakers, negotiators, and tastemakers, and they must balance artistic values with the commercial imperatives of publishing conglomerates. The book describes the decisive role agents have played in celebrated novels鈥攆rom Jack Kerouac鈥檚 On the Road to Colson Whitehead鈥檚 The Intuitionist鈥攂ut also in the creation of entire literary categories like the debut novel, the story collection, postmodernism, multiethnic fiction, and world literature.

Featuring profiles of agents past and present such as Sterling Lord, Lynn Nesbit, Candida Donadio, Marie Brown, and Andrew Wylie, along with perspectives from agents at all stages of their careers, Middlemen is an entertaining and eye-opening account of how literary fiction鈥攁nd the literary canon鈥攊s made.