It is not just money, says writer Advaita Kala. “I think it is really important to be with an agent who cares about you and just doesn’t view you as a business proposition. Writing can be lonely and a lot of times the kind of advice you need is hard to come by,” says Kala whose romantic comedy Almost Single was published by HarperCollins in mid-2007. Once the foreign press got wind of the favourable reviews it received in India, Kala got noticed and had agents coming her way. Her New York-based agent finally got her book auctioned and Bantam Dell won the bid. They are now introducing Kala this February in their fiction programme called Bantam Discovery.

So getting a pen pal, dear writer, is not a bad idea.