The Mailroom by David Rensin (click on book cover photo to purchase- affiliate link) is a brilliant compilation of interviews with industry bigwigs who earlier in their career did time in talent agency mailroom training programs. Interviewees include Ron Meyer, President & COO of Universal Studios, and Bernie Brillstein, the late talent manager, film and television producer and co-founder/co-head of Brillstein-Grey.

For those of you who don’t know, the big agencies in town, such as Creative Artists, United Talent, and William Morris, have programs to groom industry neophytes into agents. This is not a glorified internship, but a highly-competitive, formal apprenticeship (though sometimes the duties assigned to trainees seem more of a hazing ritual than on-the-job training). And that’s the idea, I guess. If you can take it, persevere, and even triumph, you have the right stuff to be an agent.

Because of the opportunity it presents, often the applicants to the training program are law school grads and MBAs. This book will give you an inside glimpse into that world and you can see for yourself if this might be something for you. (And if you decide it’s something you want to do, check out this post on How To Get Into The Mailroom Trainee Program.)

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