A literary agent in New York City has the best chance of landing you a good publishing deal with a good publisher who will pay a decent advance. Sure, there are agents in other cities, and many of them are wonderful. But New York City is the publishing capital of the world. There are more bookstores and publishers here than anywhere. When I was in high school I used to travel from the Bronx into Manhattan by subway just to visit the great bookstores: Brentano's, Scribner's, the Strand, and Barnes and Noble. Now that I'm a published writer, I still travel to New York for its bookstores, but these days I also visit my literary agents.