Simplify Finding A Great Literary Agent With These Easy Techniques

Let me start by saying that this post will not address the need for a literary agent or traditional publishing’s pros and cons. This post will describe a practical strategy to find a suitable agent, provided that you have already decided that having one is what you need. I’ll break this post down into two parts—the first one will discuss why you usually fail to find t agent, and the second part will analyze how to find that agent. The first part will give you an understanding of the process and those weak points where it can break, and the second will try to find ways to fix it.

Why You Failed Finding an Agent

Did you ever think about the fact that a lot of people put a more significant value on what they produce than what they are as human beings? Stay with me, and I will give you my thoughts about the psychology at play here.

We’ll use two analogies: dating and job hunting. Most likely, we all went through those stages at various points in our lives and not once, but multiple times. That’s because we all need a companion and (most of us) a job, and both those processes are a massive numbers’ game.

Fear of Rejection

I don’t think I ever heard of a person who went on two dates and then said, that’s it, I will be single forever. No, people assume that there was no match and move on. Most of the time, it is a human reaction to believe that somehow you were the cause of the lack of a match. Something about you made that date bad, or that job interview went the wrong way. It’s normal because we are creatures who are statistically predominantly governed by fear and self-doubt.

However, things are entirely different when we think about what we produce. Whether it’s a painting, a song, a sculpture, or a novel, the product of our artistic creation is always, always, in our minds, beyond Godly. It is the best thing that anyone has ever seen, and everyone who sees it should be damn proud of being allowed in the presence of such greatness.

And that is the antithesis of the two mental processes: rejection in a date or job — my fault or at least partially my fault. Rejection of my work or creation—their fault for not understanding its greatness.

The fear of rejection becomes so great that it becomes a hurdle in searching for an agent, which is a significant numbers game. So the number one reason why you fail in finding the right agent is the fear of rejection.

Patience, my dear Watson!

Number two is the good-old patience. Beginning writers are not patient, and that behavior rides precisely on the wave of our current society as a whole. Nobody wants to wait anymore, and everyone seeks instant gratification. Everything is available fast, now, live, online.

You need to re-frame your vision about this process and understand that it is a lengthy process. You must jump straight to the acceptance stage and tell yourself that patience is what you need. We’ll see later how to manage that expectation.

Target the suitable literary agents

The third reason you fail to get a good agent is that you target the wrong audience. I won’t go into details here because we will discuss later how to target the proper agent. But just as applying to jobs that require you to be a Master Chef while you are a Chess Master, don’t render any interviews; targeting the wrong agent won’t get you representation.

Obey the rules

The fourth reason is the failure to follow instructions. This flaw appears in two distinct groups: people who lack focus and attention and people with a giant ego who believe that some stupid restrictive rules shouldn’t fetter them. We’ll talk about each other in a bit.

Whereas the first four reasons are related to your behavior, a few more reasons do not depend on you. These are the agent’s availability and workload and a little bit of luck.

For the remainder of this post, I will try to address all those things that, when done well, increase your ability to avoid the mistakes above and find an excellent agent to represent your work.

A Practical Way to Finding a Literary Agent

Finish Your Work

The first and foremost rule I have is: finish your work. Don’t start approaching agents before your manuscript is complete. If you do, you might get into various issues, but the most critical is turning an agent off when they like your work. You submit, the agent replies and asks for the manuscript, and you reply that it will be ready within a month. Don’t do that; you are only shooting yourself in the foot. Finish your work first, and then start the agent search process.

Create an Outstanding Query Letter

Writing query letters is an art in itself. There are books and articles on the subject, and I added a few links at the end of this article. Make sure you study the art of crafting query letters but try not to follow templates literally. Use the concepts and methods described, but make your query personal and fresh. Remember, a good query letter may not get you representation every time, but a lousy query letter will get you rejected in 99.99% of cases.

Know Your Market

You finished your book. It’s done. One day at a writer’s conference, you step into an elevator and meet a literary agent, so you decide to pitch your book. You have 30 seconds. What do you say? I am not joking; stop reading now and think what you would say; how would you convey the type of book, the target, the market, the genre to somebody? If you don’t know the answer off the top of your head, you are not ready to look for an agent.

Make sure that you know what type of book you wrote. Know other books that might have similarities to yours. If I tell you that this book is “a fantasy story where Lord of the Rings meets The Wizard of Oz,” you may not get an exact image, but you do get some feeling about what it might be. If I tell you that this book is “like a Stephen King book written by Emily Bronte,” again, you may not know what I am talking about, but you get some idea.

Get beyond that, and be as specific as you can.

Research Literary Agents

Now that you know your market, you are ready to research agents. There are various ways to do this, but first, let me start with two numbers: 50 (fifty) or 100 (one hundred). That’s how many agents you need to identify. Fifty is the lower part of the range; one hundred is ideal. Scary? It shouldn’t be.

Nowadays, many methods exist to identify agents beyond the classic Writer’s Market(s) books. If you still enjoy browsing through pages, suit yourself. Just get a big pack of post-its and a marker and start digging. My suggestion is to use some of the multiple online resources available to you.

The online agent databases allow you to search by genre, geography, and other parameters. Also, many of the sites allow users to track queries and calculate statistics based on those numbers. So, you might be able to see things such as the number of queries sent, responded to, accepted, declined, etc. That will give you a good insight into how busy the agent is and how stringent.

My favorite search website is QueryTracker.net, but there are others presented below.

So, here are the logical steps I use when performing these searches:

1. Does the agent require you to pay anything (reading fees, expense reimbursements, etc.)? Then strike that agent out immediately. Don’t ever break this rule: as a writer, you should not have to pay ANYTHING to an agent. Not a fee, not a token payment, not a cent, not a penny. Nada. If they ask for it, walk away.
2. Is the agent currently accepting submissions? If not, but all else is ok, I will save this name for the future.
3. Is the agent a member of AAR – Association of Authors Representatives? Their membership may not mean anything, but I like to make a mark and prioritize those agents that are members. I don’t discard the others; I merely put them at the end of the list.
4. Does the agent work in my genre? Do they accept the type of manuscript that I wrote?
5. Does the agent have an online presence? Agents who do not have an online presence in today’s world turn me off. It merely tells me that this agent is old-fashioned or unable to get acquainted with modern technology. I don’t wholly discard these agents, but they are at the absolute bottom of the pile. I know some wonderful agents might be in that category, but that’s my rule.
6. Did this agent publish at least a few books similar to yours? Are they representing authors that produce work similar to yours? If yes, it’s a plus, and I push them to the top. I also write down the names of the books and authors, and I will use them later in my query letter.
7. Is this agent very overloaded with requests? If yes, they will have a lower priority.
8. Does this agent allow simultaneous submissions (e.g., will enable you to submit work to them and other agents simultaneously.) If no, this agent makes it into a select list called “loners.” I would contact those agents only when all else fails.
9. Is this agent rejecting A LOT (high % of submissions)? If yes, de-prioritize.
10. Is this agent accepting A LOT (high % of submissions)? If yes, a higher priority.

Once you go through this exercise, you will have a list of 50 to 100 names of agents, agency names, website addresses, phone numbers, and emails. Now you will go to each agent’s website and continue your research.

Deepen Your Agent Research

Your literary agent’s website is a gold mine. You can find information about the agency and the agents working there, works and authors represented, and submission guidelines. All of this is critical for you, a new writer looking for representation.

The first thing to do is check the submission guidelines to ensure that there is nothing there that disqualifies this agent. If there is, remove this agent from your list. The agent’s website is continually updated, while the research database might be delayed. So, an agent might note on their website that they do not accept submissions, even though this information was not present in other places.

The next thing is to check all the agents who work at the agency and see if you selected the best one. Use the same criteria above, and you might discover that the name you got from the website, although valid, is not as good as someone else at the same agency. Pick the best that works but remember: always query only one agent at each agency.

Then, read what they write about the agent or what they write about themselves. Search on the web and see what other people say about that agent. Try to assess the agent’s “drive” on a scale from 1 to 10. It’s a subjective judgment but still a valid one. Does the agent have a blog, a Facebook page, other online and offline activities? Do they participate in conferences, workshops, and so on? In other words, how involved is this agent in the industry? The more involved, the higher the rating.

Curate Your List

Now you have a list, ideally in Excel or another similar tabular system, with 50 through 100 rows. Make sure you have a Notes column at the end where you can add some additional information (like, “this agent is out of the country for the summer,” and so on.)

You have prioritized your list based on the criteria described above. The next step is to divide your list into groups of 10 agents.

When you have a tie between agents, put first that agent that statistically responds faster; this information is usually available on their website or the research databases.

Submit your work

I can’t stress enough how important it is to follow the submission guidelines of the literary agent. Make sure you read them and follow them EXACTLY. If they ask for 25 pages, don’t send 30 because you feel they’d miss your majestic plot twist on page 28. Follow what the agents say to the T.

Please send your work in the best form: clean paper, good printout, nothing folded more times than it needs to be. And, please, don’t try to adapt a package and apply it to all agents. You are not throwing shit against the wall and watching what sticks. That is your chance to find an agent. Treat each one as a separate relationship and follow their rules.

Avoid these pitfalls (you can read more about these in articles that talk about how to write a query letter):

• Don’t use unusual paper, colors, fonts, or other visual gimmicks.
• Use regular mail. Don’t use fancy mailing, like FedEx or DHL. If you want to track the receipt, make sure that you do not require a signature at delivery.
• Do not put anything other than your work in the envelope.
• Make sure’ everything is personalized to the agent (you can learn a lot about this in the query letter tutorials)

Now that you have ten envelopes or emails ready to go… let them go.

Then wait two weeks. You will probably receive some rejections right away. Learn from them, don’t get mad. Read what they say and figure out if there is anything you can do to fix that (if relevant.)

After two weeks passed, send ten more. And again, and again.

Track Your Submissions

Make sure you mark when and what you submitted to each agent. If you have 50 names, you are looking at ten weeks; if you have 100, you are looking at 20 weeks. During this time, you will receive responses. Mark the responses in your tracking worksheet. Especially mark when you received a reply and note how many days since you sent them the query. That information will be useful in the future when you make other queries because you can improve the priority list using first-hand knowledge.

Keep a Positive Attitude

During this entire process, you must keep a positive attitude. Learn how to develop thick skin and don’t take rejections to your heart. Instead, learn from them. See what the agents are telling you. Thank agents for their consideration, and generally, be excellent in your communications. Politely ask for more information about why they’ve rejected your work.

More so than not, you will find that your work is rejected simply because the agent doesn’t have enough time to deal with a new client. Make a note of that, and don’t query that agent again for the next few months.

As you can see from this process, it may take many months or even a year to get an agent. The research explained above is paramount. It avoids wasting your time and the agents’ time; it creates a solid framework for knowing where you stand in terms of your submissions. You give enough time between batches so that the agents with high priority have time to respond.

If you want, you may wait even longer for the first few batches. That is to prevent an agent with a lower priority from accepting you and getting your work, only to be approved by a higher priority agent a week later when you can no longer void your contract. Again, patience plays a significant role here.

Beware of scams

This is not the subject of this article, but it’s worth mentioning. When you get accepted by an agent, please do thorough research on their credentials. Do your due diligence, which means you may have to contact an attorney before signing your contract. Don’t get yourself locked into a bad deal. The idea is that the game is not just finding a good agent; it’s also getting a fair deal from that agent. The official AAR (Association of Authors’ Representatives) is a great resource, and so is Preditors & Editors. Do your research well because getting a lousy agent is far worse than not having an agent.

Literary Agent Resources

Agent lists and information:

• AAR (Association of Authors’ Representatives) – http://aaronline.org/
• QueryTracker.net – http://querytracker.net/
• AgentTracker.com – http://agentquery.com/
• Publishers Market –http://publishersmarketplace.com/
• Google Books – http://books.google.com/ (search for agent’s names and agencies to see what they published and what other people say about them)
• Preditors & Editors – http://pred-ed.com/

On writing query letters:

• http://www.agentquery.com/writer_hq.aspx
• http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2010/08/how-to-write-query-letter.html
• http://www.rachellegardner.com/2011/08/how-to-write-a-query-letter/

Other posts about getting an agent:

• http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2008/04/how-to-find-literary-agent.html
• http://www.dailywritingtips.com/how-to-find-a-literary-agent/
• http://www.writersrelief.com/blog/2010/06/how-to-research-the-best-literary-agents-for-your-book/

Now, before you go, I have…

3 Questions For You

Please share your answers in the comments below. Sharing knowledge helps us all improve and get better!