How to get a literary agent

With a big thanks to my agent for reading this before I hit "publish."

There’s a lot of information out there about how to acquire a literary agent. I questioned what I could add to the extensive list of authors and publishing professionals talking about it — but while I was skimming other articles before writing this one, I saw a highly ranked one giving quite a bit of misleading and bad information about the industry.¹ So here I am.²

This is just the basic process of cold querying agents. Cold querying isn’t the only avenue to getting an agent. There are also online pitch contests, conferences, and so on; those can be useful and community building! They’ve definitely have landed some authors representation. But here I’m just talking about the querying process. (And really only for fiction; nonfiction is a slightly different process.)

To keep this a manageable length, I’m just going over the basics of things I think you need to know. If you have questions or want to discuss more in depth, let me know and I’ll either answer in the comments or, if there’s enough for a whole post about it, write something else.

First, decide if you need an agent.

If you want to have a shot at a traditional publisher, especially a large publisher, then yes. You’ll need one. For the most part, you won’t even be able to submit to these houses without an agent.

While there are imprints (and smaller publishers) that don’t require an agent to submit a manuscript on your behalf, it still benefits you to have an advocate throughout the publishing process. Think advance levels, contracts, disagreements, and so on.

Personally, I can’t imagine navigating publishing without an agent.

Have a finished (and revised) book.

While there are exceptions,³ most writers are going to need a fully drafted and revised book to submit to agents. So make sure you’ve gone over your book several times. If you have the ability to exchange critiques with another writer, do that.

The whole book needs to be as good as you can possibly make it at this point. This is your shot to prove to an industry professional that you’ve got a good (and marketable) book that they should take a risk on.

Note: taking on a new client is always a risk for agents. They don’t get paid until authors get paid, so any work they do for you before you sell is an investment. That includes helping you revise it before they submit it (which many agents do).

Write a query letter and synopsis.

Exactly how to write these is enough to fill another post, but your query letter should introduce you, the book’s title, genre, and word count, and then briefly describe the book. If you have any publication credits (it’s totally okay if you don’t), then mention that.

The book description should be hooky and give the agent an idea of the stakes and motivations. Think flap (or back cover) descriptions on published books.

A synopsis should be a short accounting of what happens in your book. Aim for a page or so. This should describe the entire story, including the end.

A note from my agent: “Include comparable books! This lets me know where the author thinks the books sits on the shelf/within the genre.”

Research agents who represent what you write.

This is key. You want to make sure you’re querying agents who can sell the type of story you’re writing. If you write murder mysteries, why would you query someone who only represents picture books??

You need someone who has the contacts and the specific industry knowledge for your genre. They need to be knowledgeable about the current market, trends, and what editors are looking for.

There are lots of popular books and sites to get you started. (Lots of folks use Query Tracker. I used one called Agent Query.) But always, always check the agency website for the most updated guidelines.

Note: If an agent charges “reading fees” or "editing fees," only has sales to tiny publishers⁴ that don’t need an agent, or suggests sending your manuscript to book doctors — anything that sounds kind of fishy — take them off your list. Not all legitimate agents belong to the AALA, but they should follow this Canon of Ethics.

Send those queries (according to agency guidelines).

Most submissions these days are done electronically. (I’m old enough to have a stack of SASEs (self-addressed stamped envelopes) with rejections.) That makes it pretty easy to drop in your query, synopsis, and sample pages — whatever the guidelines specify — into an email or the submission form, then mark down the submission on your spreadsheet.

Ages ago, I read slush for a literary agent. When I came across a submission that did not follow the (very standard) guidelines, it was almost always a red flag. The author either didn’t care enough to follow basic instructions, or they thought they knew what the agent and I wanted better than we did, or any other number of things that signaled they weren’t going to be a good fit for the agency.

Honestly, following guidelines is one of the easiest things you can do to demonstrate, that you’re someone an agent might want to work with.

When an agent writes back and asks for a full or partial manuscript, send them exactly what they asked for (generally to the closest chapter break if it’s a partial) and mark it down on your spreadsheet.

Wait.

This is one of the harder periods for authors. I get it. Having spent a lot of time waiting, too, I know how rough it can be to wonder if they’re reading, if they’ve even seen that email yet, or if “no response means no.”

But just because you’re waiting doesn’t mean you need to sit still. You can work on another book, catch up on some reading, critique manuscripts for friends, send new rounds of query letters. Play a video game. Hike and look at nature. Knit fifteen sweaters. Do something you enjoy doing.

I was serious about starting another book, though. Because if you get an offer, it’ll be nice to let a prospective agent know you have more than one story in you. And if you don’t get an offer, you’ll have something else to go back out with soon.

Note: This is the process all throughout publishing. There’s a lot of waiting. And during that waiting time, you write your next thing.

Representation or move on.

If you get an offer, hooray! If you get two or more, you have to make a tough decision, but still hooray! It’s time for The Call.

But there’s also the possibility that you don’t get any offers by the time you reach the end of your list of agents to query. And that sucks. But it’s okay. This is one of the reasons you were working on another book. You’ll finish the new one, and this one will be better. You’ll use any feedback you got from agents (sometimes they have something to say; sometimes they don’t), and you’ll have learned a lot from writing that last book.

As some of you might know, it took me seventeen books before I found my agent. (To be fair, I didn’t query all of them. Some were sequels I got excited about writing. And I did have a first agent in there, but we weren’t a good fit so we separated on good terms fairly quickly.) I know lots of other authors — bestselling authors — who had to wait until they wrote something that got an agent. Sometimes those books sold. Sometimes they didn’t. Rejections are part of the business.

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So there it is! Let me know if you have questions or want to dig into something a little more. I love talking about publishing, and I think it’s important for authors to know how things work so they advocate for themselves when necessary.

1. It also said that authors and industry folks are cagey and don’t like talking about this stuff. At that point, I died laughing, resurrected, then read that line again and died again. So now I’m a ghost. It’ll be fine.

2. I absolutely hate misinformation about publishing.

3. Exceptions like an author who published short stories caught an agent’s attention with those and got representation. Or an actress who might decide to write something some day. Or a popular fan fiction writer an agent noticed. These are not unusual occurrences but they are still exceptions.

4. Tiny publishers aren’t bad. That agent may be fine, too. But if their only sales are to publishers that don’t need an agent, that suggests they don’t have the contacts at bigger houses.