The Trenches, Part II
Exercise Your Agency
I’m back and I am filled with regret. I could have called this week’s articles “Trench Warfare” but I did not. I don’t know what I was thinking earlier this week. My only excuse is I’ve been off work so my brain is not as sharp as usual. I have been sitting around in my pajamas doing zero critical thinking for days. Well, there’s nothing to be done about it now. One can only go forward, never back.
Tuesday’s Shelf Life was about submitting short fiction for publication in literary magazines. I didn’t mention, but should have, that submitting short fiction to publication in anthologies is fairly similar; the difference being an anthology tends to be open once and then never again (once the pieces are selected, the anthology publishes and the project ends) while journals publish repeatedly. That omission aside (putting aside also the whole thing about the title), I think it was pretty comprehensive.
Today I am talking about the equivalent of Tuesday’s essay but for longform works of fiction: Submitting a novel for the consideration of an agent.
An interesting distinction: The process of submitting a piece of short fiction for publication is putting that piece “on submission” or “on sub”; but being in process of querying agents is not known as being “on submission” with a novel. That process is “querying.” When your agent is in the process of shopping your manuscript to editors at publishing companies to sign, that is when your novel is “on sub” or “on submission.”
You can skip over the agent querying process and submit your novel directly to editors and publishing companies if you wish, under either of two circumstances:
That editor or publisher accepts unagented, unsolicited submissions (that is, slush); or
An editor has solicited your manuscript.
Today’s article is not about doing that; I’m just acknowledging that it’s a thing you can do.
Today’s article will cover some resources for finding information on agents, tools for tracking your queries, querying strategies, and querying etiquette and best practices.
As with literary magazines and anthologies, every agent has their own query package requirements for you to follow. Some will want you to submit through an online platform like Moksha, some want you to submit via a form on their website, and some want you to email them directly. I suspect most agents no longer will accept a paper query submitted through the mail and why would you ever want to? It used to be the way. Thank goodness we’re going ever forward and never back.
Most agents do not require that an author query them exclusively and wait for their response before querying other agents (the equivalent of a non-simultaneous submission requirement in a literary journal). There probably are some agents out there who require that, but it’s not the norm. There’s an expectation that you, the querying author, will be querying multiple agents at a time.
When you query an agent, what you’re specifically sending is a question: Would you, Madame or Monsieur Agent, like to see more of this manuscript to consider representing it (and me, the author)? To that end you will send them a query letter—which I do not herein offer guidance on how to write. That’s the universal item that goes out when you query an agent. In addition, the agent may request a sample of the manuscript you’re querying, for example, the first chapter or the first ten pages.
(The other thing I am not doing today is advising on how to tell if an agent is legit or predatory; just be aware that predatory “agents” exist. You may consider previous article The Grift Mill on that topic.)
In response to your query, you may receive a rejection, a partial request, or a full request. A partial request means the agent requests part of your manuscript to consider, for instance, the first three chapters. A full request is, as you might have guessed, a request to send the full manuscript. A full request may follow a partial request. If, after reading your partial or full manuscript, the agent wishes to represent you, they will schedule a phone call to make an offer of representation. You will then agree on a deadline by which you will accept or decline the agent’s offer of rep, for example, two weeks.
If you have queries out with other agents when you receive an offer of rep, you should contact those agents and let them know you’ve received an offer of representation and what your deadline is for making a decision. This alerts those other agents that they should either
Hurry up and review your query if they’re interested; or
Throw out your query if they’re not.
Either way, notifying other agents about your offer of rep gives them a chance to make their own offer (or not).
That’s the process: You send a query; an agent responds to your query and hopefully requests your manuscript to read; and then the agent (again, hopefully) offers to represent you and your manuscript. But before you can start querying, how do you find agents to query? How can you tell if an agent is open to queries? How do you know if an agent is a likely fit for your manuscript or not?
First things first, where can you look at a list of all the agents there are to start choosing? Unfortunately, there’s no one place to find absolutely everybody. You can try looking in the Association of Authors’ Representatives or Association of American Literary Agents organization directories, but not every agent will be a member of either or both. They are professional associations open to agents, but not every agent belongs to them as a member and if someone is not a member it doesn’t mean they’re not a legit or good agent; it just means they’re not a member, for which there could be any number of reasons. (Full disclosure: There are several membership orgs for the type of editorial work I do but I don’t belong to any of them.) Poets & Writers also maintains a database of literary agents that is free to access.
Another excellent place to find an agent is the website Query Tracker, which requires a free account to use. If you read on Tuesday or are otherwise familiar with the Submission Grinder or Duotrope, this is a similar service but for authors seeking agents. When you look up an agent on Query Tracker, you can see all their important info—contact details, website address, whether they are presently open or closed to queries, what genres they represent—as well as helpful statistics about that agent in particular, such as response time to queries. These data come from user-reported information in aggregate; so if you submit a query to Jane Q Agent and she declines to represent you after 14 days, you can log the dates you queried and received a response in Query Tracker and add your 14-day reject to the response-time data aggregate for Jane.
Far be it from me to tell you what to do, but definitely get a Query Tracker account for researching agents.
The agent’s website and their record in Query Tracker will contain some information on what types of books this agent wishes to represent, specifically in terms of genre and demographic: For instance, “young adult fantasy” or “adult historical fiction.” If you have written a historical fiction novel for adults and Jane Q Agent represents historical fiction for adults, then you should definitely query her, right?
But wait—there’s more. Historical fiction for adults can mean a lot of things; there are ways to get more information to see if your particular historical fiction is a good fit for Ms Agent before you query her.
First, figure out if she has a manuscript wishlist. This is different from a list of genres an agent represents. A manuscript wishlist is a list of things an agent is specifically looking for right now. For instance, Jane Q Agent represents historical fiction for adults but maybe she’s hankering for historical fiction set in an Indigenous community and starring Queer main characters. That doesn’t mean she isn’t open to other types of historical fiction for adults—just that she has a particular wish right now for something very specific and if your work fits that bill then she’s probably very eager to consider it.
The whole “manuscript wishlist” idea began as the hashtag #MSWL on Twitter and one way to find those tweets is to open up Twitter and search the hashtag. Something to keep in mind as you review the search results is that you’ll see not just tweets from agents expressing their wishes to authors, but also from editors expressing their wishes to agents (useful info but not what you’re looking for at the moment), and also tweets from other members of the Twitter #writingcommunity discussing manuscript wishlists and related topics using the hashtag. Be prepared to dig.
You can also go to Manuscript Wishlist, a website designed around the #MSWL theme, where agents and editors can make profiles that showcase their wishlist. The profiles will also pull in their recent tweets using the #MSWL hashtag. Note that just as with the professional organizations, not every agent has a Manuscript Wishlist profile or participates in #MSWL on Twitter. If they do you can get great information to help you narrow your agent search, but you should not assume that someone who isn’t on Twitter or Manuscript Wishlist isn’t an active or engaged agent.
Another way to get more information about what Jane Q Agent is looking for is to figure out who else she represents. What other books has she sold, and how much like yours are they? There’s two different ways to use this “who reps who” information: First, to look at what and who a prospective agent reps, and second, to take your comparable titles and reverse engineer the search to figure out who repped them and their authors in the sale.
Publishers Marketplace is a great source of information on book industry deals; you need a membership to search in there, but sometimes a Google search will yield what you need even if you don’t have an account. Publishers Marketplace deal coverage will tell you which titles were sold to which editors, at which publishing companies, by which agents. For example, today’s deal (freely available on the sidebar) announces that Amanda Urban (agent) at ICM (agency) just sold two Cormac McCarthy (author) manuscripts to Reagan Arthur (editor) at Knopf (publisher).
Since you’ll be querying multiple agents at once, you need a way to track your queries and all the associated dates that go with them—when did you initially query who, when was your query acknowledged, when should you follow up if you haven’t heard back (if at all), when did you receive a partial request, when did you receive a full request? Query Tracker can help you with this if you want to manage your logging online, or you can keep a separate spreadsheet, Evernote, physical journal—whatever works for you.
When it comes to querying strategy, everyone will have their own tailored approach and I can’t begin to suggest a specific strategy that will universally work for everyone, but I do have some pointers.
First, make sure your list of agents to query contains a mix of agents at different career stages. I don’t recommend you select a list of only seasoned, prominent, aspirational agents. An agent who is in the list-building phase of their career may be looking to add several new authors to their stable this year whereas a seasoned agent with a productive list may not be interested in adding any new authors to their list, but is open to queries just in case they (or, more likely, their assistant’s assistant) should see something really special come through—but both agents will be “open to queries” with no way for you to gauge their capacity for new clients.
Second, I recommend sending your queries out in manageable batches and giving some time between batches (staggering them). If you have fifty agents on your list, don’t query all fifty at once. A rejection could contain feedback on your query letter or first 10 pages or first chapter, and if you’ve already queried your entire list when a note comes in that “by the way, there was a prominent typo in your query letter” you’re going to be so mad. You don’t need to wait till you’ve heard a decision from every agent in every batch before you dispatch your next batch, but staggering batches gives you the opportunity to evaluate and react to feedback, should you receive any.
Third: I recommend you only query agents you would like to be represented by (should their offer of representation be a good one). Don’t query new or junior agents alongside seasoned, aspirational agents only to lure an opportunity to nudge those more seasoned agents into action with an offer of rep from a more junior agent. This sounds obvious, but don’t query an agent if you wouldn’t work with them.
Okay! I think that is all I have for today on the subject of finding agents who are a good match for you and your manuscript, getting information on them, and tracking your queries. Fun fact: I’ve never written a Shelf Life on writing query letters because I do not believe I have useful wisdom to impart on writing query letters. However, I can offer up my favorite resource on query letters: Query Shark. This website is written and maintained by literary agent Janet Reid. Users interested in feedback on their query letter (not people querying Ms Reid for representation) send their query to the Shark and she selects one occasionally for critique on the site. It’s not updated with new critiques frequently but the archive is a goldmine. Tons of practical advice and examples.
I’m off now to enjoy the rest of my off week. I hope your weather isn’t too wacky and that we get to out-like-a-lamb weather soon. See you next week at the March midpoint. Cross your fingers for CF, who is in the trenches right now and expects a rejection at any moment.
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