Good morning, writers!

If you’re just joining us, it would behoove you to start at the beginning of this blog series to get the whole picture, as this blog is the 4th post in the series, but the information herein can also stand on it’s own.

So. Literary Agents. Those elusive, magical creatures that will help you and your book rocket to the NY Times Best Seller List… because without them, you have virtually no chance in getting a NY Big Boy publisher, which is your best (but certainly not your only) chance in becoming a best selling author on a grand scale.

Before you ever contact even ONE Literary Agent, there are three things you absolutely must do.

1. Finish & polish your book. This means have more people than just your family members read it, like beta reading groups, writing groups, online critique, etc. (Sometimes for non-fiction, an agent will only require a book proposal, but this blog series is focused mostly on fiction writers.)
2. Research. And I mean extensive research that will likely take 3-6 months of your time before you ever send your first query. More on this below.
3. Write and revise and revise and revise and revise and revise your query letter based on the information you found in the aforementioned research. Then get it critiqued and revise it again.
   I’m not kidding.

Literary agents get between 75 and 500 queries every. single. day. Most of them are crap queries from writers who didn’t do the above three things. These are easily deleted by these agents, but it also likely puts them in a deletey mood. I can only imagine how exhausting it is … day after day.

I participated in Nathan Bransford’s “Agent for a Day” exercise, and I got slapped with the reality of what a literary agent goes through daily… and on a very, very light day. I suggest you read this entire exercise from beginning to end.

Then I suggest you read his blog in full as part of your research. I’ll post other blogs for you to read as well in the links section below. If you really, really want that NY Big Boy, you will do all these things first. There are no shortcuts.

Don’t be a query they can easily delete. Don’t give them a reason to delete it. They don’t need a reason to delete it. They need a reason not to delete it. DO THE RESEARCH.

THE RESEARCH:

Before you ever submit to an agent, you have to get to know them. Each and every one of them.

Don’t submit a YA story to an agent who says they do not represent children’s books, unless they specify that YA is okay. YA is a fuzzy area – some consider them children’s, some don’t.

Learn about who they are. Their choice in client leans heavily on those who make a personal connection with the agent in questions. It has to do with what they like. What they need.

They don’t care that “everybody” likes your book. Whether that “everybody” is friends and family or whether you’ve actually tested the market.

***personal experience side note***
When we left our first publisher this past April, I thought about looking for an agent… briefly… but when my ability to market our book to the point that our previous publisher couldn’t keep up with the print demand didn’t impress them, I decided against it.

We had sold over 2000 copies in the first 4 months, no small feat for a first-time author and small indie publisher. Remember, that is 4x the amount the average book sells in its lifetime. The agent acknowledged that it was impressive, but it wasn’t enough. When I told the agent how people responded to the book, how I received countless emails about how they couldn’t put it down, etc… this agent responded, “Now you have to get an editor to feel that way about it.”

That’s when I was done. I had thousands of readers who said they loved it, but I had to work to impress a single person. Not for this writer. For me at that point in this series, it was too much work and risk to wait possibly years to get the sequel out. I didn’t want my growing readership to have to wait that long, so I chose a different route. We’ll get to that in a future post.
***end side note***

WHAT THEY WANT

• A query letter that causes them to pause. Voice. Good writing.
• Something they can **sell** – this is the key. Because if they can’t sell it, they don’t get paid… then they can’t pay their mortgage.
• Something they can sell is often something that can be put into a box. The publishing industry likes boxes. I was once told that I would have to rewrite my series in first person for it to sell as a YA book… bullshit. There are countless YA books out there in complete omniscient. I’ve just recently read two of them. But that’s the box they’ve currently chosen.
• They don’t like crossovers. Again. The box. It doesn’t matter that the best selling series of the 21st century is a YA crossover, they want to put them in a box. It’s easier to pitch to the publishers.
• Many, many, many of them don’t like prologues or series. Go figure.

I’m not saying this makes any sense. I’m just saying this is what I’ve learned.

The better you know the agent you’re querying, the better chance you have at standing out amongst their enormous slush pile.

Use something like QueryTracker to help you keep track of the agents you research and ultimately query. It’s well-worth the $25 for the premium account.

Find your top 10 agents. Do even deeper research on them. Follow their blogs for a month or two before you query. Follow them on Twitter. Get to know them as people…

Then your query has to knock their socks off.

After those rejections, do the next group. It can take up to 6 months for an agent to respond to your query. If you’re not getting a request for a partial for every 3rd query (and you’re submitting to the right agents in the right way due to your research), then there is something wrong with your query. Revise it again.

Did I mention this was time consuming? This is where I said this route could take 5 years or more to see your book in print. If you don’t want to wait, then this isn’t the avenue for you.

Truly, there are so many Dos and Don’ts for agents, I can’t put them all here… and it would only be repeating what’s elsewhere anyway. This is the part where you have to do your research.

Don’t think you’re the exception. You’re not.
Don’t think they’ll love your pitch so much they’ll represent something they don’t normally represent.

They won’t.

I mean it. You are not the exception.

In their eyes, you are another wannabe author who needs them. If you give them *any* reason to pass you over, they will. Because they don’t need a reason to pass you over. They need a reason not to.

I mean it.

Do the research. When you think you’ve done enough research. Do some more.

LINKS:

• QueryVote – a site I set up for your to test your query letter out on other authors. Lots of great tips and links from this site. This is where I put up a lot of my own research when I was considering this avenue. I’ll repost only a few of the links here, but you should go through them all.
• QueryShark – read the entire thing and take copious notes. I know there’s a lot to read. I know it’s a lot of work. This is the price of finding a NY Big Boy.
• Nathan Bransford – read the entire thing. I mean it.
• Rejection Trading Cards – interested site put up by an aspiring author. You’ll learn a lot.
• AgentQuery – Free, one-stop writer’s resource on the web about literary agents and publishing.

Trust me. Finding an agent will be your full-time job for 3 months to a year, or more. It’s a commitment. It’s a lot of work and research, but it will be worth it when you hold that 6-figure advance in your hands from HarperCollins. If it happens.

It is a huge risk, but it all depends on what you want.

I know this is a super-long blog post, but the next one will be much more concise.

< — (Last Post) NY Big Boys

(Next Post) NY Big Boys Pros & Cons —>