For the uninitiated, the process of getting a literary agent is supposed to be:
- I find an agent that is “open to querying” and send a query letter: a short email, about 400 words max, that explains what my book is about and a little about myself.
- The agent, if they are interested, will then ask me to send part of the book – a “partial request” of say, the first three chapters or 50 pages or 20 pages… every agent is different. Or they’ll ask for the whole book – a “full request.” Sometimes a full request follows a partial request, but the partial step may be skipped, which is supposed to be a good sign.
- Then, if they like the book, they may just ask me to talk on the phone with them and then, if we seem to get on well together, offer to be my agent.
This… is not how it actually works. Or maybe it does for some people, but not me.
I started using QueryTracker in September 2017. I’ve logged 75 queries in there, of which 3 included a partial or full request and 41 were form-rejected (including all 3 manuscript requests). The rest (34) were all closed for non-response after a year. I don’t have records for what book I queried with; it varied.
I also kept track of submissions on a spreadsheet, once I realized the free version of QueryTracker wouldn’t let me keep track of more than one manuscript and I started wanting to re-try agents because no one new was open.
In my spredsheet, I recored:
The Gods Awoke: 33 queries, with 3 full requests and one partial, all rejected, and one direct sub to a publisher (Tor), rejected. Direct sub to Journey Press, accepted.
Galactic Hellcats: 26 queries, 3 full requests, 2 partials, all rejected, one direct submit to a magazine as serial, withdrawn because one submission to a small publisher, Vernacular, accepted.
Mot the Stupid: 20 queries, all rejected, no manuscript requests, 3 direct submissions to publishers, one rejected, two never responded.
Mars Strike: 5 queries, all rejected, no manuscript requests
Quixote Ugly: 3 queries, 1 response that my summary looked not quite ready to submit and to try again in six months (That agent required a summary with all queries, and yeah, I totally hashed that summary together in a hurry.)
Andrei and the Hellcats: 8 queries, 1 suggestion of another agent, who rejected the query, 1 direct submission, accepted (Lethe Press)
Multitude: 2 direct submissions to small publishers, one accepted. (Go Multitude!)
So, in total, I queried 171 times over nine years for 12 manuscript requests (7% achievement of first round) and zero success converting those 7% to an agent call.
That doesn’t seem like a lot, but it gets worse. I actually started querying agents around 1998, but I didn’t keep track in an orderly fashion, so there’s no telling how many of those queries there were. I do know that they were all rejected or never responded. I remember recording my first partial request in QueryTracker, and that would’ve been about 19 years after I started querying.
NB: I am absolutely certain my early query letters were terrible. I hedged and apologized and downplayed: all the things you shouldn’t do. “My book is about this… but not really. Sorry. It’s not very good but I work hard!” smoooth.
Eventually, against my personal preference and with high moral anxiety,I started looking for back doors.
At the Nebula Awards in Pittsburgh in 2017, a friend said I should query his agent, and introduced us via email. That agent never responded to my email and I felt horrible–I must have offended him. Again in 2019, at another conference, a friend introduced me to his agent. This agent was friendly in person, but again never responded to my query. A convention-friend became an agent. Form rejection. I met two agents at conventions and became friendly with them. Both rejected me but we still talk.
In February of this year, a writing workshop mate said, “Query so-and-so’s agent: you write similarly.” I looked this agent up and saw one of my online buddies was her client. I asked him to introduce us, and this time, I got a call right away, explaining that I was close, but she wanted me to re-write the end of the book. This was Mot the Stupid. The original ending was a partial success for the good guys, Mot’s own family freed. She wanted, rather, for “the whole system to be burnt down. You have to go bigger.”
I said, “I can do it in four months.”
I spent the next three months furiously working. I cut the second half off the novel and revised from scratch. She was right, I thought: this was a much stronger ending.
Then, in April, as I was finishing up the Mot revision, I got this email from a local bookseller:
Marie, this is something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while, and I hope won’t come across as too pushy, but: do you currently have a lit agent you feel really well represented by? Or are you perfectly and completely happy without one? I can’t tell from your website.
It’s just that of all the local authors I work with who are with micro-presses, you of all people could make great use of a bigger stage–especially in the current moment, when what you’re writing is very much what people are buying.
I immediately responded:
DARLING.
I am DESPERATE to get a literary agent. I’ve been querying for twenty years. I have more rejections than you can shake a stick at.
And her response:
ok, well this is bullshit and I’m making it my project for the summer to fix it. Pls stand by.
FRIENDS. She sent me three introduction emails to three separate agents. Instead of sending one of the query letters waiting on my hard drive to be revised to each agent, I sent this:
Thanks, [name], for the introduction. [some personal note: I saw this or that on their agent website, either happy they rep what I do, or concerned they don’t, or hey, your agency has a friend of mine!]
My current unpublished novel projects:
Mars Strike (working title) – a re-telling of the Homestead Steel Strike on Mars, main character is a worker involved in organizing the strike, his wife is the local law enforcement.
Mot the Stupid – Tolkien from the orc’s perspective, but science fiction, on a planet founded by medieval reenactors. (This is currently being re-written because I got an R&R from another agent who said she might consider it with a different ending.)
Quixote Ugly – Modern Don Quixote. Marta is a grad-school dropout bartender and her neighbor is a English Lit student who convinces herself she’s a paranormal investigator and Marta is her “sassy best friend.”
Galactic Hellcats 3: The Mother of All Hellcats – conclude the story in Galactic Hellcats and Andrei and the Hellcats.
I write fast, I work hard, I never miss deadlines.
Let me know if anything sounds interesting.
Thanks!
Marie
Two of the agents asked for Mot, one asked for Mars Strike. So this letter resulted in three full requests! A 100% success rate! Ok, ok, but this is a special case, wherein one is introduced.
25 years… nothing… and now in the space of four months, four agents expressing actual interest!
Agent #3 came right back with an offer of rep. I was floored. I messaged the others, including the agent who was waiting on Mot. I quickly finished the last chapter and sent it with my message.
Agent #1 demurred, said I did good on the re-write, but it wasn’t quite done.
Agent #2 asked for a call. This was Maria. We talked about a lot of things, but she never said she was interested in giving me an offer of rep. I felt she was a little standoffish. She felt Mars Strike wasn’t quite polished, which we agreed on, and she said she’d read Galactic Hellcats, so she knew what I was capable of.
At this point, I was fairly confident I would go with Agent #3. Then, Agent #2 asked me to send her Mot, since everyone else was looking at that. I did, and she messaged asking for a second phone call.
She didn’t want to talk because she loved Mot. She wanted to talk because she felt Mot was the wrong book for me to publish first. “You have a brand. It’s on your website: class-conscious science fiction. Yes, Mot does fit that, but it’s not obvious. Mars Strike is more representative of you.”
She then offered representation. I was much happier with this conversation with her. It made a lot of sense, and she answered some questions I’d thought of since.
“Okay, you’ve convinced me, yes.”
“NO!” she gasped. “No. You’re not supposed to answer right away. You need to think about it.”
I emailed Agent #3 and asked him the questions I had just asked her. His big selling point was that he was very enthusiastic, and said I’d be a priority as he was new to fiction and didn’t have a big list. Maria had more industry know-how in speculative fiction, but actually had fewer clients.
Agent #4 hadn’t responded, but I got an out-of-office from her which explains that. Sorry, Agent #4, we were ships passing in the night!
I had another call with #2 and #3, asked my writing workshop friends for advice, and 48 hours later, I made up my mind and emailed Agent #3 a fond regret, and Maria a “Be my agent?”
I know what aspiring authors reading this post want to hear most is advice, how to make this happen for them. Is any of this replicable? I think so. I didn’t have any control over a bookseller reaching out, but I did have control over being kind to booksellers in general.
I reached out to the bookseller for her perspective, and she wrote:
YOU are the one who made ME want you to have an agent–it’s worth saying you never asked me! You didn’t know to! And I was uniquely in the position of knowing agents, which a lot of booksellers aren’t, obviously. But what any local author can do is form complex and longlasting relationships with their local bookstore: you show up for us again and again, even when it’s not to your most immediate benefit, you talk us (and other bookstores) up to friends and neighbors, you participate in the wider literary community, you tag stuff we’re doing even if you’re not involved just because you care about creative wellbeing far beyond yourself! You work to uplift other authors, you connect with an open heart, you work your ass off for your writing year after year and make yourself a pleasure to work with and your books a pleasure to stock.
Awwww!!! I never suspected anyone noticed what I re-shared on social media or tagged. In conclusion:
Be yourself. Don’t be advertising copy.
Be good to work with and help others. Then people will help you!
Now I’ve got to go re-write Mars Strike with a better ending! (It never ends.)
