Tips for Getting a Literary Agent
After years of hard work, you’ve completed your manuscript. You’ve sent it to writer friends and, with their feedback, written three, four, five drafts. You’re ready to send it out into the world. Congratulations! First, though, you’ll need a literary agent, and in order to find one, you’ll need to follow a specific protocol. That’s where I can help.
To begin, consider your book’s genre, because most agents only work with certain kinds of books. Is it literary fiction? Mystery? A brief and inaccurate history of cheese? Now that you look at it a little more closely, is it actually a Denny’s menu? If so, what’s the special today? Participate by sending a tweet to someone you haven’t spoken to in years.
Now research! Make a list of agents who represent the kind of book you’ve written, print the list out, tear it up, set it on fire, and wave goodbye to it as it flutters across a lake. All is impermanence. You’re a Buddhist now. This will help you deal with rejection and suffering.
So we’ve established that you’ve finished your book. Here’s the problem: it’s not quite done yet. Revise it. Again. I know. But what you have to understand is that most agents stop reading a manuscript by page six, so if you change the page numbers to all say “3,” you are way ahead of the game. Nobody stops on page three.
Then there’s the query letter. Many beginning writers make the mistake of not including a full frontal nude body shot in their letter, which can make the crucial difference between “meh, next,” and “somebody call the cops on this guy.” Remember that any impression is a good impression, no matter how bad it is. Besides that, it’s best to keep your letter short, concise, to-the-point, efficient, not too long, concise, and good, and short. A typical agent receives well over 200 query letters per second, so there won’t be space for luxuries like “Hello” and “This book is about,” as well as most commas and periods. You’d be amazed by what a simple DEARAGENT ME WRITE BOOK IT GOOD ONE OK BYE can do.
Most writers think that being successful is mainly a matter of sitting alone and writing, while researching how hard it would be to invent the next Facebook if writing doesn’t work out. This is a huge mistake. Agents want authors with a built-in audience, so you need to connect to others in the writing community. You need to have an author platform. One idea: create a Twitter account that might be described as funny, but might more accurately be described as weird and quasi-witty in a very Internet-y kind of way. An account like Super High Magellan or Furious Pope Francis could do the trick. You should also create an author website, which is the absolute fastest and easiest way to let people know where you’ve been published and that you’re kind of sad all the time. Next, call Comcast customer service and invite them to your book club. They aren’t interested? Too bad, because Dave from the BlueCross BlueShield claims division is on the other line, so let’s get started. This is how you build your brand. Having a base of support will come in handy when your book is published and you want to get the word out without resorting to amateur moves like hiding in people’s bushes or streaking a Bruce Springsteen concert.
If agents respond positively to your query letter, you’re not going to want to say yes to all of them. Odds are, you’ll need to select one agent to represent you, no matter how cool it sounds to have a highly trained and highly deadly 132-person agent army that storms FSG and builds a productive editorial relationship with them. So take your time and really get to know which agent is best for you. Ask plenty of questions, such as: How long have you been an agent? Is it two years? Three? Is it ten years? How many years is it? Is it twenty? Holy smokes, twenty years! Is it thirty? It can’t be forty. It’s forty? Hello? Are you still there? No? Is it fifty? Remember: newer agents may be able to devote more time to you individually, but more experienced agents will have more contacts who can give you false hope.
Considering how difficult it sounds to get an agent, you may be wondering, do I even need one? Can’t I self-publish on Amazon or throw my book at pedestrians from a car window? The short answer is no, that won’t work. It’s not 2014 anymore.
It’s true, though, that the landscape of publishing is changing rapidly. E-books are beginning to control the market, and early indicators suggest that books made of bacon could be the future. People likewise say that small, independent bookstores are being replaced by big box stores and online retailers, but my own town’s bookstore was replaced by a place called FroYo Life, so I don’t know what that’s about. Despite the success of originally self-published writers like E.L. James, though, agents are still valuable for most writers. After all, for every successful E.L. James, there are a hundred other E.L. Jameses who are much less successful because their name is confusing.
Knowing you’ve got a long road ahead of you, should you despair? I don’t think so. The truth is, you could get 20 rejections before your book is accepted. You could get 50 rejections. You could get a restraining order. You could end up dead or in jail. But no matter what, don’t give up. You’re a writer, and you need to let you voice be heard by anyone as strange as you.
