Get a Literary Agent: The Complete Guide to Securing Representation for Your Work (14 page)

If you’re an English-language writer based somewhere else in the world—Greece or Moscow or wherever you may be—and have no “plot connection” with the United States, Canada, or the U.K., you should query English-speaking agents
anywhere
that rep your genre and hope for the best.

I asked a few agents this question, and some said they were willing to take on any political slant if the book was well written and the author had a great writer platform. A few agents, on the other hand, said they needed to be on the same page politically with the author for a political or a religious book and that they only take on books they agree with. Bottom line: Some will be open-minded; some won’t. Look for reps who have taken on books similar to yours, and feel free to query other agents, too. The worst any agent can say is no, so keep that in mind whenever dealing with a gray area or question.

I’m not sure any good can come from mentioning your age in a query. Usually the people who ask this question are younger than twenty or older than seventy. Concerning an age bias, I would say some literary agents may be hesitant to sign older or very young writers because reps are looking for career clients who have the ability and energy to market themselves, be a professional writer, and compose many books. If you’re older, you should have a website—and write multiple books to convince an agent that you have several projects in you—and shouldn’t mention your age in the query to be safe. If you admit you’re a teenager, for instance, you could be pigeonholed as an amateur without the necessary writing chops.

I’d say 98 percent of agents do not accept short-story-collection queries. The reason? Collections just don’t sell well. If you have a collection of short stories, you can do one of three things: (1) Repurpose some or all of the stories into a novel, which is much easier to sell. (2) Write a new book—a novel—and sell that
first
to establish a reader base. That way, you will create a base that will purchase your next project—the collection—ensuring the publisher makes money on your short stories. (3) Query the few agents who do accept collections, and hope for the best. If you choose this third route, I suggest you get some of the stories published to help the project gain momentum. A platform and media contacts would help your case as well.

I would not include a paragraph from the book, nor would I write the letter in the “voice” of one your characters—those are gimmicks. Check out the section on fiction and nonfiction book query intros in
chapter six
. If you choose, you can jump right into the pitch—there’s nothing wrong with that. But I recommend an intro that lays out the details of your book in one easy sentence: “I have a completed 78,000-word thriller titled
Dead Cat Bounce
.” The reason I suggest this short intro is because sometimes jumping into a pitch can be jarring and confusing. That said, many queries choose the “pitch first” approach, and there is nothing wrong with that.

You can, but you don’t have to. If you say it’s exclusive, agents understand no other eyes are on the material—but if you say nothing, they will assume multiple agents must be considering it. Keep in mind to always check each agent’s submission guidelines; a few rare agents want you to tell them if it’s a simultaneous submission.

Writing your book title in all caps always works, or you can italicize it. Either is acceptable in a query—but make sure you choose one so your book title doesn’t have the same formatting as “normal” text and gets lost.

The old mentality for this was
no
; you should not discuss a series in the query: Just pitch one book, and let any discussion naturally progress to the topic of more books, if the agent so inquires. However, I’ve overheard more and more literary agents say that they want to know if your book has the potential to be the start of the series.

So, the correct answer, it appears, depends on who you ask. In circumstances like these, I recommend crafting an answer to cover all bases, such as: “This book could either be a stand-alone project or the start of a series.” When worded this way, you disclose the series potential without making it sound like you’re saying, “I want a five-book deal or NOTHING.” You’ll come across as an easygoing writing professional who is leaving all options open.

You don’t have to. If you indie-published a few e-books that went nowhere, you don’t have to list them and their disappointing sales numbers. The release of those books will not affect the new novel that you’re submitting to agents—as long as that new novel is an autonomous project, not a sequel to a previous self-pub title. That said, if your self-published projects sold well, then sure, mention them. In other words, talk about your independent projects if they will help your case. Otherwise, just leave them out of the conversation and focus on the new project at hand.

You have to bite the bullet and call it
something
. Even if you end up calling it a “middle-grade adventure with supernatural elements,” you’re at least calling it something. Writers really get into a pickle when they start their pitch with something like, “It’s a science fiction Western humorous fantastical suspense romance set in steampunk Britain … with erotic werewolf transvestite protagonists.” It’s better to settle on the book’s core genre and just call it that. Otherwise your query might not even get read. The reason a nebulous genre may pose a problem for an agent is because there’s no specific bookshelf at the bookstore for it. It will also have fewer successful comparable titles on Amazon, making it more difficult for readers to discover it. To address this issue, go to a bookstore and look at the titles on the shelves. Then decide where you would want your book to sit if you could only have it in one section of the store.
That
is a good way to determine which genre is most central to your book.

In these situations, many writers default to comparison (saying “It’s
X
meets
Z
”—that type of thing). Some agents don’t like this strategy, but others find it a concise way to get a sense of the book. That said, comparing your book to other titles in the marketplace or well-known films can be a useful way to characterize the story when you have a hard time boiling it down to a single genre.

Submit no more than ten queries to start. If one or none respond with requests for more, then you’ve got a problem. Go back to the drawing board, and overhaul the query before the next wave of six to ten submissions.

The rise of e-queries removed the dreaded page break, so now writers can get away with going over one page. But just because that’s so doesn’t mean it’s a wise move. While going a few sentences over one page is likely harmless, you really don’t want a query that trends too long. Lengthy letters are a sign of a poor, rambling pitch that will probably get rejected. So edit and trim your pitch down as much as possible. Get some beta readers or a freelance query editor to give you ideas and notes. Remember that a succinct letter is preferred (it saves the agent time) and more effective (it keeps the focus on the most important aspects of your book).

The exception is
nonfiction
books. Nonfiction queries have to be heavy on author platform, and those notes (with proper names of publications, organizations, and websites, etc.) can get long very fast. So if you have several compelling platform and marketing notes to list, feel free to go several sentences over one page—just as long as the pitch itself is not the item making your letter too long.

It’s probably harmless. But if you’re going to do this, paste the pages below the query letter and do not attach them in a document. (If agents see an unrequested attachment, they may delete the e-mail immediately.) Don’t include much, perhaps one to five pages. (My advised length refers to double-spaced pages, even if the pages do not paste into the e-mail in perfect double-spaced formatting.) The problem is that many people ask this question because they have a lot more faith in their opening pages than in their query—the two are different beasts—and it seems like including both would increase their chances with an agent. Including sample pages may help here and there with an occasional agent who checks out your writing, but it will never solve the major problem of your query being substandard. Instead, keep working on the query until you have faith in it, regardless of whether you sneak in unsolicited pages or not. Then you can follow submission guidelines perfectly and not be worried.

Nothing is guaranteed, but likely yes, an agent will lead to a book deal. Some new publishers that have popped up during the past several years only release e-books. These e-book houses usually specialize in genre books (especially romance and erotica) and get agented submissions just like the biggest editors in New York do. Also, some smaller publishers operate on “royalty-only” deals with no up-front advance. But even as the industry continuously adapts to fewer book sales and more publishing options, your agent is your guide and advocate, and is there to steer you toward what she believes is the best deal for you.

First of all, check the agency website for updates and the latest formal guidelines. The agent might have gone on leave. She might have switched agencies. And most likely, she may have submission guidelines stating that she only responds to submissions if interested: “If you don’t hear from us in eight weeks, it means we are regretfully not interested in your project.” So keep in mind there might be a very good reason why you shouldn’t follow up—or rather why you shouldn’t follow up
right now
.

Make darn sure you are not to blame for getting no reply. Perhaps your previous e-mail had an attachment when the agent warned, “No attachments.” Perhaps your previous e-mail did not put “Query” in the subject line, even though the agent requested just that. Or perhaps your previous e-mail misspelled the agent’s e-mail address, and the query truly got lost in cyberspace. In other words, double-check everything. If you find no mistake, follow up; if you find a mistake, follow up but be sure you don’t make the same mistake again.

That aside, let’s say that an agent claims she responds to all submissions “within three months” and it’s been three and a half months with no reply. Now it’s time to nicely follow up. (If an agent makes it sound like she does indeed respond to all submissions but she doesn’t have a time frame for her reply, I say follow up after three months.) Simply paste your original query into a new e-mail, and send it to the agent with a note above the query that says, “Dear [agent name], I sent my query below to you [length of time] ago and haven’t heard anything. I’m afraid my original note got lost in a spam filter, so I am pasting it below in the hopes that you are still reviewing queries and open to new clients. Thank you for considering my submission. Sincerely, [name].” That’s it. Be polite, and simply resubmit.

If you send that follow-up perfectly and the agent still doesn’t reply, forget ’em! Move on.

The pitch is what’s paramount; any mention of marketing or platform is just gravy. If you have some promotional cred, it and the skills that go with it will definitely be beneficial in the long run as they will help you sell more books when your title is released. But a decent platform will not get a mediocre novel published. So feel free to list worthwhile, impressive notes about platform and marketing skills you possess—just don’t let your accomplishments in those areas cloud the fact that the three most crucial elements to a novel selling are the writing, the writing, the writing.

If you have a choice, I don’t see any logic in sending a snail mail query. They’re more of a hassle to physically produce, and they cost money to send. Ninety percent or more of queries are sent via e-mail for two very good reasons: E-mail is (1) quicker, in terms of sending submissions and agents’ response time, and (2) it’s free. Keep in mind that almost all agents have personal, detailed submission guidelines in which they say exactly what they want to receive in a submission and how they want to receive it. So almost always, you will not have a choice in how to send materials. Just send what they ask for, how they asked for it.

I’d say 80 percent of agents review memoir like they would a novel. If interested, they ask for the full book and consider it mostly on how well it’s written. I have met several agents, however, who want to see a nonfiction book proposal; in addition, some want to see sample chapters or even the whole book. So to answer the question, you can choose to write only the manuscript and go from there. Or you can choose to complete a proposal as well so you have as many weapons as possible as you move forward. In my opinion, a writer who has both a complete memoir manuscript and a nonfiction book proposal seems like a professional who is ahead of the curve and wise to marketing matters—and, naturally, people in publishing are often attracted to such writers.