How did you meet your agent?

Sorry if there's already a thread about this, or if this is the wrong forum!

I was just curious: how did you meet your agent?

Partly because I think the answers could be beneficial for anybody else (if there's anybody else) who's wondering. But I was also just wondering if anybody had any funny or interesting stories about how they met their agent, or perhaps their experience with an agent.

 

I queried them. That's how 99% of us meet them.

 

Oh wow. How many rejections did you go through (if you remember), and what was it like to suddenly get that acceptance?

 

I'm not published, but it does seem to me from my (extensive) research that practically everyone got their agent by querying.

While it's true that conferences, pitch sessions, etc. etc. will help you to understand exactly what it is individual agents are interested in, and get better at emphasising the aspects of your work that grab an agent's attention, ultimately it still comes down to querying.

All the rest of it does is give you more to bolster up the "personalisation" aspect of a query. You can tell an agent that you saw their talk at a conference, and perhaps that you had a chat with them (apparently 99% of people who attend pitch sessions and so on are invited to submit a query - it's not the distinction people think it is), but all that is good for is telling the agent why you think you might be a good fit. It might convince a few more to put eyes on your first pages, but that's all.

Ultimately, there's not a shortcut here. You write a book that's good enough to publish and has a market. You submit it to an agent in the way that they want you to, and if the agent agrees with you that your book is quality and saleable, then they'll likely want to talk to you. That's basically all there is to it.

People talk about the odds of getting an agent/being published from querying being extraordinarily high, as if every manuscript submitted has a roughly equal chance, but that's just not true. Most of the submissions an agent gets will be utterly unreadable. If yours knows how the English language works, and you can construct an interesting plot and engaging characters, you're pretty much automatically in the top 10%.

In fact, here's a rough breakdown of manuscripts received and reason for rejection from Teresa Nielson Hayden (quite old, but likely still accurate):

Spoiler

 

Queried. I've never been to a conference, never met an agent in person. Just queried.

Boring, but true.

 

I think I had about 40 rejections and 15 requests by the end. The one I sent to my now-agents was one of the first, but I didn't know it would be successful until a month later. The acceptance was a little surreal, because in my heart I was already convinced it wasn't going to happen with that book - I had nearly finished the second one when I signed.

It was a very nerve-wracking process for me, but a positive one. I realised that agents aren't, for the most part, horrible gatekeepers on power trips colluding to keep unpublished authors down. They're people who love books, and hate that their jobs necessarily involve a lot of rejection. I still talk casually to some of the agents I "met" but didn't sign with.

And of course, querying is only one hurdle. Once you jump it, it starts all over again with editors.

 

Not agented either, but got this from a writer I know. He used to submit work to an agent about twenty years ago when he started out writing, and she was always supportive of his writing and encouraged it, although she stopped short of actually representing him (he was 18 at the time).

And then at a writers convention fifteen years later, and after one published book, he arranged a face to face meeting with her. They had a chat, a couple of drinks, and she looked through his sales figures and then the book. A week later she had signed him to her agency.

Sometimes it's who you know too. I've had offers from agents to read my writing because of that network (writers putting you forward etc.). But in the absence of that, the tried and test query letter can work just as well!

 

Where do you go to contact your agents? I've never attempted to do anything like that before. I kind of gave up on my writing dreams after a very bad time in my life but recently picked it back up and I'm starting to feel very passionate about it again.

 

You send them a query. Usually by e-mail.

You can find lists of agents at querytracker and similar websites. You can narrow down your search to agents who work with your genre. Then you go to their websites, vet them at preditors and editors and AW Water Cooler, etc. Then you send them a query. Basic ideas about queries can be found at QueryShark, but be aware that these are the ideas of just one agent and others have different ideas. You send the query in the format requested by the agent. Send them in batches - maybe ten or so at a time.

Then sit back and see what happens.

 

Awesome thank you.

 

Thanks a lot for sharing that link! Not saying all my responses to criticism - ever - have been angelic in nature... but man, I wouldn't even think about writing back to a publisher like that. I'd be grateful they took the time to look at my submission and respond at all. Getting that far would be an accomplishment in and of itself, for me!

If you have the time, would you mind talking more about the conferences / pitch sessions? And I wouldn't even know where to start looking for events like that. I never hear about any conferences of pitch sessions happening near me, let alone anywhere. Where is a good place to look (besides "Google")?

Sorry if these are dumb questions. But I've never had the luxury of personally knowing anybody who's already been-there-done-that, so to speak. This is a very strange world.

Is one month the typical amount of time it takes to hear back? (assuming you hear back at all)

I think that's pretty good advice though actually. Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, it's important to also move on in the meantime and keep writing!

Yeah, it's nerve-wracking just to think about for me. Probably a good thing I'm far from ready, for now. I've heard horror stories about agents, but yeah, I assumed that most of them are good, as you said. Just like with most professions.

Sorry for asking so many questions, but I want to have a better understanding of how the process works, instead of blindly stumbling into it. Doesn't help that I don't know anybody personally who's already been through this, let alone even wants to.

After you were accepted, what was the next step? Did you have to meet with the agent in real life? Would be inconvenient if the agent who gave you the acceptance lived on the other side of the country.

Also- were all of your submissions to agents with AAR membership?

That's a pretty cool story. Always satisfying to prove to yourself, and others, that you can do it!

By "writer's putting you forward" do you mean writers on this site? Not asking for any names. Just curious. I don't know any writers in my personal life, unfortunately, so any tips on how to make connections and network is always greatly appreciated.

Perfect, this was going to be my next question!

It's good to know, at least, that the querying process is more straightforward than it seems at first. I guess it's still a little daunting, but it's no longer a complete mystery. So thank-you!

As far as other ways of meeting agents, are you familiar with them by chance? Mainly the ones that others have been mentioning; conferences, pitch sessions(?) and the like.

 

From what I see, there is no typical time but a month is on the quicker end. My experience was that requests came quickly (one was within 10 minutes of sending my query) and rejections come more slowly. A month to read a full is pretty fast - it can take up to six. I was lucky that my agency closes to submissions every January, and I submitted at the beginning of February, so they were up to date with queries and responding quickly.

A writer I talked to just got a rejection two years after sending the query, for a novel that's been accepted for publication.

They live in another country, about 3,200 miles away. I've never met either of them. It's traditional for agents to call you when they want to represent you, but something went wrong with our transatlantic call so we ended up on Skype. Mostly I talk to them via email, but we do Skype every now and then for more involved talks.

Nope. I'm not even sure if my agents are members - I know they follow the AAR code of conduct. It's not important to me. I didn't do as much research as people sometimes say you should - ain't nobody got time for hours of Googling on one agent IMO - but I used Preditors and Editors and the Beware forums on AbsoluteWrite to make sure I wasn't submitting to scam agencies. When it came time to choose, I did much more in depth research, mostly on Publishers Marketplace.

I know this wasn't to me, but I have some experience with this. I 'referred' two unagented writers to my agents. Neither of them got an offer, but it did get their pages read, and probably with more attention than a slushpile querier. Most agents will accept referrals even when they're closed to submissions. Obviously, agents and their writers share at least some tastes, so a referred writer probably has a better chance of acceptance than a random querier.

Also not addressed to me but I think you have the three ways of meeting agents: querying (most common), meeting at writing events (personally I think this is a waste of time and money, and have never done it) and referrals.

 

Awesome information. We did some "how to get published" essays in one of my advanced fiction classes when I was in college, but I never got any useful information out of them. Thank you.

 

One of the lectures in Brandon Sanderson's writing course on Youtube goes in-depth about the publishing industry and the actual business of writing. Can't remember if it talks much about agents and editors, but it might be interesting information for you anyway.



Edit:

Actually, the second half of this one's more focused on agents:

 

This is extremely reassuring and helpful. I've read a lot of blog posts and whatnot that go on about how there's only a 1% chance or whatever, but those are probably tailored towards the people who think their work is supremely great when in reality it's full of bad grammar, punctuation errors and cliches.

 

Voice of doom, so don't read if it'll upset you.

Spoiler

Reputable agents receive 40-60 queries a day. Let's say it's 50. Even if you're in the top 10%, that means you're among 1,800-ish good queries a year. Most agents take on fewer than 10 clients a year. In fact, established agents probably take fewer than five.

No matter how good your manuscript and query are, the odds are against you because the supply of even GOOD manuscripts far outstrips demand (or rather, the capacity of good agents, whose numbers are limited). Not being successful doesn't mean you never will be - just that your query didn't hit the right inbox at the right time on that occasion. It takes most authors a few manuscripts before they get representation.

The key is not to give up!

 

Quite so - but it's still not the astronomical odds people imply when they talk about publishing.

The vast majority of people querying are people who are absolutely not ready to do it yet - either because their skill level isn't sufficiently high, or because their manuscript has not been sufficiently revised and edited. Getting into that top 10% is the easy part for anyone who takes the craft seriously and has a realistic critical opinion of their own work, since the other 90% is nigh unreadable dreck.

Getting from that 10% to the top 1% is, naturally, much harder - BUT if you're doing the research and developing your skills, it's not unrealistic. It's unfortunate that it also involves an element of luck, since it can only ever be a matter of personal taste, but as you say, a few manuscripts down the line and you might just get that break.

 

Ode to my agent.

 

I'm fortunate to know some published authors through a friend, and they've read some of my scrawls and appreciated some of the stories, enough to name-drop me to a couple of agents.

It's been helpful, if only to get some detailed feedback on where I need to improve my writing and to see if the stories are commercial enough. It's also given me an insight into the publishing industry you don't often hear about. My friends are pretty candid about their experiences.

All of which is great, although there still aren't any books out there bearing my name. I really need to get my head down and put something out there, which I've started doing with the short stories.

 

Yeah, That Teresa Nielson Hayden article is old—2004—from when most submissions were still done via paper, etc. However, I really liked her 14 steps an agent takes to decide whether to reject a submission. Especially enjoyed number four:

While I can certainly understand her point of view, and accept that agents must be swamped by submissions, she does leave out one important truth ...agents do reject MS submissions from people who then go on to get them published elsewhere, and make tons of money. (JK Rowling anybody? I believe she got 13 rejections before somebody took her on.)

It behooves everybody to remember that agents and publishing houses don't always get it right, either. Not only do they reject books that end up being popular, but they also accept books that don't sell well, despite promotions, etc. They are human beings, and should never get the notion about themselves that they are infallible and godlike.

I think most of them do a great job, and I can certainly understand slush-pile fatigue. But what takes them a few minutes (or seconds) to reject has taken the author months or years to produce, and it's great when they never forget that ratio. A form rejection letter is perfectly acceptable, but to treat a polite submitter with any kind of disrespect—including not bothering to respond at all—is not.