As someone who would like to get an agent this year, I'm trying to learn all I can about finding and working with one. Right now, I'm wondering if there exists such a thing as a hierarchy of agents. That is: are there agents who are known to be more successful than others and to have stronger connections in the publishing world. And if so - how do we find them and pitch to them? Conversely, how do we know when certain agents are best avoided? It seems that anyone can set themselves up as an agent, no licensing or tests required. This makes me wonder if the profession attracts charlatans or posers, and if it does, how to avoid getting stuck with one of them.
For sure there is a hierarchy. There are the big shot agents with their big shot clients who are never, ever going to be looking at some noob's unsolicited manuscript. We're not going to get near those types until we've already been published and made some bestseller lists. For now, we just have to research agents and agencies as best we can and hope for the best. Most agency sites have their own hierarchies - often the president and VP still accept submissions, then there are partners, senior agents, and associate agents. I don't pay this much mind, though. I'm mostly focused on which of those people who are accepting submissions might be most interested in the work that I am offering. As an unpublished author, I know that I'd be fortunate to get any of them to offer me a contract. As for scams, you just have to have that same kind of awareness when it comes to any other types of scam. I only have perused the sites of agencies listed on Query Tracker. And there are a lot. Same with Duotrope. It's unlikely that these services would ever post the sites of fake agencies. And the only real way to get scammed is to send someone money. Legitimate agents will never ask for money. Ever. No matter how convincing a con artist might be, as soon as they as for money, you know it's not legitimate.
Thanks Set2Stun, that's very useful. I wonder if there's any way of researching an agent's won/loss record, so to speak. Some guides list the writers they represent; I find that useful.
They definitely won't be posting things that they could not sell, but you can be sure that they will provide a list of successful authors that they represent, and/or lists of books that they sold that did reasonably well. Probably not possible to find out how many books they failed to sell, though for sure that would be useful information for us to have.
