Topic of the Week: How Did You Get Your Agent?

[anywherebeyond]

Recently, carrie_ryan attended a convention, and wrote up her reaction to some of the advice for fledging writers here. If I may quote:

One thing that really stuck out to me: a few people (and some of them well published authors) said that the best was to get an agent was to go to cons. Now, while I agree that you can make some great connections at

Comments

[anywherebeyond]

I got my agent the new-fashioned way: e-query. Between Absolute Write, Editors & Preditors, and Publisher's Marketplace, you can get a really good idea of who's legitimate, who represents what and who has a great track record right online.

Sifting through those, I made a full list of everyone who represented my kind of book and I was honest- I didn't fudge and put in people who repped southern fiction, but not YA- what's the point in wasting my time for a guaranteed rejection?

Then I sorted them based on what they repped- if they repped books I liked, I thought I might find a good match there. When I was done, I had no agent on my list that I wouldn't have been thrilled to have rep me.

Then, I arranged the list in this order:

Agents who accept e-queries, no pages
Agents who accept e-queries, with pages
Agents who accept paper queries, no pages
Agents who accept paper queries, with pages
Agents who accept paper queries, with chapters
Agents who accept paper queries, with synopsis and/or chapters

And I sorted them this way because frankly, I was broke when I was searching. Since I had no one on my list I wouldn't have been thrilled to have, I did them in order of least expense. I've had two agents in my career, and in both cases, I signed on the "e-query, with pages" stage.

So it's my opinion that pages ALWAYS help. I think I only got one or two requests for partials based on a query letter alone. But I got multiple, multiple, multiple requests for partials and fulls with pages. So that's my best personal advice: always include pages (unless explicitly told to include something else/to disinclude pages.)