How To Find An Agent in 2 Steps

AKA Perseverance & Patience

You’ve got a completed, edited, polished manuscript ready to go. You just need to find an agent who wants to represent your book. Let the research begin.

Step 1 - read the Writer Beware website (starting with the Literary Agents page) and the Preditors & Editors website (starting with the Agents & Attorneys page).

Step 2 – Find the name of a literary agency or agent that represents the kind of novel you have written. Do NOT send an urban fantasy to someone who only publishes westerns. Most literary agencies have a website, like the Knight Agency, with a page that will tell you what their agents represent and what their submission guidelines are. Some agents, such as Nathan Bransford, have a blog where they discuss what they represent, as well as helpful tips about submitting. Also check out the Acknowledgments pages of your favorite books – authors often thank their agents there.

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Fabulous! You’ve found a reputable agent you want to send your manuscript to.

Now what?

Step 3 – FOLLOW THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES for that agency/agent. Prove to them you can follow directions. You’d be surprised how many people can’t.

Step 4 – Record who you sent what to, when. This can be done in a notebook or a text file or a spreadsheet.

Step 5 – Celebrate! You have done more than most people who want to be writers.

And the most important post-agent submission step of all …

Start working on your next manuscript.

Sheldon Cooper: While Mr. Kim, by virtue of his youth and naiveté, has fallen prey to the inexplicable need for human contact, let me step in and assure you that my research will go on uninterrupted, and that social relationships will continue to baffle and repulse me.
- Big Bang Theory, “The Jerusalem Duality”, 1.12

Sep 22, 2009

Tags: agent

Categories: agents & editors & publishing