"Finding a literary agent is like moving to a new town and having to find a contractor to remodel your house and a mechanic to fix your car all at once. It has a strong element of Russian roulette." ~ National Writers Union
Guess how many literary agents work in New York City? According to Google maps, 6,351.
When I saw that figure pop up, I recalled the same feeling I had back in the early 1990s, scanning through a barely-read back issue of The Economist, and reading that there were over 50,000 practising lawyers in Washington, D.C. 15 years later, that number may have tripled. Still, that’s fine—most could be working in some politburo think tank churning out opinions on how water-boarding doesn’t infringe constitutional rights, or defending politicians who engage in acts of public indecency or other conflicts of interest—but what if you lived in D.C., needed a nasty divorce, or paperwork filed for the purchase of a 400-square-foot apartment, or your neighbour accused you of harbouring illegal aliens in your basement? Where would you start to find a good lawyer?
Well, that wasn’t my plight. It was worse. I was looking for a good literary agent—but here in Vancouver, we know next to nothing about literary agents, let alone good v. bad ones. We see what’s on the best selling lists, listen to our friends when they say they’ve just read a good book, or hear about some novel for the first time when it’s already on the big screen. At least with lawyers, there’s word of mouth—everyone’s had the misfortune of needing one or two in their lifetimes. 2,400 miles away from New York, we have no collective experience of agents—apart from Estelle, Joey’s chain-smoking agent on “Friends” or Ari Gold on “Entourage” (who, of course, contemplates practising law at one point).
Luckily, there’s the Publisher’s Marketplace where you can see who the top deal makers are, do reverse searches on authors and find out who their agents are, track the most popular agent web pages or blogs, read their clients’ book reviews, and do your best to determine if what you have is remotely compatible with what an agent has accepted in the past.
So that’s where I started. After researching many agents’ client lists and submissions guidelines (and choosing only those who accepted emails because I was curious to see if anyone would even respond), I sent off a modest amount of email queries—8 to be exact.
Then I sat back and contemplated how long, or if, I would hear anything back. (Time to start the next manuscript, I thought. This could take a while.)
The next day, I got a response. An agent asked to see the whole manuscript, asked if I could email it to her.
Shocking. I hadn’t expected such a quick response, especially not from an agent who had recently represented a first-time writer—one who just happened to be one of Oprah’s Book Club selections.
So off the manuscript immediately went, travelling the 2,400 miles through cyberspace at the speed of light, without the destruction of a single tree. Later that day, I also got two rejections from other agents: one saying she wasn’t considering submissions due to her full roster of clients (a form, automatically-generated response), the other from an agent’s assistant saying my pitch didn’t seem right for their list but thanks for thinking of them just the same. But I didn’t mind—I’d already sent the manuscript off and wanted to hear from Agent #1 before sending it off to anyone else. A week later, I got two other form rejections but, still, no sweat off my balls, as they say.
And then the wait began.
We Canadians are known for our politeness (damn Lester Pearson and the Suez Canal Crisis). It may end up being our downfall, as it has been the downfall of our pipelined natural resources, but I continued to wait, saying to myself, “She must be swamped with queries and all the other agent-like things she does. I’ll give her 6 weeks.”
6 weeks, it turns out, is a long time not to send out other queries, not to invite more rejections. But I waited, to be polite (why ask someone to consider a query when Agent #1 might agree to take it on?). I guess I was hopeful—dubious, because it simply couldn’t be that easy to find an agent, but hopeful nonetheless.
As soon as 6 weeks passed, however, I sent an email reminder. Agent #1 wrote back:
(I just double checked…she did say I was “onto something here”—not “on something”.)
As for the other 3 of the original 8 queries, I haven’t received any responses from them. One did note on her website, however, that if she didn’t respond in 3 weeks, then consider it a rejection.
I think it’s safe to say that any lack of a response after 3 to 4 weeks can be taken as a “no, but thanks” from any agent, regardless of whether they specify that on their website or not.
Still, considering I doubted I’d get any responses at all, I figured that one request for the manuscript, 4 rejections in less than two weeks, and 3 non-responses was pretty good.
And is a 37.5% non-response rate a good thing?
Turns out, as the weeks have followed, yes it is…
When I saw that figure pop up, I recalled the same feeling I had back in the early 1990s, scanning through a barely-read back issue of The Economist, and reading that there were over 50,000 practising lawyers in Washington, D.C. 15 years later, that number may have tripled. Still, that’s fine—most could be working in some politburo think tank churning out opinions on how water-boarding doesn’t infringe constitutional rights, or defending politicians who engage in acts of public indecency or other conflicts of interest—but what if you lived in D.C., needed a nasty divorce, or paperwork filed for the purchase of a 400-square-foot apartment, or your neighbour accused you of harbouring illegal aliens in your basement? Where would you start to find a good lawyer?
Well, that wasn’t my plight. It was worse. I was looking for a good literary agent—but here in Vancouver, we know next to nothing about literary agents, let alone good v. bad ones. We see what’s on the best selling lists, listen to our friends when they say they’ve just read a good book, or hear about some novel for the first time when it’s already on the big screen. At least with lawyers, there’s word of mouth—everyone’s had the misfortune of needing one or two in their lifetimes. 2,400 miles away from New York, we have no collective experience of agents—apart from Estelle, Joey’s chain-smoking agent on “Friends” or Ari Gold on “Entourage” (who, of course, contemplates practising law at one point).
Luckily, there’s the Publisher’s Marketplace where you can see who the top deal makers are, do reverse searches on authors and find out who their agents are, track the most popular agent web pages or blogs, read their clients’ book reviews, and do your best to determine if what you have is remotely compatible with what an agent has accepted in the past.
So that’s where I started. After researching many agents’ client lists and submissions guidelines (and choosing only those who accepted emails because I was curious to see if anyone would even respond), I sent off a modest amount of email queries—8 to be exact.
Then I sat back and contemplated how long, or if, I would hear anything back. (Time to start the next manuscript, I thought. This could take a while.)
The next day, I got a response. An agent asked to see the whole manuscript, asked if I could email it to her.
Shocking. I hadn’t expected such a quick response, especially not from an agent who had recently represented a first-time writer—one who just happened to be one of Oprah’s Book Club selections.
So off the manuscript immediately went, travelling the 2,400 miles through cyberspace at the speed of light, without the destruction of a single tree. Later that day, I also got two rejections from other agents: one saying she wasn’t considering submissions due to her full roster of clients (a form, automatically-generated response), the other from an agent’s assistant saying my pitch didn’t seem right for their list but thanks for thinking of them just the same. But I didn’t mind—I’d already sent the manuscript off and wanted to hear from Agent #1 before sending it off to anyone else. A week later, I got two other form rejections but, still, no sweat off my balls, as they say.
And then the wait began.
We Canadians are known for our politeness (damn Lester Pearson and the Suez Canal Crisis). It may end up being our downfall, as it has been the downfall of our pipelined natural resources, but I continued to wait, saying to myself, “She must be swamped with queries and all the other agent-like things she does. I’ll give her 6 weeks.”
6 weeks, it turns out, is a long time not to send out other queries, not to invite more rejections. But I waited, to be polite (why ask someone to consider a query when Agent #1 might agree to take it on?). I guess I was hopeful—dubious, because it simply couldn’t be that easy to find an agent, but hopeful nonetheless.
As soon as 6 weeks passed, however, I sent an email reminder. Agent #1 wrote back:
Many thanks for following up! I’ve had a chance to look at “The Graces of Mercy & Circumstance”, and I’m afraid that I won’t be offering you representation.
As you may know, I’m just beginning the agent-ing process, and I’ve found that I’ve really got to be 110% behind a novel in order to best represent it (especially in these rather tricky times). I think you’re onto something here, and I’m sure others will feel differently.
Best of luck to you!
(I just double checked…she did say I was “onto something here”—not “on something”.)
As for the other 3 of the original 8 queries, I haven’t received any responses from them. One did note on her website, however, that if she didn’t respond in 3 weeks, then consider it a rejection.
I think it’s safe to say that any lack of a response after 3 to 4 weeks can be taken as a “no, but thanks” from any agent, regardless of whether they specify that on their website or not.
Still, considering I doubted I’d get any responses at all, I figured that one request for the manuscript, 4 rejections in less than two weeks, and 3 non-responses was pretty good.
And is a 37.5% non-response rate a good thing?
Turns out, as the weeks have followed, yes it is…
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