I think one of the biggest current misconceptions about “Be An Agent for a Day” involves ignoring this little number in the rules and regulations:
6. For the purposes of this contest you are looking for queries that demonstrate publishable potential, not necessarily your genres of interest.
I was kind of surprised to see that people outright discounted certain genres that they weren’t interested in, on the grounds that agents do this as well.
Yes. We are allowed to specialize. To a certain extent. No agent I know limits themselves solely to genres they like to read for pleasure. You just can’t make a living that way. Every agent focuses on projects they are passionate about, but agents are passionate about selling. We take on things we strongly believe we can sell. Even if it’s not what we would read if we were civilians.
All that said, how do you think you did? If you had to bet, how many of the actually published books do you think you chose? Are you confident in your choices?
Anonymous says
I actually was harder on the genre I read than the others and requested things I never thought of reading before but whose queries made them shine.
The part that bothers me is the ‘Agents’ who are deciding to be the morality police. Rubs me of censorship. I guess if they had that on their agent pages peeps would have the choice to not submit to them. But it still bothers me here.
Haste yee back ;-) says
Okay, people, due to rule 6, get a gallon of your favorite caffeinated beverage, or CNS depressant, ie alcohol. We’re gonna do it all over again!
And next week… 50 agents, a few published, will submit their first 10 pages of a WIP, (novels please). All comments accepted. See if you can spot the published agents, OR, the smart ones who forsook actual writing long ago).
Haste yee back 😉
AM Riley says
Hey, I’ve seen agents give very very specific guidelines about where their interests lie and I’ve read complaints about authors who submit material outside those interests.
Couldn’t participate, too busy at the moment, but are we assuming that the published books were any good? I think that’s a huge assumption. Perhaps some of our ‘agents for a day’ had better instincts than the norm and rejected the garbage.
Nathan Bransford says
am riley-
It’s really not about making a value judgment. It’s about determining what will and won’t sell.
KathyF says
Nathan,
I read (in several places) that an agent doesn’t really make much money on a single book from an author (unless it’s a total blowout, of course). And so they don’t take on one-book authors, but concentrate on career authors.
Is that true?
KathyF
Anonymous says
Hi, Nathan — this is such a great exercise, even for those of us not participating, so thank you!
How did you choose your queries from the hundreds that came in — did you take the first 47 that came in or did you read them and select specific queries? As someone who didn’t make the cut I’m just wondering if it was my query or timing. 😀
Jill says
Right or wrong, I chose the five I did because of 1)the clarity of those particular queries; and 2) intriguing novel premise.
So congratulations to authors of #9, #10, #14, #27, and #35. Great job!
And a pat on the back for all who entered a query. I thought most of them were quite good.
Nathan Bransford says
anon-
Honestly, I basically clicked around the inbox at random and chose the ones that had block formatting (because they were easier to copy over).
Polenth says
I chose ones I thought would sell, rather than restricting it to my genres of interest. But I didn’t look up the queries/topics to see if I could match it to a published book, so I’m not too confident I picked the published ones.
kdrausin says
Nathan,
Do you ever hold on to a query if you’re on the fence? You had said you went through 72 or 76 the other day and accepted two. Do you always make your decisions that fast and move on?
I found as a fake agent that I wanted to take my time and wait until the next morning to make my final decisions on some of the queries.
If you see talent, do you help in the editing process or expect works to be polished and complete? I have heard both from different agents.
Thanks, Krista
Laura says
I’m probably very naive about all of this, but I just felt if a work grabbed me that much, it would grab the public. Especially since, as much as I try to read cult favorites, I’m a bestsellers kind of girl, my taste tends to run that way.
And right now, I bet an agent could focus on YA along and make a killing. Is this incredibly naive of me?
Jane Doherty says
I definitely didn’t pick just things I’m interested in. At least two of them, I doubt I’d read unless compelled to do so.
I can’t remember my first pick, but the last four were: 16, 24, 35, and 49.
If nothing else, this has given me a direction for a new WIP – I’m now plotting an actual book to go with my submitted query. The idea went over better than I expected, so I guess the interest is there.
*Does a happy writer dance*
Kristi says
Marilyn P. – my friend sent me that clip from “Britains Got Talent” earlier today and it actually brought tears to my eyes (and I’m so not a crier and so not a fan of reality television.) Such an inspiration…although I can write much better than I can sing 🙂
Soratian says
I’m not confident at all! 🙂 I only have one regret when it comes to the books I didn’t pick, which is the trucking memoir (#20). I really did like that one but I’d already given out 2 by then and wanted to conserve.
I guess I wasn’t really playing to win. If I were, then I’d probably have read all the entries first and then shortlisted the ones I wanted. Instead, I decided as I read, keeping my quota in mind.
In the end though, my choices wouldn’t have differed that much. In any case, an agent decides on a case-by-case basis as well right?
Thanks!
Katy says
I personally didn’t discount any genres except non-fiction, and that was only because I don’t know anything about the non-fiction genre and therefore wouldn’t know what sells, what doesn’t sell, etc. However, I did notice that a majority of what I requested was in the sci-fi/fantasy vein, which is my genre, so I am aware that there was definitely some genre bias going on. But I couldn’t help that the projects I got excited about were in my favorite genre!
Jen C says
I think I did alright, but I have no idea if I picked any at all. I chose to be optimistic and voted for 2, but who knows.
I didn’t discriminate by genre, as most of what I chose I don’t read or write (YA, thriller), but mostly what swayed me was what seemed like an original premise to me. Perhaps that was the wrong way to do it, but what’s done is done!
I am still bummed that I missed one of the ones that I intended to vote for (#17), but it’s too late to go back and change it… I checked…
Lucy says
Mostly I focused on the strength of the writing, but also whether the hook was enough to engage me. I passed on several that had possibilities in terms of their premise, because the query letter was weak and I suspected that the writer could not carry through with the book, or would need so much editing as to not be worth the time.
It’s possible that another agent (a real one, of course) would look at the same query letter/s and say, “Hey, I think I can work with this writer.”
I’ll be intrigued to find out if my guesses were spot on–or not.
Pinkie says
I tried to judge each query on the basis of the query itself, whether it was compelling and well-written, and if so, I delved deeper into the idea of the novel itself. I also found it was easy to reject queries this way. If they weren’t compelling, that’s all I has to say. And then it’s up to the writer, if he or she so chooses, to either do more research on the art of query writing or to address the idea of the book itself as one that is not so compelling.
CPK
Sharon aka Sapphire says
Nathan,
I truly enjoyed “being an agent for a day,” although it took me three days…
I hope the prize for getting the most right is a trip out to meet you and be a reader for you for a week.
Jenny says
Quite a few people here mentioned thinking the trucking memoir was publishable. That made me realize how important it is to be familiar with what’s been published in a genre before you try to sell a book in that genre.
Since I read mostly nonfiction, when I read the trucker query I immediately thought of John McPhee’s Uncommon Carriers, a fairly recent book that brings the trucking life alive.
But I don’t read YA so I would have no idea if a query I read here was brilliantly original or straight out of another book. I sent my daughter over to look at an entertaining chapter from a novel posted elsewhere on the web only to have her tell me it was almost identical to a scene in a movie I hadn’t seen.
So a huge part of an agent’s value lies in having the kind of familiarity that lets the agent know what really is new and different.
Diana says
I was one of the people who said “I am not doing fantasy/science fiction.” That is just a genre that I’m not into, and I would make a crappy saleswoman if I was knocking on editors’ doors trying to peddle it. An author wouldn’t win with me as his or her sci-fi/fantasy champion.
However, I did read the queries, because an idea can resonate with me even if the genre as a whole doesn’t.
Nathan Bransford says
jenny-
That’s a great point. I think you also have to kind of have a sense of what that book would have to be in order to work. That query has a great voice and clearly it’s a subject about which some people are interested. But it has to be written with the right angle. If it’s going to be a literary memoir the writing has to be truly awesome (i.e. John McPhee level). It also has to either be used as a lens to explore the broader industry, or it has to tell a compelling story.
All of this is to say that voice and good structure alone doesn’t necessarily make a query. An agent is thinking about the marketplace and looking for clues about whether the book accomplished what it needs to in order to work.
TecZ aka Dalton C Teczon - Writer says
Wow, I really enjoyed this. There were so many appealing queries. I was down to tossing back and forth my top twelve.
I believe retail can be tricky because the public can be fickled. Also presentation and timing can be crucial.
For example in the flavor of vampire tales, “Twilight,” by Stephanie Meyer, was written in 2005, but became a seemingly sudden hit in 2008. It hit shortly after the tv show in 2007, “Moonlight.” I’m guessing the public, was having good guy vampire withdrawals when the show got suddenly canceled. What a great window of opportunity. (Besides the fact that she is a great writer in my opinion).
So, I would think it can be tricky knowing definitely what will sell and when to get it out there.
This exercise has created food for thought on what a challenge it is for an agent to pick the very best project to represent.
Megan says
I found it hard to keep reading if the genre didn’t interest me – i only like specific genres…
i tried hard to stay objective, however I’m not too sure how well that went…
Phoenix says
The refresh times were getting too long to leave comments, so I didn’t. But I crit on other sites, so I don’t feel too bad about not taking the time to crit here.
So many of the queries would have been quick rejects for me. Still, I found 10 that would have nudged themselves out of the slush (that’s a commendable 20% success rate!), but only 4 I would have requested (which, at 8%, is a pretty high request rate from what I hear).
The 6 runners up:
13
20
21
27
33
48
The 4 requests:
6
10
17
35
Rebecca Knight says
I really enjoyed trying to think outside my genre (fantasy/scifi) for what would “sell.” That was what made this the most interesting for me. I requested a thriller and some nonfiction, which was definitely something I didn’t think I’d do.
It will be fascinating to see how it went!
Calli says
Nathan-
I think I accidentally stumbled on something regarding the queries and which ones were published. Should I email you about it?
As far as rule 6 goes, I tried to follow it…but there was one book I can think of that I broke that rule on. It wasn’t an easy decision, but I figured, had this been real, I’d end up doing a lousy job representing a book in a subgenre that I’m antipathetic toward. Is this often a problem in actuality?
Dana says
I think maybe I got three… maybe.. but likely- 0 🙂
For the record I asked for:
9: full
10: partial
16: partial
33: partial
36: full
It was hard to look at queries in genres that I don’t normally read. It was also difficult for me to get past poor writing and grammatical errors. Really hard. But, we shall see. Nathan, I don’t know that I entirely envy you- but the job does seem sort of fun. 🙂
HA! And my Word Verification is Hussie- excellent. Nathan’s blog is trying to tell me something. 🙂
Nathan Bransford says
calli-
Yes, please e-mail me.
Nixy Valentine says
I guess I followed rule 6… and I didn’t, but to be fair, there are few genre I don’t read… I like everything from thrillers to sci-fi to crime to romance and also non-fic.
Where I didn’t follow the rules was when I had narrowed it down to about 7 maybes and I only had 3 slots left. In that instance, I picked the three I would pay money to read.
I’m confident I found one, hope I found two, and doubt I found three. =)
Jen P says
Finally finished and I can now say it was immensely difficult to select from my Top 10 to my Top 5. But just had to go for it.
Not necessarily my favourite queries, but what I think has potential. Will be fascinated to see if I even hit one right!
Query 17
Query 24
Query 35
Query 36
Query 46
(and I would have taken the CAT scan if finished instead of….35)
I wonder how much depends on the luck of the day, what else comes in the same day as your query?
Word veri: flair – what an appropriate one for all this creativity – well done all the entrants and fair commentators,a nd to Nathan a huge thank you for managing this beast.
Scott says
Numbers 6 and 10 are popping up quite a bit, I find.
My selections were: 6, 10, 18, 37, and 48. Again, it was a mix of what I thought would sell and what I thought was close enough that I could helps shape and sell.
And well said, Jenny.
Anonymous says
Nonfiction does not need to be finished at the querying stage.
Carolyn says
I am not at ALL confident I did well. If I were an agent, count me as one who would insist on pages with the query. Having pages probably would have changed my opinion on some. Plus, I rejected one query even though I recognized (and had read) the book because I HATED the query. I thought it missed completely what was good about the book.
PurpleClover says
Nathan –
I think it’s only fair that when you tell us the three published books you tell us out of the 50 which ones you would have chosen.
😉
Cat Moleski says
There was one book that I thought might be an already published, but the premise was just so distasteful to me that I couldn’t bring myself to ask for pages.
Joy says
Phew! Took me four days, but I finished. I voted “two” but I’m really unsure. After reading Nathan’s comments in this post I suddenly felt very inadequate as an agent. I do not know enough about “what sells” to make educated decisions about genres I’ve never read. I guess a lot of bias went in to my decisions, so I may have passed on perfectly sellable material. Ah well.
This whole process is extraordinarily reminiscent of my days grading high school essays. If only I had a rubric for books that sell . . . alas, thanks for the opportunity. I should’ve done this with my high school students. “teacher for a day” wonder what that would’ve done to the atmosphere and level of effort in class. Hmmmm.
terri says
Alrighty, I got my ‘fab five’ picked.
This was waaay hard and I’m afraid about 20 got ‘no response means no interest’. I just ran out of hours in the day.
Finally, had to go with my gut, thinking what books could I be excited enough about to pitch to certain publishers. I admit a preference for action and thrillers, but I tried to pick a variety including YA and urban fantasy.
Tough job. I, personally, would rather take a beating than read a romance novel. However, if I had a good contact with an editor who said he wanted to see romance novels, I’d have to educate myself as to what makes a good romance novel.
This lesson was very enlightening, even though I manage the ‘slush pile’ of customer service questions for our family business.
word verify: ‘slangs’ [urban smack for urban smack, as in ‘Slangs, I haz ’em.’
Lisa R says
Nathan,
I was one of those people who didn’t take the non-fiction because I really had no frame of reference for it. What is funny is that as I was rejecting the non-fiction I was thinking about the publish-ability factor (i.e. this could be publishable and I’m rejecting it) but I just don’t read enough or even browse enough non-fiction titles in my bookstore to know what might be or might not be. I’m sure one of the non-fiction works was probably a published or soon-to-be published book. I really floundered on that whole subject. I think you make an excellent point about agents not focusing solely on what they like and having to also focus on what sells. Do agents sometimes pass on queries that they think may be saleable but don’t specialize in to other agents? I think I might consult another agent in those cases, maybe someone who takes on a lot more non-fiction than I did (if I were an agent) but again, I am by no means an agent!
It is hard to turn off your personal filter too. I wanted to request many books because they were what I’d personally like to read but didn’t because I wasn’t sure they would be considered saleable. That’s why I think this whole thing was very instructive. You and other agents do this all the time and have a great knowledge base for what sells and what doesn’t.
Also, I have had many agents read my work and tell me that it’s great but they aren’t passionate enough about it to give it the attention it deserves. As a reader I certainly understand that. I mean I’ve read books that have left me breathless and also books that are good, solid reads but don’t leave me thinking about them for weeks afterward. But should I be reading the “not passionate enough” rejection as “this simply will not sell”? Because if that is the case, I would certainly want to go back and make some changes!
Jenny says
Folks,
Your nonfiction manuscript does have to be complete if it is a memoir–unless you are famous.
Memoir is queried just like fiction though the quality of the writing has to be much stronger than what you can get away with in genre fiction.
My impression from that query was that the author did not have the writing chops needed to pull of a memoir and was too wrapped up in his own story to sell the book as a more objective look at a lifesytle.
The only nonfiction here that could be queried via proposal is the CAT scan book. But the huge problem with that query is that the author did not present the kind of credential needed to sell that particular book.
The query also lacked a section of comparative market information–how that book differed from competing books–and a marketing plan. Both are required in a nonfiction proposal.
It is almost impossible to sell a medical book to a big publisher without a very strong medical credential: MD, head of hospital, etc.
Beyond that, health books that warn of dangers don’t sell as well as books that offer simple, or let’s be honest, simplistic, strategies for healing the common health problems people already know they have.
Just_Me says
Ha! Done!
Sadly, I doubt I did well accepting books that are already published. I had a few where I read the queries and they sounded too familiar. I passed because it sounded like “it had been done” but chances are those were the real queries.
It was a bit of a trick to ask us to request what we wanted and guess which 5 were published novels. That assumes that all of the blog readers participating also love every book published. I didn’t… and I requested some long shots because they intrigued me and I think there is a market for them.
For the record: 48, 36, 29, 17, 16
Hallie says
I picked 0, because I know I’m attracted to certain genres more than others. It was tough to turn down so many YA proposals that I’d really like to see to make sure I’m not missing something great. I tried to pick a variety of genres and books I thought I could sell instead, including a book with a query that I didn’t personally connect with. My final picks were 6, 24, 35, 36, and 37, and the string in the 30s is statistically unlikely, so I wouldn’t be surprised to find out I’d missed on all five. But I hope I got two or more.
Melissa says
Nathan, I picked some books I wouldn’t personally want to read, but I also passed on some that might have been good choices within their genres.
For the purposes of the contest, I believed it was a better plan to skip genres I know nothing about. For example, I’ve never read a single chick lit book. How could I tell if the plots I was seeing were tired or fresh? My best bet was to reject all of those and hope that the published books weren’t among them.
If I were a real agent, I would research genres I don’t like to gain familiarity with them. But I’m not a real agent, so I just played the odds.
I’m not at all confident that I picked the best books. I think maybe I picked one of the published ones. It would definitely take me more than a day to get good at picking winners.
Melissa
Melissa says
One more thing, Nathan. One of your comments says that some of these projects could go on to be published books. Do you have a sense for how many? I’m not asking for names, just numbers.
Vic K says
Hi Nathan,
As I am one of the ‘agents’ that claimed personal taste, I’d like to expand on my thinking.
As it turns out – and I’ve just really come to this realisation tonight, while entering my final choices – my preference is for originality. That, and commercial fiction. Of my five choices, not one was in the genre I write in, (fantasy) and in fact only two were of the same genre. But they all had one thing in common; I thought the basic premise was original and intriguing. So I guess my personal taste runs to seeing something new and exciting, rather than the same old stuff.
I did pass on a couple of things I recognised – which may well mean I missed something that is published that I’ve read. So I’m guessing I’ve run zero for zero on this competition. (I also think you may have hidden a few surprises in the queries intended to shock people.)
Can’t wait for the big reveal!
TFree says
Don’t you think it’s true that most of us don’t have the behind-the-curtain insight and experience to know what publishers really consider publishable? That’s why we’re in need of an agent ourselves.
abouttothunder says
I’m confident in many of my choices, but realize that I requested one that I shouldn’t have. (I would love to be the assistant that weeds out the worst of an agent’s slush pile. That would be a dream job.)
Leis says
11 to go and have exhausted my 5 some 10 queries ago…
Am I confident in my choices? Um, no so much, but then this is only for partial requests. I just can’t throw away an opportunity, I guess.
So I’d likely make an awful agent: overworked, over obsessed, overstressed workaholic without a life, eh? (now why does that sound familiar?)
Sasha says
I guessed two, although it may only be one. I’m fairly sure that one of the manuscripts I didn’t request is one of the published ones. One of the suspense novels jumped out at me as likely already published or under contract, but I didn’t request it because of being limited to five manuscripts. I wanted to request the ones I would be most passionate about representing if I were an agent.
KareFree Kennels says
I have no idea how “well” I did in this contest. As for confidence in my choices, none at all, but that doesn’t bother me.
If I were an agent, I know that I would pass on many great books that go on to be published and make decent sales. C’est la vie.
Of the 50 queries, only two really excited me. Real life.
The exercise didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know…other than that even with a reasonably written query and publishing credits, I still might pass simply because the subject or themes didn’t make me chomp at the bit to read even a partial. Conversely, sometimes a query that breaks all the rules could tweak my interest.
Congratulations, Nathan, for thinking of this contest. Lots of fun and very interesting.