Researching literary agents is an absolutely crucial step in the traditional publishing process, and I personally believe there are no good shortcuts.
You’re essentially searching for a (hopefully) long term business partner who will have enormous influence over your burgeoning literary career. A good agent can help you immensely. A bad agent is worse than having no agent.
And there’s not a whole lot of information to go on as you embark on this process. There’s only so much you can learn going in.
Too many authors approach the agent search trying to answer the question: Do I think this agent will like me?
And sure, that’s the orientation that’s broadly cultivated by the industry. Agents post their overly specific manuscript wish lists and list their million pet peeves, creating the impression that the key to entry into the kingdom of traditional publishing is to align yourself with agents’ very narrow preferences.
In truth, the real question you should be asking is: Do I like this prospective agent?
The problems with “Do I think this agent will like me?”
Now, there is one “Do I think this agent will like me”-adjacent question that you do need to ask: You need to make sure the prospective agent represents your book’s category/genre.
Agents specialize, and if you have written a category they don’t represent, it’s likely going to be a non-starter.
But don’t be too narrow about this. Your task is not to make sure the agent represents steampunk detective family dramas set in space; just make sure they represent science fiction and leave it at that. Err on the side of casting a wide net.
Beyond that, here’s the thing: you’re never going to be able to guess whether an agent will like your book or not. Heck, they might not even know they’re looking for your book until they see it. So don’t even try to guess!
Instead, it’s much more helpful to prioritize your search based on the prospective agents you like. Here’s why.
Turn the search around
Remember: you’re looking for a business partner. In order for that to work well, you need chemistry. You need a connection. And often a creative connection goes hand in hand with a personal connection.
You have no way of knowing who is going to vibe with you. But you absolutely can develop some instincts around who you vibe with.
Read interviews, take a gander at social media profiles, watch panels the agent has participated in. Who do you have a good feeling about? Who seems like someone you’d want to work with?
Who represents your favorite books? Even if they’re not in your precise category or genre, take note of it. There may be a helpful overlap in sensibility.
Prioritize the agents you have a good feeling about, even if what you’ve written is quite different from their list. As long as they represent your category, they’re fair game. And your instincts might be picking up on a sensibility that could presage a happy match.
Once again: err on the side of casting a wide net. Prioritize people you have a good feeling about. The worst anyone can do is say no or ignore you.
You never know who’s going to connect with your work. But you can figure out who you have a good feeling about and that’s literally half the battle.
How this advice worked for me
I have lived this advice as an author.
When I was querying Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow, I was a literary agent myself and had a robust network. I queried a bunch of agents I knew personally. And they all rejected me!
At the time, one of my favorite recently published books was The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. Now, this novel had absolutely nothing to do with mine (which formed the basis of my personalization in my query letter). It was a YA World War II novel with death as a narrator… my book was a wacky space adventure. But it had an overall sensibility I really vibed with. So I queried Zusak’s agent, Catherine Drayton at InkWell.
Her most prominent middle grade series at the time was Ranger’s Apprentice, which, again, was quite different from Jacob Wonderbar. But I knew she represented middle grade, so I went with the vibe. Had I gotten hung up on whether Catherine was into wacky middle grade space adventures, I might not have queried her and who knows what would have happened!
Lo and behold, we clicked, and she sold my trilogy to Dial Books at Penguin.
It’s tempting to try to predict what will happen when you’re querying and it’s easy to start second-guessing yourself. But you’ll never know in advance what will happen.
Go with the feeling, trust your instincts, cast a wide net. You’ll never know who will end up being the one.
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Art: A Letter of Recommendation by Charles Louis Baugniet
I believe this is the first time I’ve read any advice-givers say that liking an agent is as important as the agent liking you! What a unique perspective.
Thank you, Nathan!
In researching agents I’ve found many who include memoir as one of the genres they accept. I have yet to find one that says they have represented a memoirist. Getting specific, the memoir I’ve just finished is about the short time I worked as a private investigator. I haven’t found any agents who name real life private eye stories as a preference. I now understand that should I ever find such a rarity, it would be a good idea to like them as well.
When you say that you queried agents that you knew personally but they turned you down – and yet someone else took you on and sold not only that book but two others as well – do you think it is because the agents that you knew personally did not know what they were doing?
I know an agent who turned a book down that went on to become a world-wide best seller and I openly tell her that it is because she does not know what she is doing.
I cannot remember who said it but:
If you cannot write – get a job in publishing.
If you cannot get a job in publishing – become an agent.
If you cannot become an agent – God help you.
This reflects an extremely dim view of agents and agenting that I absolutely don’t share. Every agent has passed on big books. It comes with the job. Not every book is the right fit.
If an agent takes on a book they aren’t enthusiastic about, it might not end up *becoming* a big bestseller. It’s not like you can just slot in any agent on a project and get the same result. It’s all a delicate alchemy.
It may look super easy to you from the outside looking in, but it’s not. And if you think it is, why aren’t you already the biggest agent in publishing?
Because agenting is a job. And according to those that do it, it is a job that takes up a lot of their hours.
I have always found money easier to come by than having to trade hours for money.
If I were a busy agent – or to quote you, “the biggest agent” – how would I be able to spend my life as I do; playing golf, sailing, walking, travelling, dining out, and sun bathing?
You say not every book is the right fit, but surely that is just another way of saying that they cannot see its potential – which is their job in the first place.
Every publisher and just about every agent in the business turned down the first Harry Potter novel.
Christopher Little who did eventually take Rowling on told her to get a part-time job because she would never make a living from her writing.
Do you think they were right to turn Harry Potter down because it was not a good fit or do you agree they could not see its potential and therefore in the wrong business?
Seems to me like you are more interested in puffing up your chest than having a discussion. Enjoy the golf course.
HaHaHa. I wish my wife could recognise when she has lost an argument as quickly as you can.
But literary agents are not on their own at not understanding the business that they are in.
Record companies turned down Elvis and The Beatles.
Can you imagine hearing Elvis sing and then saying, “No.”
Can you imagine hearing the song writing prowess of Lennon and McCartney and then saying, “No.”
But my favourite of all time is the fact that a record company executive once told Frank Sinatra that his singing could not attract flies to a cream bun.
And nearly all NBA Executives passed on Nikola Jokic and Brock Purdy was the last pick in the draft and and and…
So your point is that literary agents are uniquely bad at their jobs?
I think it’s essential to like each other, as you say. You’re hopefully going to be working together for a long time. I know writers who are afraid to call their agents because they’re “afraid to bug them,” as though they feel like their agent is in a sort of parental or superior position. But I would need an equal partnership. You each have expertise the other doesn’t have, and the combination can be greater than the sum of its parts. But there’s no predicting how the public will react to it. It’s art.