Where Are All the Agents?

You Know, *Book* Agents, Not Like, Spies or Anything 🕵🏻‍♀️

We’re setting sail into 2024! Bring on the New Year! I’ve already made my list of 2024 manifestations, but of course the universe wants to throw me a few curveballs right off the bat, like my dog getting ringworm or giving me a nightmare yesterday in which Adam Brody was trying to kill me and I woke myself up screaming (I don’t know what my subconscious was doing there because I have nothing against Adam Brody, but I definitely do against ringworm). Yay, good vibes!

But I’m not going to let a few rocky waves get this year off to a bad start. I know we’re all setting goals for the twelve months ahead, just like one of our fellow author-sailors who put their career setback plain and simple:

I’m having trouble finding an agent.

First off, Alone With No Agent, we have all been there. Like, literally, the vast vast vast majority of traditionally published authors have all been in the same boat, adrift in a wide open sea of agents but seemingly getting no attention. So the good news is, you’re actually not alone at all!

My biggest recommendation for finding an agent will hopefully go along with a New Years resolution of setting time aside to read more. This, obviously, is with me having no knowledge of how much you’re actually reading right now, but I think we can all agree that anything that lets us read more is a fabulous thing. But here’s where I’ll throw a few directives at you: read things that are similar to your work. I’m not saying exact copies here, but stories that focus on the same themes and/or genre and/or tone and/or age group, preferably some combination of these things. And when reading those, flip on to the back, peruse the Acknowledgment section, and jot down the name of the agent that book’s author thanked. I have yet to come across an Acknowledgments section where the author didn’t thank their agent, especially when we’re obsessed with them (like I am with mine, and if he’s right for you, I couldn’t recommend Brent Taylor at TriadaUS enough). Before long, you’ll have a list of agents who represent works similar to your manuscript. You already know (because they’ve helped get a book similar to yours published to begin with) that their tastes include stories like the one you’ve written. Then get to querying, and you can even mention you specifically have reached out to this specific agent because you loved (insert other client’s book here). That’s not to say that an agent will instantly say, “Oh perfect! You’ve done the hard work for me! Of course I’ll sign you!”, but at least that agent knows you’ve done some homework and are querying them for a reason and you’re not just willy nilly typing names into the To: line of your emails hoping for any ol’ person to represent you.

There are a multitude of other ways to find agents including attending writers conferences to meet agents face-to-face or get critiques from them, pitching your story in social media pitch competitions, reading Publisher’s Marketplace deal announcements, and perusing your favorite author’s websites to see who reps them.

I’m sure for many of you—including our current agent-seeker—you’ve tried some of, if not all of, the above. I’m sending out so much love for how frustrating and time-consuming the agent search can be. I’ve been hearing more and more that it’s harder than ever to find an agent with book sales shrinking a bit and agents focusing on their current client roster. But I promise you that no matter what the trend or pattern is in publishing at any given moment in time, it always changes within a couple years. Like, always. Even now I know there are agents who never close to queries, so you just got to go out there and keep drifting those seas until it’s “AGENT-HO!” and you’ve spotted the representative who is just right for you (We get that’s a “LAND-HO!” terrible pun, right? I’m not calling any agent a ho, although if any of you agents reading this are in fact a ho, you do you and live your best life! Get it!).

Lastly, when querying (and this will probably seem obvious, but in case it’s not), be sure to follow agent submission guidelines exactly. The query letter you create is *not* one-size-fits-all. Some will ask for different information in a query letter, or different materials to be submitted with each query. For many agents, this is a test if you can follow instructions, and if you can’t, they’ll often toss your query out without reading it. They get literally hundreds, sometimes thousands, of queries a week. If you’re already showing from the get-go that you can’t take a few tiny steps to make their job easier, your query is gonna walk the plank (I’m also not calling agents pirates… Unless, of course, you are one, then you do you and live your best life! Get that booty! But like, legally?)

Go forth, and I promise you we’ll all take shifts in the Crow’s Nest of the Ventorship, a telescope placed to our eyes, keeping a lookout for agents to help you in these publishing waters.

-JJ

What about you, published authors? How did you find your agent, or do you have any tips or tidbits about what seems to be especially fruitful right now for writers looking to find a representative? Feel free to put it in the comments, or if you’d rather stay incognito, write to me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com and I’ll anonymously include your words on this post.

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If you’d like to vent about anything author/writing related, write to me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: VENTORSHIP. I’ll give you my take in a post, and we’ll crowdsource author opinions in the comments. You’ll remain anonymous, and any haters will be thrown overboard. Ultimately, I think you’re going to be buoyed up by author love and support as we realize we really are all in the same boat 🛳️