How to Build Your Literary Agent List
Journey to Publication - Week 5
It’s Week 5 of begging agents to read my novel THE LILAC ROOM.
We went a bit more aggressive on querying this past week and have now queried a total of 68 agents. Many people have asked me where we find these agents in the first place and how we determine whether they are a good fit. In this week’s Journey to Publication post, I’d love to share some of our strategies with you, as well as some great resources that you can use to compile your own agent lists.
The first step is to identify the genre of your book and to make sure that the genre matches up with the agent’s preferences. You can find a list of the agent’s past books on their profile, as well as a list of genres that the agent represents. You can do a quick search to determine whether the books the agent has under their belt reflect the essence of your own work, but many agents will take on an eclectic mix of projects, so don’t let a particular agent’s past work pigeonhole your agent list. The most important component will be the genre, though, in some cases, an agent will venture somewhat outside of their preferred genre list. Because THE LILAC ROOM is a work of literary fiction, I’ve told my assistant to query essentially anyone who wants literary fiction at this stage. The list of agents who consider literary fiction seems to shrink every year, so we are shooting all of our shots and hoping to land somewhere.
I am lucky enough to have an amazing assistant who has done most of the grunt work for me, but I’ve helped her out in honing our list and in sending some additional resources her way. Here are some of the resources I’ve shared with my assistant. If you’re looking to start querying soon, I hope that you will find them helpful!
Poets & Writers
Poets & Writers is your one-stop shop for all things publishing. This comprehensive resource offers an extensive database of literary agents, writing contests, grants, literary magazines, and more. To find an agent, head on over to their Literary Agents Database, where you can filter by theme and genre. The Poets & Writers site also features helpful articles on querying and the publishing process, making it a natural go-to for writers looking to get published (though my Journey to Publication article series will be cooler once it’s done).
Reedsy
Reedsy is a similar multi-purpose platform that helps authors connect with editors, literary magazines, and agents. While I’ve personally found Reedsy’s many offerings to be a bit too overwhelming, their Best Literary Agent list is a useful tool. The platform is quite user-friendly and includes a list of vetted agents with detailed profiles and genre filters to help you find the perfect fit for your work.
AgentQuery
This somewhat dumpy website that looks like it hasn’t been updated since 1999 is actually a gem. AgentQuery is one of the largest online databases of literary agents and makes it easy to search by genre and submission preferences. Their keyword search is also fantastic—we’ve identified quite a few agents who appreciate satirical literary novels through this method as well.
Manuscript Wishlist
Manuscript Wishlist (or MSWL as it is colloquially known) is a treasure trove for authors seeking agents. The platform invites literary agents and editors to post their “wishlists” for the types of manuscripts they’re seeking and opens the way for writers to target agents who share their passions. Manuscript Wishlist featured last week in my Journey to Publication post and helped us identify a handful of ridiculous people. Luckily, they are not all like this.
Association of American Literary Agents (AALA)
The AALA is a professional organization that ensures its members adhere to ethical practices in the publishing industry (in other words, this is the place to double-check that your agent is not a scammer). The AALA website, featuring a list of reputable agents, is a trustworthy place to begin your search for your dream agent.
QueryTracker
I try not to obsess too much over QueryTracker’s many tools, but the website is a great place to both start your search and organize your submissions. On QueryTracker, you can look up agents’ response statistics, canned email texts, and manuscript solicitation rates. It’s the website for writers that lays everything out in the open based on past reports from writers, allowing you to see how others have fared with the same agents. This sort of thing can be daunting but somewhat comforting—at least you’re not alone.
Journey to Publication - Week 5 Updates
Our rejection count has risen to ten (10) literary agents. I made the bold decision to ask an agent who rejected me this past Friday for further feedback. She’ll most likely ignore me, but I am curious to see what she will say if she responds.
No new manuscript requests, but two agents are still reading THE LILAC ROOM. I am not sure whether that means they are taking their time to savor every word or whether they are taking their sweet time because they find it mind-numbingly boring. Either way, it seems that this world is a bit of a tougher cookie to crack than I had originally expected (and I had expected it to be insanely tough).
I invite you to drop your favorite quote about patience in the comments below so that I am able to continue retaining my sanity.
And as always, if you are a published author and are open to giving me a referral to your agency, I will be forever in your debt (seriously, I will do literally anything for you).
See you next week!
Thanks for the reply, Liza! But I didn't find Gotham completely useless. You see, I'm someone very much outside the so-called 'literary establishment'-I've worked as an Emergency Room/Trauma Center RN, inpatient psych RN, home hospice RN, NYC policeman, UPS driver, banquet waiter at Tavern on the Green in Central Park back when it was the busiest restaurant in the world, supermarket stock boy, and my only college degree is an associate's from a community college. So for a great-unwashed working-class kinda guy like me, very far from the rarefied MFA world, Gotham provided a valuable introduction to publishing. Discouraging, though. Well, at least the jobs I've worked in my life, which almost killed me, gave me great fodder for a novel-Cormac himself would've KILLED to get his hands on my material.
Wow, Liza, you came around at the perfect time for me. I've been trying to get my first novel published for a while. First I hired a book doctor through Gotham Writers to get it into shape. I thought they would just hand me some unpaid intern, but then I was flabbergasted my book doctor was a published writer whose first novel was even acclaimed in the Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. I was even more flabbergasted that after being told to allow six weeks for a close reading, he flew through my novel in two days, called it a 'well written and engaging narrative' and then even offered to help me get it published after I fixed a few things. A perfect opportunity, needless to say, and a dream-come-true for an unpublished writer. But that was almost four years ago, right in the middle of COVID, and at the time I was working in a busy New York Emergency Room (I am a nurse), getting divorced, and helping my sister care for our mother, who was on home hospice back then. So I put my literary ambitions aside to take care of much more important things. Only when I finally got around to the edits and got back to my book doctor almost a year later, he was too busy to look at it. And I understood that, since he works for the State Department and the Ukraine war had just broken out. But I couldn't help feeling I had let a great opportunity slip through my fingers, and now he doesn't even return my emails. So I went back to Gotham Writers and took a much cheaper course in getting published (the book doctor set me back two grand, and the hilarious part is it all goes by word count, so when I found out the small fortune I would be shelling out for my door-stopper behemoth, I edited out 100,000 words over three months: KILL YOUR DARLINGS haha). Well, that was almost two years ago, and I have only sent out about a dozen or so queries during that time. But I think your blog is the shot-in-the-arm I need to get my ass in gear again. I will follow your advice here-68 agents queries in a week! Wow! What the hell have I been doing all this time? Thanks!