How to Secure a Literary Agent Referral

Journey to Publication - Week 6

Week six of querying my novel THE LILAC ROOM is upon us. This week, it has come to my attention that agents are much more likely to respond to your query through a referral (this seems quite similar to the job application world, though writers seem more reluctant to give them out than employees). Let’s talk a little bit about what referrals are and how they can get you in front of your dream agent.

What is a referral?

Most of us peasants are out here cold-querying agents. We identify a list of agents who seem like good fits for our projects (you can use these resources to get started) and then send out our query letters to agents. The odds that these agents request a manuscript from cold-querying are about 0.03% according to QueryTracker. So—how are people landing book deals and getting their manuscripts read?

Many authors stand out from the pack through referrals—a good word from an agent’s previous client that vouches for you and your writing. A referral is a signal to the agent that the quality of a particular manuscript is superior to what the agent might otherwise receive from cold queries. A referral is also an indication that a particular project might be a good fit.

How do I secure a referral?

The best way to secure a referral is to befriend a published author. But if you don’t have any authors in your close circles, there are several other ways to secure such a connection. I cold-emailed a few authors on my own mailing list, for instance, to see if they would be willing to provide a referral. While that might seem like a suboptimal approach (no one responded), I always advise shooting your shot. Subscribers to my mailing list are familiar with my writing and would be able to vouch for me—it never hurts to reach out to your existing reader base to ask for help, so if there’s a particular author you’d like to connect with, send that email! Most published authors don’t attain J.K. Rowling-level fame and are out here living normal lives. They love to hear from you, so an email can’t hurt even if it goes unanswered. Who knows. That email might be the basis of the friendship you need for that referral.

You can also network with authors at conferences (though many are virtual nowadays, which I’ve found makes it exceedingly difficult to connect face-to-face with anyone helpful). If you’re able to attend an in-person conference, however, you might just start to sow the seeds of that lifelong literary friendship.

Finally, join some writing groups or workshops. Admittedly, I have never been diligent about this. As selfish as it might sound, the reality is that I don’t typically have the bandwidth to give feedback on other people’s writing—I do so all day anyway over at my company and get paid for it. While I’d be glad to give out unpaid feedback in exchange for valuable feedback on my own work, I’ve found that the sort of feedback I receive at these workshops tends to be amateurish at best and often comes from other unpublished writers. That being said, you can always cultivate a more long-term friendship with a writer in this way and hope that someone from your group will eventually secure an agent and offer a referral.

Wait, that’s brilliant advice. In fact, writing the previous paragraph just inspired me to sign up for a writing group. As of five minutes ago, I am now a part of a writing group. I will keep everyone posted on how it goes.

Where else can you meet writers to secure referrals? Beyond cold-emailing, social media, conferences and writing groups, you can always strive to network with your existing circles and hope that someone can organically introduce you. This has been particularly difficult for me because, as an enemy to the Woke Cause™, I am an easy target for social ostracism in the writing world, and most writers refuse to interact with me. My circles are instead filled with finance and tech people who have never read a book in their lives.

Funny how that works out.

Either way, if you’re looking for a referral to an agent, my philosophy is shoot your shot and ask. The worst that will happen is you will be ignored. You never know.

I’ll shoot my shot here once again. If you are a published author and reader of Pens and Poison, please consider giving back by putting in a good word for me at your agency. You will have my infinite gratitude.

Journey to Publication - Week 6 Updates

Why did I choose to write about referrals this week? Well—I finally got one from a very well-known author. He connected me with his agent, to whom I sent a custom query. The agent requested to see my full manuscript within one minute. That is the power of a referral. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!

Some more updates:

Last week, in doing my agent research, I stumbled on an agent who got fired from her agency for using the social media app Parler—AKA for being a conservative Christian. The agent has since moved on to a more boutique agency.

Great—a sane literary agent! I wrote her a more personalized query.

Will this be my agent? I sure hope so!

In other news, the two agents who had requested my manuscript last month have not started reading it yet, so there is still hope!

I am counting on Jeff the Agent because he always responds to my emails within three minutes and seems like a chill guy to work with.

This week, I’m also introducing the Query Counter, a brand new tool that will give you a reference of what the request/reject rate is like. Here’s where we’re at:

Query Counter - Week 6

Query Rejections: 16

Manuscript Requests: 3

Total Queries: 76

See you next week!