Playing the Agent Game
My first “yes” from an agent came along with a nonfiction project I was asked to join in the late 1990s. A Men’s Health editor was looking for a writer. As a side project, he wanted to pitch a book on health and eating. I just so happened to be featured in USA Today on the very topic, thanks to my Bay Area cooking school making the news. Mostly a cook, I’d also worked as a part-time food journalist, collaborating on two cookbooks that sold well.
The agent, whom I would never meet except by phone, had worked with the Men’s Health project editor on other books. The editor and I drafted the proposal, the agent revised it, then sent it out on submission. Success! We got bids from publishers, settled on a medium-sized press that distributed with St. Martin’s, and had great direct-mail sales. The advance was lovely, the rights even better.
Agents were gods.
That book sold well. Royalties continued for ten years post-publication. The publisher offered me contracts for three more books. The agent negotiated reprint rights. My relationship with him was pleasant. Years passed. Then one day I got a call—my agent was retiring. He offered to refer me to a colleague who was a principal in a large NYC agency. A star signer. I’d heard of this man. By then I knew how hard it was to get an agent—so once again, I felt lucky to be lucky. My second yes.
But I didn’t know enough yet to be anything but thrilled, to look beyond this new agent’s credentials to his particular communication style or his interest in my career. I received his contract, signed it, and waited. I sent him ideas for the next book. I waited. I thought another yes was all I needed to pave my golden future in publishing. After time passed with zero response, I realized this second agent had just done his friend a favor, took me on because of my first book’s good sales. I fired the guy.
Writing friends were aghast. “Do you know how hard it is to even get in the door of an agency at that level?” I didn’t care. Not seeing eye to eye, not experiencing the communication I believed should happen between agent and author, felt like reason enough to part ways.
I decided I was done with agents. Who needed them? I could sell my own books. And I did. I sold two more nonfiction books to the publisher who’d backed my first. Two more in a different genre were bought by a small Midwestern press. My first novel was picked up by a Florida publisher. None of these contracts required an agent. I had had books traditionally published, I got good reviews, the books made money, readers liked them. I was on track.
During the pandemic, though, I began to question my certainty. I was working on my second novel, a bear of a book, and it was in its tenth revision. The Florida press wanted first refusal, but I wasn’t sure. I wanted a broader readership. I wondered if that meant finding an agent again. A writing friend who took a class from an industry professional told me querying required 75 attempts for one yes, an average querying time of one year.
Even with these facts, I grossly underestimated the research and time required: reading articles (“How I got my agent”) and listings on #MSWL (Manuscript Wish List) and agent interviews, checking titles from each agent’s list, following their Twitter threads, looking up sales in Publisher’s Lunch. A mountain of work. How lucky I was to get two agents handed to me, without any effort! But I like goals, I like new challenges. So, I set an objective of querying 50 agents in nine months, as a test. If my experiment flopped, I’d keep selling my own books, sans.
A friend suggested I pay an editor to refine my query letter. Even more work, money too! But I saw the wisdom. The paid editor helped me enormously. I sent it to the first ten agents on my list, then created a wall chart—50 names listed along the left margin with columns for agency name and contact information, date queried, date sample chapters sent, date full manuscript sent, and end result.
The first batch elicited requests for sample pages and full manuscripts. Great! But the first ten full requests came back no’s. I stopped the process. If the query worked, but the manuscript didn’t, could I revise even more? Some of the no’s included feedback that made sense; I wanted to make use of it before I sent out more queries. Further revision took more money (editor) and more time. I attended conferences, like Grub Street’s Muse and the Marketplace, and refined my agent list. I studied acknowledgements pages in books I loved (where agents are often thanked), scoured Twitter for agent threads, read more books on my chosen agents’ lists.
My wall chart helped. Over 50 percent of my queries resulted in requests for samples; about 50 percent of those resulted in requests for a full. That cheered me; I was doing something right. In month nine, the last month of my test, I received my first real hope: a positive response from two agencies that read the full, plus an email from a third agent who read it and wanted a phone call. I gave her my cell number and we set a time.
That morning, I went shopping—I was in a daze of hope and pushing down that hope. When I got home, I realized I’d left my cell phone at the store. I raced back. Luckily, someone had found my phone. I got home just in time to breathe a little, then receive the agent’s call. She made the offer. My third yes—but one I really worked for this time.
My past experience had clarified what I wanted. I wasn’t willing to sign with just anyone to say I’d achieved a goal. I knew I could publish on my own. I’d done it before. But I wanted partnership now, I wanted someone who could help me shape the rest of my fiction career, educate me on the changing industry, champion my books.
My current agent and I have worked together on two novels now. Today, I know it might take more than one or two or three yesses to get the agent best for you and your writing career. I know I was lucky at the start, and I learned what it meant to not be lucky at the end. The third yes took me a year and the work of a part-time job. But it was worth it.
Do you need an agent? Today, it’s hard to say, Absolutely, yes, you do. It depends on what you’re after as a writer. Like me, you can go it alone. Like me, you can try playing the agent game. It changes often, it doesn’t have clear rules much of the time, but it does feel great to get each yes.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
This week’s exercise is designed both for those way into the agent game or just starting out.
If you’ve already begun your agent search, try an organization chart to keep your research in one place—like a spreadsheet or my wall chart. Follow my steps above. Also, check out the various places I looked online, also listed above, if you haven’t already—they can be gold.
For those of you just starting out, think about these small ideas and whether they make sense to you.
Plan for a marathon instead of a sprint. One of my students queried ten agents and got all no’s. He came to me, ready to give up. I told him with the 75-agent rule, he was only one-seventh of the way there.
Expect rejections—they are part of the game, so flow with them as best you can. Print them out and paper your bathroom wall. Circle good things agents say in their rejection emails; accumulated, those comments can mean a lot. (I made a list of the positive feedback and kept it next to my wall chart.)
Don’t query your top choices first. You’re still learning the ropes, you may find you have more revising to do, and you don’t want to blow your one chance. Wait until you’ve gathered the rejections, gotten a feel for how it goes. (I didn’t heed this advice and blew my chances with someone I’d courted for years.)
The query is the first gate you have to pass and you can, with great results, if you get help to make it as strong as possible. Think about it: If an agent gets 1,000 of these a week, what stands out in yours? Get feedback from writer friends, take a class, hire an editor to hone your query until it sings. You’ll be glad you did!
An earlier version of this post first appeared in the wonderful online writing blog, “Dead Darlings,” from Grub Street in Boston. Check it out here.