How I Got My Literary Agent
Let’s start with the obvious: querying is hard.
Querying in the midst of a pandemic, massively overworked literary agents, and a changing publishing landscape is especially hard. Anyone who is doing it should honestly get a gold medal in perseverance (also, probably chocolate for, ya know, the feelings).
I’ve always found posts about how authors manage to cross that proverbial finish line to be immensely helpful and encouraging in the past, so I wanted to do my part and make my own!
Follow along for some real talk, statistics, and a healthy dose of humor along the way.
How It Started
Now, some of you know that I was actually agented before. My first agent and I ended up parting ways last fall, so I found myself back in the query trenches. This article covers my first querying process (including the ridiculous number of giant life events I had while trying to query)!
I was with my last agent for close to a year, and we went on sub with an entirely different book and genre than the one that connected me with my new agent. When we parted ways, it was an amicable split, but that didn’t make it any more fun to realize I was back in the query trenches.
Earlier that summer I volunteered to help moderate the pitch event #DVpit. 2023 was the first year that we were trying it on Discord rather than Twitter, and there was a ton to figure out. Even so, I had a blast getting to know my fellow moderators and helping the writing community prepare for the event. Going in, there was definitely a part of me that felt that calm “I am now in the leagues of the agented” feeling. The tiniest bit of a glimpse that I might know what I was doing and have advice to offer others.
In a strange turn of events, my split with my agent happened right before the event. Rather than just moderating the pitching, I found myself once again jumping back into the fray.
Here We Go Again
I figured that joining in DVpit as a participant was the best way to sort of nudge myself back into querying. Even if I got absolutely no interest from agents, I figured it would still be good for me to re-familiarize myself with my querying materials and to sort of dip my toe back in the water.
Rather than the casual, slow start I was expecting, I got quite a bit of immediate interest. Which was great, but also intimidating. In all, I got nine “likes” from eight different literary agents on my pitches about my Cloud Book (the book I eventually signed with my new agent). You can see the pitch below.
Of these eight “likes,” three turned into a full request.
Obviously this was awesome, but from there I made one wonderful and terrible choice: I decided to reread the book before sending.
Usually I avoid this once a book is being queried because it stops me from making changes endlessly and means I don’t have to keep track of six billion different versions of a book out in the world. Since it had been several years since I queried his book, I figured that it was safe enough to do so (and that I probably should have before the event, realistically, if the timing hadn’t all been so strange).
I expected to fix some little grammar things or tighten up tricky sections. What I did not expect was to finally have things “click” in my head for how to fix the elements that had consistently gotten the book close to an offer but not quite all the way to one.
Fixing was going to involve substantial rewrites, and it was tempting to send the book as it was and make the rewrites for those who got queried later. However, since the major elements of the book weren’t changing (plot, character, themes, etc.) rather than just the way the story was told, I decided it was worth the stress/time to do it right.
Now, I’m so glad I did, because that version of the book is the one that eventually got me my offer.
Which brings me to two important takeaways:
Always follow your gut. If it says something needs to be fixed, it probably does.
Don't decide to do a major rewrite after you already have a request from an agent. It's beyond stressful. Trust me on this.
The Offer
I sent my (now) agent the full manuscript at the start of January 2024. Three and a half months later, she set up “the call,” and the rest, as they say, is history.
I’m now so incredibly excited to be represented by the amazing Lynnette Novak of The Seymour Agency!
Lynnette “got” my book immediately in a way that very few people have. She understood the characters and the story, and she was enthusiastic about the representation (and the fact that it didn’t have to be the “point” of the book to exist, which was where I had consistently lost agents in the past). She also was eager to discuss my career as a whole, and I found our visions aligning again and again.
Honestly, I don’t think I could ask for a better advocate for my little gay cloud book (or for me).
The Stats
Personally, my favorite part of “how I got my agent” posts. My last article has the whole querying journey prior to this one, but here I’ll just focus on the 2023 post-Agent 1 journey.
For this round, I sent out 52 total queries and received 8 full requests (about a 15% request rate).
My (now) agent offered on April 15, so I technically spent 5.5 months querying this time around (though I didn’t send any cold queries until January, so closer to 3.5 months with general querying).
Fun fact: This was the fourth time I queried Lynnette over five years. The first was in 2019 with a YA Fantasy book, the second was in 2020 with the initial version of Cloud Book (MG Fantasy), the third was in 2022 with a picture book, and the last was in 2023, which led to my offer!
And, Of Course, Some Advice
As frustrating as it can be, “I just don’t have the clear editorial vision for this book but I love it” is very real feedback. Again, this is a common query rejection phrase and one that I think people easily get confused/upset by. In my experience, it’s actually really promising though! When I started getting mostly this for the response, I realized that the story was officially out of my control, and there was something freeing about that. It was no longer edits needed or revisions needed… it really was that I just needed to find the right person. Every story is unique, but those of us who have one (or many) marginalized identities have it especially rough when it comes to finding that perfect fit. It really does matter to find it, though, because you need an advocate who believes in your work as much as you do.
Don’t give up (but do pay attention to advice)! Querying is long and hard and I feel like every day I see yet another post about how it’s only getting harder. One of the best things you can do is believe in yourself and your work and persevere until you find the right now. However, it’s important to pay attention to the feedback you’re receiving. If multiple agents are calling out the same thing, it doesn’t mean you have to change it, but you should at least have a very good reason that you don’t. Some feedback like “the pacing wasn’t quite right” is actionable and can be solved with betas. Others like the infamous “I just couldn’t connect with the characters” is too squishy to do anything with (and often used against authors with marginalized identities in a really gross way but that’s a whole other post).
If an agent says they like your work and want to see future work, they mean it. I feel like I was always suspicious that this was just another polite way to pass on something, but in my experience, it really has been true. Some of the agents (including Lynnette) who I sent the earliest cloud book queries to were the same agents I queried years later with an updated query letter and heavily revised manuscript. Though Lynnette’s was the one to turn into an offer, I got so many incredibly kind responses from others outlining what they loved about the story and the changes both.
One Final Piece of Advice
There is a story out there that only you can tell. (Perhaps many!) You owe it to your future readers and yourself to keep going until that story gets told. Trad publishing isn’t for everyone, and that’s okay, but remember that the process is long and frustrating and involves so much waiting, but eventually, good news does come.
You’ve got this.