Top Ten Reasons You Can--and Can't--Get an Agent

Top Ten Reasons You Can’t Get an Agent

1.     You are approaching the wrong agents.

2.     Your marketing strategy is all shotgun.

3.     Your query letter isn’t working.

4.     Your story idea is not unique enough to stand out in the marketplace or to stand up to the competition.

5.     You have no idea what the competition is.

6.     Your story idea is not strong enough or compelling enough to sustain a book-length narrative.

7.     Your story idea is not well-executed.

8.     Your level of craft is not high enough.

9.     You are not an active member of your writing community.

10. You are not prepared to be an author as well as a writer.

Top Ten Reasons You Can Get an Agent

1.     You know which agents would work for you.

2.     You’ve written a great query letter.

3.     You come highly recommended.

4.     Your work is based on a strong idea.

5.     You’ve executed that idea well.

6.     Your level of craft is high.

7.     You’ve already published in this or other formats: literary journals, digital and/or print publications, etc.

8.     You’ve got a platform.

9.     You are an active member of your writing community.

10. You present yourself and your work in a professional manner.

QUERIES BY THE NUMBERS (Or, why I haven’t responded to your query letter yet)

Don’t hate me because I’m behind in answering your query. It’s not personal; I have thousands of unread queries in my in-box. Not because I’m lazy or I’m inept or I hate writers—just because I got 1000 queries my first week as an agent and they’ve kept on flooding my in-box ever since.

And I am not alone. In my unofficial survey of agents who actually consider unsolicited queries (not everyone does), I gathered enough data (in an admittedly non-scientific manner) to offer up the following statistics regarding queries. These are the odds you are up against when you send a query:

•      The average agent gets 5,000 to 10,000 queries a year

•      The typical agent represents 30 to 50 clients

•      Which makes the best case scenario in terms of your query resulting in representation: .01% chance

•      And the worst case scenario: .003% chance

What’s the takeaway here? Don’t rely on queries alone. Network with agents, editors, and your fellow writers at conferences and genre association meetings; press your published pals for referrals. Find other means of pitching your work; relying on queries alone is a risky proposition.

And whatever you do, don’t get peeved at publishing professionals who 1) don’t respond; or 2) don’t respond in the way in which you would prefer. Give us a break. We are drowning in inquiries, and we don’t get paid to read queries. We get paid if and when we sell our clients’ work.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some queries to read….