5 Steps to Getting a Literary Agent
Today I'm sharing five steps for getting a literary agent.
You've written your first book, and you're ready to see it on shelves. But what do you do?
Odds are you need a literary agent and it can be kind of confusing how to get one, unless you know exactly what to do. It can also take you forever to get an agent, unless you do it the right way. That’s why I am sharing the exact process to follow to get the exact literary agent you want.
But first, I have an embarrassing story to share with you. When I was first trying to be a writer, I had a memoir that I wanted to find a literary agent for. So I went to Barnes and Noble and I found this really thick book that was titled something like, The Guide to Literary Agents for that year, and it had hundreds and hundreds of agents’ names in it.
And then I wrote the exact same letter describing my book, changed the name at the top, and sent out a mass email to maybe a hundred of those agents. I didn't personalize it at all. I sent everyone the same letter. I was basically spamming them.
So it's no wonder that this didn't work. A couple of them were nice enough to write back to me, but no one wanted to represent the memoir, and I definitely didn't hear from well over 90% of them.
Suffice it to say, this is not how you want to go about finding a literary agent. So what should you do?
Step #1: Finish your book
Step number one is to finish your book. Yeah, I know. You're probably like, yeah, that's obvious. But a lot of people don't know that and it's easy for us to get ahead of ourselves. Sometimes people think, oh, can I find a literary agent before I finish my book?
And the answer is no. You're going to have to have a full draft of your book to show this literary agent. And when I say done, I don't just mean done. I mean it needs to be revised and polished. The grammar needs to be impeccable.
If you're sending out versions of your manuscript riddled with typos or grammar mistakes, it's not going to work out well for you. So put the horse before the cart and don't just finish your draft, but make sure it's in the best possible shape it can be before you even think about querying agents.
Step #2: Do your research
The next step is to do your research. Not every literary agent is looking to represent every kind of author. The more research you do ahead of time to figure out who is interested in what you've written, the better—the less rejection you'll get, the less time you'll waste.
Agents are really clear, and incredibly clear online, about exactly what they're looking for. If they want to represent cookbooks, they will say cookbooks. If they want to represent children's picture books, they will say that. If they want thriller or fantasy or sci-fi, they will tell you what they want to get from you.
So find agents who represent your genre or your type of book, an agent who you think would like your book.
You can also learn about agents not just by looking at what genres they say they're interested in, but by looking at what recent books they have represented. A lot of times they will have these on their website.
Or you can go about it from the other direction. You can find books like yours that have come out and figure out who the agent was for that book. There are a couple ways to do this, but I think the easiest way is to look in the acknowledgements section of the book. You will need to have the book in front of you because you probably aren't going to be able to see the acknowledgements in the online sample. Acknowledgements are usually at the end of the book.
But in the acknowledgement section, the author always thanks their agent. So you can figure out who the agent was for that book and then look that agent up, see if they are accepting query submissions, and find out what kind of genres they're currently interested in.
And that brings me to another minor point. You want to make sure an agent is accepting submissions. So when you look them up, if they say they're not currently taking submissions, you don't need to waste your time writing them a letter because they're not going to open it. They've already told you.
Step #3: Write a compelling synopsis
So step number three, once you've found a handful of 5-10 agents who you are interested in querying, is to write a compelling synopsis of your book.
An important part of your query letter is a synopsis of your book. It's possible to write the most compelling book of all time, but if you summarize it poorly, you don't write with clarity, and you don’t grab the attention of your reader, it won't matter. You're not going to catch the agent's interest.
That's said, I don't want you to overthink this. This is still a factual explanation of what happens in your book. And yes, you can go ahead and spoil the ending. That's fine. The key is to make it interesting, make it like the back of the book teaser.
What's a paragraph you could write about this book that makes someone think, that sounds pretty good? You may have to write a couple of versions and run them by friends and family to see what reactions you get.
In my experience, that's a pretty good barometer of how effective a synopsis is. If friends and family read it or you read it to them, or even if you just summarize it and they say, “Sounds good,” then you've got it. But if they just sort of look confused or say, "Oh, okay," then see if you can do better.
Practically speaking, the synopsis is about a paragraph in length. Your entire query letter to this agent isn't going to be longer than a single page. And that includes the greeting and your name at the bottom.
So you're only going to want to write a paragraph about your book, which means you can spoil the ending, but you can also just leave it hanging. It's okay to leave it on a cliff hanger.
Step #4: Write a solid query letter
The fourth step is to write a solid query letter. Your query letter is the pitch of your book to the person who's going to help you sell it.
It's a single page. It's not a lot of words, but it's the first point of contact you will make with an agent. The way you write it may make the difference between this agent requesting your manuscript to read and never writing you back or asking for anything from you.
You want to be engaging and professional and even personal, but not overly familiar. You also want to be direct.
So here's what you're going to do. You're going to open by telling that agent why you are querying them specifically. You're going to say, “I found your name here and X, and I'm sending you my book because X. I thought you would be interested in it because of this reason…” or whatever it may be.
Or, “I know that you represent this author who…” blah, blah, blah. Tell them why you are querying them. Show them that you've done your research. This doesn't need to be a full paragraph. It'll probably just be one sentence, maybe two sentences tops. But it's a really important part of your query letter.
Literary agents get hundreds of these query letters every week. And a lot of them are completely impersonal. I would say 90% of them probably don't bother putting a personal connection at the top. So just by putting that one to two sentence personalization at the top, you're going to make yourself stand out.
In your next paragraph, you're going to give the elevator pitch of your book, that synopsis of your book that we just talked about. Sort of the back of the book teaser that makes them want to read it.
You should also mention what genre your book is in and how many words it is—you can be rough here. You don't have to give the exact word count, rather say roughly 80,000 words. And it's great to pick a couple of books to compare your book to.
So when I was pitching my first book, I said it paired the humor of George Saunders with the unconventional storytelling format of Jennifer Egan. I said my book was a marriage of these two authors.
Now you can compare yourself to a couple of authors, or you could compare yourself to a couple of specific books, but this is basically a shorthand way of telling the agent where your book would sit on the bookshelf. If it were to be paired with some similar books inside Barnes and Noble, what would those books be?
Okay. So you've told the agent why you are emailing them. You have said what your book is, what books it compares to, how long it is, what the word count is, and you've given a short synopsis of it that's a little bit like a teaser that makes them want to read it in the next paragraph.
Now you're going to tell them a little bit about yourself. So a short bio. If you have anything published, this is where you would include it. If you have any essays that have been published, short stories, anything, you can include your publication history here.
But even if you've never published anything, just tell them a little bit about who you are. What's your occupation? Where do you live? Particularly include any specific facts of your life that pertain to the story you've written. That's really relevant information for the agent to consider.
If you've set a novel in Wisconsin, tell them you grew up in Wisconsin. If you've set a novel in Hawaii, tell them that you lived in Hawaii as a child. If it's on a boat, tell them about the years that you spent as a first mate.
Now you don't need to write them paragraphs about this. Again, this entire letter should be only one page, but we do want a paragraph telling them who you are.
And finally, in the very last bit, it'll be personal again. You will tell them that you are following their exact instructions and including whatever portion of your draft they have asked for in the submission guidelines on their website.
Every agent has a website where they include what's called submission guidelines. In those submission guidelines, they'll say, "This is what I want you to do. I want you to paste the first 10 pages into an email," or, "I want you to attach the first three chapters." They're all different.
So it's really important to check the submission guidelines and do the exact thing that they've asked you to do, and that's what you'll say you're doing in the last line of your letter.
Then you'll get in and get out. You'll say, “Thank you so much for your time. I look forward to hearing from you,” and sign your name.
Step #5: Make your first three chapters sparkle
Step five, and the final step to getting a literary agent, is to make your first three chapters sparkle. Now, of course your whole book should be good, but if you can get past the query letter step, the next step is that a prospective agent will likely make what's called a partial manuscript request.
How many pages they ask for will vary, but often it's about three chapters. So you want to have a strong opening of your book no matter what, right? Because you want to hook the reader once it is out there in the world.
But if for no other reason than this is how you get a literary agent, make your first three chapters as solid as they can possibly be, because this is how you're going to get to the next step with the literary agent, which is requesting your full manuscript.
And once you're there, you're really close, you're well on your way. My agent says she only requests full manuscripts from people that she's pretty sure she wants to represent. So at this point, you're in the green zone. You've just gotta make it a little farther.
How much can you make on your book?
So once you get a literary agent, you're well on your way to selling your book. But how much can you make on your book? How much do people make on their books?
This is a good question. It's one I get a lot. There's actually very little data out there unless you're a publishing industry insider. It can be a hard answer to find.
So I actually made it my mission to find out. I compiled data from over 1400 published authors and found average and median book advances based on all kinds of metrics—genre, whether it was someone's first book or not, whether they had an agent, and who their publisher was. I put all this information into a free workshop, which you can watch right now.
So click the link below to find out everything you want to know about current book advances and what you can realistically expect to make on your book. If you're serious about becoming a professional author, this really is a must watch.
You won't find this data laid out this way anywhere else. So click below so you can watch this totally free workshop right now.
