The Fish Finder: Locating Agents

This is part 5/11 in our series about How to Land a Literary Agent:

• Your Fishing Guide: What I Know About These Waters
• The Prey: What Exactly Is An Agent?
• The Why: Who Actually Needs an Agent?
• Dawn or Dusk: When to Start Fishing
• The Fish Finder: Locating Agents
• The Bait: Writing a Pitch
• Casting Your Line: Query Letters
• The Nibble: When an Agent Expresses Interest
• The Bite: Getting an Offer
• The Play: Interviewing Agents
• The Keeper: Final Decisions and Next Steps

Hoo boy. This is a big one. Some people say that all agents are the same, and the main thing is to have one. As for me, I say, “Remember that time you went fishing for walleye in Minnesota, and all you kept catching was bullheads and crappies? Did you shrug and tell yourself it didn’t matter? I don’t think so.”

Industrial fishermen will sometimes use what’s called a “seine” net. It’s a huge net that you lower into the water, forming a circular cage that you gradually tighten and close. Then you bring in the haul—whatever tuna and octopi and snorkelers and garbage bags that happen to be floating in the vicinity. You don’t really care what you get—you just want something. You might find a few good fish. All the rest you throw away.

That’s pretty much how I did my first agent search: I went to a website that listed agents, generated a list of 100 or so, and dispatched a terrible query letter (see next week’s entry: “The Bait”), hoping to land myself the Big One.

It didn’t go so well.

These days anglers use fish finders to locate their prey — devices that are so precise you can see not just where the creatures are but also what they look like. You need the writer’s version of a fish finder—a technique that helps you track down the kind of fish you’re angling for.

I now have a couple of agent searches under my belt, and through trial and error, along with a bit of dumb luck and dumber unluck, I’ve developed a sense of how you can target your audience. There are many kinds of agents (see the earlier post on “The Prey: What Is An Agent?”), and you need one suited to your work and aspirations.

Here are a few tips for identifying agents who might be right for you:

• Referrals. Do you have author friends who already have agents, and whose work is similar in genre to yours? (Note that I use the word “friends” loosely—meaning for it to include relatives, neighbors, your local barrista, people you bumped into on the elevator, friends of friends of friends, etc.) This means that you’d get a referral, and the chance that the agent will actually read part of your writing sample skyrockets from 2% to 30%. (I’m making those numbers up, but as numbers people say, they are “directionally accurate.”)
• Targeted Agents. There are various websites available that allow you to research agents: Poets & Writers (you might sign up for a subscription), AgentQuery (a bit dated but useful for the search parameters), and QueryTracker (fairly popular, and can be free, but a subscription helps). Some of these will allow you to search for agents according to such useful criteria as genre (do they only do romance, or do they also handle literary fiction?) and availability (are they accepting submissions or not?). The key here is to identify the ones who are truly aligned with your writing. Then you should follow the links back to their agency (if they have one), to read more about them and their colleagues. You’ll get a sense of whether or not they are truly candidates for you, and you can even craft your pitch to them in a customized way. (About pitches, see next week’s “The Bait.”)
• Copycat. Another great trick is to look at other recent books in the same genre as yours. Who was their agent? Often the authors will thank their agent in the acknowledgments. But you can also use QueryTracker to see who agented various books, or who represents authors you identify with. Then you can craft a pitch to an agent who may already be inclined toward your style or taste.

One important detail: wherever you learn about a given agent, you should see whether he or she is open or closed to submissions. Lots of agents are overwhelmed with manuscripts, and if you submit to them when they’re “closed,” your submission will go straight into the trash. So don’t bother.

OK, so where does all this leave us? You’ve determined that you need an agent, and you’ve developed a list of candidates. You’re ready to send a query to the first five or six of them. But what do you say? How do you introduce yourself? What’s the etiquette for this kind of online dating?

Well, now that you’ve identified the kind of fish you’re going for, it’s time to prepare your bait.

Next Up: The Bait: Writing a Pitch