News Flash: Agents are Different

I think the current effort on the part of literary agents to demystify and explain their roles, discuss the details of the oftentimes confusing world of publishing, and give advice to aspiring authors everywhere is capital-A Awesome. I regularly check out sites like Janet Reid’s blog, Pub Rants (Kristin Nelson), Bookends Literary Agency, Jennifer Jackson, and my own agent’s Knight Agency Blog. I highly recommend the archives of Miss Snark to anyone getting started on this query roller coaster. This kind of thing was just gaining ground when I was looking for an agent. Now, there are a ton of agents out there who blog, twitter, and otherwise donate their time to the aspiring author. Good for them, better for aspiring writers everywhere.

However, it is important to note that though all of these agents have your best interests at heart when they choose to give advice, the advice might differ from agent to agent. The Bookends folks infamously don’t like it when those who query “thank them for their time.” Nathan Bransford goes ballistic if a query begins with a question. Other agents hate “X meets Y”-style comparisons, and still others hate comparisons to published books, period.

If you read my query, you’ll see that I include comparisons. Didn’t stop my book from getting several agent requests and offers. Though one must remember, this was in 2005, where what agents were looking for may have, in fact, been quite different. I thought the “request stats” and responses for Allison Brennan’s THE PREY in Nathan Bransford’s “Agent for a Day” experiment was quite interesting, and not necessarily indicative of anything. A lot of people said the book sounded “too familiar” (well, it was a NYT bestseller) or yesterday’s news. Well, it sold in what? 2003? That was six years ago. The books people are querying now are going to come out in 2011. Huge difference.

Last week, a bunch of agents, editors, and writer participated in a Twitter event called #queryday, whereby the pros shared their experience and answered questions from writers looking for advice. Did the agents all agree with one another? No way. In fact, I saw several instances in which the advice of one agent or editor directly contradicted the advice of another. I saw advice given that directly contrasted not only my own experience, but the experience of other authors who were watching #queryday and wondering what in the world that particular agent meant.

The conclusion we came to was that different agents want different things. One agent might say they can’t sell boy-focused MG to save their lives, but another agent is slavering for it. That doesn’t mean toss your MG, it means don’t send it to the agent who thinks there’s no market. That same agent might say they’ve had great luck with Amish inspirational romance, while the second agent’s response is “jigawhat now?” If you’re all about the Simple Folk, then by all means, send your romance to Agent #1. If an agent tells you that 100k is way to long for a YA fantasy, but you’re seeing debut YA doorstoppers published all the time (my own debut YA fantasy clocks in at 108k, though I know someone who sold at over six figures but cut it down to ~75k for the final), then maybe the answer is just submitting to an agent who is fine with the long stuff.

The blogs are great, in my opinion. Knowledge is power. But no one agent is omniscient. That’s why there is more than one. That’s why a lot of these agent blogs tell you to query widely. If you’re getting the same answer all over the place, well, maybe it is your manuscript. If you don’t get any bites off your query, after querying widely, then you need to take a long, hard look at your query. Maybe you aren’t presenting the info in a dynamic form. Maybe there is something in the letter that is turning them off (don’t sound desperate, or include TMI about your twenty-seven rejected manuscripts or how this is the first book you’ve written ever ever ever!). Maybe the premise of your book is flawed in some way. I once queried a paranormal romance that got very few bites until one kind agent explained ot me that though para rom was hot, I needed to have the paranormal elment more front and center int eh premise. A vampire boyfriend, say, not a few ghosts around the edges. (Again, this was 2004. I don’t know how the market might have changed now.)

If your query is getting bites but they never turn into anything more, then maybe there’s something wrong with your manuscript. A dull opening, a sagging middle, aliens that land in chapter fourteen. Maybe you need to work on your craft.

But just as you shoulnd’t take ONE rejection as a condemnation of your entire manuscript, you shouldn’t take one agent’s opinion about the state of the market as the be-all-and-end-all word from on high. Especially if you look at Publisher’s Marketplace and see deals being made like that every day, or hear another agent say they are wild for that kind of book. Agents are different. Query widely.