Another pass from an agent.  One of the ones I'd submitted to quite some time ago, but the rejection still stings. I need to have a discussion with someone regarding a recommendation on who to contact next.  I'm having a hard time deciphering what the recommended person wants in terms of submissions and communication. 

Still working on the question:  Should I pursue print-only queries?  The market for Flight may be too small not to. 

After attending WorldCon, I compiled a set of notes from agents' comments. I think it is critical to understand that when someone in a professional capacity shares what they want from you, you should listen.

Agents may be more enthusiastic than they can back up, but that's a whole different issue. When someone tells you how to format, craft or otherwise target a message to them, listen.

If they say: "Never a paper submission." That means no paper subs. It is not a crypto-hint that all the really successful authors in their stable get seen by sending in paper subs.

If they say: "I like my submissions formatting in this particular way." Then dammit, crop and adjust your query to fit.

They are not trying to make life harder for anyone, it is just they have optimized their process in certain ways. Yes, it is mildly infuriating that there isn't more comprehensive standard for submissions. We're stuck in this rat race, and being obstinate and ignoring tips and hints is not useful in furthering your career.

There is another side to this coin. If someone does give their feedback on your query or partial or full, please realize that their feedback is entirely their own opinion. They may have some insights into what sells well, but is a single opinion. They do not hand out the Arbiter of Quality patch to each newly minted agent (no accreditation process in the first place). So take it with a smidge of salt and check the next name on the list.

After listening to the agents at WorldCon, I did have a successful query and was asked for a partial, I believe specifically because I hit all the point in the query that the agent had request during their time in the spotlight.  The partial was not a good fit, but it was useful is cementing my belief that you should craft each query to the target very well.  Especially if you happen to have a MS in a rare market segment.

I had an incredibly useful session at WorldCon hearing from several agents about their take on what getting an agent does for an author.  I almost choked when they said as a group that they were looking for YA SF, because so far I hadn't heard back from a single agent.  I don't take it personally, it was very clear from the audience questions that there are tons of people subbing to them.  Perspective is important.  It's be really peachy to get replies back, though.  Wish I hadn't had something immediately afterwards.  It was my first day, by my second I would have put the other session on hold for the chance to talk to the agents.

Still, I subbed to one agent this week, and will follow-up next with another. I also got a brief chance to thank onyxhawke for the crit
of Flight.

Here's a tip.  Don't let yourself get so caught up in a new novel or short story or other creative endeavor that you fail to keep beating the streets for potential agents.  I've spent four months studiously avoiding the agent query process.  

Two thirds of that time because I was neck deep in a really fun rough draft, but that doesn't help me get _Flight_ sold, no sirree. The other third was just complete and abject fear of more non-existent feedback.  I don't mind rejection, it's the query and never hear anything back thing that drives me nuts.  I understand people get hundred if not thousands of queries, but it still would be glorious to even get a form letter.

I'm now back, researching the other agents on the list, and updating data from Goodin's list into my own mangled version.  My new goal will be one well-targeted and researched query per week until I get to the end of the short list.  Once I'm done with the short list, I'll re-evaluate.  

My apologies on the dearth of information.  As I said, don't do this.  You'll never get a 'Yes' if you fail to even ask.  

Where we slap ourselves upside the head and go: "Why didn't I think of that earlier!"

Or in my case, forgetting that one of the most important parts of the agent search is that they are people, too. As people, and faceless names on daunting repositories, they know people. A particular agent might even work with someone you know. You do chat with you writer friends about this stuff, right?

I would hope everyone does try and reach their peers as much as possible with useful information queries. That's the attraction of the Internet, we can actually be connected for useful areas such as this.

Now that I've performed the "whole cloth" part of the process, I'm going to "cheat" and consult other people on who might be a good fit. I will of course be taking everything everyone says with my normal course of skepticism, being me. However, I do trust my writer friends to give me an honest assessment of people they've either worked with, or even take part of the inevitable hearsay.

In my normal journal, on forums I visit and via email with some of my other authorial friends, I shall ask everyone I know if they have any recommendations or know anyone in specific that would meet my needs. The important thing to mention here is that I'm asking for a name, not a recommendation. Just a validation that I might not have caught every possible agent in the Universe with my first cast, not work on anyone else's part. I think it is critical to stress that you've asking for an idea, not to fob trade off of a friendship or other professional acquaintance. I have some really strong feelings about favoritism in one's professional realms, so I'm trying here to practice what I preach.

Resources that may be of use:

• Absolute Write
• Preditors and Editors
• Friends
• LJ
• Your writing forum or peer group of choice

Ask away.  If it is honest and sincere, I think you'll be more likely to get an answer.  Writers are a pretty friendly batch.  But whatever you do, don't betray a confidence.  If someone gives you a name, or resource/contact, don't turn around and betray that.  Some people in the industry feel that secrecy is the best method for good resources.  I don't but I can honor others personal beliefs.

Right, so does anyone who is reading this know of an agent who is open to YA sf, and also open to near future sf and/or urban fantasy?   Again, just looking for potential names.  I'm willing to do the hard work, just trying to see if I've missed someone out there that "Would just be perfect for you!".

There's no reason to believe that an agent that is perfect and loves your stuff is just out there for the asking.  But it never hurt to ask, you never know unless you try.

Winnowing Things Down

Right, so we're now got a query package, or at least the semblance of one. But where do we send it? I'm not a big fan of the shotgun blast approach to querying. I feel rather strongly that a tailored approach overall makes more sense for authors in genre fiction.

Since I've got an even more specialized criteria for my selection, I'll be narrowing down the field a bit more. Young adult sf isn't exactly in vogue at the moment. There's a ton of fantasy material, but not much in the sf space.

So where do I start?

I could try one of the classic print listing venues for agents, but frankly, we live in a digital age, and I'd like to work with someone I can find via alternate methods. I recognize that some people might not be comfortable with that. I've been worrying about this issue for a while, so I've bumped into Melinda Goodin's Locus Sales spreadsheet (http://members.optusnet.com.au/~mgoodin68/locus.htm). There are a thousand odd entries in this sheet, many representing multiple book series.

At last! A starting place.

While the spreadsheet is not day to day updated, it holds enough aggregate information for me. She lists agent, agency, sale, genre and date information for sales through Locus of related genres. I know Locus sales don't necessarily contain all works published in the US, but it should give me a good representative sample of agents and agencies.

I grabbed the .xls file, so I could slice and dice the data with impunity. My source data contained everything from July 2004 until October 2007. I made sure to immediately make my own working copy, so I could ensure that any modifications didn't impact the original.

One of the things I did was add a "Dru Ranking" column to the sheet. Here I will record or increment values in the field according to various decisions I make about agents, agencies and entries in the sheet.

Great! So you've got a big honkin' list of authors, agents and publishers, now what?

One of the first things we need to decide is on what criteria do we want to prioritize:

• Do we care about agents who represent first sales?
• Do we care about agents who get their author competitive auctions?
• Do we care about rockstar level advances?
• Do we want agents who in our sub-genre only?
• etc.

Once we've make a bunch of declarative statements about the type of agent we think would be able to place our novel best, we have a way to narrow down the field. In my case I have the following assumptions about what would make an effective agent for me:

• Can sell young adult fiction (YA). Kind of important if I want Flight to get accepted.
• Can sell fiction like Flight, e.g. space opera or coming of age stories.
• Has sold something recently. I added additional weight to agents who had sold something in the past year, 2 years and three years.
• Has taken on new authors, helped with first sales. This is obviously useful for me, because I know they are willing to look past the chicken and egg situation with new authors.
  
• Has represented sales to publishers who cover the respective genres. YA, sf.
  

There was one kicker for my selection process.

Not only did I have a general requirement for finding someone who could handle Flight, I was also going to be looking for someone who could handle my other work. My other novels are not YA, so I needed to know that the agent in question could also make sales to non-YA imprints.

Your selection process can be more involved, but to start out with, start by auto-storing or filtering the various columns to match your baseline desires. For me, this quickly cut out a decent percentage of the field, since YA sf is not as commonplace as I might desire. I then worked my selection by tagging each line entry with a "1" in my custom field if it met any of the criteria. If it met more than one, I incremented the values appropriately. This was not a speedy process, and taught me a lot about the market place, as I started seeing some trends.

Eventually, you end up with a bunch of line entries from the same agent/agencies over time, and you need to consolidate. I did this by copy and pasting the relevant fields into another spreadsheet or tab and then performing an incremental sum for each agent that had multiple entries. Like say: Russell Galen who by my count had 60-odd sales listed from July to October 2007.

"But Dru, I'll never get accepted by someone like Russ Galen," you lament.

There is that risk. I'm more of a aim for the stars kind of guy, though. You never know until you try. However, you can slice and dice your data however you want. if you want to award 100 points to agents with little to no track record. That's the beauty of choosing your own criteria! You can alter the process however you want. This is hardly a proscriptive process in any way, shape or form.

You know how big that spread sheet was to begin with?

Well guess what? It didn't get that much smaller, even with my crazy weighting process. If I drop agents that don't meet any of my requirements, or only match on a single requirement, I end up with 16 or 60 agents, depending on if I cut off hard on a specific issue. Essentially, for each major culling process I can remove 90% of the field. Fabulous. This is really exciting, because it means I have a reasonable number of attempts to make. Even if I have 60 agents to query, that's a much more manageable number to tackle.

Now I have a list of 60 or fewer agent to query. What's next?

Ahh, there's the rub.  Now I have to move onto: Step Five: Research and Tailoring The Query.   This is where we find out if agencies are still accepting new queries, are interested in new authors and how to make a comprehensive query that fits their style for submission.

ETA:

I would dearly, dearly, like to hear about anyone else's attempts or process to winnow the field of potential agents during their current or past search.   How did you limit the playing field or find that special someone?

or for short story people, how do you select your short fiction markets?  I'd think there might be some cross-functional skills.   I look forward to hearing more!

One of the things that I find even more daunting than coming up with the query letter is the synopsis. To me, it seems like the two to three paragraph version is simpler, because it is essentially the elevator pitch. Whereas the synopsis is the bar-side tale to a friend. There are a couple of different approaches, and the synopsis/summary discussion receives a regular flogging at AW.

While I'm an outliner in general, my formatting process doesn't really lend itself to easily matching it to something I can then hand off as a part of the query package. Instead of following my outline, which is more puppeteering in nature, I took a simpler approach. I tend to write in 1500-3500 word scenes. By writing a brief one to three sentence summary of each scene, I could make some progress. This is a lot harder than it sounds. What part do you keep? I stuck with it for _Flight_ and worked with a forward progression.

Eventually I ended up with sentences that works as stand alone pieces, but didn't help show I had a consistent plot or structure. So I took another stab at my synopsis and instead went with two to four sentences per chapter and use them as a story paragraph instead of standalone sentences. This approach worked better for me. I ended up with a nice three page synopsis. The process wasn't all peaches and cream, though. It is really hard work to delve through your novel and figure out what part of 60-80,000 words captures/illuminates your ability to write *story*. I probably spent at least a week working through various revisions.

My recommendation would be to try and be as verbose, yet as succinct as possible. Take those sentences, play with them. Make sure you use active word choices, to help demonstrate your ability to make your story zing. This part of the package will help the agent/editor decide if the subject material and your skillset is close enough to take a good look at your MS or at least your sample chapters.

Finally, I did my normal sit on things for a week edit/revision step, and came up with a synopsis that I think is pretty good. Of course, I can't tell yet if it is, because I need to get to Step Four: The Agents. I've got most of the material now, now all I have to do is figure out who is the best agent to represent me. Well, that and see if I can convince them to represent me, of course.

Please feel free to chime in with any process you've found useful in putting together your own synopsis. I'd really like to know what other people have found useful in the past and present.

After comments from my critique group and a little more analysis of what I was trying to accomplish, I worked on a couple sections of the query. First, I took out some of the passivity and tried to punch of the forward acceptance. All part of the projection to the agent that the novel is worth reading.

I also extended the synopsis text within the query to add a couple more elements. This allowed me to touch on more elements of the plot and characters that are important for a pitch related to _Flight_. I finally shifted some of the business pitch to the first section.

There is still a decent proportion of this query that will remain handcrafted as I start to figure out who and where to send this. I am certain that even an hour to personalize per query is worth the time. It adds another level of professionalism, and should help make people take me more the query more seriously.

Now, take a read-through of my final take on the protoquery. If you have any comments or critiques, feel free to make them now. I'll be more than willing to play the part of pincushion of discussion. If not here, I'll have to learn through bad submissions, so I'd rather poke holes in things now.

====

"…and now back to our regularly scheduled programming."

Previously we talked about the components of a good query package. Now I'm going to start tackling each as I develop them, with some of the trials and tribulations of that process. For some reason I was taken with the drive to take on the agent query.

The query process is just not something that I feel super comfortable with. Like applying for a job, you're essentially on a blind date to a prospective employer/partner, without being able to physically gauge why or how you've struck out. The vehement disdain that most agents seem to have for conference pitches virtually eliminates that avenue, at least in my opinion, so I'm stuck sending in the query.

Well, if we're stuck with the query, best make it a good as we can get it, right? What makes a great query? This is one of those frustrating aspects of the industry. For each agent there's one style that they seem to prefer. Some like off-beat introductory paragraphs, others like 'just the facts", and others care more about your experience. How the heck can one person manage to cram that all into one query?

Answer: I can't. Essentially I'm going to have at least two, perhaps even three query "styles" ready for each agent. Each style should have a lot in common with the other, so the core--that solid kernel of your voice and pitch will need to be consistent throughout, without being bland.

...Or at least that is what I decided. I'm willing to be corrected on my assumptions, but they are what I'd rolling with at the moment.

In this next segment I want/get to bang my head into discuss the components that people should have handy for pitching their piece to an agent.  We all know that you need a properly formatted MS.  What else is there? 

Well if we're sending out bulk queries, we'd probably need a slew of SASE so that people could get back in touch with us.  However, I'm pretty sure that taking a targeted approach will work better for me than shotgunning queries out there.  A small supply of SASE ready for the turn-around if I get a rejection (but who would do that to lil ole me?) will suffice.

What else?  Well, there's the query letter itself.  Since I'm planning on crafting the majority of each query by hand for each agent, we'll hold back on worrying about the query itself for the moment.

Some people might save off specific versions of "first five pages", "first three chapters" and "first 50 pages" for ease of sending out to the agents. I'll need to make sure I have the appropriate bundles made, and formatted in .doc, .rtf and any other format requested.  Something to work on during the drama of disaster recovery.

Speaking of formatting, I've created a file structure on my computer that is related to my agent query.  It has the following basic structure:

• Agent Contact Tracking
• Agent Info (who to hit up first)
• FAQ & Feedback
• MS related (MS, first 5, etc.)
• Other Parts
• Queries
• Summary Info

This leads back into what I think the remaining components of a "pitch package" are.  I think for most agents, if you have the MS, the query and some form of the summary detail, you'll be in a good place.  However, I'm interested to know if I'm missing some critical component here.   For my file structure, this allows me to pop the additional components into "Other Parts".   Then if "Other Parts" become consistent between agents, I can bump a folder up to the root directory. 

One thing that I'm aware of is as I go through this process I may learn that specific agents have a very particular "query package" order.  There's the story, the query (choose me, choose me!), the summary details (I can write an entire story and it contains plot).  Is there anything else that agents typically look for? 

Next Up:  Synopsis vs. Summary

Prior to acquiring an agent, everyone rails about needing to have the manuscript done. There is often a laundry list things people do or don't do when querying agents related to the manuscript.  I'm still formulating my package, and will open up discussion on that shortly.  I'm planning on having some items generated prior to contacting the agent(s) and some created on demand. 

But first, let us ensure we've got the most important component finished.  No manuscript, no way to respond to requests for fulls. 

I have now assembled Flight into a concise whole.  I've followed "the Absolute Write/Viable Paradise postings/lectures" on industry standard manuscript formatting:

• One inch margins
• 12 pt. Courier, left-justified, double-spaced
• Header - Title/Author/Page
• Hard page breaks for chapters
• Hash mark for scene breaks

However, I'm still torn on which method to use for the manuscript wordcount.  I've been reading more sections of AW and similar sites on query packages.  There just doesn't seem to be a clear consensus.  Flight comes out so drastically different according to which method I use. 

According to the software wordcount, I've got a consistent  61,000 words.  According to the 250 method, now that I've properly assembled Flight's component chapters, I have a 76,000 word novel. 

I think I'm simply going to keep both at hand, and use the 250 method in the interim unless I get specific feedback to use the software wordcount method. 

The MS looks pretty enough, and I have it all saved up in both Word and RTF format.  I'm going to try and view it in a couple different word-processors to make sure that both versions aren't doing something goofy with the formatting. I remember people at Viable paradise getting news back that their RTF docs were munged when they got to the instructors.

Is there anything else that I'm forgetting about the manuscript?  Let me know if you have any good resources or links for MS formatting or staging for the hopefully author.  Each time I feel neurotic, I try and realize there are thousands of others in similar situations, and I'm not completely insane for trying to get published.

Next Up: The Query Package

Hello there.  This is my attempt to create a community for other interested parties who are involved in or aspiring to be involved in the search for an agent.  Thanks to sparta5 for the suggestion on the name.  

Who are you?

A bit about me, so you have a clue where I'm coming from.  I'm drumiller, a writer who recently finished a young-adult (YA) science fiction novel.  I'm also a graduate of the Viable Paradise <http://www.viableparadise.com> writing workshop.  I write predominately genre fiction with a current focus in speculative or science fiction storylines.  

Why are you looking for an agent?

Well, as mentioned above, I recently finished the final edits on a YA novel.  I've been working on Flight from Darklight for a while now, and think it is as strong as I can make it.  The next logical step is to locate a publisher to take it.  However, after doing some research from some resources (listed below), I realized my energy might be best spent finding an agent to represent me.  

My primary reasoning for this:

• the number of top tier publishers (or at least their genre imprints) who accept unagented manuscripts (MS) these days is relatively small (but not zero)
• Agents work full-time at fostering relationships with publishers, and are more likely to know who might be receptive to a piece of mine
• I have other novels in queue, so I'll need to find someone who can shop around my other work as well
• I work full time, so my time can be either split by work and writing or work and shopping my work around.  I chose the work and writing.

How do you plan on finding an agent?

Well, that's what this whole community is about: trying to work out a way to locate the best agent(s) for me.  That, and hopefully sparing other writers from stumbling around in the dark when they attempt the same thing.  

Resources:

• The Street Smart Writer by Jenna Glatzer [great book for the newbie writer]
• forums.absolutewrite.com [Excellent Ask an Agent/Ask a Editor and the Novels forum]
• Miss Snark [the archives for useful information, though she didn't deal with genre fiction much]
• livejournal.com [Excellent author posts on agents]
• Preditors and Editors
• Writer Beware