The Great Agent Hunt!

Where to begin? Can you download a list of agents, how to query each one (they all want different things, which blew Mr. Burke away), as well as a complete dossier about them? Um, sadly, no. Absent the easy ticket, I sat down before RWA National this summer and started working on a spreadsheet to track my queries. I set it up with agency name, agent name (sometimes the agent and agency are the same thing, but often they are not and it's imperative to track which agent you are querying at a large agency), address (email and snail), type of query (email or snail, letter only, letter + synopsis, letter + first 10 pages, letter + first chapter, etc.), and the date I sent the query. I also created columns for whether I got a request, when I responded, and whether I followed up. Oh, and a column for any notes (for example, I noted "RWA Natl" for the agents I pitched in Dallas).

Armed with a nifty location for my data, I stared at the blank screen and thought, now what? After a couple of years of writing and hanging around other writers, I had some ideas about agents I was interested in querying and so I started with them. Then I went to agentquery.com where you can search agents by genre and find out almost everything you need to know to fill in your little spreadsheet. So, was I ready to send yet? No.

If the agent/agency had a website, I visited their website. If the agent/agency had a blog, I visited their blog. I did as much research as possible to determine which agents I wanted to query and how best to query them. I admit to being a little stymied when I got to large agencies. Who to choose? I'd been told by numerous people that, whenever possible, you should pick a particular agent and target them for your query. Makes sense, but how to choose? They all seem so nice in their 200-word bio!

Then I realized that this process really is a courtship. (See Maven Lacey's awesome post on how finding an agent is like dating.) We make the first move when we send the query. If they like what they see, they ask to see more. If we like what we see (how excited were they when they asked for more?), we send more. And so on. At any time along the courtship, one or both of us might decide the other is not "the one." I've never shied away from making the first move (ask Mr. Burke), so I did my best to choose agents that were appealing for whatever reason (books they liked, websites they liked, any neat-o personal information I clicked with, etc.).

Finally, I asked my RWA chapter loop if they had any suggestions for people looking for sexy historicals. Our chapter president came back to me with a fantastic list (she rocks!), which I inserted into my spreadsheet (some were agents I'd found, but some were not - double yay!). Now, I had a list of forty some agents. Wow! That's a lot of query letter writing!

You may ask, "Aren't you sending the same query letter to each?" Basically, yes, but I tweak each one for each agent. While I'm not looking for a new BFF, I would like to connect with an agent on some level and I'm probably not going to do that with a form letter. So, even if I had very little distinctive information on a particular agent, I changed something about the letter to make it unique.

How'd I do? The jury's still out, but I only sent my first round of letters about three weeks ago. I'll be sending another round this week. I'm doing them in batches because let me tell you, querying is time consuming! Lots of printing, stamping, addressing, individualizing (the letter). But so worth it. And I say that without having gotten a request (yet!) from a query. Even without a request, there is something about putting your work out into the big bad world. It's that next step on the road to publication and that, by itself, is a success.

Are you querying? If not, are you getting ready? How did you prepare? Dish your secrets!