How to Publish Your Novel: Where to Find Literary Agents

If you’ve decided to traditionally publish your novel, you’ll need a literary agent. There is a lot of information out there, but this is the simplest way I’ve discovered to find agents with minimal hassle.

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Years ago, when I first thought I might become a published author someday, I started researching how to achieve my goals. What I found was completely overwhelming. I needed an agent, but there were thousands of them. Each of them wanted different documents I had never heard of. Query? Synopsis? What?

In this series, I’m going to share what I found and break down how to publish your novel. I’ll cover a the difference between the types of publishing currently available, writing a query letter, writing a synopsis, and finding the ideal agent to query. The process can seem overwhelming, but I hope to offer some clarity and simplicity so you can approach publishing with confidence.

Welcome to Part 2: Finding an Agent.
If you missed Part 1, catch up by reading Self-Publishing vs. Traditional Publishing.
Or, skip ahead:
Part 3: Finding the Best Literary Agent for You
Part 4: How to Write a Query Letter
Part 5: How to Write a Synopsis

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Literary Agents:
The Basics

So you’ve decided to publish your novel and have settled on the traditional publishing method as the best option.

Step One is to find a literary agent to represent you.

What is a literary agent anyway?

The shortest answer is that literary agents sell manuscripts to publishing houses. Most publishers don’t accept manuscripts from authors directly; they need to come through a middle man (middle person?)–the literary agent in this case. When you find an agent who likes your work, they will submit to publishers on your behalf, negotiate contracts, and will be your advocate in the publishing world. They love your book and want others to read it. Typically, they take 15% of whatever advance or royalties you get, but they don’t get paid until you do.

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Literary Agents:
Where Do I Find One?!

Gone are the days of purchasing enormous, phonebook-like tomes listing every literary agent’s contact information. Thank goodness for the internet.

The best resource, in my opinion, is QueryTracker. QueryTracker is an online database of agents that also has searching and tracking functions. A free account allows you to add agents to your “To Query” list, see their response times, see submitter comments, and more. You can select a genre, e.g. “fantasy,” from the sidebar and see all the agents who represent fantasy (355 as of today’s writing).

You can absolutely get away with using the free version of QueryTracker and still have all the resources you need to get started. However, if you’d like more of an in-depth look at statistics, query tracking, and tracking multiple projects, it is worth investing in the premium subscription. At $25 per year, it is a relatively low cost that will add value to your search.

Other agency databases can be found on Poets and Writers, Writer’s Digest, or genre-specific websites that may list agents seeking manuscripts.

Organization Amid Chaos

As you start to do preliminary research, you’ll quickly find lists of agents who likely represent your genre. You’ll also realize there are potentially hundreds of agents to sort through. What are you supposed to do with all this information?

First, take heart. Hundreds of agents means there is likely someone out there looking for your type of project. The sheer number to sort through, however, can be overwhelming if you don’t go about it methodically.

Before you get too deep in research, it’s important to keep track of who you’re looking at, who’s a good fit, and who’s someone you’d never consider submitting to. Nothing is more irritating than realizing you’ve ruled out the same person two or three times because you’ve forgotten who you’ve researched already.

Compiling an ideal list of agents is going to take some time and focus. In next week’s post, Finding the Best Literary Agent for You, I’ll go over my method for sorting through all the information to find the best literary agent for your work. Done this way, it doesn’t seem so daunting after all.