When do I start looking?

Get one of the novels up to submission quality. Then you can start researching agents.

Good luck!

I'm working on getting my novel to submission quality. The competition is tough and the less reason I can give them to say no right away, the better it is for me. I want the agent to look at it and say "yes, I think I can sell this", not "I could maybe sell this if it was polished more."

I think the search for an agent is done while writing the next book.

Ah, storyteller makes a good clarification!

You can think about finding an agent while you're revising. You can do lots of research and compile your list of agents you'll want to query.

Just don't query until the manuscript is ready for submission. If you query and agents ask for your full, it's best to have that full ready to send.

There are some great web sites and agent blogs that offer valuable (although sometimes contradictory) information about querying and the publishing industry:

www.agentquery.com

Nathan Bransford (an agent with Curtis Brown Ltd)
Kristin Nelson (Nelson Literary Agency)
Miss Snark (anonymous agent - blog now archives only)

Spend some time on Publishers Marketplace to get a sense of the verbage used in pitches. FINISH your novel and start another!!! I always worked on my query letter and pitch while I wrote and interestingly enough that's what my agent is having me do with my next novel...

I'm with qdsb -- you can always research agents and work on your query while polishing your book (I'd argue that you should have the first draft done first but that's just because I tend to change things a lot with the first revision that would require changing the query letter).

While you will be tempted to send the query when you're "almost done" with your book, I strongly advise against it. First, you're rarely as close to done as you think you are. Second, life always pops up and keeps you from getting done. Third, you can always revise and polish the ms again. Fourth, you never know which agent will want it NOW and you do not want to keep them waiting. In my own experience, I went from first query to having an offer in 3 weeks -- I got a request for a full 2 hours after e-querying one agent. No way did I want to say "uh, can you wait a bit while I finish things off here?"

And I also recommend having beta readers for both your manuscript and your query (there's a share your work section here that does fantastic work with queries). Cause once you query an agent and get rejected, you really can't query them again so you want to make sure you put your best foot forward the first time.

Define Submission quality for me please.

notpc said:

Thanks, this all helps. Submission quality? Is this when your mother says "That's a great story you should send it in! Here's a cookie." or is it when you submit it to AW for a critique and it isn't covered in blood?

Can the MS quality be different than what you would send to a publisher?
Because if it has to be perfect I will never be ready for an agent. I write software and there's a point in the programing phase where you have to says STOP or it will never be released. There's always more you can do. When is that "STOP" point in the writing phase? When is the quality good enough to submit, query, an agent?

I think the beta reader is a good idea. Anyone want to be mine?

Click to expand...

For submission quality: definitely the second one, but if you can't get critique on the whole mss, just make sure the first few pages have been reviewed and use your judgement.

It's true, I think, everyone has to abandon their books more than finish them. You have to decide where that is. It's probably when your eyes start glassing over and you know you can't edit any more without a fresh look in 6 months. If you think you could make it better in 6 months, maybe send out one or two queries, test the waters, but save a lot of agents for 'later' in case you can make revisions.

Good luck