It's not that you can find more or different information offline. It's that the information you find online is more likely to be bad than good, and if you don't already know something about agents and publishing--including the best places to look for useful information--you won't know how to filter it. I hear from so many writers who've gotten involved with bad agencies by clicking on Google ads, or using one of the online literary agent listings that have been put together by people who don't know how to vet the agents they list (
here's an example), or by subscribing to a newsletter like the one sent out by Firstwriter.com, which doesn't vet the agents it includes at all and often highlights marginal or incompetent agents.
Here's an example. I Googled
literary agents for fantasy novels. First result: a
message board posting with a list of UK agents--good info for UK writers. Second listing:
WritersNet, an agent database that includes as many, if not more, marginal and amateur agents as reputable ones--not good. Third listing: something called
AuthorNetwork.com, an agent listing that includes numerous fee-charging agents plus out-of-date info--also not good. Fourth listing: a blog called
Literary Agent News, which Writer Beware recently
exposed as a scam--very bad. Fifth listing: the
blog of the editor of
Guide to Literary Agents--good info here. Sixth listing: Writer Beware's
Literary Agents page--that's good too. Seventh listing:
Miss Snark--also good, but only if the writer takes the time to read more than the one entry. And on the right-hand side of the page: ads for Dorrance Publishing (a vanity publisher) and Writer's Literary Agency (a notorious scam)--very, very bad. Suppose you're an aspiring fantasy author who doesn't know a great deal about agents or publishing, and is trying to learn as you go. What are the odds you could get into serious trouble as a result of this search?
As for being out of date--an online listing is far more likely to be out of date, incomplete, or just plain incorrect than the most recent version of a print literary agency guide. For instance,
this one, which an inexperienced author might assume was an authoritative list of AAR agents, but which appears to have been cribbed from the AAR list some time ago, and no longer matches the
actual AAR list.
In my opinion, a new author just starting out is best advised to start (and I do mean start; I'm not suggesting that writers not use the Internet at all--quite the contrary) with the most recent version of a print market guide. It's a good idea to use more than one, as the listings will differ. Starting with a print book rather than the Internet is especially important if, as is often the case, the writer has decided to skip the step where s/he reads up on the publishing industry, in an effort to become knowledgeable about what s/he is getting into before s/he actually tries to get into it. The print guides don't just provide lists of agents; they also have articles to help writers learn a bit about agents and publishing.
So do the better online agent resources, of course, such as AgentQuery. But when you go into a bookstore to look for agent guides, what you'll find is a selection of up-to-date, editor-vetted books that have been written by people with expertise in the subject. When you go online to look for agent guides, the bad will pop up with the good, and an inexperienced writer may not be able to tell the difference. Mind you, I'm not saying that print guides are perfect. Nearly all of them contain some bad apples. But as a group, they are reasonably authoritative and up to date, which can't be said of many, many of the agent resources online.
Other useful steps that can be done offline: identify books similar to yours in subject, theme, and/or genre so you can try and find out who agents them. Check out industry publications such as PW in your local library, or subscribe to a publication that covers your field, such as Locus.
Once you've assembled a list of agent prospects from offline sources, you can then go online to research them further, and also to try and find out who agents the books you've identified. This will inevitably lead you to other agents and alternative resources, which, since your offline activities will have given you a grounding of knowledge, you'll be better equipped to evaluate.
I don't have much hope, by the way, that anyone will actually follow this advice, which many people will no doubt perceive as tedious and old-school (I get similar reactions when I suggest that people wanting to do in-depth research should go to--gasp--the library rather than doing Internet searches). Many people, probably, will also figure that the advice doesn't apply to them, because they already know enough to be able to filter the information they find on the Internet. Sadly, a lot of them are wrong.
- Victoria