Agents looking for YA paranormal romance?

eileenmcilwain

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Hello,

Does anyone know of literary agents who are looking for authors of YA Paranormal Romance?

I know a lot of agencies aren't interested in representing authors in this genre because the market is flooded, but surely there's an agent somewhere who will give my manuscript a look in? I mean, someone has to be representing the authors of all these YA Paranormal Romance books!

If you can recommend any reputable agents who are interested in this genre I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance!

Eileen
 

Cyia

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The only way you're going to find a submission list is to find YA agents (look for fantasy / urban fantasy) and then check their agency sites or personal blogs to see if they've declared "NO PARANORMAL ROMANCE!"

It still sells, so yes, there are people still wanting it. I do think you'll have a better chance if your para isn't a vampire or a were-thingy, but even if it is, if the story rocks their socks off, you're golden.
 

HoneyBadger

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QueryTracker.
Research agents.
Don't freak out if you get a less than positive response:

After being here at RT, certainly I can tell you that editors are weary of paranormal romance. That everyone is talking about erotica because of 50 Shades (by the way, I don't rep erotica so please don't query me for that.)

...

I can tell you that a lot of the romance editors also rep YA and they might be moved to violence if just one more YA paranormal romance lands in their submission inbox.
 

MrsBrommers

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The only way to know if to check an agent's guidelines. Look at who represents books you like and see if that agent is still open to those types of books. QT has a list of who reps who. But, yeah, it's a hard genre to break into. Paranormal in general is very full. One thing that can help is to relabel the book's genre if you can. If it's dark enough and frightening enough, you can call it horror. If it's mysterious enough, call it suspense.
 

cherita

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I can tell you that a lot of the romance editors also rep YA and they might be moved to violence if just one more YA paranormal romance lands in their submission inbox.

Totally OT, but this explains so much to me about the current state of YA...
 

Miss Plum

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The only way to know if to check an agent's guidelines. Look at who represents books you like and see if that agent is still open to those types of books. QT has a list of who reps who.


This is your method. It's going to be tedious and time-consuming, but your best bet is to go to QueryTracker, use their search tools, and then click out to the page of every last agent or agency that's a "likely" and check out their current interests.
 

Becca C.

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And if you're not completely sure if an agent wants YA PNR or not, what's the worst that can happen if you query them? They'll reject. Not the end of the world. And hey, if you're not sure and you end up not querying them, what if they would actually love it? You could be missing out by hesitating :)

You can't always judge every agent's taste by their submission guidelines and wishlists. A lot of them will just say "Heck, query me anyway, you never know what I might like!"
 

AmyT

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I agree with everyone else that you'll probably just have to look on Agent Query, Query Tracker, etc, then look at the individual agent's websites (that's how I did it). If you have a fresh, unique take on the paranormal genre they will be interested.

But I also agree with MrsBrommers about maybe calling your book something else if you can. A while back a book was marketed as a "YA thriller," and I read it and it was totally paranormal romance. I don't love this, but agents will do the same thing when they submit your book.
 

eileenmcilwain

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I was considering re-labelling it as YA Urban Fantasy, which it is, but it's likely most agents have had a gutful of those too. I also don't want the agent to feel like I've tricked them. If I was an agent and someone did that to me, I'd feel a bit miffed.

I did get a full request after submitting it as a YA Paranormal Romance, but it got rejected because the agent had recently taken on a manuscript in the same genre. They were having trouble finding a publisher for it and were reluctant to take on another manuscript with similarities to the one they already had. Apart from that, they didn't say anything negative about the manuscript itself - on the contrary, they said they "really liked it" and seemed genuinely sorry that they couldn't take it on.

It's just so frustrating that most agents will automatically bin my manuscript without looking at it because of the genre
.