Agents' Success Rate

My agent sells first time authors a lot (I want to say 6 in the last year but could be off a tad), myself included, and she typically sells multi-books deals for very sweet advances. I believe she got $500K for one last year (not me). What's more, I was a slush pile query. No previous publications. All I had going for me was a great idea and a great book. And she got me a three-book deal for a six-figure advance.

Agents and editors are looking for fantastic books. If you have one, it'll sell. No one cares if you're a first time author.

The stigma with first-time authors is that a high percentage of them start querying before the books are ready, and they haven't quite gotten their work up to professional level yet.

Reach for the glass with both hands It IS possible as long as you're willing to put in the time and effort to learn your craft and write an original story that knocks people's socks off.

I don't know about new writers but Miss Snark used to say she sold 50-70% of what she took on.

Danthia said:

My agent sells first time authors a lot (I want to say 6 in the last year but could be off a tad), myself included, and she typically sells multi-books deals for very sweet advances. I believe she got $500K for one last year (not me). What's more, I was a slush pile query. No previous publications. All I had going for me was a great idea and a great book. And she got me a three-book deal for a six-figure advance.

Agents and editors are looking for fantastic books. If you have one, it'll sell. No one cares if you're a first time author.

The stigma with first-time authors is that a high percentage of them start querying before the books are ready, and they haven't quite gotten their work up to professional level yet.

Reach for the glass with both hands It IS possible as long as you're willing to put in the time and effort to learn your craft and write an original story that knocks people's socks off.

Click to expand...

If you don't mind me asking, who's your agent?

My agent has made two good, multi-book sales for first time authors (me included) this year. Kristin Nelson has sold several first books in the last year or so, including AW-er Jamie Ford.

Kristin Nelson. She's amazing.

This is from Jodie Rhodes' website:

You should know that it’s virtually impossible to sell fiction by an unknown author and we take on only a handful of novelists each year. On the other hand, we eagerly accept nonfiction books by acclaimed experts on areas of keen current interest to the public.

To give you an idea of how well nonfiction sells vs fiction, we sell 70% of all the nonfiction books we represent (and can do so on the basis of just a short proposal), 25% of YA/Teen books and 5% of adult novels.

Danthia said:

Kristin Nelson. She's amazing.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I hear very good things about her.

To be fair, I checked out her website. She's a one-woman show who says she's different from all other agents in background and how she markets, and that she opened her agency with the express purpose of agenting unknown writers.

If she only manages to sell 5% of the adult novels she reps, I wonder more at her experience, than at what publishers are buying.

Teriann said:

This is from Jodie Rhodes' website:

You should know that it’s virtually impossible to sell fiction by an unknown author and we take on only a handful of novelists each year. On the other hand, we eagerly accept nonfiction books by acclaimed experts on areas of keen current interest to the public.

To give you an idea of how well nonfiction sells vs fiction, we sell 70% of all the nonfiction books we represent (and can do so on the basis of just a short proposal), 25% of YA/Teen books and 5% of adult novels.

Click to expand...

Hi ChaosTitan: Thank you for following up. I thought about that too, after I posted her numbers. Initially I thought perhaps she wasn't the best agent to approach with adult fiction. Then it occured to me that because the 5% represented new writers, it may in fact be representative of the numbers most agents experience with debut writers. An agent selling only, say, third novels of successful novelists will have a 100% success rate. If an agent say she sells 50% of her novels, debut novels could well sell at 5% rate. Now, statistics isn't my strong point, I'll admit, but if 5% is anywhere near the success rate across the board for new novels, that would certainly explain why new novelists have trouble getting an agent!

New novelists only have trouble getting agents when their books aren't good enough. Period.

That's a tad sweeping, December. There are plenty of factors involved in why an author may not hook with a novel. Rejection doesn't necessarily mean your work isn't good.

DecemberQuinn said:

New novelists only have trouble getting agents when their books aren't good enough. Period.

Click to expand...

I'd tweak that and say new novelists have trouble getting agents when there isn't a market for what they've written, or it's saturated.

Yes, that's true; I should have said "the number one reason". I just get extremely irritated seeing people who should know better talking about decks being stacked against new writers, or how new writers can't attract any interest, when that's demonstrably not the case.

Being new has nothing to do with it; if you've written a publishable book (by which I mean not just well written, but original and interesting) and a good query letter (which I firmly believe you should be capable of doing if you've written a publishable book) you will find an agent, whether it's your first book ever or your fortieth.

If Jodie Rhodes sells 70% non-fiction, then this is an agency geared toward non-fiction. Expecting this agency to sell your debut novel is a bit like expecting your general practictioner to do your heart surgery.

All agents are not created equal. One who specializes in non-fiction is not the agent you want for your fiction project. You wouldn't send your YA fantasy to Janet Reid, no matter how good an agent she is, because she doesn't do YA fanatsy. But she'd be tops on your list if you wrote a crime novel.

December makes a very good point. If you're talking about fiction, all you need is a great book. Non-fiction needs more these days, but fiction doesn't. But a "great book" isn't just one that's well written. It's one that is well-written, original, has a strong voice that stands out. First time authors do poorly because most first novels suck. Mine did. I sold novel four.

I also think agents are harder to get than publishers these days, because the competition is firece. Agents will usually only take on books they can make money off of. An editor might like a book enough to offer a small advance, but an agent will pass on that same book because it can't make them enough to pay the rent.

Writing is an art, but publishing is a business. You can have the best boy-wizard novel out there, but right now, that idea isn't fresh, so the odds of publishing it are slim. But that same writer can write an original novel and sell it.

You can look at all the stats you want but they're pretty meaningless, because you don't know what the context is. If an agent rejects 100 queries, you have no way of knowing if any of them were any good to being with. And if your query is professional, with a great hook and wonderful writing, it'll get a request for pages even if it's up against 1000 other queries. And the stats are way off because a lot of people re-query their first novel several times. The guy saying "first-time authiors can't get published" might be saying that because he's tried to submit the same multi-revised novel for the fourth time.

Agents are looking for great books they can sell. If you write a great book, you have just as good a chance as anyone else, first time author or not.

DecemberQuinn said:

New novelists only have trouble getting agents when their books aren't good enough. Period.

Click to expand...

There are people on this board who queried 50+ agents before they found their agent, who then sold their book (or a series of books) in short order to major publishers.

So some books need to find the exact right home, and it may take dozens and dozens of queries before they find the right agent. Quite a few agents passed on Harry Potter, after all.

That said, it's not because the publishing industry is biased against new writers or whatever. It's because some books have a more focused appeal, and other books have a broader appeal.

It's so true that it takes more than a well-written book with compelling characters and a strong voice to get picked up by an agent, or an editor, for that matter. I could write a fantastic western-themed erotica fantasy novel set in the frozen tundra of Siberia with a polar bear as the main character, but chances are the market for this kind of book would be extremely slim. You can take originality only so far. Though this hypothetical novel might find an agent, who might sell it to a publisher, the odds of it doing well don't look good.

Karen Duvall said:

I could write a fantastic western-themed erotica fantasy novel set in the frozen tundra of Siberia with a polar bear as the main character, but chances are the market for this kind of book would be extremely slim.

Click to expand...

Maaaan, I'll buy that!

A polar bear character work for Phillip Pullman

Gary Clarke said:

Maaaan, I'll buy that!

Click to expand...

LOL! I guess there's a market for everything. Hmm... I could make the polar bear gay. Maybe have aliens land somewhere around chapter 14...

A gay polar bear? Perfect for the Bravo channel.

Danthia said:

A polar bear character work for Phillip Pullman

Click to expand...

And Edith Pattou!

Oh, I'm buying two copies if he's gay!

I have no idea about success rates for agent submissions. Why don't we look at it this way:
> Agency has 4 agents.
> Agency receives 400 queries a month (100 per agent).
> Of 100 queries received by an agent each month, she winds up representing 1 new writers (?) each month.
> Yearly, agents represents 12 NEW writers (?).
> Agent has ongoing stable of 20 writers.
> 12 NEW + 20 in STABLE = 32 writers yearly (high?).
> Assuming 1 manuscript yearly from each writer = 32 NEW manuscripts to shop each year (high?).
> If agent has 20% success rate = 6-7 sold yearly (seems high to me).
> Based on 6-7 sold yearly by each of 4 agents, agency sells 24-28 works a year (seems like an awful lot to me)

Using the hypothetical above indicates to me that the real percentage may be between 5 and 15% (?).

Lets start from there and see if we can get some comments. And I agree, the best source would of course be the agents out there.