On moving on

This is just something that's been bugging me for a while. Sorry if it sounds like a rant.

The supporting talk always includes this bit about "okay, your dream agent rejected you, just pick yourself up and move on to the next one". Because there are so many amazing agents there. There are... hm, are there?

Let's pretend you write something popular, purely for the sake of argument. Like, Young Adult. Lots of agents represent YA, right? You should have an endless list of potential query receivers.

But if you open, say, PM and look at the deals (I know not all deals are reported, but this is one of the few places where we can find some factual information), you'll notice a curious thing: the best deals, the fresh deals, and the highest amount of deals all belong to the same agents. A few. Not a hundred. Not even thirty. Barely a dozen.

Then you start digging for more info. Not just on whether or not an agent takes your genre, but whether they are active in it, info about other clients, books similar to yours, interactions, working style, etc, etc. And you notice that the names popping up with the positive flags are the same ten or so names. Then you research more agents, the ones with fewer deals, the new but well recommended ones, etc, and add some new names. All five of them. Because others seem to have a single client in your genre and all their sales are in nonfiction, or they became agents yesterday, or they got a baby and closed off for a year, or they are really active in another genre, or their last sale happened back when dinosaurs walked the earth. Oh, and I forgot to mention the painfully amazing top notch dream rockstar please take me now and I'll offer my soul as a side dish agents who don't take on clients anymore.

To make it short, for most people I talked to, their completed list of agents to query is no more than twenty. Sometimes fifteen, especially if their type of book isn't too hot right now. Out of that list, there are maybe five dream agents.

How is that an endless supply of agents? To me, that's a pretty short road to walk. So moving on means not so much a new hope but a new step towards the dead end.

I forgot about my own thread. Oo

Goldenleaves said:

You know not all deals are reported?

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Yes, I know, it's just that it's one of the few ways we have to create our agent lists.

sheadakota said:

A dream agent doesn't mean your book will get to the big six- there are plenty of other agents (Hundreds of them) who are not ' dream agents' so to speak, but perfectly compitent and able to get your book published. I guess the question is how flexable you are willing to be.

I could have said if X number of agents only on the very top of my market reject me then I am done. They did but I kept querying- no my books are not best sellers but they are selling very respectably for the market they are in.

It all depends on what you are happy with I guess.

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There is also the question of the next project. I mean, what if I keep sending out queries and end up with an agent who isn't anything special (because everyone else on my list rejected me)... whereas I could have trunked this project, written another one and landed myself a much more amazing agent. What if I get too focused on get-agent-now and lose the future possibilities.

suki said:

But you do need to research and make those decisions. And research beyond PM. Google is your friend. You will find sales through client's and agency blogs and even editor's tweets and blogs that are never posted on PM.
The "top sellers" are not always the best agent for you - I'd suggest broadening your research, because there are a great many talented and effective agents out there that you are not going to find on those "top dealmakers" lists - probably ever - for a variety of reasons.

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I am researching beyond PM, but the buzz wave seems to bring the same names onto the shore again and again. With some exceptions, yes, but still. Just for example, 9 out of 10 times I heard someone here praise their agent for being good in his (mine also) genre, s(he) turned out to be an agent I already had on the list.

There are also some agents who seem to be experienced and respectable, but there is almost zero information about them on the Internet. With them, though, you can tell they've been around, the names of their clients are impressive. And then there is the most frustrating kind of agents. The "hm?" ones. They are legit, they made one or two sales in your genre, but that's pretty much all the information you can find about them. Or there is some info, but it's related to another genre, so you might assume they are focused on that one.

Esmeralda said:

I want an agent on the way up... so that I can go with them. I'll be there when others are in the newbie boat looking to join our club.
Meanwhile, I keep at it, working on the next wip while waiting to hear. Good luck windcutter...it will happen...for all of us!

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Thanks.
An agent on the way up, ironically, seems to present the same kind of risk a new author's book presents to an agent--you never know whether they are destined to rise or wither in mediocrity.

Phaeal said:

I don't know. Over two hundred queries in, I still had top-flight agents and agencies on my list, and that's when I hit the right desk. If you want to quit at twenty or thirty, that's your call. I'd counsel greater perserverence and much less mulling over the aspects of the querying process you don't control, which is whether the spark of interest you strike with your initial contact ever becomes a hot enough fire to get you rep.

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Just curious, are you writing literary fiction or genre fiction, and if genre, then what kind? Mine is fantasy, and even if I put together all the agents on agentquery who accept it, disregarding their reputation, sales, clients, etc, I doubt I'd count to over two hundred, especially considering how some smaller agencies go the way of "rejected by one=rejected by all".

I think maybe I took a certain bit of advice too close to heart. It said "don't ever query an agent you wouldn't want to sign up with". So I have this urge to make sure I'm not missing on someone cool, someone who might make me regret settling for a smaller chance.

Filigree said:

I'm trying to find the sweet spot between an established powerhouse who might not have time for new clients, and the clueless-and-or-predatory brand new agents who pop up and flame out within a year or two.

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This sweet spot is exactly what I called the frustrating kind. Powerhouse has a reputation. A certain agent might turn out to be wrong for me, but at least at the start I feel like I know who I'm dealing with. Brand new agents often stir up a bit of buzz. But middle list agents... with some, you just don't know whether they like keeping low profile or they just don't have any really good deals and connections.

Jamesaritchie said:

You're just about right. If you mean agents actually open to new clients, few genres have more than twelve to fifteen top agents. This is just how it is. There will be another twelve to fifteen good agent good agents, but that's about it.

No genre has fifty agents that I'd want.

There are a lot of agents out there, and like in any other field, most are not very good. Some are horrible.

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Yes. Agents who are both worth having and open to new clients. A lot of the personal problems won't show up until you are actually dealing with them closely.