Can't find an agent for love nor money

PrincessTeacake said:

I'm from a country that tends to only publish books about the country itself, the publishing industry here is very much in its infancy so I've had to try the UK and America in my search for agents. I've contacted a few that looked legitimate but I've either gotten a refusal due to high demand or no response at all.

How can I get an agent to take on my work? I wouldn't even mind if they told me it was a load of rubbish, I could scrap it and work on something else. Any advice would be most welcome.

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First, welcome to AW.

Second, are you sure your work is ready? Has it been polished and is it ready to be queried to agents? has it been read and critiqued by peers? if not, maybe start by finding some beta readers or, after you have 50 posts, post some excerpts for critique in Share Your Work. No sense querying anyone if the book isn't ready.

Next, once the book is ready, research agents who represent your genre. Make a list of all of those you wish to query.

Write an effective query letter - you'll want to research what they should and shouldn't do - there are helpful resources in Query Letter Hell in Share Your Work.

Then, query agents who represent your genre, according to their submission guidelines.

Pretty much everyone needs to follow the same process - research agents, draft an effective query letter, and query.

But first, make sure the manuscript is ready

Look around AW - there are a lot of helpful threads and discussions of agents, publishing and querying.

~suki

PrincessTeacake said:

How can I get an agent to take on my work? I wouldn't even mind if they told me it was a load of rubbish, I could scrap it and work on something else. Any advice would be most welcome.

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A good agent won't take on a client whose current work is rubbish. Real agents don't get paid until your book has sold, so an agent won't agree to work for free by taking on a client whose work can't sell. Beware of scammers who take on anyone for a fee.

If you're not having any luck with your submission, look at the query and the novel itself to make sure everything is perfect. If there's room for improvement, stop querying until you've made those improvements. Also, a lot of people never publish their first book. (My first book will certainly never be published, thank goodness.)

PrincessTeacake said:

I've contacted a few that looked legitimate but I've either gotten a refusal due to high demand or no response at all.

How can I get an agent to take on my work?

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Contact more than "a few." Lots of people here have queried dozens or scores of agents before getting representation and selling their books. I can think of a few people here who queried a hundred or so agents before finding the agent who sold their work (to major publishers and good reviews, mind you).

All the steps suki laid out are absolutely right on target, but the first thing you have to do is understand the process--you have to query tens or dozens or a hundred agents, not "a few," before you can say you've hit a brick wall.

You could do worse than spend a couple of hours looking at the Queryshark - queryshark.blogspot.com - to develop your query letter

Maybe in addition to doing the traditional querying, you could try something unconventional. I'm a Freemason, and I've garnered the support of a high-ranking, well-connected brother to help me out. I've also tapped academics involved in publishing from my alma mater, and plan on reconnecting with an old friend of mine who is former counsel for New Line Cinema and the friend of numerous West coast comic book writers. There's all sorts odd avenues you could pursue.

_Richard

You just have to keep trying. Where you live doesn't matter. How well you can write a query, and how well you can write a novel, mean everything. Honestly, very, very few queries are anywhere good enough, and a bad query means even a good novel will go unnoticed.

As for how good your novel is, beta readers can't tell you, and neither can anyone else you know, regardless of how much you trust them. For good or ill, only an agent can tell you if it's good enough for her to represent, and only an acquisition editor can tell you if it's good enough for her to risk thousands and thousands of dollars.

So work on your query. Wherever you are, you find an agent by writing an irresistible query, preferably with from three to five pages, the first three to five, sent along for the agent to read.

Jamesaritchie said:

As for how good your novel is, beta readers can't tell you, and neither can anyone else you know, regardless of how much you trust them. For good or ill, only an agent can tell you if it's good enough for her to represent, and only an acquisition editor can tell you if it's good enough for her to risk thousands and thousands of dollars.

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Beta-readers can help with typos, grammatical errors, gaping plot holes and the like, so they should be your first line of defence against over-optimism about the quality of your work. There really is no point querying until you know your manuscript is error-free and polished to a professional standard.

Whether your writing will attract the interest of an agent is a whole different question, however, and I agree with James that no amount of beta-reading can get you over this hurdle.

I think the situation at home with the publishing industry or lack thereof had me a bit disillusioned. I'll get back on the horse and try some more agents. Thank you again!

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Absolutely you should do this, but don't do this now. I get the sense, from your post, that you would really benefit from learning more about how best to aquire representation from an agent. You only get to query an agent once, so taking the time now to write a stonking Query letter will benefit you in the long run. You may believe you have one but, believe me, you don't. QLH down in Share Your Work (password = vista) is where you can learn more about this dark art and, once you reach 50 posts, ask for advice on your own.

In the meantime, Google SlushPile Hell for advice on how not to write a Q and QueryShark for how you should (for US Queries, UK queries are entirely different).

Perhaps you'd get some additional help if we knew what country you're from. Was that mentioned already? I might have just missed it.