When To Begin the Agent Hunt
Monday, June 21, 2010 Two quick administrative items before getting to the question of the day:
1) I will be reading and signing tomorrow night, 6/22, in Seattle at the Barnes and Noble Pacific Place at 7pm. I would love to meet some of you in person there! From there, I'm headed down to Los Angeles for a reading at Borders Westwood on Thursday, 6/24 at 7pm. Please come!
2) As I promised on Friday, I have reopened the Buy One, Get One Free giveaway as a thank you for the incredible response to last week's women's writers event. You have until I land in Seattle tonight to send me your receipt of The One That I Want to allisonwscotch@gmail.com. I'll send out Time of My Life when I get back in town. (That includes to those of you who did the BOGO giveaway last time. Sorry - takes a while for the books to come in.)
Okay.
Question of the day: I have just started a memoir as well as a non-fiction book. (I also am halfway through a book that I put down 10 years ago.) At what point do I look into getting an agent?
The answer to this question varies on what sort of book you're writing. For both fiction and memoir, you need to have written the entire book before submitting. (This can occasionally be waved for memoir, but that's an exception, not the rule.) Toooooooo many people start a book (that's the easy part!) and don't complete it (that's the hard part), and agents a) need to make sure that you'll finish the dang book and b) need to make sure that you'll finish it well. With absolutely no statistics to back me up, I'd wager that something like 90% of manuscripts are abandoned by aspiring writers, and agents will in no way waste their time reading until you're done.
But then, once you're done, you're not really done. I highly, highly, highly recommend that you sit on your draft and go back and pull it apart and put it back together again. I've repeatedly said on here that most new fiction writers are not nearly as good as they think they are (present company was CERTAINLY included, which is why I feel like I can say this), so please, since you only have one shot with each agent, do not get caught up in the hysteria of immediately sending out. You'll most likely regret that impulse.
If you're working on non-fiction, you don't have to write the entire draft. Instead, most agents ask for - I believe, and this may vary from agent to agent - the first three chapters and a detailed outline/proposal. Again, I don't write non-fiction, so if I'm wrong, someone please feel free to weigh in below.
Readers - will you share how long you waited to go after an agent? How long did it take you to land one? Is there anything you would have done differently?
Reader Comments (10)
Haha, I think I'm going to have to come back and answer these questions at a future date... hopefully not TOO far in the future, though. ;D
I have written four novels and am almost done with a fifth. I have learned so much as I've gone. I've tried to get an agent with each novel and I got closer every time UNTIL my fourth novel, where I received THREE agent offers, and took one. That agent later dumped me like a sack of potatoes. (Yes she was that rude.) My current agent is great and has valiantly been shopping novel #4 around with no offer, so far. Novel #5 will go out if novel 4 doesn't get an offer in the next few months. . .With every novel, of course I was tempted to seek out an agent before the book was ready. . .and I paid, sometimes, for not resisting that urge. I might submit to a few agents, get some feedback, and then rewrite. (I probably rewrote #4 at least twelve or thirteen times, altering it as I got more advice. Even since I got the agent, I've rewritten three times.) I don't think my story is that unusual either. The best thing I can say is find some other writers you really trust to be honest with you and who will take significant time editing/offering suggestions and don't send it out to agents until you've written, put it aside, and rewritten several times, at least. It's worth the wait because the finding the agent part will be a LOT easier this way.
I am the exact opposite. In fact, I wish I had just the slightest nudge of charging out of the gate at go. But, I am the classic perfectionist. I have read and pulled apart and put back together, so many times. I'm giving it one more final edit and then I am holding my breath and taking the leap, something I probably was ready to do, several edits ago.
Oftentimes, I feel my fear of getting it wrong, holds me back. So, I'm on the other side of the scale.
I got an agent request and submitted my first complete manuscript all buffed and polished--not a typo in sight! Unfortunately, I didn't know anything about the craft of writing or what I was doing. I knew I was a good writer, and I assumed that command of the written word would make me a natural novelist. Let's just say that I wasn't. That manuscript had major issues (lack of characterization, shifting narrative voice, backstory--you name it). I not only trunked it, I still blush at the fleeting thought of subjecting anyone to it.
After it was promptly and rightly rejected, I did a lot of work on my writing. I learned everything I could and months later, went back to the story. I still wanted to tell it, but I immediately saw that I had to rewrite the whole thing, start to finish. That's how bad it was.
I'm embarrassed on one level, but also grateful for the lessons learned. That rewritten story got me my agent (same one who saw the hateful first draft--he's seen me at my worst!) and it's now on exclusive submission at one of the big houses. I'm still a long way from being a published author, but I couldn't agree more with Allison.
As usual, fantastic post. I wish I'd read it before I sent it out in the first place!!!
Joann:
Here's the thing -- one can always change words. I know published authors who would rewrite even after the book is on the shelves, if they could -- so they tell me! So if you feel like it's just you being pickyun -- don't wait!
Thanks for this great post! Personally, I waited until I'd done 2 full edits myself and then had 2 friends who write do the same before I sent out to agents, and I was glad for it. Almost immediately, I received 6 requests for fulls and a handful of partials, though I credit much of that to also spending a HUGE amount of time on a solid query letter.
I've heard from all but 2 of the agents, and with the exception of 1, I got great feedback. Just about all said they loved the book, the unique concept. and had a blast reading it, but unfortunately, given the changes in the industry, and the US economy, no one could add me (a debut author with a niche product, even if it is great - at least in their opinion) to the their list. Fully understandable!
That said, and I was SHOCKED when one suggested I self publish to build an audience. Could have knocked me over with a feather, as a year ago, that might have been author suicide, but after talking to some industry experts, I've been encouraged to do exactly that and leverage my unique concept and background in PR to get my book out their and build my own brand. Not how I had imagined it, but I'm up for the challenge! There's so much great information out there on how to self publish, and the e-reader really has opened some interesting doors for authors. Who knows how many potential best-sellers are just sitting there on a shelf somewhere?
That said, in the same spirit of your post, I'll be doing my research, hiring the right editor and taking my time to make sure it's done right - you only get one shot, right?
I'll be started my own blog on my experiences in this endeavor shortly, but in the meantime, anyone whose interested, maybe even doing the same, can find me on Twitter at wordsmithwesson.
Thanks again for the great info!
No one tells you that writing the query and the synopsis is actually more difficult than writing the novel! You should probably write the query and synopsis first and then write the novel around them! Ha!
I’ve spent two years writing and tweaking and rewriting my novel. The last year (the third) has been spent doing the requirements and trying to jump through all of the little hoops to get an agent. I've decided that it would be much easier if I were already a celebrity of some sort! Even if I were the ‘Clothespin Queen’, it would have been easier to land an agent!
And, tell me… Where is the ‘Recall’ button on my computer? I’ve sent out queries that have landed me the generic, but polite ‘No thanks, but this isn’t for us…’ and I swear, when I originally pressed ‘Send’, they were perfect! Once reviewed, after the polite rejection, I can’t believe THAT is what I sent out! What was I thinking? Was I drugged at the time? Will a single Margarita’s do that? Had Body Snatchers taken me over, trying to ruin my life for one of their sick experiments? Apparently!
This whole day has been devoted to perfecting my latest query, except for brief intervals of taking the dogs out so they can smell what other creatures may have peed in the yard, and roll in it.
Good luck, Writing Friends
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