Introducing: My Agent Database (for writers)

Patrick Hopkins and I launched a thing, so this post is just a shameless plug. And a query process complaint. You have been warned.

About fifteen months ago, Patrick got fed up with the querying process.

For those who aren’t familiar, if an author wants to be published by a big name press — a ‘traditional publisher’, they usually need a literary agent. For fiction writers, you need to start with a finished and polished manuscript. For non-fiction, you need at least a few sample chapters, and a way to establish your subject matter expertise (a website, a large social media following, published papers, etc). To get a literary agent in the US, you send the agent, at minimum, a query letter and however many pages the agent asks for, using either mail, email, or a webform. (Check out my querying resources for more.)

The tricky part though? Every agency does things a little differently.

The Querying Ecosystem

There are a bunch of places you can look for information about agents when you start querying. There’s a whole ecosystem, and it’s hard to know who has the most up to date information.

• QueryTracker tells you who’s looking for what genres and helps you keep track of who you’ve queried and when
• Manuscript Wish List lets you know — if they participate — what the agents are looking for. Some agents get into the nitty-gritty of what books they read and subgenre vibes they’re looking for. But, sometimes agents and acquiring Editors get mixed together in your search results, and a lot of those Editors don’t want un-agented submissions.
• The individual agency websites – they break down what submission requirements they have — and sometimes how their agency prefers a query or synopsis to look like
• Agents’ professional social media accounts are as varied as agents are. Tracking down their social media links to see if you would be a good match often means looking in at least three different places
• And it’s up to you to vet the agents to see what sort of track record they have

We know that agents hate it when people mass-query every agent they can find with a generic query letter and attachment. Agents want to be sure they’re only getting queries from authors writing the stuff they actually state they’re looking for. But, the number of hoops writers are jumping through takes a lot of time away from the thing most of us want to be doing — writing. (Or, you know, having already written).

The thing we made: My Agent Database

With a bit of help, Patrick has spent the last fifteen months putting together a 30MB+ spreadsheet of doom we’re calling: My Agent Database — (available on Patreon for $1 a month).

With over vetted 2,000 agents, we’ve got it so you can hop to one of over 60 tabs split up by age range and genre (Adult Contemporary, Picture-book, Middle-grade Sci-fi, etc). It’s got a lot of information in it.

You can filter by agents who don’t want a silly synopsis, or ones looking for lgbtqa+ representation, or plot elements like fairy tale retellings.

Plus, he’s updating it DAILY. I’m helping out and pushing the marketing. (Sorry! This post started with a warning, though.)

Patrick and I are still addicted to helping other people rewrite their query letters (because it’s a million times easier to write someone else’s), so that’s not going away. Those are now available on the Patreon as well, putting everything in one place. He’s also developed worksheets to help writers fix common writing mistakes.

The Launch

Just under a month ago, I was packing for a 9+ hour drive to Kentucky for my annual trip to the Imaginarium Convention when Patrick reached out. To paraphrase, he asked:

“You’re about to hit that con. How about we launch there? On Patreon.”

*insert brake-screeching noises from my brain*

We were already set up on ko-fi, but he was right. That was the wrong platform for this model.

So, Sako and I get to Louisville, Kentucky about 9pm, eat dinner and crash out. And Friday morning, 3 hours before the convention started, I threw together a logo, told Patrick the database needed better formatting to be more easily readable, and set up the Patreon.

Then, I added Patreon to my linktree, and which was already on my business card, (because OMG, keeping up to date with all my links is more than a single card can take). Finally, I got go hit the con’s registration and get my badge, before my first panel.

At panels, I handed out my business card, and between panels, I recorded a launch video, posted the announcements everywhere, and ta-da! We were launched.

We’ve slowly been working out bugs in our system, but we’re getting there. This past week, I went ahead and created social media for the product, (Facebook, Bluesky, Instagram, Threads), except the video stuff. We’ll just be using my Youtube and TikTok. Patrick and I started to put together a Substack newsletter that launches next month, and we’re hoping to start interviewing agents once a month for the newsletter. Once we get our feet under us, those interviews might just be a podcast.

My Agent Database’s Future

I’ve been told that “no bells and whistles, but all the data” is not the best marketing slogan, but we have plans!

We sat down this week with a database designer friend of mine and we’re drawing out the database schematics. (That much data needs a database, but until now, we didn’t have a budget). I’ll likely be part of the website front-end work.

There’s a lot we want to see My Agent Database grow into, but we needed to start somewhere. We’ve got the latest data available, in one place. Everything else is gravy.