Category: Querying

How To Find An Agent For Your Novel

I talk a lot about my querying process, but one thing I haven’t talked as much about is HOW to find the agent in the first place.

It takes a bit of research, but most of us writers are pretty comfortable with research, especially if it means we’re putting our manuscript in front of the ‘right’ person. It’s a little time consuming, but ultimately not usually challenging.

[caption id="attachment_9301" align="alignnone" width="1880"]Person holding a blue ballpoint pen writing. Photo by picjumbo.com on Pexels.com[/caption]

Step One: Pick a list of literary agents

Where can you find a list of literary agents? All over the place.

Why You Should Consider An Agent If You’re Hoping To Publish Traditionally

You can only spend so long revising and editing a novel. Somewhere between revision 3 and revision 12, you’re probably going to be done with your book. But now what?

If you want to get your novel traditionally published, you’re gonna need to query some agents. But why?

Read on to see Morgan answer:
1. Why Would A Person Choose To Try Traditional Publishing?
2. Why Not Just Query Publishers?
3. Why Would Agents Reject Your Manuscript?
4. What Are The Benefits Of Having An Agent?
5. Where Do You Find An Agent To Query?
6. How Do You Pick An Agent To Query?
7. How Do You Keep From Getting Form Rejections?

Top 10 Tricks For Writing A Better Query Letter

Query letters are hard.

They’re a job application to sell a project that you’ve poured your heart, soul, and more-than-just-all-your-free-time into for months, years, or even decades.

But, if you could have told your story in 250 words or less, you wouldn’t have needed to write the whole novel!

The problem is, there are thousands of other writers who (mostly wrongly or naively) think their novel deserves to be published more than yours does. You’re reaching out to agents who’ve seen almost everything and you need to convince them that your novel is different! (Or at least written well enough that readers don’t mind)

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how to get it right. I don’t know the secret formula either, and I suspect it’s different for every agent, and dependent on how recently that agent had lunch.

But all is not lost!