Shae West asked Jennifer A. Nielsen:

Hello, Mrs. Nielsen! I am a home schooled christian, and I absolutely love your books! My question is. How and where did you find your publishing agent? I am writing a book myself, so any advise you can give me would be amazing! Thank you so much!!

Jennifer A. Nielsen Hi Karsyn. I'm thrilled that you are writing and thanks for your question. The first thing you need to do is finish the book (of course) and then revise, revise, revise until it is the best you can possibly make it. I cannot emphasize enough how important that is. Most authors (including myself at this stage) are so eager to submit to agents that they quit revising too soon. You only get one shot with any particular agent on that manuscript, so take your time to make it great.

Second, I recommend a site like agentquery.com - you just enter in your genre and it brings up all the agents who represent the kind of story you wrote. Do your own research on them and make your list for who you want to submit to, then look at how they want to receive submissions. Follow their instructions and go!

There are tons of blogs on how to query, what to do and not do, etc. Start reading those and learn the business of writing. That is every bit as important as learning the art.

Finally, understand that getting an agent can be very difficult. So don't worry about the rejection letters - just use them as motivation to get better and submit again. Remember that a rejection letter is not a rejection of YOU. It is ONLY a rejection of that sample of writing you sent by one agent at this one point in time. Any of those factors change and it might have been a yes, so don't get discouraged. Just keep going, keep learning, and keep believing in yourself. Do that, and one day you are signing with an agent, and then the real fun begins!

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