Literary Agents Part 1. How to Choose Them

[BookWhispers]

There are hundreds of literary agencies. And thousands of literary agents. One of them can be the champion of your work. They will secure the best deals for you, guide you through the marketing process, and support you and your work until your book finds a solid place on as many bookshelves as possible. But the majority of the agents are not the right ones for you. Not because you were a bad writer. But the agents specify a lot and the literature world is very rich. You need to send your queries to people who actually work with books similar to yours. Especially if you write in a marginal genre. How do you choose whom to approach in the first place?

https://mybookwhisperer.org/2020/09/0...

[Daisy]

That is a good question, I have sent out a lot of queries to YA/Fantasy literary agents and I have been rejected a lot. I’m at the point of given up.

[BookWhispers]

BookWhispers wrote: "There are hundreds of literary agencies. And thousands of literary agents. One of them can be the champion of your work. They will secure the best deals for you, guide you through the marketing pro..."

Sadly, that happens very often. Agents and publishers are just one of the options. That is why I give a lot of space to self-published authors on my blog in a form of promotion and interviews.

[Dennis]

Have you heard of Querytracker.net? It's a relatively cheap user-driven subscription website that shows who's taking what and when. In fact, many agents exclusively use it to track queries from prospective authors.

Truthfully, the website could use an update but it does offer some really useful analytics such as rejection/acceptance ratio, how long it typically takes an agent to respond, etc. It's a good way to narrow down possible agents.