If you ever asked me how I got my agent, I could blithely say, well, I finished a book and sent it off to three agents and my #1 choice just scooped it right up and then sold it twice!
This would, technically, be true.
But, as with all “remember when I was an unpublished writer” stories, it’s not the whole story.
I’ve been writing for a long time, and submitting stories for fifteen or sixteen years now. I finally felt I was up to querying publishers for my novel-length stuff back in 2002. I sent out five or six query packages with coverletters, sample chapters, and synopses. I didn’t query agents because (ahem), the book wasn’t actually finished, and I knew that an agent was going to get back to me faster than a publisher (DO NOT DO THIS. I feel that I must say that, though I knew the publishing rules and broke them anyway, as I also knew the likelihood that anyone would want to see the whole book).
Good news all around was that not one single publisher requested that manuscript. So, hey, no harm no foul. I got blanket form rejections all around and stuck that half book back in a drawer.
Next up was the first book in a fantasy fiver in 2004. I had a full list of agents, nearly a dozen, and I submitted query letters and/or sample chapters to all of them (How to know which ones? I read who sold what kinds of books over at Locus and read author acknowledgments for my fav books. Most authors mention their agents. Then I just Googled them and followed the submission guidelines listed on their site. The hardest part was just writing a decent query and synopses. To accomplish that, I recommend Elizabeth Lyon’s Sell Your Novel Toolkit). Rejections were mostly personal this time around, and I had a couple of rewrite requests. The top agent on my list, Jennifer Jackson, who I knew repped Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, and Jim Butcher (among many others) passed, but nicely, and did say that if I severely rewrote it, she’d consider looking at it again, and was certainly interested in anything else I wrote.
In 2007? 2008? when God’s War was finally ready to start making the rounds, I actually ended up querying a publishing house first (despite my intentions), in part on recommendation from Colleen Lindsay, who is a bit of a Thing in the publishing world (that is, she knows people who knows people, has worked a ton in book publicity, and also worked as an agent for about a year) and had commented a bit on my blog and corresponded with me virtually (we still haven’t met in person!). She suggested I send it off to a book editor with her recommendation, which I did. I went through some rewrites over there. Also to no end. But while I was going through that process, I decided to query my top three agents in case a contract came of the rewrites.
Agent #1, Jennifer Jackson, got back to me pretty quickly and wanted a full, which I sent over. You’d think I would be over the moon about it, but I was already pretty used to failure and disappointment by this time. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I just had realistic expectations about how this industry worked, having been in it for so long and hanging out with/following writers for as long as I had. When she called me up to “discuss the book” I figured I was going to be asked to do another round of revisions. Instead, she said she’d like to represent the book, and was I interested in that?
OH NO DON’T REPRESENT MY BOOK JENNIFER-FUCKING-JACKSON (FYI she made i09’s list of Top 20 SF Movers and Shakers of 2008, and was the top dealmaker in 2008 according to Publisher’s Marketplace. Sounds like somebody you want in your corner, right?).
But why, some folks might ask, did I bother querying an agent when I already had a publisher interested in the book?
Well, if you’ve read God’s War’s long and plodding road to publication, you’ll realize that not everything is cut and dry in the publishing world. It’s not all “Sign here and make millions.” Like anything else, it’s a business, and I’m smart enough to know that I’m a writer, not a contract negotiator. You hire an agent to pair your book with the right editor at the right house and negotiate contracts for you. Unless you want to do that in your spare time? And let me tell you something – when you’ve been submitting stories on your own over fifteen years and suddenly you’ve contracted with somebody who will take care of that entire submissions process for you for your novel so you can be free to write more novels… that is a really great feeling. I will happily pay my 15% so I don’t have to read detailed editor rejections and worry about where my book is going next or how somebody is trying to screw me or make regular monthly phone calls to publisher about when and how I’m getting paid or argue over royalty statements.
That is business crap, and I hate it. I just want to write books.
If all you want to do is write books (and, let’s face it, you’ll be marketing them, too, and likely have a day job, so that’s three jobs right there), then I highly recommend finding the right agent to fight for your book. The more money you make, the more money they make. It’s a win-win.
Also, the more folks you have in your corner, to bigger team you have to take on the world, the better your chances.
So that publisher passed, another publisher said yes, paid us, then cancelled it, then Night Shade asked to take a swing, and we signed, and got paid, and magical-puppies-and-kittens… God’s War started hitting shelves this month.
What did my agent do in all this? See that entire prior paragraph. She’s the one who handled that book through every single up and and down and carted it off to the next adventure while I moaned over my rough life and started writing book three. Because that’s what awesome agents do: they can do all the business of the biz while you cry into your cornflakes.
Which is as it should be.
Do you need an agent? Nobody HAS to have one. But if I hadn’t had one and this book magically got picked up somewhere along the way (highly, highly unlikely, as that first sale was basically an editor my agent knew saying, “Hey, I heard you’re shopping a book by that chick who wrote some stories I read online. Can you send that over to me?”), I can pretty much guarantee that I’d be far poorer and even more obscure at this point without one.
Hard to believe, I know.
Your mileage may vary.