Six Go-To Tips You Must Know Before Finding A Literary Agent for Your Book

If you are opting for the traditional route of publication, you need a literary agent. If this is your first time opting for traditional publishing, then you should know a bit more about the process of becoming a traditionally published author. 

Here are some of the go-to tips you need to find a literary agent for your book. 

Edit, Re-edit, and Re-edit One More Time 

The number one thing that you need to do first before you get a literary agent is to write your book. On that note, you should know when your book is ready to query. Understandably, you already know about the importance of editing your book. 

Ideally, you should self-edit your book several times before you start reaching out to literary agents and querying your book. When we say “query your book,” we essentially mean sending out your book to a literary agent. 

Check the Following Before Approaching A Literary Agent 

Before approaching a literary agent, you should polish your book so that it is the best work possible, which is something you need to do even before you start considering getting an agent. 

• It means that you have completed writing a full draft. 
• You have revisited your draft and done several rounds of editing. 
• You have ensured your characters are robust. 
• You have double-checked the plot and structure of the book. 
• You have ensured that you have the right amount of world-building in your plot.  
• You have ensured that the word length suits your chosen genre. 

You get the point – you need to edit and re-edit and re-edit one more time to ensure that you can approach literary agents with your work. Here are some query letter examples to help you get an agent that you should go through before pitching your book to a literary agent. 

Get A Second and Third Opinion

To perfect your draft to be pitched to a literary agent, it is in your best interest to find a critique partner or a few beta readers to get a second and third opinion about your manuscript. If you have trusted friends who work in the writing industry, then their opinions can make a massive difference. 

Even though they are your friends, ask them to be brutally honest with their critique of your writing so that you can polish your work a bit more before sending it out to literary agents. Beta readers usually know what would make a great book and whether your manuscript is or is not suitable for querying at that stage. 

After receiving some valuable feedback from the beta readers, make sure you work on that feedback so that you can polish your manuscript in the best way possible. 

Research Potential Agents before Reaching Out

Now, when it comes to finding the ideal literary agent for your manuscript, you must do your fair amount of research first. Make sure you understand the submission guidelines of each of your chosen literary agents so that you increase your chances of getting accepted. 

You can use Google Spreadsheets to make a list of agents. To make this entire process easier, you might want to query in batches. In your spreadsheet, you can create an “A-list” of agents who you really want to query because you feel that if your work were represented by one of these agents, you would be winning. 

Subsequently, you can make batches of B-list and C-list agents whom you would like to represent your words. Don’t make the mistake of querying all of the agents at once. The purpose of querying in batches is to test out the strength of your query.

Things to Look for When Researching Agents 

There are several things to look out for when researching agents. Every single agent will have an agency profile where you can get accurate information regarding what an agent likes and what they want. If you see that they, on their profile, have highlighted something that your book fits into – you already know that your book will work for them. 

So, you know that this is one of the tell-tale signs that you should include that agent in your spreadsheet. Copy-paste that part of the agency profile that applies to you and shows why you want to query them. You will be using those parts later in your query letters to the respective literary agents. 

This way, you will be doing your research, which can take a few weeks, and make a list of literary agents that you are excited about querying; you know they will like your book because of the authors they represent, the type of genre they describe in their agency profile, and other things that match your work regarding what they are looking for. 

Avoid This One Mistake At All Costs

When it comes to finding an agent who would be interested in representing your work, you must avoid the one mistake of querying agents who do not represent your genre. Not only will this be a silly mistake from your side, but you will also be wasting your time and effort as you will definitely not get picked up, and those literary agents will ignore your query altogether. 

If you really want to get a literary agent, you must treat this aspect of your traditional publishing journey very seriously. You must thoroughly read their profiles and respect what they are after. Even if the literary agents represent some great authors whom you really love, but they are not in the same genre as your written manuscript, don’t reach out to them. Instead, focus on the literary agents who represent your type of manuscript and genre. 

Final Thoughts

You can leverage social media to research agents and their profiles. For instance, literary agents post on Twitter when their submission box is open. On that note, you should also check whether or not literary agents are open to submissions because literary agents aren’t open to submissions all year round. They are only open during certain periods of the year. Usually, at the beginning of a year and before the fall season, literary agents are typically busy and not open to submission.