How I got my agent
the beginning of my journey to publication
I signed with my fantastic agent back in 2021, but I always hesitated when it came to writing a “how I got my agent” post. Being superstitious, I thought that I’d fail to get a book deal, and that I would have to quietly disappear from the online writing universe in my shame. Well, I didn’t get a deal with that first book despite me not posting this. This is a reminder to myself that failing to hit the next milestone doesn’t invalidate all of your prior achievements.
I’m going to chronicle the journey in firsts. This issue is already quite long, but in future issues, I’ll dig deeper into querying strategy, choosing agents, and maintaining motivation in the face of rejections.
Dec 2020 - The First Time I Thought about Publishing: Despite saying I wanted to be an author when I grew up, I never seriously thought about publishing or what it entailed. But in 2020, I started reading “How I Got My Agent” blog posts and felt envy and desire stirring in my heart. I used to tell everyone I was a writer, but it felt like I’d been estranged from what used to be a crucial part of my identity. What had happened to me? Why did I give up on that dream?
Jan 2021 - The First Manuscript: In 2020, I enrolled in a creative writing online class and decided that I’d finish something, even if it was absolute garbage. The class was pretty useless, but it kept me accountable. I wrote a YA fantasy and discovered Author Mentor Match and decided I’d submit to the program in early 2011. Besides completing my first story, it was also my first time doing revisions on the same manuscript, and wow, it was painful. At the same time, it made me excited in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I submitted to AMM and dreamed about being rejected and being accepted, and then I realized the results had come out a long time ago, and yes, I had been rejected. But it was fine, because I had a new idea I was excited about.
June 2021 - The First Query: By April, I had a draft for a YA contemporary. I’d written it feverishly over three months, but it felt like a real story. Not some purposeless stroll through plot-land with some dragons thrown in, like my ill-fated YA fantasy. I searched for beta readers on the Facebook Beta Readers Group and connected with an amazing beta reader who not only gave me detailed feedback but even drew out brackets for my fictional competition. Her encouragement made me think that hey, maybe I should try querying this thing. I wrote up a query and workshopped it with friends and on r/Pubtips, where the feedback was mostly positive, making me more confident about querying. Then I said “why not” and sent it to ~5 agents on June 1st, from a list that I’d mostly cultivated from random searches on Manuscript Wishlist and acknowledgments sections.
June 2021 - The First Rejection: Ah, the first of many. This came in a day after my query.
Yeah, not much to go off of. But suddenly everything felt real. I was actually pursuing being a real author. I was pitching industry professionals. And they were replying to me. My bitterness over rejection gave me the motivation to fire off another 10 queries.
June 2021 - The First Full Request: On June 11, I woke up to this in my inbox.
WHAT??? I couldn’t believe it. My query had actually worked on someone. Over the next few weeks, I’d get three more full requests and plenty more rejections. When I was feeling particularly impatient (aka every day), I’d go on Querytracker and look through the queues of the agents who’d requested my full, trying to mentally urge them to read faster.
July 2021 - The First Offer: Then July came around, and I received an email that sent me screaming around my apartment.
July 2021 - The First Call: During the call with the first offering agent, I think I was still reeling with the shock that someone had read my book and liked it so much. I managed to ask the questions that everyone said to ask, though it felt like I was grilling the agent when really I just wanted to sink to my knees and sob with gratitude. After the call, I let all the other agents I’d queried know about the offer. Thus began the most bizarre two weeks of everyone suddenly responding very quickly, letting me know they wanted to see a full or passing. Look, it’s awesome to get that many emails every morning, but it’s also emotionally taxing to get rejected so many times in such a compressed timeline. I received two more offers, the last of which was from my current agent. None of my initial fulls turned into offers, and a lot of agents backed out because of the tight timeline.
August 2021 - The First Time I Became a “Client”: My current agent is the last one I heard from. I still remember when the email came in while I was at dinner, with a paragraph talking about all the things they’d loved about my book. They were enthusiastic, had mentorship from a senior agent, and worked at an established agency. When I told them about the idea that would become WOMEN OF GOOD FORTUNE, their response was “omg.” I talked to one of their authors, who had nothing but good things to say. Not only that, I felt like we just clicked. I accepted their offer and let the other two agents know, unable to believe that this had actually happened. That I was partially on the way to being an author.
A week before my birthday, we finalized the contract. It still boggles my mind that there’s someone out there referring to me as “my client” and that when I talk to my agent, they say things like “your readership will follow you” or “in the context of your career…” Looking back, I didn’t do the sort of due diligence that’s recommended today when querying (check Publisher’s Marketplace, scour Twitter, query in batches based on response rates, etc.) so I feel very lucky.
My final stats:
Total queries: 40
Offers: 3
Full requests: 12
Rejections: 23
No response: 5
Next time, I’ll be writing about submission hell, a suffering that is still very fresh in my mind. Stay tuned!
Resources for your querying journey:
Pubtips [Reddit]: for learning about industry current events and getting query critiques
Beta Readers & Critique Partners [Facebook]: for finding beta readers
Querytracker [free + paid versions]: for tracking agent response rates and keeping track of open queries
Publisher’s Marketplace [paid]: for vetting agent offers (see if offering agent has successfully sold books) or keeping track of the types of books being sold. You can subscribe to Publisher’s Lunch for free if the price tag is too high
Some great “How I got my agent” posts, in case mine wasn’t enough:
my favorite thing i wrote today:
The world seemed so normal, even though I’d spent the last few months with my head buried in my code, trying to build something I believed would change the world. I wanted to check our signups. Had people gotten the email? Were they registering? Or was this where my idea would end, not with a bang, but with a whimper?
yayy!!! this is a fantastic and realistic summary of the process--it's always easy to see the final form and not see the mountains of rejections and crumpled up pages along the way. thank you for sharing, and welcome to substack!! <3