I got the following question in my email yesterday, “Any tips on getting an agent?” Many years ago I had an agent. Sam was a super guy and he handled the nonfiction things I was ghosting for someone or doing for an organization without attribution. Without attribution just means that your name doesn’t appear anywhere on the work. Sam passed away a number of years ago. I have been writing fiction and publishing it using Kindle. The books do very well as long as I continue to promote them. However, I would prefer to write and not to work as a salesman. I am looking for an agent for my fiction works. I have made 162 queries. No agent as yet. I am using this online service to search for an agent. https://querytracker.net/literary_agents.php They do not have every possible agent, but they have a very good selection. They make it easy to track your submissions to agents. You can query agents by the type of genre they represent. There are somewhere close to 50 different genres these days. Just plug a genre’s name into Google and you will find out what it’s about and what the average word count is for that genre.
There are two common types of submissions that agents take. The first is simply an email query. The second is filling out an online form. The online form submission is becoming more and more popular. The online forms seem to be answered quicker than an email query. Generally, an email query has a cover letter, a synopsis, and a sample of the novel. The online forms often have questions such as what is your one-sentence pitch? Often there’s a question about novels similar to the one you are submitting. Another favorite one is “What are you reading?”
You may wonder what a query letter looks like. Below is the one I’m currently using. As you can see it is short and to the point. It is probably not the best example since it hasn’t gotten me an agent – grin! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
Dear Ms. Agent,
I am seeking representation for my upmarket novel, Ordinary Struggles. Novels about one person’s life are numerous. There are none I know of that deal with one man’s life from the time period from the early 1950s until the 1980s in the extreme north of Minnesota. Ordinary Struggles chronicles Billy Johnson’s life. We see him helping his widowed father clear land on their farm – being caught in the jaws of the draft – while he is overseas, the girl he plans to marry is raped and beaten so badly she will never be normal again – he tries again to find love only to have that woman get pregnant by another man. Billy finally does find true love. Unfortunately, Billy struggles do not end there. He still has problems, but he remains true to his ideals. The novel ends with Billy righting the wrong that was done to his first love in a single heroic act. Because of the locale, it is both exotic and familiar. From the hostile weather of -50° to strange wildlife, existence for Billy Johnson’s family is not easy. Billy’s daughter, Marie, must worry about her kitten being preyed upon by a carnivore called a Fisher. On the human side, it is things like the lack of available marriage partners after leaving high school because people flee the area. Suicide is high. There is a reason it’s called the godforsaken land.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing from you.
Mr. “VC” Angell
