Consistantly Inconsistant Literary Agents

If you’ve read my blog, which is not long yet, you know I’m seeing an agent for my novel. In this search I have located agents representing science fiction, bookmarked them, found their blogs, found their twitter, and tried to learn what I could. What I’ve found is that all agents agree that a good query is essential. I’ve also found that “a good query” is entirely subjective. Not only that, but agents tend to change their style preference over time.

Query Shark, run by Janet Reid of FinePrint Literary Management, recommends immediately getting to the goods. That is, start telling them what your story is, and keep the housekeeping (your technical information and writing credits) at the end. Her notes often begin with, “Start with the good stuff.”

Jon Sternfeld, an agent for the Irene Goodman Agency, recently wrote a commentary for Writer’s Digest about query letters saying, “I also don’t want to hear the plot of your book before I even know if I care about it.” How are you supposed to judge a book without knowing the plot? Does he look at the cover?

While I was initially appalled at his apparent unconcern for our efforts, I can still understand his point of view. Literary agents receive hundreds of queries a week, sometimes even in a single day. How are they to sort through them all? If you consider most queries should average 250 words, according to Janet Reid’s Query Shark, then an agent who receives 250 queries a week have read the equivalent of a 250 page book. That’s a lot of reading for what may yield at best two or three requests for manuscripts.

Janet Reid has admitted that the formatting, or the writing of the first paragraph, or its content can quickly get your query rejected without fully reading it. Jennifer Jackson, an agent with Donald Maass Literary Agency, has claimed that she reads each query completely, and tries to read each synopsis and five pages included with the query if possible. Does she really accomplish that? I would be skeptical, but I would say if your query looks well enough, it saves her the time of requesting more material. Most agents I have found blogs all admit that it is easy to find your way to a form rejection in your query letter.

So you found that ideal format listed on X website for a sure-fire winning query. That’s great, but it turns out that sure thing is only good on one particular agent. What are the odds you just sent it to that agent?

I wish I had a solution, but the problem is one of individuality. Each person has different tastes in voice, style, subject, sub-category, and more. An agent who loves a good Urban Fantasy may be unenthusiastic about a good High Fantasy. There is no way to work against  this. Researching agents will help, but there is still so much riding on your query letter. Perhaps more than is fair, but that is how things work right now, leaving us authors-to-be kicking our query letter wastebaskets over in frustration.

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