I Try to Figure Out What Literary Agents Want

It feels weird to not know how to do something. Yes, I get it. Not knowing how to do something is a normal thing. But, dude, it’s been a while for me. I know how to do academic publishing. I am on the inside. But traditional publishing with literary agents? I am literally on the outside trying to break in.

Me (a mid-career academic who wrote a self-help/positive psychology book entitled HILLBILLY RISING about her hillbilly culture) with my face pressed against the glass of the publishing industry.

Google gives you the basics. For nonfiction, you write a proposal. It is very similar to the proposal that one writes for academic presses. Except that those proposals go straight to the academic press editors. I have both written these and reviewed other professors’ proposals. It comes down to logic, expertise, and the ability to write in clear prose. Been there done that.

For traditional publishing, there is an additional critical step: The Literary Agent.

You send query letters to agents. You have about 500 words to sell them on the book and on yourself. Not just your expertise. Your marketability. Your platform. Cue Ariana Grande singing “Popular.” It’s like I am running for high school student government again. I feel the same about social media influencers, as I felt about the popular clique. Just because your popular, doesn’t mean you are good.

The exception to this rule is Melani Sanders (@justbeingmelani) May all good things happen to her.

First step was to engage with social media. I had left Twitter when it became X. I only had Instagram and TikTok to see what my children sent to me. I am the kind of person that shouldn’t have social media because I am simultaneously obsessive, very weird, and find myself to be hilarious. But…

Professional Instagram: @DoctorErinCat Actual Weird Self Instagram: @erinpsyc Twitter/X: @HillbillyRises

The query letter is high stakes. Evidently literary agents get hundreds of these. Some get hundreds a week. They reject 99% of book queries. (How many people are out there trying to be writers? The math is not mathing…). How to make myself stand out?

I read a book, Irresistible Query Letters: 40+ Real World Query Letters With Literary Agent Feedback by Mary Kole. I read blogs. Jane Friedman was very helpful. I posted my query draft on cooperative review sites like Critique Circle and Reddit. I am not sure that there is a moment that you really feel 100% confident about a query letter. The advice is too diverse. At some point you have to just go for it.

Go for it with whom? A key aspect of this process is finding the right agent. The agent that will be excited by your work. Agents do not take on a huge number of books a year. To get paid they have to sell your book to a publisher. They need to have a passion for your book. They have to be sure that it will sell. Cue Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh & Neva Small signing “Matchmaker” from Fiddler on the Roof. Playing with matches a girl could get burned.

First I searched using Manuscript Wish List. Honestly, it was overwhelming. It was also time consuming. Searching for “psychology self-help” leads to over 400 results. I tried many different ways to search. I always got too many or too few hits. So I dove in. Thank goodness for speed readings. I created a list of 20 possibilities. And began to gather information about the each agent. What they wanted in a book. How they wanted to be queried. I cannot stress enough how time consuming this was.

And it was not over. Because what I should have done was start with Publisher’s Marketplace. In my mind it costs too much money. $30 a month! HBO + DisneyPlus + Hulu costs me less! But, yes, you have to do it. Better searching. Access to who reps whom. Information about whether the agent is effective. How many deals have they negotiated and when. Comprehensive information. I deleted 5 possible agents and added 20 (!) better matches. More time invested to create a spreadsheet of necessary information. Just hours upon hours of grinding through websites and gathering information.

Initially, I had a bit of a bias towards female agents. But then I noticed something. The male agents were less likely to mention that they wanted their nonfiction writers to have a large social media platform to market the book. They seemed more interested in expertise and message. It’s a small sample size and could be an erroneous observation, led by my general distrust of life coaches. But I added more men and now have over 50 possible agents in my spreadsheet.

It is very difficult to hit that submit button and send the information. You are instructed to only query one agent in the agency. Once you query someone, you don’t get a second chance. And most heinously, the norm in the industry is “We get too many queries to respond to people. If you don’t hear from us after eight weeks, then consider it a pass.” Eight weeks is a diabolical amount of time to wait.

A-Querying I shall go.

I can feel the lines in my face deepening.

What does Alex Cat want me to do?