Back To Basics: Research

Ok, you’ve written your book, edited until your brain turned to mush, created a stunning synopsis, have the basic query letter, and now you need to send out a submission.

Before you start emailing agents or snail mailing them, you need to do your research.  Make sure that the agency and the agent and/or editor represent your genre and is looking to add clients to their list.

Have names and addresses and look up their credentials.  Have they sold any books lately?  Who else do they represent? What percentage do they make?  Do they charge you postage for mailing out submissions?

It boils down to know who you are submitting to and know if they are a good fit for your work.

These are my favorite sites for agent research:

www.writersmarket.com – This site is well worth the subscription fee.  You can buy the book, but the site is updated more often and the search features are great.  You can also save your searches and organize them.  If you don’t already know this site has listings of agents, editors, publishers, magazines, etc.  It also has useful articles and advice.

www.agentquery.com – This has a database of agents.  They have very specific standards and as far as I can tell they are all legitimate agents with sales.  It’s a free database and the search features are great.  A very good place to start to figure out who to submit your work to.

http://www.querytracker.net/ – This is another database of agents.  They have a lot of extra information, like recent sales, and whether they’ve responded based on the information submitted by users.  There is a free version (which is what I have) and a paid version.

Editors and Preditors – This site has agent listings with reviews and information.  They help you know if someone is trying to pull scams or if they went out of business.  A great site.