*Let me preface this by saying that I ultimately decided to self-publish, so I cannot offer advice on what worked to get me signed with a publishing company.

When I wrote my first book, I was completely starry eyed. I knew it was a great story. I knew it was going to be big. What I didn’t know was the how.

I was told that was the only way to get the book published was to hunt for an agent. It was 2004, and self-publishing was virtually unheard of. So I found a copy of Writer’s Market and started through the list.

It certainly wasn’t easy. I had to find someone that worked with fantasy or middle grade books and hope that it didn’t say they wouldn’t work with the other category. (Some agents would work with fantasy writers but only adult books, for example.) When I actually ran across someone I thought would be ideal to represent me, I then had to see if they were currently looking for clients.

Because Writer’s Market wasn’t necessarily up-to-date, even if I was working with the most recent edition, I went online and looked at the agent’s personal website or an info page for their company to see if they were still looking for someone in my category.

As if this weren’t complicated enough, I then had to send them a query letter that I adjusted for the specific agent and kept my fingers crossed that I would actually hear a reply. If I got the reply, which was rare, it rarely included a request to review the manuscript.

After about a year of this, I was working at Waldenbooks at the local mall while I was job hunting. We had a local author there one day to sign books, and her sister, who happened to be her agent, was with her.

I kept finding excuses to go to the front of the store to talk to them, and they finally asked if I was a writer. Nearly everyone I worked with was a writer.

After chatting with them off and on about my book and the rest of the series, the agent said she would be interested in reading it. I was blown away! Within the next month, she read the book and signed me as a client.

She shopped the book to publishers for the next two years with very little luck. A handful of publishers wanted to look at the first three chapters, but none of them wanted more. If I got any feedback, it was that the story was nice, but it wasn’t right for that house. I had a weird feeling about the whole thing, so I finally ended our work together when our contract ended.

I continued searching for agents and revising my book until 2012 when I finally decided that I was ready to self-publish. I was tired of being ignored, and I had enough confidence in my writing and editing abilities by that point that I knew I was ready.

But in eight years of searching for or working with an agent, I learned a few things.

1. The agent doesn’t make money until they sell your book to a house, so don’t expect to pay them for their service. It’s like working with a real estate agent.
2. Do a little research before signing with an agent. Find out if they have placed any authors successfully with a house. Talk to them about who they know at what publishing company and learn about those relationships. My agent didn’t live in New York or Chicago, so I wonder if she really had the connections necessary (in 2005) to be successful.
3. You will find any number of sample query letters online telling you various conflicting things. Just remember to keep the letter short, stick with the main plot of the book, be polite, and be genuine.
4. Ask someone who knows what they are doing if the contract with your agent looks alright before you sign it. I asked an English professor about mine.
5. Always check the agent’s or their company’s website to make sure they are looking for authors in your genre before you send a query. Don’t waste their time with emails for books they don’t want to work with at the moment. You may blow your chance of working with them in the future.
6. Never send an unsolicited manuscript. You rock. Your manuscript rocks. But no one likes receiving stuff they didn’t ask for. Offer and then wait for the reply.
7. Make sure that your book is complete and you are happy with it before you query agents. If an agent says they like your work, but something is nagging you about the manuscript, it may not be ready. You could ask them about the specific thing that’s bugging you to see if they have comments about it, but honestly, it should all be ironed out before you approach the agent. With my book, I felt like it needed work after a few months with no requests for chapters, but my agent kept saying it was fine. A few years later, I worked with a professional to clean up the manuscript and discovered that I was right. It wasn’t tight, the first few chapters dragged, and it had various other shortcomings. I’ll take the full blame for this, but I’m still surprised that an agent agreed to work with that manuscript without suggesting I revise it first.

To have the most success with finding an agent, make sure you’re ready for the challenge. It may not be easy, and it may take years before you find a good match for your work. But if it’s your dream to be published traditionally, keep your eye on the prize.