Searching for a Literary agent
- K.C. Auburn
- Jan 1, 2022
- 2 min read
How it started
Well once I finished my book before I broke it into 3 books, I very greenly looked up "Fantasy Literary Agents". I hoped to find one right off the bat as I was completely unaware of the whole process, still partly unaware but I'm learning.
Sites I visited to find agents
What I learned
There is a lot that goes into finding the right agent. I started by just finding those interested in fantasy and blindly submitting to them. That's a no-no. I learned that I needed to research the agent, find their interests, what books they've chosen before, and how to properly query them. I still haven't gotten these items down pat, but I'm much better than I originally was.
After about a dozen rejections, one agent took the time to let me know a little about what I needed to change. She recommended reviewing the size of my book, but at the time I still didn't understand that it was such a huge deal! I thought agents and publishers loved big books! But that's not necessarily the case. Each genre has its own standard range of word count. Now I've paused querying to focus on revising my book to make it better and better until I feel it's ready to submit again.
For a Fantasy novel, I found the range is somewhere between 60k-120k. Some agents and publishing house submissions I've seen have said it's not a hard line. I suppose a smaller or larger book could still work and be successful. But usually smaller than 60k is cause for suspicion or may be seen as a novella (which I had no idea was a thing before now.)
So I broke down my larger 3 part book into a series. I've been adding information and tweaking ever since, to help each piece have a satisfying close that will hopefully make my reader go "I need to read the next one!"
I still havent had any luck snagging one of those golden tuna's but I think I'm getting much closer.
I'll go into more details of my querying in another post as it's a whole other monster!
You’ll get it! Just keep trying!