How NOT to Get an Agent—aka, How I Got an Agent

First things first: I am not an expert in anything except clownassery. Want to be a dumbass? I gotchu. Want to learn to navigate the publishing industry? Look elsewhere as I have no idea what I’m doing. 

Which is precisely why I’m writing a how NOT to get an agent post, because you shouldn’t do half the stuff I did. Or maybe do, I don’t know, I’m not the boss of you. And like. I somehow landed the coolest agent ever. So maybe I am qualified to give Expert Advice*

*I am not qualified, go see a doctor and seek a second opinion.

The year is 2020. I am a wee lass a few months shy of turning old-ass thirty. On a writing retreat with my IRL writing group during the first weeks of the brand new year and a few months before the end of the world, I am convinced to write my first book. It is a YA parody on fairytales, because I spent most of my childhood wondering why would all these main characters leave the comfort of their own home with a witch or stab their finger on a spindle. 

The MC is as annoying and self-centered as I am. The Love Interest even more so. There is a cat. I am highly allergic to cats in real life. 

I write it as a joke.

My friends encourage me to apply to Author Mentor Match—what’s the worst that can happen? I get rejected? Psh, I grew up ugly. Rejection and I are longtime on-again off-again lovers. 

So I apply.

I get a request for my full manuscript, which sucks because I don’t have one.

I finish my book in 24 hours, adding a whopping 20k words to round it up to 65k. I submit it. I get a mentor, who is fantastic at pointing out pacing issues and ways to flesh out worldbuilding and how many adverbs I use. Her advice is invaluable and even when I’m mad about it—because my first draft is PERFECT, okay?—I know she is (mostly) right.

When we decide its time to start querying, I stubbornly believe I will be agented by the end of the week.

Four months, 10 full requests, 3 partials, and 55 queries later, I don’t have a single offer in my inbox. I have encouraging messages; some agents ask me to send them new work if I don’t score an agent with this manuscript. Others suggest I revise my book to MG. One tells me I should scrap this, start there, and actually my book is boring. Most are rejections that insist my book is too young (and I stubbornly refuse to believe this, point blank PERIOD). 

Here’s where I interject to give you my hard-earned wisdom slash advice. All this talk that the publishing industry is subjective? It is. One agent’s opinion is—wait for it—just an opinion. And while I am Gremlin Andy (First of Her Name, Believer that She Isn’t Good at Anything) most of the time, I know I’m a good writer. Like, Good good. (I’m working with my therapist on becoming Elevated Andy full-time and letting go of Gremlin Andy, don’t worry.) 

The fact that there was an agent who legit responded with something along the lines of, “I greatly dislike your writing,” basically tells you what you should already know: THIS BUSINESS IS SUGGESTIVE.

Don’t let it destroy your joy of writing. Keep doing it. If you have the talent, if you have the spark in your words, the right hook, you’re gonna find the right agent for you. 

Of course, if you’re a racist, homophobic, transphobic ass bigot, then you don’t deserve to be in this business anyway because guess what, sweatie? It’s 2021 and the gay immigrant agenda is THRIVING. 

Letting go of my first book, BAD THING, was a difficult thing to do. Upon seeing my inner-turmoil, my partner actually had my book printed and bound as a way to celebrate the thing that brought me so many Good Things. A solid group of fans—I mean friends—in a city I had only recently moved to, who celebrated my triumphs and grieved my failures with weekend coffee and brunch. A group of eleven raccoons known as Team Trash, who met through AMM and became a small collective sharing a few brain cells and a lot of trash between them. Twitter friends who talked writing with me. The confidence to keep writing, even if it seemed like I would never actually get an agent. 

Back to the story, we’re nearly at the end of 2020, the literal worst year in the existence of ever (she says, as 2021 prepares to say, “Hold my beer”). I’ve been toying with writing about the myth of El Dorado, taking the funny movie we all know from our childhoods and actually having it star people of color, not the colonizers. NaNoWriMo peeks over the horizon, promising pain.

I use the month of November to finish drafting my book. It comes out to about 70k-80k of word vomit, but I cry twice throughout writing it and at the end I think this is the greatest book ever written. Move over, Charles Dickens—a literary hero has been born and it’s ME, bitches!

I take December and January to revise, make my friends all read it and tell me how good it is (“It’s so good!”). I query recklessly. Which is to say, during my first round of revision and ten pages in, I decide to throw out some queries into the wind because “no one will respond in January” and just kidding, I get five full requests. I send along my half-revised book, get rejections a few weeks later when I’ve actually finished revising my book, and get huffy that I didn’t wait like everyone told me to. 

This is where I interject again: don’t rush the revision process.

Really though, rushing to send queries out only hurts you in the end. Go ahead, burn through revisions. I did. But when it comes to sending those queries out? Wait til you’re actually done with revisions. It’ll be a week, two weeks later, tops. And it will make a world of difference because you’ll be presenting the best book you can present at the moment. Sure, in six months, you could present something wholly different and even better, or a year later you could have an even better albeit totally unrecognizable book. Revising never ends. But right now, you want to give your current book its best chance. So get beta feedback. Revise. And send that bad boy out. 

Once I finish revising, I think I have the best book in the whole wide hworld, emphasis on the H. I send out some more queries, specifically to a few people I’d been waiting on. In March, I bid on a meeting with kt lit’s founder Kate Testerman, who I talk and make awful jokes with for an hour and mention that I actually queried one of her agents, Chelsea Hensley. Chelsea’s been busy, so she says she’ll check to see if she got my query.

Less than a week later, I get an email from Chelsea asking for the full. I send it along, do PitMad, get a few more requests, send queries, cry about things, get vaccinated, and wait. Wait, wait, wait.

Until a day at the end of March, when I am at my day job in full Grump Mode. I am on my way to the car to get home when I refresh my email and see The Email.

The Email precedes The Call we all know and love and hope for. It’s the email that sets up The Call. 

Chelsea’s email mentions that she loves my manuscript and would love to hop on a call. Does 8am sound good?

I have no chill like I’ve said a million times so yes 8am IS FINE who needs to work out when you’re running high off adrenaline.

The rest is history. We talk. I love her, obvi, because she’s amazing. She mentions that she was hoping I’d query her again with a new project. I let other agents know I have an offer, and I hop on two more calls with equally amazing agents who I WOULD die for. I am faced with a decision that makes me so emotional I get tarot readings done because I’m LEGIT conflicted. Everyone is amazing. Everyone has drastically different plans on what to do with the book in terms of revisions and how soon I’d go on sub. The tarot readings don’t even help, but thank you, Nat.

I choose Chelsea because her vision for THE GILDED HEIRS matches my own the most.

Again, I interrupt the story because this is super important: I truly believe any of the agents who offered would have been great. Perfect, in fact. I firmly believe that anyone who gets to work with these individuals are hashtag blessed. Had I chosen to go with someone else, I think I would have been just as happy. 

That’s my point. Life can go in so many different directions, down so many paths. The path I’m on now isn’t necessarily any better or worse than the path I could have taken with another agent. Just different. 

Trust that you’re making the best decision for YOU at the moment. The future is wild and unpredictable and just that: the future. Unknown. Unfathomable. You’ll get there when you get there. Big agents or small agents—it doesn’t mean much if you’re not connecting with them as people, because you are ultimately a person with feelings and goals. You want your partner in this business to acknowledge your feelings and goals, too.

That’s how we get to the now. I’ve signed with an agent. I’m an agented author, ten years later than planned (except not really, because I didn’t even know you needed an agent to get published lol rip baby Andy). I go on sub in a few weeks, though if Chelsea is reading this and wants to reconsider and go out now, I’m also totally down hit me up you know my number (and email and address and social security at this point, probably).

So, how do you get an agent? 

By trying really hard. By failing. By writing a lot. By revising. By crying, sacrificing a virgin, using a ouija board (DON’T FUCKING USE A OUIJA BOARD THIS IS A JOKE). By being you to the best of your ability. By listening to your heart and your mind, taking the time to do things right, by treating you as gently and nicely as possible. 

By writing the best book you can. 

How do you not get an agent? By not trying. Not failing.

Not writing.

This is my ultimate advice, what I want to leave you with, the greatest knowledge nugget Gremlin and Elevated Andy can impart:

Keep writing, keep trying, and eventually, you’ll stumble upon the right path. Whether that’s traditional publishing or self-publishing or giving up writing altogether and becoming a shrimp farmer in the Sahara Desert. Just keep it going. The only person you have to prove yourself to is you.

(You probably don’t need to sacrifice the virgin, though.)

Finally, what you’re really here for. The stats:
Book One
BAD THING, 55 queries, 10 full requests, 3 partials, 0 offers

Book Two
THE GILDED HEIRS, 47 queries, 15 full requests, 1 partial, 3 offers