How I Got a Literary Agent for my Debut Novel

I have news: REDSIGHT is going to be published in 2024! When I was on submission I was too nervous to talk about how I got an agent, but my book is real!

I’m finally in a place to share how I got here. There’s a lot of discussion among writers about how many queries are too many, when do you stop sending them, how many should you do in a first round, should you do all the pitch events, etc. For a while I was very consumed with those same questions. Pitching your work can be as time consuming as writing a novel in the first place.

Query Feedback

At least it was for me. I spent more time querying than I did drafting and editing combined. I started in January 2021 with a small round of five agents to test my query. I worked on my query with my writing group and several friends who offered to read it for me. I got some great advice during that process. If you can find someone to read your query before you start, it is invaluable. Even if it’s someone who has not read your book. Those folks will catch completely different things from the people who have. 

Editor Interest

From January to March I sent queries and did pitch contests. I got my first request within a week or two. When I did SFFpit on twitter I got interest from an editor and I added that information to my query, which may have helped with the process. If this happens to you just include a sentence like “[editor] at [imprint] has expressed interested in this project/asked me to submit to them.”

The R&R

After three months I got some feedback about the beginning of my story. In fact, I got a detailed R&R and I had a call with an agent to go over the feedback. I remember feeling excited that someone actually read my book the whole way through. The person I spoke with was very nice and professional.

I agreed with their feedback and decided to work on the edits. During this time I had about 6-7 other fulls out so I messaged everyone, let them know I was doing an R&R for someone else, but I’d be back in touch with an updated manuscript in 2-3 months. Every agent responded and said they wanted to read the revised manuscript when I was ready.

During those 2-3 months I stopped doing pitch contests or sending new queries. I completely stopped using social media and just focused on my book. I felt like I was really close to getting a yes from someone and I didn’t want to waste my opportunity. My feedback was to lean into the weird, horrifying elements of my space opera and let the cult in the beginning of the story be really scary.

That was absolutely the right advice. After two-and-a-half months I felt confident about my changes. I spent 2-3 weeks doing a last pass of line edits to get the word count down. I emailed the revised manuscript to the R&R agent and posted an aesthetic on twitter.

More Editor Interest

Within two hours a second editor DM’d me and asked to read my manuscript! I remember feeling like I must be doing something right if several people were interested. I sent some more queries in August and September.

I remember spending a lot of time staring at QueryTracker, especially this page. For one agent I was the only request for at least six months.

By October, I was basically done querying new people, except I’d always planned on participating in DVpit. At this point I’d sent around 50 queries total and I was waiting on a bunch of people to get to my manuscript. So at the end of October I set up my pitches for what I thought of as my last pitch contest.

At this stage I was so tired of doing pitch contests. The entire process gets old. The waiting gets old. The amorphous rejections get old. I got a lot of passes that were some variation of “I’m not the right agent for this.” I had no idea what that meant. Did that mean no one was the right agent for my book? At times it felt that way.

But I got a like on one of my DVpit tweets from Ernie Chiara. At the time, someone else from Fuse Literary had my full manuscript. I didn’t know what to do so I queried him anyway and got a full request within two hours. I also got a rejection from the original Fuse agent. I didn’t know what to think of that.

At the time I was done worrying about my space opera. I drafted a horror book in March-April of 2021 and I’d already decided to query that in 2022 if my space opera didn’t work out. I think most of my frustration came from the long wait times, but in reality I didn’t have to wait long to hear back from Ernie. He asked to set up a call with me a week later! 

I didn’t actually know if this was an “offer representation call” or a “let’s talk about changing parts of your book call.” They don’t tell you until you get on the phone. I had a template of questions a friend gave me and I’m glad I took notes because I was so surprised and stunned that (1) someone read my book at all and (2) they liked it.  

If you get an offer and need a list of questions to ask, please reach out! I have a great one I can share.

I was totally shocked by how excited he was about my novel. I always thought agents looked for books that would sell and that was their main concern, but he actually liked it as a book. If you haven’t queried Ernie you really should because he’s great to work with and extremely genuine. I went away from that call feeling very impressed by how prepared and on top of everything he was. 

Afterwards I had to email everyone else with my query. Not just the people with my full, EVERYONE WITH A QUERY. I think I got 2-3 more requests from the query people when I nudged with my offer. I gave the usual two weeks to respond and everyone respected that. One person asked who the original offering agent was and I told them. If someone does this, you have to be honest or they’ll think your offer isn’t real. This is a situation where maybe an author somewhere didn’t tell the truth and it made things difficult for everyone.  

During this process I spoke with Ernie’s other clients and they all had wonderful things to say about him. If you get an offer from someone you should not skip this step. It’s really important to get as much information as you can during this stage.

A Second Offer

In the second week of this period I got a second offer! I had a call with this agent too and they were also wonderful, which made my decision extremely difficult. I got identical editorial feedback about my novel: both agents wanted to make the book slightly shorter but neither of them wanted major developmental edits.

I also heard back from the R&R agent during this time. They wanted me to make additional changes without representation. Because I had two other offers, I decided it was better to pursue one of those instead of potentially working with this other person. I think this agent would have been great for a different writer but they wanted a book that did not exist. 

Some authors pick an agent based on the edits they have to do. The kind of changes someone asks for can tell you a lot about their style and preferences, but my feedback was basically the same so I had to think about different factors. So much of this is personal but I had to go with who I thought would be the best person for my entire body of work. I write in science fiction, fantasy, and horror so that’s a lot to consider. 

Stats

Here are my numbers.

Total queries: 50

Total full requests: 18

R&Rs: 1

Offers: 2

Firstly, I am 100% aware that I got very lucky during this process. This is the only book I ever had to query. I went on submission one time. I found a fantastic agent I absolutely would not change through randomly sending out my work. I got incredibly lucky and I’m grateful for how well everything worked out. If you did not find the right agent for you after querying one book that does not mean ANYTHING about your skill as a writer.

At several points I was convinced I’d have to query another book, that I’d have to go on submission again with another book, that nothing was going to work out. I emotionally gave up a million times but each time my friends and family encouraged me. If I had to do this completely on my own I don’t think I would have gotten through it. It is extremely hard to put your work out there, get turned down over and over, and think anyone will be interested in your book. I have a lot of sympathy for writers trying to get into the industry.

Especially for science fiction, there just aren’t as many agents looking for space opera or sci-fi of any kind. Some of the rejections I got on my manuscript were down to the market being challenging for this kind of book, and those people were not wrong. Sci-fi is a much smaller genre than, say, thrillers or adult romance.

Uncertainty is Part of the Process

I want to be transparent and explain that it didn’t work out with the two editors who expressed interest in my book. One of them passed on the manuscript, and the other decided to leave editorial. The first agent I had a call with didn’t want to commit to my work either. All this to say, I still got representation and my book still got acquired.

It’s ok if you have near misses. At the time it massively worried me because I didn’t know how anything would turn out. I had a lot of emotional ups and downs during this process and it was hard to put everything in context while it was happening.

In my opinion, there’s no reason to stop querying at an arbitrary number. I think you should only query people you actually want to work with, and keep sending them as long as there are people who fit that description. Take your time to research agents. Talk to people who are represented if you have questions.

At a certain point I got really tired of pitch contests and I FOUND MY AGENT DURING THE LAST PITCH CONTEST I EVER DID. I remember typing a message to my friends saying “I’M NOT DOING ANY MORE OF THESE ANNOYING CONTESTS” and then it actually worked.

Life is like that. You’re better off doing the pitch contests even when you get tired of them because you never know who will find your work. 

If you think my book sounds interesting you can add it on goodreads! 

REDSIGHT comes out in spring 2024. If you want to know more about the book you can find me on twitter, instagram, and tiktok as @meredithmwrites.