Sympathy for Agents

by Deren Hansen

I'm not an agent, and the only kind I play on TV is secret (wait, I've said too much), but I've worked through something recently that has ratcheted my sympathy for literary agents up a notch or two.

Recently I had to do some hiring. We posted a notice with a handful of requirements for the position and for the process (e.g,. send us a resume) in a public place. Then we watched as responses from all over the map rolled in:

• Some had nothing to do with the job.
• Some came from people with wildly inappropriate experience (e.g., I've operated a cash register so I can build enterprise software).
• Many came from people who didn't follow the simple instructions to include a resume.
• "Queries" from people other than the applicant, who didn't follow instructions either.
• There were even people who felt they had to berate us for not recognizing their inherent talent and our flawed decision making (e.g, "if you had been more diligent, you would have reached a different conclusion,") when we decided they wouldn't be a good fit.

If you've followed any agent blogs or found posts when they talk about query mistakes, this list will sound familiar.

Another familiar note that surprised me was how quickly I was able to dismiss 90% of the responses because the people hadn't paid attention to either our requirements for the job or the application process. By the same token, it was easy to see who among the respondents had made a good-faith effort and we didn't hold unimportant details like resume format against them.

The first thing I want you take away from these observations is that you should do yourself and the agents you wish to query a favor and try to follow their submission instructions. Just that much care and attention on your part will put you ahead of 90% of the people sending queries.

The second thing you should take to heart is that a good faith effort, which includes doing enough research to be confident that the agent actually represents projects like yours, is more important than agonizing over every fiddly detail. This is not to say you'll get a pass on grammar and spelling errors. But no agent is going to care whether you indent the first line of each paragraph (which you shouldn't in standard business letter format) if the words in those paragraphs describe a project that fits what they're looking for.

Put another way, what we wanted in response to our job posting wasn't hard to do, and yet I was amazed at all the ways people found to make it harder. Querying agents doesn't have to be as hard as some people make it: relax, take a breath, read the instructions twice, and then give it your best shot. I can't tell you how refreshing it was to open a response and see that they'd actually paid attention to our request.

Of course, didn't hire everybody who sent us a good resume. Similarly, no agent is going to respond favorably to every well-crafted, carefully-targeted query. So if you did your homework, made a good-faith effort, and were still rejected the simplest and most constructive explanation is that it really wasn't a good fit.