Once your book proposal is written, you'll naturally want to find a literary agent to represent you.
Two of the best places to find a literary agent are in books and online.
Which is better? How should you search to maximize your efficient use of time and energy? And which is more accurate? The following article answers these questions from the perspective of a writer who wishes to find a good literary agent who handles books like the ones you write.
BOOKS VS.
ONLINE SEARCHES FOR A LITERARY AGENT Books and online searches each have advantages and disadvantages.
The truth is that neither one is perfect, and each offers something of value.
Books, for instance, often have accurate information and more complete descriptions of agents than an online listing.
Books also offer the information in a way that allows you to find agents in a specific genre.
For instance, Writers Digest's "Guide to Literary Agents" has a genre index so that if, for example, you're a sci-fi writer, you can instantly see all the agents who handle sci-fi.
Online searches, on the other hand, have the advantage of being more recent.
If an address or telephone number has changed, it's easy to update it online.
Online searches can also turn up bits of information that are not readily available in any other way.
For example, when searching for a particular agent, you're likely to stumble upon things like newspaper and magazine stories about the agent, interviews with the agent, or comments by other writers about the agent.
This is due to the vast amount of info available on the Web.
All this seemingly peripheral data can be useful to you when trying to select an agent.
USING BOOKS AND ONLINE SEARCHES IN TANDEM While book searches can provide exhaustive information about literary agents, and online searches can provide immediacy and current data, using both sources of information together is really the best way to search for an agent.
One way to do this is to search for literary agents online first.
See if the agent is mentioned in Google.
(Almost every agent is.
) Then see if there are any interviews with the agent, which often lets you get inside information on how he thinks and approaches the task of representing clients.
Next turn to the books which list agents and see what the writeup says about this individual.
These two sources of information will give you invaluable insights into how the agent works, what kinds of books the agent represents, and what the agent is like as an advocate for an author's work.
By using both books and online sources, your search for a literary agents will likely lead to a good short list of agents to send your query letter and book proposal to.