Agent Choosing Process Tips - Eleanor's Slipbox

<cite>Taher Safavi</cite> I have a huge process for this, and it's been a long time since I discussed it, so I'm glad it has come up now. I hope this will be useful to anyone on scrib reading. For reference, the sources for this information are the New York Pitch Conference (I just wrote about that in another thread and will repost here) plus other authors within the Ubergroup who are traditionally published, as well as an Ubergroup moderator who is an editor at a big five publishing house. To avoid attracting trolls, they elect to keep private about their employment in the main forums. They have been an invaluable source of inside information. If you want more details on stuff related to their experiences than what I provide here please feel free to hit up me or any Ubergroup mod within UG or on the UG slack. They are happy to share info as long as it's in a tightly regulated environment. They are also an IRL friend (I live in New York) so if you or any Ubergrouper happen to be here in person when the COVID apocalypse ends, I'm very happy to make introductions to both this individual and the various publishers and agents I have acquaintance with through NY Pitch. One of my exes kindly created a spreadsheet I'm happy to share which allows you to rank how well an agent matches you (you have three categories for "genre" and three categories for "clout" ie sales record and connections) as well as if they seem generally friendly and are actively seeking. As I research agents, I score them in the appropriate categories (just 1 or 0, like, represents historical or does not represent historical. has made 6 figure deals or has not), and the spreadsheet automatically totals it up and ranks them by how ideal they seem overall. This allows me to organize my priorities. There's also a spot for notes on that particular agent, such as if I found a sentence on one of their blog posts that I want to use in customizing a query later without having to dig through everything again, name of the agency in case you have a second option available in the same place and want to avoid embarrassing double query faux pas, as well as a place to mark when I queried them, what their policy is on nudges, and how they responded. The spreadsheet adjusts their displayed rankings accordingly, moving them down after you query, and moving them all the way to the top if they request, etc. It's a bit over-engineered, but has been useful when dealing with a hundred agents. The biggest resource I use is Publisher's Marketplace. I think this is flatly essential. You want the hard numbers that let you know if an agent is legit. Have they made sales in the past year? Deals over six figures? Film and foreign rights (note those may be handled by a separate rights specialist in the same agency and show up under that person's name instead)? If they are a junior agent with little experience are they at least attached to a reputable agency with a good sales record? Ongoing access on a company level (from more than one IP address) is devastatingly expensive, which is why the Ubergroup no longer maintains a central Publisher's Marketplace account for member use, but when you're sitting down to seriously build your query list, I think ponying up for one month's individual access is really important so you don't waste your time querying--or taking advice from--a scammer or a hack. As to populating the list, I have a series of thing I've liked: