How I Got My Literary Agents—Round Two (Leaving, Re-Querying, and Re-Signing)

Hi y’all!

Greetings from my lunch break! I hope everyone’s been well enough. April’s been a whirlwind. I came back onto island, immediately moved (just down the road), and then got absolutely hammered by the flu (COVID-negative, but still messed me up. I’m asthmatic, so respiratory illness tends to hit me like a truck!) This month, I also got back into my journalism cadence and—sweet relief—started to see some of the writer’s block I’ve been struggling through starting to lift.

The brain fog right now is no joke and I’m saving my energy for deadlines this week, but I felt like getting this update done would feel really good, even if it’s messy. So bear with me through the lack of organization. This is rambly, so apologies.

First, what comes next: more book edits.

Thanks for reading Words Like Silver! Subscribe for free to support my work.

Subscribe Now

placeholder

I do as always have more book edits to do, which I’ll explain in a bit. I have one major change that will have big ripple effects on scenes and a few smaller changes, but unlike my last revision, I don’t have to entirely rejigger the scene order, which I think will keep it from being too time-consuming.

2024 Update: This was such a damn lie.

Admittedly, I’m hitting a wall on unpaid edits.

2024 Update: Girl, you don't even know.

I will be more than happy to edit the book more once I get a deal and obviously want to set it up for optimal success now, but it’s a whole lot of hours that are costing me both financially and in spent energy. So I’m a little over working it with an uncertain outcome.

Still, the changes I’m making are ones that I actually wanted to make and then my agents ultimately agreed with. I brought these changes up to every agent I considered signing with and most agreed that they would make MOUNTAIN SOUNDS easier to sell, whether or not they are the right call.

There’s never an endpoint on creative work—just a point when you put it down.

If you follow me on Instagram, I routinely swear that my studio art minor (which was only a few credits under being a major—RIP) was the most helpful in setting me up for success, and this is one reason why. In my drawing and printmaking classes, I often struggled to decide on an endpoint for any of my pieces because there were always more details to perfect or a new direction/layer to lean into. My professor routinely had to teach me how to find an endpoint, and this is true for my manuscript too. And then here’s the history major talking: it’s a living document for as long as I can find something to change, so even when I put it down after a revision, it’s never fully “finished.” It won’t be finished until it’s literally on shelves, and then it will take a lot of re-training for my brain to stop thinking of improvements or shifts.

Because each person who comes onboard will change/shift the book.

Part of why people emphasize having a literary agent as being the right chemistry fit—and why you’ll hear so much dating vernacular when discussing who your best representation is—is that each voice involved in editing and pitching the work will change the flavor and end result of the book.

I edited in one direction for my last agents, and will likely edit back some in the other direction to appeal to my new agents. In the same way you’ll swap around words or phrases in the query letter to appeal to a specific person, you’ll adjust parts of the book based on who you know will be reading it next, whether that be editors, those with your same taste, or someone else entirely. It’s why you can call the same book five different genres and none of them are necessarily wrong or right.

Art changes based on the viewer, etc,. etc,. Physics-wise: the very act of observation changes that which is observed.

So finding the right literary agency fit feels crucial, and there’s a good amount of compromise involved. It becomes a team energy (synergy, baby) and although you want the core of your work to retain whatever individual spirit you poured into it in the first place, certain decisions and points in the process are more collaborative. You are constantly making choices about how best to position it, and how to change the work to fit that new angle.

Both times I’ve been deciding between representation, I’ve been even more surprised how each conversation leaves me considering my book in a new light. Do I lean into the agent who specializes in dark, atmospheric grounded fantasy and call MOUNTAIN SOUNDS a full-on Gothic? Do I lean into the literary prose and pitch it upmarket to the agent who churns out award winners? Do I go with the agent who’s solely focused on the business side and willing to give me full creative control—but because of that, might not have a clear vision editorially of what MOUNTAIN SOUNDS will end up being?

It’s all, always more subjective than I think it will be.

TIMELINE

I have absolutely no idea where I originally saw this so yell my way for credit.

My querying period was pretty intense, as my close friends can attest. It was kind of 90% of what I thought about when not working from November to March, so I was very tunnel vision-ed.

November 2023: left my previous literary representation.
December 2023: Sent a few emails to the few agents who’d previously seen MOUNTAIN SOUNDS who I wanted to re-pitch. I followed up mostly in the existing email thread even though it looked like this at this point:

• NEWLY AVAILABLE / Re: Extended Deadline Notification / Re: OFFER OF REP Notification (Deadline 2/22): MOUNTAIN SOUNDS by Grace Smith (YA Speculative Fiction)

But people say it’s beneficial to show an agent that they’ve replied to your email already because they see it’s an ongoing conversation and not a pitch from someone new. I get it; I do this with PRs.
January: Sent most of my queries. Last time, I sent queries so rarely, but this time, I went ahead and ripped off the Band-Aid, trying to fish for an offer in as short an amount of time as possible. Whenever I fell into despair over having to query again, I sent about 5 queries out again just so I had more options.
February: Got my new offer! Knew I was going to be off-grid for travels and that several agents I absolutely adored said that they were incredibly swamped, so I gave 3.5 weeks*
March: Suffered. Signed with my new agents.

*I don't know how I feel about the long window. I have commitment issues and generally would rather have all my options, but I was still mentally doing badly for the entire month. I do think those people who give a clean, industry standard two weeks are probably doing it right, but knew I needed to know for sure nobody dropped out because of time. I’m not sure what I’d recommend? Go by feel, but know you’re going to be torturing yourself the entire notification period. Because it’s sort of true—if they want it badly enough, they’ll drop everything to make your book work. But I also didn’t want to push someone to a NO because they weren’t in the right mood or tried to force it. And you really will get messages like this on your decision day that make you overthink when to call it.

It’s incredibly time-consuming to do the research, but I do recommend personalizing most of your queries.

There were definitely “shot in the dark” queries that I didn’t personalize simply because there wasn’t a lot of information on said agent available, but I usually had a very specific reason I was reaching out to a given agent.

I really cared about making sure the agent aligned with the themes of MOUNTAIN SOUNDS, as that’s where I diverged most in my previous representation.

I’m such a place person and the book navigates a lot of existential questions about nostalgia, so I absolutely had to sign with someone who wanted to treat those core, internal questions as crucial to the understanding of the book. So I ended up using an introduction sentence before the plot to just immediately iron it out. This book is about corrupted nostalgia and defining ourselves by the places we return to.

This is partly why I felt like my querying journey was even more successful this time around. Not only was the book sharper but my query letter was as precise as I could have possibly gotten it.

It was more niche, but I knew I wasn’t going *too* general. If they read it and loved it, they were probably a fit for my work. Whereas last time, I think my choices were a little less deliberate.

Oddly enough, I actually think my book was messier than the previous draft I queried with during round one, but it was overall stronger/more commercial.

I do think I lost a few more upmarket options because of this, but at least for me, I’m aiming for the biggest possible sale/mass appeal possible because I think that’s what will allow me to write throughout my life and support myself doing so. So I needed to go for the stronger, more commercial option even though there were aspects that felt sloppier than my previous draft and more glued together.

But the key is that I got it as far as I possibly could have gotten it by myself, and was at the point when I needed somebody else’s input and opinion to shape it further.

For example, I decided that I’m just not willing to stick my neck out for positive schizophrenia representation, even though the agent feedback I got said that I handled it/research/sensitivity reads in the exact right way. So the major edit I’m making is fully changing the nature of Tatum’s potential “hallucinations” and shifting them into a more fantastical slant that doesn’t touch on this at all. Right now, publishers are very careful about any representation that isn’t #ownvoices and I am obviously not schizophrenic myself, so although all my feedback said I handled it as well as I possibly could have, I’ll likely have an easier time on submission if I skirt that entirely and just make a major change.

This will rebalance other aspects of the book like: 1) the family parallel of inheriting a genetic illness and the nature vs. nurture of turning into a parent 2) the secrecy and logic of telling support systems what’s going on (Tatum has to be isolated in some ways for the plot to work, and it frustrates me to no end when the main character doesn’t simply call someone for help) 3) you can do everything possibly right and still have circumstances out of your control, but you can’t stop trying (lesson for Tatum and for me), etc,. 4) literally seeing a different season and why???

I had this convo with every agent who offered me rep, and it’s been a big core of the book since I first wrote it. Because it’s not a psychological thriller or a shock factor twist; it’s a genuine part of the character that informs the way she sees the world. We’ve discussed options, alternatives, etc,. but I think where I’ve landed is that I am simply so nervous about submission and this is the one risky factor that could keep it from working out, and I want to optimize my chances as much as possible. So it’s going back to sheer fantasticism, but that will have the ripple effect of reducing some unreliable narration tension, getting rid of her “secret,” adjusting character arcs and dynamics, changing the foil of her mother’s legacy, etc,.

I also included bylines this time.

I didn’t do this last time, but figured my journalism is an accomplishment!!! I should mention it if it helps. I love my bio sentence about the cobbler and cicadas, and I hope that will always stay in any pitch because of voice.

BUILDING MY LIST OF AGENTS TO PITCH

In general, I got very positive feedback during querying, so hoping that bodes well for MOUNTAIN SOUNDS. Querying and novel writing are two separate skills, but I like to think I’ve vastly improved at the former in the last year.

In general, I stuck to big names and established agencies, just because I knew that’s what I wanted to feel secure.

• I generally didn’t query agents I’d previously queried, figuring the book hadn’t changed *that* much. If I didn't pick them last time, I wouldn't do so this time.
• I bid on an industry fundraiser and got an hour-long ask-me-anything session with a dream agent! So that was a referral. I wouldn’t pay-to-play if it’s your first time querying probably, but I did this time because I knew with previous rep, I could more accurately target.
• On that note, I didn’t do any additional paid opportunities like conferences, mostly because you signed out for them weeks out and the thought of still querying a month from then filled me with complete and utter despair.
• In addition, I had three industry referrals from publishing friends, including the one that led to my current agent. (I think people should include referrals in their stats!) I had more referrals in my first round of querying—maybe about five additional. In general, I stay off of writing Twitter nowadays because the cliques get a little thorny, so didn’t have any recent ones.

ANALYZING RESPONSES & FULL RESPONSES

The nature of the rejections I got this time around was very different from my first time around, which tended to be very complimentary and form rejections. This time, my rejections were more specific (and therefore more unintentionally hurtful—yet good for me!

The frustrating aspect of rejections—both on the query and manuscript level—is that everybody will say something different. In general, common guidance is to look for patterns. Does everybody say your characterization needs work? Does everyone drop it partway through or not request past a partial? (If so, your beginning pages likely need more tension.) Is clarity a big issue—do you need to line-edit to avoid confusion, or fix worldbuilding that’s making it hard to picture?

My feedback was all over the place. One agent would say they loved the ending, and the other would want to change it. Somebody loved the characters but disliked an element of the plot while the next person raves about that element but thinks the character development needs work.

I found that agents who’d previously read my work but chose not to offer this time either were much more honest in their feedback this time around, likely because they wanted to provide more concrete feedback as to why it still didn’t grab them. So some of these hurt my feelings/made it feel like I’d never *fix* what didn’t make every single person fall in love.

“At the end of the day, you simply cannot have every single person fall head over heels with your work. (But that doesn’t keep you from wanting to.)”

During the notification period, I got most of these rejections—at very random times too, so they were difficult to prepare for. At the end, I got a series of about 10 full rejections in a row at which point, I literally considered calling it quits for good—on literally all my creative endeavors. I’d move home, save up, get a “big girl” corporate job that bored me but hopefully made a lot of money, and just accept it wasn’t meant to happen. (I went zero to a hundred real quick.) Stability is the next step, no?

I cried a lot, wasn’t sleeping, etc,. Our brains are wired to remember rejection more, so I couldn’t hold onto the feeling of getting offers I loved. Instead, all the worries about being rejected overshadowed my excitement about getting those first calls.

What has killed me both times is that no matter how long your notification period is, you will likely get most of your answers at the bitter end.

The day of my deadline, I was still waiting on 11 answers. Out of them, I’d chalked up three to being non-responders based on QueryTracker and what I’d heard about them.

Still, the week of? Brutal.

I did end up extending my deadline by a day or two—and did receive an answer an hour past when I officially emailed my contract over to my new agency, who I was thrilled to sign with. I just wanted *all* my options on the table, because making decisions without all the information is tricky for me.

You’re not trying to keep anyone on the hook, but you do have to look out for your book and future by making sure you’ve heard back from everyone.

I had way more people on the fence, which was mentally horrible for me—but bodes well for the book, perhaps?

The most emotional part of querying for me is the feeling of being so close and running myself into the ground to make an outcome happen—and still not being quite there. It almost hurts more for somebody to tell you that you were extremely close, but didn’t quite win them over. Almost.

So I remember the almosts more than anything else.

Last year, I got a positively brutal almost that was my “Roman Empire rejection,” which I’ve posted on this Substack before. This round, I got closure on that because the agent in question said that my revision had successfully addressed everything she’d wanted to see in edits. So that was great! Still, it wasn’t an offer because she had a client ultimately too close in subject matter. That’s a valid reason for a rejection, but it’s always to get a rejection that’s literally not about your work. That closure felt really phenomenal because this is an agent who is likely the closest to me as a reader in terms of taste, so her sign-off on it meant a lot.

The other close calls hurt more, but I do think I had a healthier mindset this time around about what they meant. It wasn’t you failed because you were so close and it’s still a no but rather they loved your book enough that they seriously considered offering you representation.

The goal for edits, of course, will be to sharpen until it’s an undoubted yes.

On that note, my work got passed around way more, which feels rare in the current climate.

In the olden days, an agent might pass along your work to someone else at the agency if they don’t think it’s a good fit for them but that somebody else might enjoy it. Realistically, although some agencies *say* they pass around submissions in-house, it’s much rarer. They simply don’t have the time to keep up when some get 800+ queries in less than 24 hours.

That being said, this happened to me frequently this time—and was actually how I signed with my current agents.

I was frequently surprised in checking my email and receiving a rejection (lol) from somebody that I’d never queried. And that was because the initial agent I *had* queried had passed along my manuscript to somebody else instead to read. So I had more eyes on my work this time.

I asked an industry friend about this, because my first question was what, if anything, I should take away from that.

Takeaway one: You can tailor your list all you want but the person who connects to your work might not be who you expect.

People say this, but I am perpetually surprised by who requests/offers and who does not. It’s never been who I’ve expected. There are some agents I thought would be slam dunks and some long shots—but it balances.

Takeaway two: It’s a good sign because the agent sees my premise and pages as marketable and quality enough to pass to a colleague—just not for them.

So all in all, the book did what it was supposed to, but now it boils down to personal taste. Hopefully this bodes well on submission!

GETTING THE OFFER I ACCEPTED

I ended up with four offers this round. I got the first ones at the beginning, then just got endlessly rejected throughout the period before getting my final offer—the one I took—at the end. So with roughly three days to go, I was at rock bottom simply because I forgot that other people had read and loved it. I was just staring at 20-something rejections telling me I’d failed.

I never have email notifications on my lock screen (I turn them all off or else my phone would constantly be buzzing) but I did for the notification period. So when I read the first few lines of this email, my heart sank. Until I clicked into it and saw the rest:

This was from the assistant of an agent at WME I’d queried, who passed it along to a colleague, looping them in on the email. So then I set up a call with the adjacent agent and her assistant (my current agents!) I would not have gotten this offer had this initial agent and assistant pairing not been intentional about shopping it around at WME. And I wouldn’t have been on their radar if a friend hadn’t put in a good word. I queried this person first without a referral, but when I did get a referral, I think that was the push for them to shop around my work to others if they weren’t personally going to sign me. So I got very privileged in this case (but my other pass-arounds were completely organic.)

While I’d been excited about my previous offers, WME was an agency that was on my auto-yes list—as in, if I got an offer from them, I’d probably drop everything else to take it. I had a list going in my journal of what I was looking for in my agency this time around (as well as a cross-referenced matrix of every single agent looking at my work and which traits they had, weighted to help me rank in order of preference) and WME as an agency crossed off a lot of them without even considering who the agent was.

• established agency/history of sales
• passion & friendliness to talk to
• submission strategy: go wide and angle for a lot of $$$
• support for film rights, etc,.
• easy to talk to about the negatives & disagreements
• communicative

This agent was a bit of a shock to me when I looked them up. It looked like most of their experience was in nonfiction and adult fiction. They didn’t even have young adult listed on their genres to represent. So I was extremely unfamiliar with their sales acumen and whether or not they were a “good” agent beyond their impressive WME pedigree. I’d never seen them on a ranked list for my genre, but they were a Partner in the WME Books department, with great sales.

That being said, WME is also a mentorship agency meaning that a lot of the assistants start out by helping senior agents with their workloads and then specialize. So maybe her assistant was secretly the one who’d loved it and planned to lean into YA?

Right after that, I went into spiral mode of worrying but got on a red-eye and at least had that offer, which psyched me.

THE CALL & DECISION

!!!!

When I got on the call, I was immediately put at ease by how passionate Rivka Bergman and Eve Attermann were about my book. My new agents—doesn’t that sound fun to say!! Because that’s what I wanted: someone who’s as obsessed with MOUNTAIN SOUNDS as I am. Luckily, I got very passionate offers this time around, and each of the agents I talked to this time had that magnetism. But in my first round of querying, the agents I signed with weren’t the most passionate; in fact, I often couldn’t tell what they really loved about my book. But they gave me the best, most logical case for signing with them and so I did.

William Morris Endeavor is one of the big Hollywood and overarching “talent” agencies along with Creative Artists Agency and United Talent Agency. It’s a name you’ll hear in NYC and LA, as it represents a lot of screenwriters, actors, musicians, athletes, etc,. It carries weight in non-literary circles (which is good for me on a holistic level, actually) and has a certain amount of clout, which I wasn’t going to pick solely based on—but is absolutely a nice bonus. So when I described querying to friends, I said I pitched a mix of literary agencies and talent agencies.

WME, CAA, and UTA have a reputation for going for more “mass” popular books, which is why a lot of their deals are them brokering book deals on behalf of celebrities, politicians, and other non-book (or rather, not exclusively bookish) people who are influential in other spheres. If you work there, you work for a massive corporation and likely have a salary, rather than other literary agencies who may work solely on commission—so it’s more businesslike, a little more removed, but also very efficient in its systems. My understanding is that there’s a lot of motivation for these agencies to maximize and cross-pollinate any IP it assists with—which is why their film departments often handle the film rights for *other* literary agencies. So if I went with them, I knew I could also get a certain amount of secured help with publicity, foreign rights, film rights, and even speaking engagements if I were eventually interested in building my platform that way. Pros and cons with any agency, but this is where the questions I mentioned in my last newsletter came up:

• Were they a good fit for what I’m writing now and what I hope to write eventually?
• Did I want small/boutique or big/corporate?
• What about my relationship to film & foreign rights?
• What was their submission strategy? Did I think they could get me a big $$$ deal?
• Did we agree on edits?
• Communication style? Did I feel comfortable talking to them?

Spiel-wise, they’re extremely solid. That being said, my one concern with signing with my agents was that I just hadn’t known they were interested in YA—and they addressed my concern perfectly. I just told them I was shocked by the offer considering their current client list.

Their case for the range in their list made complete sense to me, their edits were spot-on with what I was thinking and what others had told me (so there was no lack of editorial vision there), they had the commercial mindset and connections I was seeking to hopefully make MOUNTAIN SOUNDS as big as possible, and they even had the film agent looped in already and calling to find out if they’d signed me. Their partnership and strengths together were really compelling too, and they were SO easy to talk to that I immediately felt that chemistry that I’d been lacking in my previous partnership. Ironically, it was the same dynamic I’d signed with last time: a senior agent with long-established roots, plus a younger newer agent who promised they’d have a ton of time to devote to me and my book. Best of both worlds.

Fundamentally, they got my book in the way I needed but also had the structural support I’d been missing. Plus, it’d be nice to know I was maximizing my film potential (a big life dream.) They’re also interested in leaning into MOUNTAIN SOUNDS as a crossover work, meaning we’ll likely end up pitching to a mix of adult and YA editors. (There are a ton of writers who look down on YA fiction, which I have strong feelings about—and now it looks like I could potentially be a litfic darling after all. Nice.)

Although I’d never thought about pitching MOUNTAIN SOUNDS to the adult market, there are pros and cons to each and the adult reasoning makes a lot of sense too! Which is why I’m so serious when I say that your book’s end result, flavor, contents, style, reception, everything can change simply based on how you label and interact with it. Which editor I’d go with. Which imprint. Whether we aim for film or book clubs or kiddos. It’s still a living document, and timing and luck matter in reception.

Then I did my due diligence and chatted with their clients, who said endlessly kind things and exactly whatever I needed to hear. They’ll edit to perfection and tweak until it’s absolutely spotless before you go out. They’re sharky and I’ve never doubted they’ve gotten me my best deal. It’s very easy to air concerns. Etc,. etc,.

I asked my friends who have worked in or currently work in publishing. How do they treat WME? How much should I weight genre sales history in this context? And the response was resoundingly that WME is that good that specific genre representation doesn’t matter as much as at smaller agencies. A few established friends’ approval sealed the deal for me; if they promised I could go with my WME option and be equally viable on sub, I was totally in the clear.

(I definitely found myself worrying a lot about my own judgement when I got down to the wire. I’d picked wrong last time. How did I know I wasn’t doing the same? But that’s just a product of having had the experience that I did. I was going to have that mental freakout no matter what. My brain just was picking out any possible flaws.)

2024 Update: Theme of the year has been not being able to trust my gut for the first time ever—I'm just that worn out—and having to learn other strategies for decision making. Which is good, actually, because it forces me to be less independent and trust other people/external sources of support more.

Online forums told me that some people can find the overall corporate focus of the Hollywood agencies frustrating if they write in a more niche genre that doesn’t really have mass appeal. But based on my conversation about my book in general and the expectations laid out on the call, I didn’t feel that applied to me.

I told them I’d extended my deadline to hear back from the agent with the family medical emergency. I felt bad for leaving them on the hook for probably a little too long, but again—I was 99% sure I was going to go with them but just needed the itch to go away first and to get the closure I needed.

And now I’m signed!

I obviously really like them both, love the agency reputation, and agree with the edits they’re having me make. Nothing massive, but they also agree with my decision to revert back on the psychological storyline and just avoid any uncertainty during submission re: portrayal of mental illness.

(As a note on agent distribution this time around: one of the agents who read my book was an Appalachian foster kid herself so I loved having her sign off on my representation, one had a schizophrenic family member, another still repped nonfiction about schizophrenia, and I personally have taken the exact medication Tatum does. So I still felt confident about my representation, but just know the market is kinder to those writing solely in their lane.)

Overall, querying seemed to go well even though it was mentally awful. I really loved each agent who offered, and most rejections complimented my prose, voice, and atmosphere (my favorite qualities of my book.) Hopefully me being passed around means it’s marketable enough to appeal on sub. Upon first impression, I adore my agents, so hope that impression continues! It feels really good to sign with a dream agency.

Now to strengthen the rest and get back to work.

FINAL QUERYING STATS
Queries: 48
Full Requests: 32*
Referrals: 4
Request Rate: 66.7%

What’s next?

I’m not sure if it’s recency bias or that my querying experience was shorter this time around, but it definitely felt intense.2024 has been a bit brutal, and I’ve been drowning for a lot of it. So even now that the process is over, I’m still rolling over to check my email at 5 A.M. before remembering that I don’t have to do that anymore. I’m still very sensitive to it! But the fight-or-flight is gradually leaving my body.

I always get excited in moments like this when I can pivot back from publishing expertise to actual writing craft because they are two sides of the same coin. Both fascinate me, but there’s something relaxing about sinking into the literal language again—challenges and all.

I devoted April to catching up on journalism work and then immediately got sick, so haven’t really picked up my book for edits yet, but I’m hoping that means my eyes will be fresher when I sit down to make my revisions. I’m hoping to keep the workload under a month (I am so tired of doing this for no money) and so will likely get current articles off my desk then sit down to do the book in (hopefully) one fell swoop. I really will try to cure my burnout when MOUNTAIN SOUNDS is on sub and I can not be actively writing a book in addition to my day job, for at least a little while.

Fall 2024 Update: hahahahahhahahahahaha. I'm so damn naive.

I personally love my revision process, so to watch what I do from scratch, you can follow my Instagram for updates. Back to socials I go—RIP.

Wish me luck! Ask me any questions and I’ll get back to you.