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Researching an Agent's Track Record

by Victoria Strauss

Research is the name of the game, whether you’re searching for a contractor to put a new roof on your house, or a literary agent to represent your book manuscript. How do you research a contractor? You check references. You make sure the company has experience doing jobs like yours. You verify that there are no outstanding complaints. Your book deserves the same consideration.

Before submitting a query, the smart author will carefully research the literary agents s/he has targeted. Aside from the obvious--you really only want to approach agents who have an interest in the sort of work you're trying to sell--there’s another compelling reason to verify an agent's reputation before (rather than after) you submit: You don’t want to wind up fending off the dubious attentions of an incompetent or fraudulent agent.

The Procedure

Start with a good print market guide (with a couple of exceptions--see the links below--I don’t recommend most agent listings you can find on the Internet; they’re too likely to be out of date and to include disreputable agents. I'll repeat that, with emphasis: the Internet is not a good place to do your primary agent research). These books provide not just agents’ names and addresses, but details about their interests, specialties, and submission requirements, so you can decide if your work and their expertise are a good match. Often, representative recent sales will be listed.

The two guides I like for US-based writers are Jeff Herman's Writer's Guide to Book Editors, Publishers, and Literary Agents, and Rachel Vater's Guide to Literary Agents. In the UK, Writers' and Artists' Yearbook and Writer's Handbook are both comprehensive resources. In Canada, there's The Canadian Writer's Market and The Canadian Writer's Guide (the latter published by the Canadian Authors' Association). For Australian writers, there's The Australian Writer's Marketplace.

It’s also a good idea to expand your search by picking books you think are similar to yours in subject, theme, genre, and/or style, and finding out who agents them. This can be as simple as looking through the book’s acknowledgments--authors often mention their agents by name. Or you may have to poke around a bit on the Internet. A search on the author's name or the name of the book may bring up the author's website or news articles in which the author's agent is mentioned.

Once you’ve assembled a list of appropriate agents, you’re ready to do some checking (see below for links to the resources mentioned in the following paragraphs).

First, look for warnings from other writers or publishing industry watchdog groups. After all, why would you even consider an agent who’s been the focus of author complaints? The Preditors and Editors website warns about questionable agents; you can also contact Writer Beware, which tracks questionable agents and maintains a large database of information. Agent Research & Evaluation, which also collects writers’ complaints, offers a free agent verification service. Finally, pay a visit to Google Groups (a searchable database of Usenet messages). Writers often post questions about agents to Usenet, and the answers they receive can be informative. Type the name of the agent or agency into the search box, and any relevant messages will come up.

If everything looks okay, try a web search on the agent using a search engine such as Google (it’s a good idea to search on both the agency’s name and the name of the individual agent--if the agent has a common name you can minimize irrelevant results by adding “agent” or “literary” to your search terms).

What you’re looking for is evidence of a track record of commercial book sales--i.e., proof that the agent is professionally competent. A web search can turn up an agent’s website if there is one (a reputable agent’s website should include info on clients and/or recent sales), news items about the agent and his/her sales, writers' conferences the agent has attended (conference websites often include informative bios of attendees), interviews the agent has conducted in which s/he mentions clients, and so on.

Another nifty trick: go to Amazon.com and type the agent's name in quotes into the search box ("Henry Morrison"); or, if the agent has a common name, refine your search by adding the word agent ("Henry Morrison" agent). Be sure your search is set for Books. Amazon's "Search Inside the Book" feature, which includes books from many top publishers, will bring up all text references, such as authors' mentions of their agents in their acknowledgments, as well as agents' entries in various market guides. (This search will usually bring up only a few results initially, together with a link to "additional results". To see everything, you'll need to click that link.)

Google Book Search, which also allows you to search the text of a large number of digitized books, is another good resource. Simply type the agent's name in quotes into the search box, and if the author has mentioned the agent in his or her acknowledgements (and the book is included in Google's database), a listing will come up.

Be sure to do some further research if you don’t recognize the names of the publishers where the agent claims sales. Questionable agents sometimes list “sales” to vanity or questionable publishers.

Other good places to search:
  • Agents' Association websites. The US, UK, and Australia have professional trade groups for agents. To join, agents must prove they’ve made sales, and agree to abide by a code of ethical practice. Some good agents choose not to be members of these organizations, so not finding an agent on the list doesn’t mean s/he isn’t reputable. But membership is a good indication of legitimacy.
  • The Publisher's Weekly website. PW regularly reports on agents and their sales. Formerly much of the site's content was free, but it's now available only to subscribers. Even so, typing the name of an agent into the website’s search function will bring up short "teaser" references if there has been any coverage of the agent or his/her sales.
  • Publishing News Online. This magazine provides a similar service for the UK market.
  • For genre writers, there may be a specialty magazine that covers the field. For instance, Locus magazine, which covers science fiction, fantasy, and horror, publishes a monthly column about who’s sold what to whom.
  • Publisher’s Marketplace, a website where many established agents have detailed listings (as with any online agent listing, use caution: there are a few bad eggs here).
  • AgentQuery, another useful online agent listing at a site whose owners are careful about vetting the agents they list.
  • The Publisher’s Lunch Newsletter, an electronic publication that provides the latest news on the publishing industry plus a weekly special edition covering recent book sales.
  • For genre writers: Speculative fiction writer Melinda Goodin has compiled science fiction, fantasy, and horror sales announcements from Locus magazine from 2004 to the present. Romance writer Karen Fox maintains a list of recent romance deals.
  • The rights sections of publishers' websites, where recently published and forthcoming books are listed, along with their agents (for links, see the list below). Not all publishers host such listings, but some do, and they are a real treasure trove of information.
I've left till last the most obvious source of information: the agent him/herself. No agent is going to want to respond to an out-of-the-blue inquiry from an author s/he's never heard of, but an agent who shows interest in you should be willing to answer a polite inquiry such as, "Can you give me a list of your most recent sales?" Refusal to provide this information, vagueness, or claims that sales information is confidential should prompt suspicion.

If Your Research Fails

What if your research turns up little or nothing? It’s possible that the agent is new, and is only beginning to build a track record,  or that the agent is successful but prefers to keep a low profile. However, it’s also possible that the agent isn’t very good at selling books, or that he’s someone who makes his money from charging fees, rather than from placing manuscripts.

If you do decide to query an agent about whom you can’t find much information, proceed with caution--and if the agent offers to represent you, don't even consider accepting without asking for a list of recent sales. A reputable agent should be willing to respond with concrete, verifiable information (author, book title, and publisher--not just a client list or a string of publishers' names). An agent who refuses to answer, or chastises you for asking the question, is one you want to avoid.

Links to Resources Mentioned Above

Writer Beware (http://www.sfwa.org/beware/)

Preditors and Editors (http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/)

Agent Research & Evaluation (http://www.agentresearch.com/agent_ver.html)

Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/)

Google (http://www.google.com/)

Google Book Search (http://books.google.com/)

Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/)

Association of Authors'' Representatives (USA) (http://www.aar-online.org/)

Association of Authors' Agents (UK) (http://www.agentsassoc.co.uk/)

The Australian Literary Agents' Association (http://www.austlit.com/b/index.html)

Publishers Weekly (US) (http://publishersweekly.com/)

Publishing News Online (UK) (http://www.publishingnews.co.uk/)

Locus Magazine (http://www.locusmag.com/)

Publisher’s Marketplace (http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/)

AgentQuery (http://www.agentquery.com/)

Publisher’s Lunch (http://www.caderbooks.com/)

Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror sales announcements from Locus magazine, compiled by Melinda Goodin (http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/%7Emgoodin19/locus.htm)

Romance deals, compiled by Karen Fox  (http://www.karenafox.com/market_news.htm)

Publishers’ Rights Listings:

Order Books Mentioned in This Article

Copyright 2002-2007 Victoria Strauss

Victoria Strauss is the author of seven fantasy novels, including The Burning Land and The Awakened City. She’s a regular book reviewer for Fantasy magazine and SF Site, and her articles on writing have appeared in Writer’s Digest and elsewhere. In 2006, she served as a judge for the World Fantasy Award. An active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, she's Vice-Chair of the Committee on Writing Scams, and maintains the Writer Beware literary scams warning website at www.writerbeware.org. She welcomes visitors to her own website: www.victoriastrauss.com.

This article may be reproduced, with permission, proper attribution, and without alteration, for distribution to writers' groups. Contact Victoria


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