What Do Agents Want?

And why that's the wrong question

Hello friends,

This week I had the GREAT pleasure to be a panelist on The Writer’s Bridge Q&A Zoom with fabulous editor Christine Stroud (Autumn House Press) and stellar fellow agent Danielle Chiotti (Upstart Crow) and it was wonderful. It followed my favorite format for these things—a free-for-all Q&A. I can talk at length about any publishing topic, but I don’t know what you don’t know, and my whole deal is getting you as much information as you want and need. I love a chat feed full of questions. Every event needs something to herd the cats, so this one posed the starter question: What do agents want?

And I get it. Of course writers want to know what agents want. Writers (most of the time, but not always) want an agent and subsequently a book deal, and agents (usually) know what will get a writer a book deal. Easy, right? (Lol.) If only agents could tell writers exactly what they want/will get them a book deal, then all this angst will disappear and everyone’s dreams will come true. Right? If only.

And it is natural that writers should ask what agents want in query letters and first pages and pitches and comp titles and all the big, amorphous things you need to sell a book and about which there is little guidance on how any of it actually works (save this newsletter). I get it. We agents get it! I can tell you what you probably want to do in a query letter and it will probably help you with most pitches and comp titles. This is all fine.

What I don’t think is helpful or useful is asking agents what they want in books in general. Genre (outside of what they do and don’t represent), character, first pages, POV, tense, trends, stuff like that—asking what an agent wants will not get you the answer you’re looking for. You can ask whatever you want! I’m not the question police. But you’re asking the wrong person those things. You should be asking yourself.