How to Meet an Agent

 I have a little news: an agent has asked to read my full manuscript.

This is a tiny step that has never occurred before. It’s still very early days because the agent may read the entire novel and decide it would be too hard to sell. I’ve accepted that. However, she has promised to give feedback, so even in that scenario, hopefully her advice will make it more attractive to other agents. She’s already given me some excellent feedback on the opening chapters that I’m working to implement before I send it back to her.

Getting a full manuscript request has always been the stumbling point, the point at which I put my novels on hold and write something new. In some ways, the last ten months have been harder than when I was submitting to agents in my teens. Back then, I received a nice piece of paper with a generic rejection after a long wait. These days, the best I have received is an email, and in most cases, nothing at all.

It turns out that submitting work to the slushpile (the inbox of an agent) isn’t the best way to approach an agent. The route into communication with this agent came from a very different avenue: my attendance at Bradford Literary Festival.

I don’t know how typical this is of literary festivals, but I should note here that Bradford Literary Festival 2023 was an amazing event for emerging writers. They had many sessions which were pitched to unpublished writers, and as well as offering encouragement, real stories and practical advice, they also had a 1:1 event to meet an agent.

I booked onto this event through luck. I had no idea it was happening until a writing buddy on Critique Circle told me that she was doing it, and then I was lucky enough that I was in the country to attend, because the day before we arrived home from a holiday in Europe. Anyway, after wrestling with my own insecurities briefly (the terrifying prospect of receiving verbal feedback), I decided to go for it, because that must be the attitude to make something happen.

I had no expectations for the event. The website description simply said it was a chance to receive feedback from an agent. I thought it would be helpful to know which elements of my pitch were off-putting, and more specifically if the novel concept itself just wasn’t saleable and I should work on something else. So, it was an amazing experience to be told by someone in the industry that my writing style is good. It’s a huge validation of all the efforts I’ve put in over the years.

A third piece of luck I should mention is the agent I originally booked to meet was unable to attend, and the agent I met replaced him. From researching her, I was already happy, because her bio expressed her interest in Young Adult, while the original agent (from a pick of three not yet booked up) seemed only partially suitable due to his interest in Adult Fantasy.

The lesson I have taken from the festival generally is that this is a much better way to get in touch with agents. Meeting them in person begins a dialogue, allows them to see your passion and understand your aims much better than a sentence or two bio in a query letter ever can. Another statistic I learned from another session at the festival is that a big agent receives 700 to 1000 submissions every week to their inbox, of which they might accept just two new clients a year. I always knew the chances were slim, but statistics like that really hammer home just how infinitesimally slim the odds are. A really good question was asked in the general agent meet, when they referred to how most of their clients are not unsolicited. Someone asked how they find new writers, then, if they don’t find them in the slushpile, and the answer was: events like this one.

If nothing else, I know to look out for future events which involve agents. And that my writing is good.