HOW I GOT MY AGENT
Some of you may have seen my announcement about signing with Andrea Morrison at Writers House, so for those wondering how I managed to bamboozle that, here’s the story of HOW I GOT MY AGENT.
Let’s start at the very beginning.
I started writing around 2013. My first novel, a YA epic (fail) fantasy was written over two years and sent out to exactly two people. Back then, I didn’t really know how to objectively evaluate my work, so it’s safe to say that book was a raging trash fire and we should never speak of it again (seriously, don’t bring it up; that’s how spontaneous human combustion happens).
My second novel, Stranded, did a little better. After spending a year and a half learning how to write, edit, workshop, and revise a book properly, this novel turned out pretty good. Good enough to land me my first agent — at LBA books in the UK.
Sadly, while Stranded got very close to finding a UK publisher, it ultimately didn’t sell in English. It did, however, sell into the German market in early 2017 (you can find the full story of how that wonderful weirdness happened here).
Since the German deal was for two books, the third novel I wrote was the sequel. But sadly squared, by the time I delivered that book, my UK agent had left the business.
Which effectively meant I was out of contract, out of books to sell, and back to square one in terms of representation.
Sigh.
Still, a new idea was busy percolating in my mind, and in June 2018, I started writing my fourth novel, MINDWALKER.
Now, MINDWALKER wasn’t just a different genre to Stranded, it was also a very different book. Older, darker, and set in New York (or at least, what’s left of it in my imagined future) — so I knew right away that when the time came, I’d want to query US agents with it.
But first, I had to wip it (sorry!) into shape.
Originally, I was planning to do this with the same betas and CPs I used when working on Stranded, but then, on a whim, I entered the manuscript into PitchWars — a mentorship program that pairs un-agented writers with more established authors (mentors) to revise their novel and get it ready for an agent showcase.
100+ US agents participate in that showcase, which made it a very attractive prize for me, seeing how I was desperate to break into that side of the industry.
So imagine my excitement when my manuscript actually GOT IN.
WHAT???
Anyway, that’s when the real work began.
Between November 2019–January 2020, I worked with Kat Dunn (Dangerous Remedy///Disaster gays!///BUY IT NOW!!!) to make MINDWALKER the very best book it could be.
For me, as a slow writer, that meant 3 months of 16 hour writing days, because PitchWars has a hard deadline, at the end of which I had to be agent ready. And there was no way I was blowing my shot by skimping on the polish.
I rewrote about 35-40% of the book during those first 2 months, then spent the last working through 400 line edits (yeah, thanks, Kat) and shining up the prose.
Then come February, the pitch and first page went live on the PitchWars website, where it quickly became apparent that as much as we both loved this book, it wasn’t going to be the hot book of the class.
We were prepared for this. YA sci-fi is a notoriously tricky genre, so we weren’t expecting to lead the charge or anything, but in a class where 17 agent requests was the average, my perfectly respectable, better than expected 9, felt like a bit of a failure.
Regardless, on the 11th February, my showcase requests went out… to more lukewarm results. Where other mentees were getting reads and offers within the week (PitchWars is a hell of a drug, folks), MINDWALKER received mostly rejections/silence on the PitchWars front for a couple of months. Which is why I was also following a more traditional query route at the same time.
For me, that was 5 batches of queries over 2 months. 62 total. During that time, I changed my query twice. The first time, I workshopped it with my PitchWars classmates. When that still didn’t land me the request rate I wanted, I paid for a query edit.
My reasoning for that was: I love this book, but this book, at a glance, is a risk. So I wanted to make sure I was positioning it in the best way possible, so people would actually look at the pages before dismissing it on genre alone.
And it was totally worth it, because that third version of the query is what got me the offer from Andrea. Though — funny story — it wasn’t actually Andrea I queried at Writers House.
See, PitchWars can really mess with your mind when you’re not the star of the showcase, and though we were told beforehand that it’s super common for agents to overlook entries due to sheer volume, the voices in your head start telling you that if a certain agent didn’t request you in the showcase, they won’t be interested in your book, period.
So for the first few rounds post showcase, I was trying not to query too many agents who participated in PitchWars, choosing instead to focus on those who didn’t. Which is how I came to query Amy Berkower at Writers House.
She was in my first batch once that shiny new query was ready and it got me a request within the HOUR from Amy’s submissions manager, Genevieve, though — as expected — the actual read took longer. My manuscript was still in her queue when I got my first offer, not from a query, but from one of those original showcase requests.
It was a wonderful offer, from a wonderful agent, but as is customary when you have materials out with others, I asked for 2 weeks to notify those still reading, do my due diligence, and speak to anyone else interested in the book.
After that, things moved faster (they usually do once you have an offer in hand). Genevieve, for one, got back to me the same day I notified her of the offer, upgrading her partial to a full and promising to read by my deadline.
A few days later, I got another email from her. She loved the book, and though it wasn’t a good fit for Amy, she really wanted to share it with other agents at Writers House and find it a home. A few days after that, I got the email saying Andrea had read MINDWALKER and wanted to talk about representation.
During this time I was lucky enough to have received even more interest still — both from another PitchWars request, and some of the other agents I’d queried. It seems the tricky thing with this book was getting someone to take a closer look, once they did, I had an overwhelmingly positive response (yes, I sold my soul. Yes, you can have the number for my crossroads demon). Which really goes to show that a high request rate isn’t always an indicator of success. My request rate was average, at best, and yet resulted in multiple offers.
Anyway… after speaking to all the interested parties, and AGONISING for days (it’s hard to say no to qualified, lovely people who love your book!) I decided that Andrea was the best fit for me.
So yeah, a bit of a roundabout way of getting there (my usual MO), but a wonderful end to my query journey.
For those of you still wanting more details, here are my query stats:
9 PitchWars requests (4 partials, 4 fulls sent)
62 queries over 5 batches between 11th Feb-13th April
38 query rejections
5 PitchWars rejections
8 requests pre-offer (3 partials, 5 fulls)
3 additional requests post-offer, plus an upgrade on 2 of the partials
12% request rate pre-offer
16% request rate overall
55% upgrade to full rate on partials
35% offer rate on fulls
That’s it! That’s the scoop! If you’ve found this rambling story somewhat helpful, be sure to check out my resources page :)