Finding a Literary Agent
One of the necessary steps in the traditional publishing route, as opposed to self-publishing, is the need to get a literary agent. Literary agents open the door to a much broader range of publishers than you can get by self-submitting, as the vast majority of publishers don't accept direct submissions. But finding a literary agent, especially in the present state of the traditional publishing industry is not without its problems.
In my search for a literary agent, I have run into more than my fair share of hurdles. Given that The Stobrimore Chronicles series is a portal fantasy with high/epic fantasy elements, I have found that there aren't that many literary agents out there who are actually looking for that particular subgenre. When it comes to fantasy, most of them are looking for "Magical Realism" fantasy, which often involve contemporary storylines in the modern world, but magic is a thing. Or "cozy fantasy", which... to be totally honest... sounds like fantasy where nothing really significant happens. Basically, to use an anime/manga term, "slice of life" fantasy. That's all well and good, but it's not what I write.
Another one of the hurdles that I seem to repeatedly run into in my search for a literary agent is the ever-increasing number of expectations for the identity of the author, as opposed to a focus on just the story itself. Many agents appear to be looking to represent what they refer to as "underrepresented voices", often meaning LGBTQ authors, disabled authors, authors of color, etc., with some agents being so restrictive in their expectations that they will refuse submissions of stories about people in those "underrepresented" groups if they are not written by members of said group. Basically, if you're not gay, don't write stories about gay characters, if you're not black, don't write stories about black characters, if you're not disabled, don't write stories about disabled characters, and so on. I recently encountered an agent whose profile literally came out and said:
" BIPOC queries ONLY."
Usually, admitting to accepting submissions in a business setting based solely on the race of the applicant is considered racial discrimination and it tends to be illegal to come right out and say that, but whatever limitations you want to place on yourself is your choice. Personally, I don't understand that expectation of limitations, because it operates on the "keep to your own kind" mindset, which seems more regressive than progressive. And I get wanting to expand your market to include these "underrepresented voices", but when you get to the point where you're looking to exclusively represent those voices and those stories, it is only going to limit your audience to these much smaller demographics, at the cost of the larger demographics. It might look good on a bio or a blog to say that you represent these groups exclusively, but niche markets have niche customer bases, and if you're only representing niche writers who write niche stories, you're going to be looking at niche sales numbers, which seem kind of counterproductive when the ultimate goal is to make money.
But I'm a writer, not a bean counter, so what do I know?
Personally, though I have disabilities, I don't consider myself a disabled novelist. I'm just a novelist. Period. No qualifiers needed. The words on the page speak for themselves. Were I to only write stories from the perspective of a person with disabilities, it would be extremely limiting, and the thing about writing fiction, especially fantasy, is that it can go wherever your imagination takes it, and imagination has no such limitations. It shouldn't matter who or what the author is. Unless they're reading an autobiography, the readers don't much care who or what the author is, as long as the story that they're reading is enjoyable. If I do my job right, my readers aren't going to care much about me. They're going to care about Jack and Lia and Crescia and Artemis and Alivair and Rhandor and Fynn and King Daven and Queen Liandra and Zavyra and all of the other characters in The Stobrimore Chronicles, and what happens to them. All they should care about when it comes to me is when I'll complete the next story. My disabilities are wholly irrelevant as long as they don't interfere with my ability to write. I want an agent who will represent my novels, not me. If I want the world to care about who I am, I'll write an autobiography.
I recently looked at a potential literary agent's "wishlist" and found myself somewhat surprised when they said, in no uncertain terms, that they want nothing to do with any sort of novels where a police officer/detective, soldier or any other such officer was portrayed as the protagonist. As a former military police officer myself, I was quite offended. I get that everyone has preferences. It's perfectly understandable if someone doesn't like stories with gratuitous violence, racism, sexism, etc. and would prefer not to read them for consideration of representation, but to basically suggest that they will automatically hate anything where a cop or a soldier is portrayed as anything but a villain says far more about them than it does about any story that might be submitted. I obviously didn't bother to submit to him, and I wouldn't want him representing me, anyway.
Politics, identity-based or otherwise, activism and all that jazz aside, one of the other hurdles is the limitations in the query process with many literary agents, who only request a few pages to determine whether or not they like a book. The first twenty pages? Sure. The first 3-5 chapters? Makes sense. But some only ask for 3-5 pages of a novel and then use that to determine whether or not they want move forward. Honestly, how anyone can even remotely begin to get an idea of a nearly 350 page novel by reading just the first 3 pages is a mystery to me. That's like judging whether or not a movie is good by watching the first few opening credits. It's like walking into the first Star Wars movie, seeing the Lucasfilm logo, then seeing "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away..." and standing up and walking out of the movie saying, "Nope. I've seen enough to know that I don't like this movie."
I actually got one rejection that said the following:
"Even though we found great qualities within your query and synopsis, we didn't connect with the sample pages as strongly as we had hoped in order to champion the project."
In other words, they liked the query that gave details of the story, they like the synopsis that told the entire plot of the novel, but they didn't connect enough with the 5 pages of the 347 page novel "as strongly as they had hoped". The five pages where you're still being introduced to Jack and Artemis, and have yet to even get to know anything of the existence of the Worldgate, let alone what's on the other side. It doesn't make much sense to me. At least if they had requested the first 3 chapters, they would have been introduced to Lia, Crescia, Alivair and the world on the other side of the Worldgate. Frankly, it kind of makes me wonder what it would take to fit enough into the first 5 pages in order to get someone to "connect with the sample pages strongly enough". Especially when you consider the fact that it's the first 5 pages of the first novel in a trilogy story. They say that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but you also shouldn't judge a book by the first 5 pages. If anyone out there is a literary agent who only asks for 3-5 pages, I would certainly love to hear some insight on your methods. Sincerely.
The last hurdle that I'm running into is the waiting. As the Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song says, the waiting is the hardest part. There was one agent in particular who seemed like the perfect agent for me. Her literary wishlist contains elements that make it seem like The Stobrimore Chronicles are exactly what she's looking for. Unfortunately, even though her agency says that their goal is to respond to queries within 6 weeks, it has already been more than 16 weeks at the time of writing this entry, and she's been inactive for more than a month, so it's starting to look like I'm never going to hear back from her. Facing rejections is hard enough, but what's even worse is being left hanging with no means of getting clarification. Some agents have such low response rates it makes one wonder if they're even still working as literary agents. I understand that they can get a lot of submissions and can end up backlogged, and I can easily imagine how overwhelming that can be, but it's not unreasonable to at least expect some sort of acknowledgement and assurance that they will eventually get to your submissions. Otherwise, it just feels like a waste of time for both parties and an insult to the authors. Because while the agents are sifting through their endless supply of stories that they can use to make money, the authors are sitting there, waiting on pins and needles in the hope that the thing that they spent months, or in some cases, more than a year pouring their heart and soul into doesn't end up casually discarded and dismissed with an impersonal [insert title here] form letter rejection where, the more times you see the same form letter from different agencies, the more the, "Thank you again for providing us the opportunity to review your writing, and we wish you the best of luck in finding an agent who will passionately represent your work!" part at the end of the form letter starts to feel entirely condescending and disingenuous.
In closing, I will say that I'm not stupid. I realize that the moment I hit "publish" on this blog post, there's a chance that some of the literary agents to whom I have submitted my novel may read this and take offense. A few may even simply reject my novel out of spite. But if you do happen to be a literary agent reading this post, I'm sure that you know that I'm not saying anything that thousands of other authors haven't said, and for those of you who are not just literary agents, but authors, as well, you've probably found yourself saying, or at least thinking the same things yourself at one time or another. It is absolutely not my intent with this post to insult you or belittle your profession in the slightest. I fully understand that it's a tough and very subjective business and you find yourselves swamped with hundreds if not thousands of aspiring authors that you have to sift through to find the works you want to represent. It sucks to say "no" almost as much as it sucks to hear it. I get that. And if, by reading this, you decide to reject my submission, then, as disappointing as it may be for me, such is life. Should the traditional publishing route not work out for me, I always have the option to self-publish. I would prefer not to go that route with my novels, but if I must, I will. As you can see in the "The Stobrimore Chronicles" section of this site, I've already designed covers for the first three novels in the event I have to self-publish. In the off chance that you read this and it happens to influence you in the other direction, then I look forward to working with you.
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