Literary agents, please tell us…

…If you might consider looking at unagented work that has snagged an advance-paying commercial publisher’s contract offer.

We’re a little tired of doing things this way:

And we’re certain you’re tired of dealing with us.

If you already share this? Thank you, bless you, may your authors win many awards and make truckloads of money.

Obviously, if we queried you already and you sent a form rejection, we’ll likely not contact you about the offer.

This one additional bit of information doesn’t have to be complicated. ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘No Way In Hell’, and ‘Never Darken My Door Again’ are all blunt, quick options. It would be helpful if it’s easily found on your Publishers Marketplace or QueryTracker page if you have one, or part of your agency’s online submissions guidelines. It can even be, to quote Douglas Adams: “…on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.”

We’re authors with some basic Google-Fu. We’ll find that damn leopard.

We understand why you might say ‘No’. Many agents want to guide the sale from the beginning, and they’d rather spend energy and time on those clients they signed out of their own slushpiles or private recommendations.

Many of you probably shouldn’t say ‘Yes’ when we ask, because if you are not as enthusiastic about the book as we are, you might not move mountains on its behalf. Tell us ‘No’ ahead of time, and we won’t bother you.

Likewise, it would be really helpful if you announced a few times a year when you’ve caught up to queries sent by a certain date. We know you get around 20,000 queries a year, and you probably won’t respond to every one of them. If we know a specific date to close out queries, we won’t bug you with nudges.

Within many genre niches, there might be only so many agents who know that field. Once the giddy joy of a contract offer settles into reality, we’d like to contact those agents who might be open to an arrangement. We don’t want to appear unprofessional and waste your time and ours, by trying to blindly guess what sort of agent you are.

Thanks for listening.