Customer Reviews

1998 Guide to Literary Agents: 500 Agents Who Sell What You Write (Serial)

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This is probably the best available book for people (like me) who are in search of a literary agent. It consists of short, just the facts ma'am, listings with all the basic data, e.g., name, address, name of the contact person(s), listing of recent sales, whether or not you'll get hit up for a fee, etc. This book's big weakness is, not surprisingly, that its compilers take the agents' side rather than the writers' side, which means that the info tends to be very bland. Another big weakness is that many prominent agencies (e.g., The Wylie Agency, the Endeavor Agency, and a number of others) are not listed at all, because they asked to be left out, in order to minimize the number of incoming submissions.

I was very excited about finding and using this book. I queried several agents listed. Agents that seemed to be looking for my work, judging by the description. I followed the excellent suggestions on submitting queries.No problem with the book. The sequel to this book should be why agents don't respond to queries. I included SASE's every time, wrote legible, direct, well-written queries. For eleven agents I queried, only three responded. The title for the sequel should be "How To Contact Rude Arrogant Agents Without Having To Be An Already Existing Bestselling Author." Thanks.