LiveLinks: Agent Query

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This week: Agent Databases 1: AgentQuery

You have buried your darlings and revised, tweaked, and proofread until you are blind. It’s finally time to find an agent who will lovingly help you find a suitable home for the product of your blood, sweat, and tears. Several websites provide searchable databases of agents. The two I found to have the largest number of legitimate agents listed and the most useful features for novelists are AgentQuery and QueryTracker. This week, I review AgentQuery.

AgentQuery (http://www.agentquery.com/)  is FREE, and you don’t even need to sign up to do a search.

My unspecified search revealed 965 agents (including non-fiction). AgentQuery claims that it vets the agents in its database, meaning that they should all be real (watch out for those scam artists) and represents the most currently up-to-date list available. You can search by genre (27 are listed), other key words, agent acceptance of email inquiries, agent acceptance of new clients, and membership in the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR). (AgentQuery notes that “In our opinion, AAR membership is not a black & white litmus test for good versus bad. It simply offers one source for verifying potential credibility.”)

My specified search on agents seeking Women’s Fiction and accepting new clients produced a list of 226 agents. The order of the names produced seemed random (not alphabetical, for example) and information provided in each listing was scant, but each listing did contain live links to both the agent and his/her agency.

AgentQuery also has resources and useful links on publishing and e-publishing and a link to agents’ Twitter accounts. Its articles on querying and other topics are breezy and useful. AgentQuery does NOT provide a tracking service.

Overall Rating: For its size of database and easy access, especially if you want to avoid one more log-in with password, AgentQuery receives my four star “check it out” rating:

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Next week: A review of QueryTracker, the database with a system to keep track of your submissions.

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