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How to get an agent
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Once you've got your manuscript ready you need to work on getting your proposal right. This isn't something you should be sloppy about. This is like your job interview, and, word-for-word, is going to carry more weight than your actual book. There are plenty of books out there on how to write a good query letter, like
Lisa Collier Cool's How to Write Irresistable Query Letters
and John Wood's How
to Write Attention Grabbing Query & Cover Letters. There are plenty
of others as well. It's worth reading these carefully and taking some time over your letter. Let friends read it. Get suggestions from other writers. Lots of people even get them
professionally edited.
Once you've got your proposal package polished you're ready to find a suitable agent to query. This is where your membership to a site like firstwriter is going to come in again. I know, I know – if you're anything like me you'll take one look at the $2.99 a month membership fee and think "no way - I can find this stuff for free". Then, after having wasted every night for a week searching around on Google, you'll start to wonder just how smart it is to spend hours and hours doing something for the sake of $2.99. Pretty soon after that you realise you could work for just one night, or put in one hour overtime, and pay for the whole month's membership with plenty left over... and get all your evenings back for actually writing.
So go and sign up at firstwriter, and make sure you tick the box to receive email alerts for at least literary agents. This is a great feature, because every time an agency changes or a new one is added (which is just about daily) you get told about it straight away.
Once you've signed up you can search for agents who handle the kind of material you write. Just search for ones who accept unsolicited MSS to start with. You can still query the ones who don't, but those that do are the most receptive to new material and therefore the best place to start.
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