You might have seen the phrase vet agents (and/or editors) before submitting materials. It gets thrown around a lot in the writing world, especially around pitch contests and such. The premise behind it being that anybody can call themselves an agent (or an editor.)

So what do we mean when we say that? What is vetting, and how do you do it? I have thoughts.

So there is no confusion, I am the Pitch Wars Agent Liaison, and the timing of this post is definitely related to Pitch Wars, as mentees are getting to the point where they have to vet agents–to decide which agents to send materials to or not, to decide which agents to query or not. I will be very clear in this post which parts are ‘official’ and related to my job, and which parts are me, a writer with some industry experience, just sharing my opinions. Most of it will be the latter.

Warning up front: this is going to be really long. Sorry. I’ve got a lot to say.

The Official Pitch Wars Part:

As the agent liaison, I have done some vetting of the participating agents. But not much. Pitch Wars, several years ago, decided that we’re not going to try to make judgements on ‘good agents’ and ‘not good agents’ because so much of that is subjective. The standard I used was this: Are they, in fact, a literary agent? If yes, they can participate. That’s it. It’s a very low bar. You may want to set your personal bar higher than that, and it’s absolutely your right to do so. In fact, I expect that you *will* do more vetting. Which is kind of the point of this post.

That’s it for the official stuff. Everything from here on out is Mike Mammay’s opinion. Use what you like, discard what you don’t. This is going to be long, and some things I say are going to be debatable. People are going to disagree. Hopefully not so much that they are going to come after me with pitchforks and torches, but hey…you can’t ever be sure.

I can promise you two things about this post:

1. I’m being honest. I truly believe everything I’m saying. Could I be wrong? Yes. I probably am in some regard. If that’s pointed out to me, I might change my opinion. I’m an adult like that.

2. I mean no ill will toward anybody. I’m not trying to disparage agents or writers, and I’m not trying to talk down to anybody. I’m trying to share things that I know (or that I think) so that that you can evaluate it and use it to make better decisions for yourself.

I’m not here to judge those decisions. It’s your career, your choices.

Everything about deciding on an agent is related to your personal goals and situation. What you want is an agent who can help you reach your goals. Since goals differ from person to person, the vetting process will also differ. The first thing you have to do is figure out what your goals are, and that can be hard, because it means being honest with yourself.

So that means there’s no right answer. There’s only a right answer for you. Here are some thoughts to help figure that out.

1. Strategy. I’m going to talk for a minute about a situation where agents have shown interest in your work. Maybe you got a bunch of likes on a pitmad tweet. Maybe a lot of agents requested your materials in a showcase. Who knows. At that point, you have three possible strategies, each of which has pluses and minuses. Let’s run through them.*

*Note: This is not meant to replace the advice of your mentor if you have one. Rather, I’d suggest this is the kind of thing you might benefit from discussing with your mentor, or with other advisors.

But the choices are pretty basic:

a. You can send material to everybody who requests.
b. You can apply personal criteria and send only to the agents who meet it.
c. You can rank order agents based on your own criteria and send to the top ones first, and then to others if that doesn’t work out.

Let’s examine the ups and downs of each method.

a. Send to everyone.

Pluses:

Gives you the most chances to get an offer — this is obvious. More agents, more chances.

Gives you the most chances to get multiple offers, which would allow you to talk to each offering agent and compare, which can be a valuable decision-making tool.

Could make the process go faster, because it only takes one agent reading fast and making an offer to allow you to nudge other agents, forcing a quicker decision.

It’s really easy. Sure, this is a minor point, but it’s true. You don’t have to make criteria and you don’t have to think. You send to everybody and figure it out later.

Minuses:

Faster is not always better. If one of your lower ranked agents offers fast, it might speed up the process, but not necessarily in a good way. If your top choice agents are rushed, they may prioritize other things and pass on you because they don’t have time to read. So you might be forcing a no that might have otherwise been a yes.

Can put you in a tough situation if you get an offer and it’s not a great fit. If you have one offer and you talk to the agent and get a vibe that it’s not a good situation, are you capable of walking away from that offer? Be honest with yourself, because it’s hard. I’ve seen good people fall into that trap. You’ve worked your whole life to get an agent, and there one is, in your grasp. It becomes really easy to convince yourself that it’s a good fit when it’s your only option besides writing another book.

Remember, no agent is better than the wrong agent. Yes, I know you’ve heard that before. Yes, I know some of you don’t really believe me. But you should. I could bring in a dozen guest posters who could tell you their stories of having the wrong agent and how bad it was for them.

b. Apply criteria and send only to those agents who fit it.

Plusses:

You ensure that your top choice agents get to see your material.

Forces you to figure out what you’re really looking for, which might provide perspective later in the process.

Can be more manageable in situations where you get multiple offers, as you’ve already eliminated some agents.

Minuses:

Fewer chances to get an offer. Not only are you cutting down on the number of agents seeing your material, but well-established agents may only take on one or two new clients a year, so they might be really selective, whereas newer agents might be building a list and willing to take on multiple clients.

Might miss out on an agent who you filter out through your criteria who might have actually been a good fit.

Figuring out which agents do and don’t fit your criteria is hard. For example, what if you look at sales. Does an agent lack sales because they don’t have the right contacts, or do they lack sales because they haven’t had the right clients yet? Or do they lack sales because they’re new in the business and just haven’t had time to make sales yet? Any of these could be true, so ‘lack of sales’ becomes a really subjective criteria, even though on the surface sales is an objective thing.

c. Rank order the agents and send to your top choices first.

I’m not going to do pluses and minuses here; I’m just going to discuss it. Because it’s really a combination of the previous two and the same pluses and minuses apply. You’ve just got one added factor.

Let me be clear: agents are going to know that you did this. They’re not stupid. If an agent requests your material and you wait six weeks to send it to them, they know that you did that because they weren’t in your first batch. You know that whole writer insecurity thing that you have? Agents have that too. It’s a human thing.

So what does that mean?

Depends on the agent. A lot of newer agents are pretty realistic about the situation. They want the opportunity to compete for your manuscript, but they understand that there is a hierarchy and that they probably aren’t anybody’s first choice at this moment in time. So it might not matter to them at all. Kind of an ‘it is what it is’ situation.

Some might be bitter and look at your work with a more critical eye. This probably won’t happen that much, honestly, because, well…see above. They’re realistic, and it’s hard to be mad at somebody making an obvious decision. But subconscious biases do exist. But what is more likely is this:

They don’t prioritize you, because they know you’ve already been rejected by other agents. Realism works both ways. Agents are busy, so they have to prioritize their time. It’s human nature for an agent to prioritize (1) projects that they may have to compete for and (2) projects they are the most excited about. (Not all agents do this. Some might be strictly first in, first out.) By waiting, you’re making it hard for either of those two criteria to apply. They know that you’ve had rejections, so they don’t feel the pressure of competition. And knowing that a bunch of other agents may have passed already, how easy is it to get excited?

That doesn’t mean they can’t still fall in love with your project. Maybe other agents passed because the project needs work and a new agent sees that as an opportunity. There are a dozen different permutations of how this could play out.

These are just a few thoughts about ways to think about sending material and/or querying. In the next section, I’ll go over setting your criteria and measuring agents against that criteria. Note: I’m only going to talk about criteria *before* you query, not once you have an offer. Once you have an offer, you have a ton more resources at your disposal (notably, you can talk to clients and you can directly ask questions of the agent. But that’s somebody else’s post to do.)

The Big Ones

In my opinion, there are two major criteria that any agent should meet, and if they don’t, it is my belief that you shouldn’t query them. I don’t really think the criteria themselves are debatable, though how we define them probably is.

1. Can the agent get your manuscript in front of the editors that you want with a reasonable expectation that those editors will read it?

This is why you are looking for an agent, right? Because you want to get published. That’s your main goal. To get published, editors need to read your book.

On the one hand, this criteria is easy, because it’s binary. Either the agent can do this or they can’t. Where it gets tricky is…how do you know? After all, there’s nowhere you can look it up.

So how do you figure it out? You probably have to fit together a bunch of different pieces that get you close to the answer. Here are some of the pieces:

a. The obvious one is that they’ve sold books to the editors at the top of your list. If that’s true, you’re probably done vetting. But those are the easy ones. Even if they’ve only sold once to a top editor, it’s still a good indicator that they’re getting manuscripts read.

b. Another good indicator is that they work at an agency that has sold to top editors in your genre. A newer agent might not have sales, but if they work at an agency that does, you can probably assume that that agency wouldn’t employ them if they couldn’t meet this basic function.

c. You can ask a client. This one is tricky, because you can’t just reach out to clients when you’re querying. Once you have an offer, that changes. Prior to the offer, you probably have to know somebody. But if you’re part of Pitch Wars, maybe you do. After all, you have a mentor. And your friends have mentors. And those mentors have agents. And those mentors have friends who have agents. It’s a small world, and you’ll quickly find that a lot of people know each other. And it’s not an invasive question for one mentor to ask another some basic questions about where they went on submission. Or to ask their friends. Don’t expect a lot of detail here, but some basic info can go a long way.

Alternately, you can look up some clients on social media and see if they’ve talked about it. Probably not, because for some reason there’s this idea out there that you shouldn’t talk about being on submission. But you might glean something.

d. You can ask an editor. Obviously this one requires access. But if you have it, for some reason, you should use it. I know some editors, and I’ve absolutely asked them before ‘hey, do you know this agent? What do you think of them?’ But you probably can’t do that, and even I can’t do that more than a couple times a year, because that would get annoying. But maybe you know somebody who can ask. Or maybe you’re at an event and there’s an editor there doing a coffee-klatche, whatever that is.

e. Pool your information. Are you in a group of like-minded writers of the same genre who are all querying? Ask each other. All of a sudden a couple of contacts become a lot of contacts. You won’t all apply the information in the same way, because you all have different goals and different strategies. That’s fine. You can still share objective information. (Do be careful sharing *subjective* information, because your opinions are your opinions, and you may not want them getting out.)

2. Can the agent effectively advocate for you after you sign with them?

This is it. The other big one. Because you need this from your agent and if you have an agent who can’t do this, it can actively harm your career.

This is another criteria where it’s hard to know. So what do you look for?

a. Has the agent handled contracts before and do they know what to do with them? A lot of this goes back to the same criteria as the past category. If they’ve done business with a major publisher, or their agency has, then you can probably feel pretty confident about their handling of a contract.

b. If there’s no evidence of a. above, is there something else that would point to them knowing how to do this? Did they intern under an established agent? Did they work at a different agency where they would have learned this?

I’m not saying you should immediately disqualify an agent if you can’t find evidence of this, but if you do query them, you should have it very high on your list of questions that you ask about before you sign if you get an offer.

In my mind, these two things are non-negotiable. If an agent can’t do these two things, they shouldn’t be an agent. Because you have to have them.

Once you get through the main criteria, there are some other things you can look at to pick the best fits. This is getting long, so I’m going to try to run through them quickly. If you want to know more about any specific one, there are tons of people who have talked about it before online, so do a search.

1. Editorial or not editorial. Maybe you want an agent who is going to edit your work before sending it out. Maybe you don’t. You can usually find this out about an agent because it’s usually not a secret. Most agents specifically say so somewhere. In my experience, *most* agents are editorial, so it’s usually a matter of degrees. For this, maybe follow some clients on social media and see what they say about edits from their agents. Or read acknowledgements in books by authors that agent represents.

2. Commercial vs. Creative. This is a big one that I don’t see a lot of people talk about…at least not right up until the point where they split with their first agent and move on to a second (which is fine. It happens more than you think.)

Bottom line, there are agents out there who are mostly looking for ‘big’ projects and don’t want to be bothered with smaller things. This is no shade. It’s a business, and that’s a viable business model. There are authors out there who do the same thing. And then there are agents who want to take on books that they love, regardless if they have commercial viability.

Some of this you’ll figure out when you get the request. If you’ve got a quiet book and the agent requests, obviously they’re into smaller projects. The only problem comes when you have a big, commercial book. Because you’ll attract both types of agents. And that’s fine…right up until that project doesn’t sell. Because what happens if your next project isn’t as commercial? Will your agent still want to take it on submission? The answer isn’t always yes.

For the most part, this is a conversation that you have after you get an offer but before you sign…you ask ‘what happens if this project doesn’t sell.’ And the agent will also be trying to figure it out ‘what kind of projects do you want to do down the road?’ And it can be really hard to know before you have that discussion. But it’s something to keep in your mind. And you can look at the agent’s list and probably see if there are some books with smaller deals on there, and that will give you some information.

At the same time, some agents may take on projects that they love creatively but don’t really have a way to sell. I will say that they probably have *some* hope that it will sell, because otherwise they’re working for free. But every agent, just like every writer, is in the industry for their own reasons.

3. Specific criteria that apply to you. Maybe you’re looking for an agent who shares your identity. Or maybe you’re looking for an agent who at least represents other people who share your identity. This is completely valid, if that’s what makes you comfortable. It’s also one of the few things on the list that’s pretty easy to figure out. With that said, it’s also not something you have to consider unless you want to, as you’ll find a lot of agents who would love to represent you but maybe just haven’t found the right client yet. And that’s all I’m going to say, as I’m absolutely not the right person to offer on this topic.

4. Big agency or small. Some big agencies have resources that small agencies don’t. They may have a contracts department, or a foreign rights agent, or a film industry liaison, or whatever. Some agents essentially work on their own and handle all of that or, in some cases, don’t really do anything with foreign rights. This is one of those things where you have to know what you want and what’s important to you. On a positive note, it’s one of the easiest things to check, as you can look up foreign rights sales in Publishers Marketplace, and you can look at the agency staff on their website. Most agencies that have dedicated staff aren’t going to hide it from you. It’s an asset, and they want you to see it.

This also matters to where you want to fit in an agency. Do you want to be the biggest client there and get lots of attention? A smaller agency might fit. Do you want to be part of a bigger stable with famous authors that you’ve heard of? A bigger agency might be a better fit.

But in most cases, who else your agency reps is not a huge thing. It’s just not going to affect you in a lot of ways, or very often. So I wouldn’t personally go looking for a specific agency just because of that (however, the reasons that those other authors signed there are probably reasons you might want to consider as well.)

5. Sales. Notice how far we got into this post before I put this in as a criteria? Because I think it’s overrated. Sales are useful as mentioned above as an indicator of other things. But sales on their own? Eh. A history of big sales doesn’t mean that they can sell your book for big money. It does mean that if they do, they’ll know how to handle it because they have experience. But the book is the book and it’s going to sell or it’s not. The agent has some impact on that…mostly via editing, perhaps a little by reputation…but not as much as you’d think. (Note: This is a pretty controversial statement, and I’m sure you’ll find disagreement. Again, reminder, this is just one guy’s opinion.)

Sales can also be misleading because there are easy sales and hard sales. For example, selling my first novel, PLANETSIDE? Hard. The adult SF market is super tough to break into. Selling my third novel, COLONYSIDE? Really really easy. PLANETSIDE earned out in 5 months. SPACESIDE earned out in 3. Selling the third book in the series was not a difficult process. “Do you want it? How much and on what day?” Done. Don’t take this as a slight to my agent…she is absolutely the best and she does a ton of work for me. But that book was going to sell, regardless. So when you look at pure number of deals, just remember that not all deals are created equal.

If you want a number to look at for sales, look at how many debut authors they’ve sold. It’s harder to find that, but it’s a more useful statistic.

6. Compatibility. I put this one even below sales, because it’s even more overrated. “I like their vibe on twitter” is not a good reason to pick an agent. (Conversely, ‘they’re a total ass on twitter’ is absolutely a reason NOT to pick an agent.’) Look, some level of compatibility is nice. But you don’t have to be friends. You’re business partners. And a good agent is going to adjust to what you need as a client anyway. It may take a bit of time to establish that, just like it does with any relationship, but an agent who prefers phone calls can probably deal with it if you prefer email. And that stuff evolves over time. I like email, and for like 4 years that’s all I ever did with my agent. But this year there were a couple of things where we were both like, let’s just get on the phone and do this. So we adjusted.

And it’s really hard to know any of this until you’re actually working together, so don’t over value this criteria when you’re deciding whom to query.

With that said, there are some red flags, and if you see them, I’d run.

a. If you hear about an agent who takes a week or more to get back to a client, don’t query them. Period. You’re just not going to be happy. The appropriate amount of time for an agent to get back to you is the next business day. Two at the outside. Even if they just reach out with a ‘Really busy. Will get back to you soon.’ You may not be their priority for that week–they have other clients. But you should never feel like you’re not worth their time.

b. If you see an agent be mean to anybody in the industry, I’d pass. And that includes anybody from querying writer right up to editor at a major house. An agent is a professional and they are going to represent you, so their actions reflect on you.

Think of it this way: Publishing is a business of relationships. Maintaining good relationships is important.

Note: A policy of ‘no response on a query means no’ is not mean. It’s accepted in the industry. Taking a long time to respond to a full is not mean. Agents are busy, and client work comes first. It happens.

So what am I talking about? Mocking querying authors online (with the possible exception of that one querying author who is so far out of line (sexist, racist, entitled) that they really deserve mocking. You know the guy. And yes, it’s always a guy.) Talking bad about other agents, unless they’re pointing out legitimate business concerns. Talking bad about publishing in general. And all of these include subtweeting and general attitude.

And, at the extreme, there are agents who have had more serious offenses. I’d like to tell you that they’re all gone, but alas, that’s not true. So keep your ears open.

And once again, I’m going to cut this part off here, as I’m not the best person to tell you what is a problem and what isn’t. I’m a reasonably successful published writer and a straight white man who lives in America. Literally nobody is a problem to me. I’m not defending that, just acknowledging it for the truth that it is.

7. Market. This one applies more to non US authors, especially those living in the UK. You have to decide if you want a US agent or one in your home country. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but I’m not smart enough to know what they are. I’d recommend talking to other authors from your home country about it, if possible.

8. Big List or Small. This isn’t something that would matter to me, but I’m including it because I’ve heard people mention it. Mostly I want to debunk it. I think the conventional wisdom is that if an agent has a lot of clients, or a few big clients, than that will mean less time for you. And…maybe? Certainly an agent who takes on a whole pile of clients at the same point in their career might have some time management challenges. But not every author on the list is the same.

First, not every writer on your agent’s list is even active. The agent may just manage their back list. They’re still a client, but it’s mostly managing royalties.

Second, not every client needs the agent’s attention right now. Take me. Sometimes I need a lot. Maybe I’ve got a contract offer that needs to be worked out, or a manuscript that needs editing. Other times, I’m writing a book that’s already contracted and I don’t need much at all.

Generally, if an agent has too much work, they won’t be open to queries. Or, if they stay open, they won’t actually read queries. Bottom line, they’re in a better position to figure this out than you are. So don’t overthink it.

9. Full time or part time? You might not know this, but a lot of agents have other jobs. Agenting doesn’t often pay well at the beginning, so it’s a necessity of life. Should this matter to you? I don’t know. Does it? Because agents with other jobs have either figured out how to make it work or they haven’t, and I can’t really see any reason that makes one inherently better than the other. Maybe the times during the day they are available? But then, who knows what their other job is, and hey, most authors have other jobs, too.

And I guess that’s it. I’ll probably think of more, and if I do, I may update the post. If you’ve got querying experience and you have other criteria you used, feel free to mention it in the comments.

Remember, you can apply all of this or none of it. It’s up to you. It’s your career, and anybody who tries to tell you that there’s one right answer is flat out wrong. Listen to the people you trust. Trust your own intuition. And remember…you get a chance to go more in depth in learning about the agent if you get an offer, so it’s not a huge problem if you query a couple agents that might not be great fits. Like with writing, you can fix it in edits.

Tags: agents, literary agents, Vetting literary agents