Saying Good-Bye to My Literary Agent

Photo by CLARA METIVIER BEUKES on Unsplash

Last week I said good-bye to my agent.

I signed with her in spring 2022. It was such a thrill. My first agent!

Of course, I also hoped she’d be my only agent, but I’ve learned that it’s common for writers to have more than one over the years.

Maybe the agent retires or changes focus or even switches careers altogether. Maybe the agent and the writer don’t work together in a way that’s mutually satisfactory.

It could be many things that have absolutely nothing to do with the writing itself—like the agent’s health or family issues.

I’m not sure what happened with my agent and me. I can only speculate what was going on at her end. On my end, it was the lack of communication.

My agent gave me super helpful feedback last spring that helped me revise my dog novel. This was the project that made her want to sign me up in the first place.

I submitted my revision to her at the end of the summer and she said she’d get back to me by the end of the month.

But she didn’t.

I nudged her by email several times. Did she think my revision needed more work? Was she sending it out to editors yet? What was the plan?

Crickets.

Meanwhile, I worked on revising my zoo mystery. I got some great feedback from a book-coach-in-training and recently wrapped up that revision.

I sent another email to my agent asking if we could talk. She responded quickly, but then crickets again when it came to scheduling the call.

My patience was finally exhausted. I sent one more email saying that unless I heard from her by a certain date, I’d consider our agreement terminated.

I also thanked her for her feedback on my dog novel, because it helped me make that novel stronger. And without her asking for a second animal book, I don’t know that I would have come up with the zoo mystery. I thanked her for that too.

Her help has been instrumental in my growth as a professional novelist.

So now it’s back to querying agents with a new book, What the Raven Said: A Zoo Crew Mystery.

I enjoy the research involved in choosing agents to query. One resource I found is a collection of YouTube videos by a pair of literary agents with the Bookends agency. For example, they talked about “The Difference Between Newer and More Established Agents.”

Super helpful as I prepare the list of people I want to query.

I’m not rushing this process, but I did get started on it as I waited for two beta readers to finish reading and send me their feedback. I’ll dig into that this week and see how much work I have to do before this novel is ready to send out.