A guide to finding a literary agent

If you are serious about following the traditional publishing process, then you are going to need to get yourself a literary agent. Most traditional publishers will not accept submissions directly from an author, so you will need to find an agent to represent you and your book. This article will show you everything you need to know about finding an agent and explain why this is the starting point of the traditional publishing journey.

What does a literary agent do?

During my writing career, I have had two literary agents, with my main agent being Andrew Lownie. I found Andrew to be a vital part of my writing career and, if I am honest, I don’t feel it is possible to be a traditionally published author without a good agent.

So, what does an agent actually do?

Finding a publisher

The first job of the agent will probably be to provide editorial feedback on your book. This may be the first time an author has received professional feedback, and it can be overwhelming. However, the goal is to lift the book to the next level and get it ready for submission to publishers.

Once everyone is happy with the manuscript, it will be submitted to one or more publishers. Agents often have relationships with publishers, and they tend to submit your manuscript only to publishers they feel will be interested in what you have written. This is a nerve-wracking time, and it can take several months for a publisher to declare an interest in the manuscript.

How this process plays out will vary greatly from book to book. You might find that there’s just one publisher interested. However, you may find there are two or three, allowing you a bit more freedom of choice. If enough publishers are showing an interest, the book might go to ‘auction’, where several publishers bid for the book, each offering the best deal possible. This is rare, but it can happen.

Negotiating a deal

Once the manuscript has found a home, the agent will start to negotiate a deal.

The first thing to understand is that there are several different types of contract, and the type will dictate the negotiation.

The most common type of contract will see you being offered an advance upfront and then receiving a cut of each book that is sold.

An advance is an agreed amount of money you will be paid before the book is published. This is an advance on royalties for the book. In other words, the publisher is paying you in advance of the royalties they think you will earn from the book. You will then have to earn this much in royalties, known as ‘earning out’, before you receive more money. Typically, you will get something like 10% of the book’s cover price for each sale.

An agent will try to get you as high an advance as possible. The theory is that the bigger the advance, the more effort a publisher will put into selling your book. It is very common for a book never to earn enough royalties to pay back the advance, meaning this is the only money an author ever sees for their work.

Advances are normally split over several milestones, such as a percentage on signing, a percentage when the manuscript is submitted and the rest when the book is published.

Most agents charge a commission of 15% or 20%, which means that they will get that percentage of everything you earn. What tends to happen is that the publisher pays the agent your cash, the agent takes their cut and you get the difference.

One of the important roles of the agent is to make sure you get paid what you are owed, even years after publication.

It is possible that you will be offered a royalty-only contract. This is similar to a traditional contract, but there is no advance. You will receive a higher percentage of each book sale. This model is common among small presses, specialist publishers and some academic presses.

For this type of contract, the agent will be looking to push the royalty you get as high as possible. It’s not unusual to see 20% or even 25% of the cover price. My experience is that agents tend not to like these types of contract since they are not getting any upfront cash.

The third type of contract is a profit-sharing agreement. These are becoming increasingly common. In this type of contract, the author and publisher share the risk. No advance is offered; instead, the publisher first recovers agreed publishing costs, after which the remaining profit is divided between the publisher and author according to the contract.

In this type of agreement, the agent will be looking to push the agreed cost figure as low as possible and the cut per book as high as possible.

This model is particularly suited to publishers offering a ‘digital-only’ option, which removes the need for a large print run. A prominent example is Authors Equity, founded by former senior Penguin Random House executives.

Ongoing support

So, the deal is done, the contract is negotiated and you all, hopefully, have a bit of cash in the bank. What does the agent do now?

The first thing they are going to do is ensure that your rights have been successfully placed and your profits are being optimised.

The first and most important rights will be the foreign-language or translation rights.

A U.S. publisher can publish wherever the contract permits. The usual English-language territory arrangements are:

U.S.-only rights: United States and normally its territories and possessions.
North American English rights: United States and Canada. Mexico is normally not included.
World English-language rights: English editions may be sold worldwide, including the U.S., Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, English-language Caribbean markets and export markets in non-English-speaking countries.
U.S./Canada plus open-market rights: Exclusive rights in the U.S. and Canada, with nonexclusive permission to export elsewhere where another publisher does not hold exclusive English rights.
World rights in all languages: The publisher receives both worldwide English rights and the ability to publish or sublicense translations. This is substantially broader than world English rights.

Typically, your agent will guide you towards the best deal.

If your book is a success, there is a chance that rights will be sold in other countries. In other words, a different publisher may acquire the right to translate the book and sell it in another language.

This can be very lucrative for you as an author. Typically, the acquiring publisher pays an advance for the right to publish the translation and may pay further royalties if that edition earns out. If your home publisher controls the translation rights, your share of this income will usually be divided with that publisher according to the contract and credited against your advance. In some cases, subsidiary-rights sales can help a book earn out before it is published.

You will find that some agents handle foreign-rights sales in-house. There are also agents that only deal with foreign rights. It’s impossible to say which is the best option for your book. If you are working with a big publisher, it might be best to leave the rights with the publisher. However, if you are working with smaller publishers, the agent might want to take control.

Beyond territorial English-language rights, a book can carry many separate rights:

Print rights: Hardcover, trade paperback, mass-market paperback, print-on-demand, large-print, limited and special editions.
Digital rights: Standard ebook, enhanced or interactive ebook, app and database editions.
Audio rights: Unabridged, abridged and dramatised audiobooks, audio serials and podcast adaptations.
Translation rights: Publication in each foreign language; these can be sold separately by language or country.
Serial rights: Publishing excerpts before the book appears (“first serial”) or afterwards (“second serial”) in newspapers, magazines or websites.
Reprint rights: Anthologies, excerpts, quotations, digest or condensed editions and educational course materials.
Book-club and special-sales rights: Editions produced for book clubs, corporations, schools or particular retail channels.
Dramatic rights: Film, television, streaming, stage and radio adaptations.
Graphic and interactive adaptation rights: Graphic novels, comics, games, apps and other interactive versions.
Merchandising rights: Products using the title, characters, artwork, phrases or fictional world.
Derivative-work rights: Sequels, prequels, spin-offs and stories based on characters or settings.
Accessibility rights: Braille, accessible ebooks and specialised audio editions, subject to statutory accessibility exceptions.
AI rights: Using the text for generative-AI training, AI-produced translations, synthetic narration or generated derivative material. These should be addressed expressly rather than hidden inside “digital” or “all media” wording.

With all rights, the agent will be looking to optimise profits and will have a plan of action. In my experience, these often go to the publisher, but that’s not always the case.

For example, imagine you have written a book and managed to gain some interest from a TV company that is looking to make a Netflix series from it. In this case, the agent would negotiate to keep the screen rights and might even negotiate with the production company directly.

The other major role of the agent is to make sure you are being paid what has been agreed. The agent will make sure that the publisher is paying you the correct amount of money at the times agreed in the contract.

In my experience, it is not unusual for publishers to make mistakes and pay authors less than was agreed. In these situations, the agent will not only deal directly with the publishers but will also make sure that you get the right amount of cash (minus their cut, of course).

OK, so that’s what an agent does, but how do you know you are ready to submit your manuscript?

Is your book ready to submit?

Here’s the most important thing to remember when submitting to an agent.

Don’t submit until your manuscript is ready.

When submitting to an agent initially, they are going to ask for the first three chapters or fifty pages. The temptation will be to send this and see what they say.

Here’s the problem: if the agent likes your book, they are going to ask to see the full manuscript. They will expect you to send it pretty much straight away. If you have not finished the book and the agent has to wait months for you to pull your finger out, the moment will have gone. The publishing world moves on, and your chance will have slipped away.

Don’t submit until you are ready.

You also tend to get only one chance per manuscript. If an agent rejects a book and you rewrite it, they are unlikely to look at it again. They are inundated with manuscripts; they just don’t have time.

This means that you need to make sure your book is the best it can be. This means utilising beta readers and even developmental editing.

How to find literary agents

Finding a literary agent is really just a Google search combined with some due diligence. It’s very easy to get a list of agents.

My advice is to do the following:

Make a long list of literary agents. These will include both one-person operations and larger agencies.
Go through each agent and agency and look for agents who represent your genre. They will often list this directly, but sometimes you can look for books in the same genre as yours. If an agent does not represent your genre, they will say no, no matter how good your book is. Agents simply don’t have publisher contacts outside their genres.
Once you have your list, look at each agent in turn and make a careful note of what they expect you to submit. Most will want fifty double-spaced pages, a synopsis and a cover letter, but requirements differ. Some agents will reject you if you submit the wrong material.

There is one other way to find an agent, and that’s to meet them face-to-face at a publishing conference. This can be a time-consuming, hit-and-miss affair, but it can be effective. It gives the agent a chance to meet you and make a connection. These events tend to set up ‘meet and greets’ where the author can pitch to an agent in the hope that they’ll be interested in the book.

This is not an exhaustive list, but here are some of the more popular conferences.

A quick personal note: some of these conferences expect the author to pay a fee to pitch with no expectation of representation. Make of this what you will.

United States

Atlanta Writers Conference — Atlanta, Georgia. Offers scheduled query pitches, manuscript critiques, lightning pitches, an agent panel, and informal networking. Some appointments can be attended online.
San Francisco Writers Conference — San Francisco. More than 25 agents and acquiring editors are expected. It offers paid agent appointments, pitch events, and extensive informal networking.
Washington Writers Conference — Rockville, Maryland, near Washington, DC; normally held in spring. Agent pitches are central to the conference, with registration packages including several scheduled appointments.
WriterCon — Oklahoma City. Offers one-to-one meetings with agents and editors, currently advertised as included in registration.
Writers’ League of Texas Agents & Editors Conference — Austin, Texas; annual. Writers with finished manuscripts can apply for one-to-one consultations with agents and acquiring editors. Appointments tend to fill quickly.
Broadleaf Writers Conference — Decatur/Atlanta, Georgia; annual. Offers individual agent pitches and ten-page critiques. Its 2027 agent list will be announced closer to the conference.
AWP Conference: Writer to Agent — Location changes each year. Registered attendees can apply for meetings with participating literary agents. Unlike ordinary pitch appointments, agents review applications and select the writers they want to meet.

United Kingdom

Romance Writing Festival — Bournemouth. Writers can book a one-to-one agent pitch for £70. Unusually, you can book an agent meeting without buying a full festival ticket. Best suited to romance and related commercial fiction.
Coastal Crime Festival — Southampton. Offers twelve-minute meetings with agents and editors after they have read your covering letter, synopsis, and opening chapters. Particularly suitable for crime, thrillers, horror, and commercial fiction.
London Festival of Writing — London. Run by Jericho Writers, it offers pre-booked fifteen-minute meetings with literary agents and book doctors, plus dedicated industry networking. This is probably the strongest general-fiction option in the UK.
Romantic Novelists’ Association Annual Conference — Location changes. Attendees can request pitches with as many as five industry professionals and are guaranteed at least one appointment. RNA members receive this as part of their conference package; non-members pay an additional administration fee.
London Book Fair and Writers’ Summit — ExCeL London. Excellent for encountering agents, publishers, editors, and rights professionals. However, it is primarily an industry networking event rather than a guaranteed literary-agent pitch conference.

Tools

There are several tools and websites you can use to make the submission process easier and more efficient. Not only do these tools list reputable agents, but they also help guide your submissions, give you a way to track replies and even outline what specific agents are looking to acquire at any given time.

For tracking submissions to literary agents, these are the strongest options:

QueryTracker — The best place to start. It lets you record queries, responses, manuscript requests, and offers. It also shows agents’ typical response times and warns you if you have already queried someone at the same agency. Free, with additional premium features.
Duotrope — Tracks submissions to literary agents, publishers, and literary magazines. It includes response-time statistics, searchable listings, and deadline information. Most features require a paid subscription.
QueryManager — The submission portal used by many agents. Queries sent through it can be viewed and managed online. It is free, but it only covers agents who use QueryManager.

Useful research companions:

Manuscript Wish List — Helps writers discover what individual agents currently want. It is primarily an agent-research tool, not a full submission tracker.
Publishers Marketplace — Useful for checking an agent’s reported sales and professional history. It is a paid research service rather than a query tracker.

If you’re submitting short stories, poetry, or essays to magazines rather than querying agents, consider The Submission Grinder, Chill Subs, and Submittable Discover.

My recommendation: use QueryTracker as your main tracking system, Manuscript Wish List to identify suitable agents, and Publishers Marketplace when you need to investigate an agent’s sales record. Always confirm current submission instructions on the agent’s own agency website before querying.

What to include in your submission

Before I outline what to include in your submission, please note that I have a detailed article about how to write a fiction book proposal, and I also have an article about how to write a nonfiction book proposal.

The basic outline for all book proposals is the same:

Cover letter.
Writing extract.
Synopsis.

That said, there are some slight differences between fiction and nonfiction book pitches.

The cover letter is your first chance to grab an agent’s attention. The agent will come to this letter looking for a reason to say ‘no’. This means that you need to give them everything they want. I would argue that the most important element of the letter is clearly identifying your genre and subgenre. The agent doesn’t want to start reading your extract only to discover that they don’t represent your genre. After that, explain where your book fits in the market, outline the book and introduce yourself as a writer.

The writing extract is next. This varies from agent to agent, but it is typically the first fifty pages of the book, double-spaced. For fiction, the agent is looking to ensure that you can write, that the story is good and that the opening is engaging. For nonfiction, it is roughly the same, though there is perhaps a little more focus on the style and logical nature of the work.

At this point in the process, your best possible outcome will be for the agent to request the full manuscript.

The synopsis is critical.

For fiction, it has one clear job: telling the agent the story of your novel. The agent will be looking for character development, structure and an engaging story. This is not a cliffhanger document; it is a full outline of the story.

For nonfiction, it’s a slightly different matter. It is possible for a nonfiction book to be commissioned before it is written. Therefore, the synopsis needs to be detailed. It needs to clearly break down each chapter, outline the key themes of the book and give the agent (and publisher) enough information to understand what the final book will look like when written.

How to handle responses and rejections

So you have submitted to an agent and you are waiting for a reply, what can you expect?

The first thing I’d say here is that you will get rejected. No author has ever submitted a book and not been rejected by someone at some point.

It is also important to understand what an agent or publisher is looking for in a book.

The publishing industry is just that: an industry. Publishers are looking to make money. They are not looking to publish the best-written books they can find; they are looking to publish books that will sell.

Here’s a way to think about it. A typical print run will be 3,000 to 5,000 units (yeah, publishers call them units, not books). This represents a significant outlay of thousands. The publisher will be looking to recoup as much of this as possible, hopefully making some profit along the way.

The publisher has a set budget for publishing books each year, and they are looking to commission books that have the best chance of selling out. This is what is meant when an agent or publisher says a book is commercial. It means they think it can sell. Commercial doesn’t mean well-written, though the book might be. It means it will sell. The magic sauce that makes a book commercial is a mystery to everyone, so each commission is a bit of a guess.

This all means that your writing might be world-class and your story immaculate, but if the agent or publisher isn’t able to see an immediate readership, it will be rejected.

Here are the types of responses you can expect:

Form rejection — This is the standard rejection. It’s a hard no.
Personalised rejection — The agent has gone out of their way to explain why they have said no. It is still a no, but probably contains enough information to help you improve your book.
No-but rejection — This is a soft no. The agent is saying they don’t think it is working for them, but they provide a list of things that you could improve and invite you to resubmit. This is good news.
Request for a full manuscript — The agent loves your pitch and wants to read your book.

Getting a request for a full manuscript is not a guarantee that the agent will say yes, but it is the first step in the process. Once they have read the ‘full’, they will either offer representation, ask for revisions and a resubmission or say no.

What to do when an agent offers representation

If you have got to this point, it’s time for a happy dance.

The agent will inform you that they like your book and want to represent you. Now, before you get carried away, it’s worth taking a moment to ensure that the agent is right for you and your book. Taking on an agent is like a marriage. You are binding yourself to this person for the long term.

Think carefully.

The first step is a meeting. This might be a phone call, a video chat or even a face-to-face conversation—whatever works best. In this meeting, you have to remember that the agent will be working for you and that you have the power.

There are two things that are important at this point. The first is editorial approach. Will the agent be providing feedback on your novel? If so, who will be editing the book? If not, why not? The second is submission plans. Which publishers is the agent planning to approach? Do they have relationships with these publishers? Why do they think it will work? Does their vision for the book match your vision?

You will also want to bring up the contract and determine just how much of the money you earn they will be taking. I’d say that anything over 20% is a red flag.

A personal note here: whenever I have met with agents, I have always tried to keep in mind that the book was good enough to secure one agent. If that agent wasn’t right, it would be good enough to secure another.

The final step of the process will be to inform other agents that you have had an offer of representation. I would give these other agents a few days to reply. You tend to find that once one agent has said yes, other agents are keen not to miss out. When you tell them you have an offer, they will often take your book off the slush pile and take a gander. You might find that within a few days you have more than one agent offer on the table.

Literary-agent red flags

As with all other aspects of the publishing world, there are scammy, dishonest and downright crappy agents. They prey on an author’s desire to be published. It is always worth showing a certain level of caution.

I would also add that these red flags don’t always mean an agent is scamming you. It might mean they are very, very busy and you are a tiny fish in a huge pond. Alternatively, they might be very new and have no real contacts in the publishing world.

The first thing to consider is upfront costs. No legitimate agent should ask authors for reading fees or any other type of fee. If they want money, run. I would add to this list agents who suggest that you get your book edited but insist that you use their internal editor or one they recommend. This is just shady business. I have no time for these agents. If a book needs an edit, then yeah, say so, but let the author find a good editor.

The second thing is promises. If an agent promises that they will secure a book deal or some other kind of publication, they are lying. I once knew a highly respected agent that represented a bestselling author who had decided to switch genre. Despite the author having a track record of sales, they were still unable to secure a deal. It happens to the best of us. At one point, my agent was pitching three ideas I had for nonfiction books; only one ever found a home.

The third is being vague. An agent should be able to give you clear answers upfront. Their contracts tend to be boilerplate, so if you ask to see one, it should be with you quickly. Also, watch the way they communicate. Are they quick to reply to emails? Do they keep meeting dates? Do they seem excited by your book? Once again, approach with caution. Remember, you might be married to this person for several years. If your book is a bestseller, then this agent will have your career in their hands.