Secret Agent

Just how many literary agents are there?  I wonder if I’ve run through the entire list yet.  Just before the holidays, when I had a rare few free moments, I started sending out queries.  I use agentquery.com.  As Preditors & Editors shows, there are plenty of people out there ready to take you for every word you’ve got.

In this day of webocentrism, you’d think agents, of all people, would keep up-to-date.  Agents, however, are literally spoiled for choice.  Most of them don’t need new clients since so many people are trying to break into writing that they can pick only what they find titillating.  Like deciding at a glance that you’d never go out with this person.  Never mind what might be inside.

So I found five agencies, all listed as open to new queries and saying, “Yes, I’d like to see your work!”  Out the emails went.  The first email received an autoreply stating my query was being automatically deleted since the agent was too busy.  Check back when her website said she was accepting queries.  I checked again.  Her website said she was accepting queries.

Email to agent number two bounced.  The message said my individual email account (there were no attachments to my email) had a high probability of being spam.  I have a gmail.com address, and I know that .com can be a curse.  I tried from my verizon.net account, my only other email.  Guess what?  I’m spam.  The agent can’t be reached.

Agent three’s email actually made it through.  It took him less than two weeks to send me a pinhead email.

Agent four used a submittable account, so that emails wouldn’t bounce.  I was impressed by this, but I expect someone so savvy won’t be interested in my sophomoric efforts.

Email to agent five went through, but since the mailbox was full, it was deleted three days later, as undelivered as an untimely birth.  

Since those few rare moments of free time, I haven’t been able to research other agents.  Meanwhile my novels grow older, and in some sense, heavier.  Best not to write about contemporary events, I guess, unless you already have an agent.

To those who have, it is said, more will be given.  Such is life without a literary agent.