Many writers ask me if I can "find them an agent." But I'm not a matchmaker and it's really best to undertake this research yourself. It's about more than just who represents work like yours. It's about personality, fit, and what you're looking for in the relationship.
IMHO, the best agents are akin to career managers and often take on the role of informal therapist as well, helping you through the highs and lows of your book's lifespan. This is someone you should be able to trust—they are a fiduciary.
While you may end up changing agents over the duration of your career (there are many reasons this might happen, and not all of them bad), the agent who sells your books will typically remain tied to those deals until the contract terminates with the publisher.
When researching agents, I send writers to three resources: (1) PublishersMarketplace.com ($25/month) to research publishing deals, which include the agent of record if there was one. Some agents also have informative profiles at the site.
Aside from identifying the agents associated with publishing deals, PublishersMarketplace just a great education for anyone in the publishing industry. By reading deal reports, you see how books get pitched and sold in a few words. You start to pick up on trends + agents' tastes.
(2) QueryTracker.com ($25/year for premium), which has helpful insights into how agents respond to materials—very difficult to find such info and probably doesn't exist anywhere else in such comprehensive form.
(3) Duotrope ($5/month), which has a searchable database of agents, publishers, and literary journals.
Always supplement these tools with your own research into the agent's website, social presence, recent interviews, and so on. See if they've tweeted with hashtags like #querytip or #mswl to understand what they're looking for.
If you'd like more guidance on finding and working with the right literary agent for you, join me for an online class on Thursday with @hyyoon, who has been working in book publishing since 1992: janefriedman.com/finding-workin…
And I also have a free, comprehensive post here on how to find agents, which mentions all of the resources above: janefriedman.com/find-literary-…
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