Agents Need (Software) Agents

(Cross-posted from my real writing blog.)

I recently finished writing (yet another) novel and I'm looking for an agent to represent it.

To get an agent (it seems) you have to 'query' them. That is, you have to write them a letter asking them if they would be interested in reading your manuscript. Easy enough, you'd think, but writing a query to an agent is actually a form of High Art. The novice must master this exacting artform before the agent will even consider responding to the letter, never mind them actually asking for your manuscript.

Don't laugh. I'm serious. I never knew until recently how delicately-wrought an agent's query is. When I look back at queries I've sent out in years gone by, I realise now that I never had a cat in Hell's chance of being asked for my MS. I was doing it all wrong! There was one time - many years ago - I sent out 56 agent queries and got back just six, pro forma rejection letters. That experience was instrumental in me deciding not to bother even trying to get published again: a resolution I kept for nearly fifteen years.

There are whole websites dedicated to critiquing query letters. And many others that deal with the subject among many others on publishing etiquette. I'm told there are even services where people will write query letters for you for money!

Why is it so hard? Because agents get hundreds of queries each week. Far more than they can read sympathetically and consider with a generous spirit. The query has to be organised so that it is in a structure they expect, is concise enough to scan through in a few seconds, and gives them specific pieces of information.

As someone who has spent a long career designing user interfaces to computer systems, I understand this problem very well. In fact, it would make the agent's life soooo much easier if they created an online form that could be first checked by computer to weed out the grosser errors. For example, they like to see their names spelled correctly. A computer could easily check that. They like to know that a manuscript (fiction, anyway) is complete. That just needs a checkbox. They need to know it is a genre they represent (selection from a drop-down list), that the word-count is reasonable (peasy), and that the author can spell and construct gramatical sentences (so easily checked these days). This kind of checking would probably mean form rejections are sent out to a huge number of queriers without ever having to bother the agent.

Of course, the agent would still need to read the synopsis and they'd still need to see whether the author had personalised the query appropriately, but the software filter would be saving them so much time that they could spend lots more effort on this than they currently have available.

Sadly, most agents still insist on paper queries and havent even reached the stage where they can deal with email. It looks like there may be an opportunity here for a new agent to leap ahead of the competition. Don't forget, less time spent reading duff queries is more time spent networking and selling the good ones.