A Boston literary doyenne dispenses advice

1. If you have more than one idea or book you are working on, pick ONE of them to lead off with, and don’t mention the others for a while. (The woods are full of amateurs who have drawers full of unpublished manuscripts.).

2. In a bookstore, browse through lots of other books in a similar category, books you admire and think are in the same style as yours.

3. Look in those books’ acknowledgments sections to see if the authors thank their agent; thereby you will accumulate a list of agents who handle this kind of material.

4. Research these agents online to get their addresses, names, and submission criteria. If a website is good, you can also get a feel more broadly for the kind of work the agency represents.

5. You can then send a highly professional, crisp query to any number of your selected agents at once. However, don’t make it look like a blanket submission. Tailor each query letter to the specific agent; mention if possible other work you admire that the agent represents. If you know one of the agent’s authors personally, get a personal reference. Be sure your query letter gives background on you personally and why you are a credible expert on the subject addressed. Publishers think of nothing but “platform” these days — authors who teach in the field at a reputable institution, who run workshops nationally on the subject, who have a popular blog on the subject, who have already published material on the subject in national media and thus have a pre-existing audience.

6. To bypass some extra steps, you can attach to your query an outline or short prospectus of your proposed work, together with a short sample of the actual prose. (A sample is important, since summaries often don’t make a work sound attractive.)

7. Keep in mind that an agent is running a business and looking for commercially promising projects. Agents will not be interested in helping you develop your ideas, or helping you select good ideas to develop, until you have already proved you can be a solid breadwinner for them. You’d do best to arrive with a very clear, professionally presented package. Good agents are overwhelmed with prospects (we get more than 30 submissions a day) and in many cases they don’t even have time to answer a query unless it is irresistible.

8. Remember, the gods favor the persistent.

—by Jill Kneerim

{Jill Kneerim is the co-founder of Kneerim & Williams, a literary agency in Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. Since she is not actively looking for new clients, Kneerim put together this list to help prospective authors find agents who are.}