In my last blog post, I talked about writing a short story. That's still in the works. But I decided my time would be better spent researching the query process. I'll share my journey with you here.
A while back I bought a book called Novel & Short Story Writer's Market. In it is a large list of agents who, as of the date of publication, were open to queries. So I started a spreadsheet that was quite comprehensive. It lists name of agent, name of agency, website, email address (if any), response timeframe, date queried, date to follow up, date materials requested, etc. I also made several different pages to my spreadsheet so I could determine how good of a fit I thought the agent would be for me. This was difficult in some cases because some agency websites were pretty black and white, where others were more descriptive about what they wanted from an author or what types of books they were looking for. Some got a fabulous categorization because they were from or living in my state and I thought it would be fun to meet with them in person. Others because they were actively seeking new writers. Others for fun reasons like they worked for a popular gaming company in their past. If an agent got put in the "represents genre" category, it was probably because they said they accepted novels that were in my genre and not much else.
I'm also active on Twitter and I've been finding agents there, too. Not very many but occasionally I'll see someone post that they've signed with an agent from X agency. I go check out the website to see if my novel will fit with any of their agents.
So that's my agent research process. I've also been working on my query letter. But that's for
another blog entry.