Literary Digest
B&A: Do You Have Any Questions For Literary Agents?
I’ve asked this before, however, a lot of the questions people want to ask an agent is something you can easily find out from books, blogs, magazines, etc.
I signed up for an “Ask the Agents” panel on writer’s digest, and I already have a couple of questions for them. One is about prologues and another is about the YA market. But I’m trying to come up with some others.
It’s difficult because I’m a research junkie. I read their books blogs, and magazines, so I already know a lot, and don’t have oodles of questions.
If you answer and I know the answer to the question in your answer (you get that? 
), and you allow e-mails, then I may e-mail you the answer. If you give me a good question, I’ll ask the agents directly and probably give you best answer, and answer your question in the comment box. Or email you, whatever.
Sure, of course. I want to know anything and everything that will be a prospective factor in whether or not they accept my manuscript.
But I’ve read a ton of interviews with literary agents, and all of them have different preferences. If I could ask my desired agent any question, it would be “What are the key things that turn you off when you read a query?”
But to any agent in general, I really want to know:
Do you want to be told that the writer intends to make their project an ongoing series? If so, do you want an outline? (This is what Cassandra Clare said is mandated, but I’m unsure. I asked Jim McCarthy of D&G Lit. on an online web-chat and he said, “Not for me.”)
If you like the general premise of a project, would you overlook sub-par/average execution?
If you can’t find a publisher for a writer you’ve chosen to represent, will you tell them that they should make some changes, or that they should lay low until the market twists in their favour, or that they should just look for another agent to represent them?
If a novel that was presented to you supported a specific sub-genre, like romance or mystery, underneath the broader genre of urban fantasy or steampunk, would you like to know all the genres a novel supports in a query letter, or just the main, general ones?
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