It has taken seven years, five manuscripts and one book deal to get to this point, but I have finally signed with a literary agent. And I couldn’t be happier!

I am now represented by Camilla Shestopal from Shesto Literary.

The first time I spoke to a literary agent was at Jericho Writers’ Festival of Writing in 2014. As part of the weekend package, you could book two one-to-one sessions with literary agents to get some feedback on your work. I was so nervous, but the agents were both lovely and asked to see more of my manuscript.

Over the ensuing years, I have sent probably close to 100 submissions to literary agents and done several one-to-one meetings. Most agents want a submission package of the first three chapters, a covering letter and a synopsis. If you want any advice on writing a synopsis, I recommend Write a Great Synopsis by Nicola Morgan.

There is a lot of waiting involved with submitting to agents. Some don’t get back to you at all; sometimes you will receive a ‘form rejection’, which is a standard response without any specific feedback on your work or, if you are lucky, you might get a personal rejection explaining what they liked or didn’t like about your book.

Rejections are part of the writing life. They’re rarely personal. My way of dealing with them is to put them in a folder and never look at them again! (Unless they contain some helpful feedback of course.)

Or…you might get a full manuscript request. If you get one of those, you should definitely celebrate! Literary agents get thousands of submissions per year, so your work has stood out.

I’ve had a few near misses in the past. Literary agents who were interested in my work, but not enough to take me on.

Camilla Shestopal was the first agent to respond with a ‘revise and resubmit’ which was a full page of editorial notes about how she thought I could improve the book. I agreed with almost all of the changes, so I was happy to implement them and write another draft.

I worked on the book, with Camilla’s suggestions, for several months before she finally asked to meet me. Due to lockdown restrictions, this took place on Zoom.

To prepare for the meeting, I read two books that were very helpful:

Getting Published by Harry Bingham

Getting Published is Just the Beginning by Rhoda S Baxter

This helped me to prepare some questions and know what to expect from the meeting. Although I was nervous, it went very well, and she offered me representation! We chatted about the book, and what would happen next, and a few hours later she sent me a contract to sign.

I couldn’t be happier to have an agent. I got my first book deal without one, but I feel much more confident going into the process with my second book with an agent by my side.