In Which She Talks About Agent Databases

I just heard about Agent Hunter.uk , a searchable database of UK based agents and publishers. I thought it sounded peachy, but I didn’t expect much out of it. After all, I’m strongly considering self-publishing (Amanda Hocking and Hugh Howley, anyone?)

So I shouldn’t, theoretically, squeal all over an agent database.

But I kind of did.

The interface is incredibly clean and easy to use. You can search an agent by genre,naturally, but you can also sort your search by:

Agent experience (I know, say Wha?!)
Authors represented by them.
Specific likes and dislikes (Though this wasn’t working very well. I typed in some basic words like ‘coffee’ or ‘Scotland’, because I love both, and found no results. When I inputted ‘fantasy’, I got only one result. But I do believe that this is something easy to fix and it doesn’t damage the service as a whole.)
Opportunities to meet (As in scheduling a meeting with the agent. Which is useless if you don’t live in the UK.)
Size of literary agency.
And the best of all: If they’re AAA members.

Once you sort and find an agent, you’ll get all kinds of valuable information about them (their twitter, a bit of their history, what they are looking for, how to make a submission, etc). So yeah, it’s a pretty sweet website. Plus the annual fee is peanuts (12 GBP which is around 19 USD).

Now, I know what you’re thinking: What about QueryTracker.net? They offer similar services.

Lots of sources will provide similar services to you, fellow writer. And that is EXCELLENT! Competition = Better options to you, customer. All you need to figure out is what’s best for you, personally. Weight everything in and then make a decision. Which basically means: Be business savy, aye mate?

So Querytracker.net, much like Agent Hunter, offers free services but charges for the upgraded accounts (They charge 25 USD a year). Querytracker provides great quality service, plus you’ll get much broader results since you can sort agents from the US, Canada and UK.

Some of QT’s further search queries are limited to paying members only (Like sorting per submission method or AAA members), whereas in AgentHunter.uk there’s no such thing (although they will blur some agent info from free members).

Now let’s say you’re writing a Paranormal Romance for Adults. In QT you can only choose the category ‘Romance’ and ‘Fantasy’, so you’ll end up finding a load of agents who represent both but might not represent Paranormal Romance (even though they should). Plus it’s an YA saturated market so it’s really important to know which agents take Adult Paranormal.

In AgentHunter.uk, the sorting is a tad easier, since you can easily select paranormal romance adult (see below).

Overall, I believe both services are a great resource to writers, but I really like Agent Hunter’s clean cut and intimate style, plus their easy sorting. If they included options like sending out and tracking queries, much like Query tracker, it would be really cool. Also, it’d be GREAT if they added an US agent database.

What about you lovelies? Did you try these ones out? What do you think? Share your thoughts on the comments below