Q06: Agents & Social Media

(This question is part of a larger subseries called Perpetual WIPs: Querying Writers. For the remaining questions, see here.)

How does an agent’s social media presence affect your decision to query that agent, if at all?

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I never thought about that before. Hmn. If it was neck and neck, I would choose the agent with 20k followers verses the agent without twitter who only blogs once a year. Agents who are social media-savvy also seem to have much more updated recent sales / wish lists etc.

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It actually plays a large part for those who have a social media presence. I can see how they interact on twitter or their blogs, see their personality and decide if they’d be a good fit for me. I’ve actually decided against querying certain agents based on some of their tweets. For those who don’t have much of a presence, I don’t mind either way, and will query even if they don’t blog/tweet.

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Although it’s not a deal breaker, I like to see that an agent is savvy and connected. Their blogs/online interviews are super helpful in the decision of whether or not they’d be receptive to my work.That being said, I’d be less interested in an agent who seems to spend an inordinate amount of time working the social media circuit.

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A huge, huge amount. The majority of agents I query, I stalk on Twitter, blogs, interviews before querying so that I can attempt to personalize the query. I consider myself to be fairly active on Twitter (also stems from my career as a journalist, though), so I think it’s a wonderful medium for keeping up with agents. Also, many agents live-tweet going through their slush piles or tweet helpful tips, so it’s definitely beneficial to keep up with what agents are reading, what they’re liking, what they’re not.

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Yes, it does affect my decision to query an agent or not. Those who are always complaining (ranting about/ridiculing) queriers online and acting like smart asses will never see my query or MS!

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I’m likely to query the agents active on social media before those who aren’t, but it doesn’t keep me from querying the non-active ones.

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It doesn’t affect my decision much. I’ve queried several who rarely or never tweet. However, I’ve also decided not to query some whose twitter personas don’t seem like a good fit for the type of person I want to work with.

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Well, I’m a bit of a slave to the hype machine, so it does affect my decision. If they tweet something and entertain me, I’ll move them up on my list. This is a bad habit of mine and I’ve recently stopped reading agent tweets as much because of this. I don’t know, it’s both troublesome, but also awesome that we can get to “know” agents a bit more before querying.

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Yes. I’ve held back on querying agents that sound awesome but their twitter makes them seem like whiners or bitchy.

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I admit that I’m a Twitter junkie so many of my top picks I’ve chosen because of their presence and interaction there.

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Got any recommendations for fab agents to follow on Twitter/FB/Tumblr?