For authors looking for agents, it's often a long, tedious process, filled with plenty of angst and luck (both good and bad). What are agents and editors looking for these days? What are the trends? Those questions are nearly impossible to answer, because in the time it takes to get a book to market, often 2-3 years, trends can quickly change. Still, it's nice to have agents spell out what they're looking for, such as the successful Donald Maass Literary Agency, which helpfully includes their "wish lists" on the agency site.
Maass himself starts it off with his stated desire for "A thriller in which the unlikely doom scenario is made utterly believable with 300 pages of careful, point-by-point elimination of all the reasons why it wouldn’t happen…PLUS, featuring a protagonist of unshakeable principles whom we cheer for from their first moment on the page."
Cameron McClure wants "A historical mystery or thriller that in addition to mystery plot, gives us a new or controversial look at a well known historical figure. For example, a mystery set on and around the new high-rises of New York that shows us a more generous side of Robert Moses than we see in THE POWER BROKER," or "A mystery or thriller with a bike messenger as the main character or villain, like Tami Hoag's KILL THE MESSENGER, or maybe a bike mechanic main character, or some other character who makes their living with bicycles."
Stephen Barbara would like to see "A genre-bending novel for the adult suspense market, one that functions like Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men – overturning clichés of the genre, challenging ideas we hold dear, and creating suspense not through the unknown but through the sheer audacity of the villain."
There you have it. A tiny sampling of what tickles the fancies of some agents in the publishing biz. Maybe you won't have to finish 9 novels, receiving almost 500 rejections, and penning over a million words in the process before selling your first book, as did JA Konrath, author of the Jack Daniels mystery series. So, keep writing, keep reaching, and keep sending out those manuscripts...
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