The submissions process is far from homogenous. We see a wide variety of requirements across the agencies. Why so?
There are several reasons. The most straightforward is that agents are asking for the exact amount of material they need to make a solid judgement. Another reason might be to set a higher bar to filter out less-determined writers. There's a third reason: QueryManager. QueryManager is a third-party submissions manager used by many agents. We suspect that the default configuration asks for more fields than is typical; increasing the material requested by agents that use it.
Here is a compilation of all of the types of items that literary agents ask for. Unsurprisignly the top three are: a sample of writing, a synopsis and a covering letter . Overall we found 28 discrete items, though seven of these were only asked for by one agent (not the same one!).
Anectdotally (from a trawl of writers' forums), writers respond poorly to 'hoop jumping'. We will explore how writers feel in much more detail in a planned article. Writers have mentioned other esoteric requests such as What would the playlist for your book be? and What songs would be on the soundtrack. Others have even mentioned moodboads, karaoke songs and astrology signs (though, to be clear, we did not come across any of these with the sites we analysed).
We also found that there is wide variation between the sample sizes requested by literary agents, ranging from a full manuscript to to the first 500 words. Interesting! If it is possible to assess a manuscript in just 500 words, shouldn't all agents be doing this?
3 chapters is the most commonly asked sample size (though it is often 3 chapters OR x words, though what x is, is much more varied!). If 3 chapters are not asked for, the range of other sample sizes is more irregular. It is not clear why agents ask for such a wide range of sample sizes.
Of the 28 distinct items requested by agents, some are quick and easy to provide (i.e. Have you sent this to other agents?) and others are less so (i.e. Provide x comparable books on the market today). We scored each requirement as either a 1 (simple) or a 2 (more involved). As each agent tends to request more than one item, we scored overall effort as the sum of scores for each requested item.
The submission burden tends to be higher for writers when agents use QueryManager for submissions. This is because the number of items they ask for is typically high. Its (presumably) default fields such as previous publications and referrals, aren't asked by agents that accept submissions by email. The agent requiring the least effort simply states: "Email us a whole manuscript or just a few chapters."
We also see that the mode, i.e most frequently occuring effort is for those agents that most typically require a covering letter, synopsis and sample (around 46% of agents). Agency submission requirements for fiction are far from standardised.
Anectdotally, we have found writers on forums suggesting that some forms can take a little under an hour to complete (followed by swift rejection). Others have suggested that submission forms can feel a little opaque (i.e. what exactly needs to go in what field) and redundant ('Paste the query, then paste bits of the query in multiple other places') We will be investigating the writers' perspective more thoroughly in a later article.