As I’m finishing up my fifth novel, the time has come for me to search once more for literary agents and it turns out that some of them are listed as poetry literary agents. I know. I didn’t think those existed anymore either. It seems kind of pointless for me to put in all of this work to find poetry literary agents and share it with no one. So I made an address book — a phonebook — so that you can get straight to submitting. These are the people that represent your favorite mainstream authors. If you want to get straight to it, click below. If you need some explaining, read onward.

Featured Download: to get your copy of the addressbook for 12 poetry literary agents, click here.

There are some things you need to know about before you start querying these people. First you need to make sure you know good query letter formatting. If you’re the kind of person who likes having a coach, I’d highly recommend M.M. Finck. Peggy’s a friend and helped me prep for this upcoming submission as much as anyone could.

You should also make sure you’ve read the queries that got to a “yes” over at Query Shark.

That said, some basic rules:

1. Lead with the story. Always.
2. Make sure to have a relevant bio listing either your publishing credits or why you qualify to write about this topic. For me, growing up around four generations of carpenters in Texaco-ruled Southern Illinois suffices.
3. READ THEIR INDIVIDUAL GUIDELINES ON THEIR WEBSITES. I can’t stress this enough — it’s the only way you’ll know if they’re even accepting queries these days.
4. Keep it under 250 words.
5. And keep it stylistically similar to the book you’re pitching.

Godspeed out there folks. If you need any other help regarding novels or literary agents, shoot me an email.

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Featured Download: to get your copy of the addressbook for 12 poetry literary agents, click here.