Writer's Market: Yay or Nay

[craig]

I'm ever so-slowly approaching the end of my novel and after some rewrites and edits will be querying agents and/or publishers directly.

I have on hand a Writer's Market from 2008.

Would the info in here even be accurate anymore? My understanding is that turnover rates are high in agencies and publishing houses. Also, I know that for at least one publisher, the economy has led to a drastic cut of staff.

Is it worth it to buy this year's version? Are there good online resources that rival a copy of the book? (I'm unemployed at the moment, so cheaper is better.)

I know there's agentquery.com -- which seems to be pretty comprehensive, at least last time I looked.

[AMSchilling]

Check your library. Mine has copies of the current year (usually in the reference section, and not for checkout.) I used a lot of online resources like agentquery for most of my contacts, though. Publisher's Marketplace online was where I found the most (http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/). Sites like that might be updated faster than the book. Double-check with the agency website before sending to anyone, regardless. If someone has left, hopefully their info will have been pulled from the site so you can avoid the turnover issue.

[HillaryJ]

Internet sources seem the most up to date, and agency websites the best of those. Agentquery.com, querytracker.com, even writersmarket.com (fee for use) have decent search engines.

The hard copy Writers Market is not a comprehensive guide, and I found that many top-level agencies are not included in it. It was valuable to me for preliminary research, but I haven't gone back to it since building my original list (and most of the agents came from sources other than the book).

[craig]

Cool. I'm glad I'm not the only one that's never been overly happy with Writer's Market. I think it definitely serves its purpose and can definitely be of immense help to people starting out in this journey of writing -- but for someone like me that's looking for an agent who specializes in sci-fi, Writer's Market has its limits.

[Margo]

Ditto to what HillaryJ said. The Writer's Market can't tell you an agent just closed to submissions for two months because he has 500 backlogged queries in his inbox. Or that she just blogged that she never wants to see another vampire romance. Agency sites and agent blogs are great sources for up-to-date preferences, guidelines, etc.

[cheekychook]

Try http://www.agentquery.com ---it's free and easy to use (lots of search options). Good luck!