Nathan Bransford - The Forums

I'm in the querying stage with my novel and I'm getting rejection after rejection. It occurred to me a while back that my novel would fall under the category of soft sci-fi, whereas the agents I've been querying tend to deal in hard sci-fi.

I've tried searching for soft sci-fi agents, but seem to have no luck with that -- I only come up with lists of sci-fi agents (with no differentiation between soft and hard). I've also googled a few soft sci-fi authors I enjoy, to check if they list their agents anywhere, but have had no luck with that either.

Anyone happen to know of a way of finding soft sci-fi agents?

Are you on Publisher's Marketplace? You may have some luck looking up soft sci-fi authors there and seeing their agents listed. I'm afraid I'm not much help, as I write YA and most YA agents are pretty eclectic in their tastes. They'll usually either say "I prefer contemporary/realistic" or they say "I don't like hard sci-fi or high fantasy, but will consider urban fantasy and stories with sci-fi elements" or something.

Query Tracker and Agent Query can be helpful, in case you're not utilizing them yet.

Another question: are you getting zero bites on your query, or are you getting some partial/full requests, but ultimately rejections? There's a big difference. If no one is biting on your query, you may need to rethink it. If the query is doing its job but the pages are being passed on, then your query's fine and the agents aren't connecting with the material. Which happens a lot. You just have to keep trying until it connects to the right person.

I'd keep querying agents who rep science fiction/fantasy in general.