Okay, I confess that I don't know how many agents you queried, but I got the impression that you'd queried about 5-10? Ish? If only because you've gotten all your responses back, and I still haven't gotten all of mine back yet.
But there are 37 agents on agentquery.com who are members of AAR and are seeking new clients, that specifically take fantasy. (Advanced search.) My initial agent-hunting plan was "look for agents who rep everything I write, but upon unilateral rejection, look for agents who rep what I have written." If I have a mistaken impression about the number you've queried, I apologize.
I was also willing to broaden my search outside of AAR agents if they were old school (AAR membership as a benchmark of quality has only become relatively recent, from my understanding, and you have to have been a practicing agent for 5 years to join, I think, so the young 'uns are excluded), and who didn't have any Preditors & Editors/Absolute Write warnings. You may feel differently about that, but unchecking the AAR box does broaden the search to 82 agents. Verifying their coolness is a chore, but I made a deal with myself that I couldn't give up before 50 queries.
So, if you've done or thought of all of this, and discarded these things, I apologize for butting in, but for serious, you've done so well in such a short time with the agent hunt, that it seems like it can't be over.
As for subbing to publishers sans agent: my understanding is that when you get a publisher on the line--i.e., with offer in hand--it's a much easier thing to get an agent by calling to say, "Random House wants to buy my book and I need an agent. Are you interested?" I've heard of several people who did it that way, and maybe the first agent didn't take them, necessarily, but they always found *someone*--and someone good--to take them on. So you don't have to do the whole thing alone, you just have to get into the submissions pile. (This was my Plan B.)
Overall, I agree, you shouldn't be putting All The Eggs in this basket, but you can move on to writing the next one and keep the MS circulating.
no subject
Okay, I confess that I don't know how many agents you queried, but I got the impression that you'd queried about 5-10? Ish? If only because you've gotten all your responses back, and I still haven't gotten all of mine back yet.
But there are 37 agents on agentquery.com who are members of AAR and are seeking new clients, that specifically take fantasy. (Advanced search.) My initial agent-hunting plan was "look for agents who rep everything I write, but upon unilateral rejection, look for agents who rep what I have written." If I have a mistaken impression about the number you've queried, I apologize.
I was also willing to broaden my search outside of AAR agents if they were old school (AAR membership as a benchmark of quality has only become relatively recent, from my understanding, and you have to have been a practicing agent for 5 years to join, I think, so the young 'uns are excluded), and who didn't have any Preditors & Editors/Absolute Write warnings. You may feel differently about that, but unchecking the AAR box does broaden the search to 82 agents. Verifying their coolness is a chore, but I made a deal with myself that I couldn't give up before 50 queries.
So, if you've done or thought of all of this, and discarded these things, I apologize for butting in, but for serious, you've done so well in such a short time with the agent hunt, that it seems like it can't be over.
As for subbing to publishers sans agent: my understanding is that when you get a publisher on the line--i.e., with offer in hand--it's a much easier thing to get an agent by calling to say, "Random House wants to buy my book and I need an agent. Are you interested?" I've heard of several people who did it that way, and maybe the first agent didn't take them, necessarily, but they always found *someone*--and someone good--to take them on. So you don't have to do the whole thing alone, you just have to get into the submissions pile. (This was my Plan B.)
Overall, I agree, you shouldn't be putting All The Eggs in this basket, but you can move on to writing the next one and keep the MS circulating.