What's in a Wish List?

How to figure out what agents actually want

Jun 24, 2025

Hi friends,

It’s hard to find an agent, right? Part of the problem is actually finding the living and breathing agents out there, but the other half of the problem is trying to figure out which agent should get your specific book. We know it’s hard. That’s why we try to be as specific as possible, without being too specific, when we put out our wishlists, in all the various formats. There’s Manuscript Wishlist. There’s our own websites. There’s QueryTracker (sometimes). There’s getting vibes from deal reports. There’s ancient, ancient interviews. I know it makes your head spin. So let’s try to make sense of it together.

I’m going to come up with three book ideas completely off the top of my head and tell you how and/or why you can use my various wishlists/resources to see if it’s a fit for me. I’ll do an adult novel, an adult memoir, and a YA novel, just to keep it tidy.

Adult Novel:

My 80,000 word upmarket women’s fiction historical called Take a Memo, Maude is set in the fast-paced world of 1950s advertising, a la Mad Men. Except this time, it’s all from the secretary’s point of view. When Maude discovers senior partner Chip has been taking cash under the table from clients, will she jeopardize her much needed job to do what’s right, or take Chip’s too-good-to-refuse offer to join him? And as Chip gets more desperate and even violent, does she really have a choice?

Ok, I know I just made up this book but I want to read it ASAP. Should I write it? No, I can’t but this is a softball to start out with. I state frequently that I am looking for mid-century set novels about women in the workplace and this is exactly it. It even says Mad Men is one of my favorite shows on MSWL! I often say I like books about publishing, too, but that this book is about about advertising instead of publishing would not make a difference to me. Honestly, if it was about accounting or insurance or widget-making but still mid-century and told from the secretary/woman’s POV, I’d still want to take a look. If this book was set in the 1970s or 1990s, I’d still want to take a look. If it was set in the 1890s, I’d still want to take a look. If it was set in the 1490s (however that would be possible) I probably would not be as hot on it as my interest in historicals really only extends to relatively modern times (i.e. the 20th Century, give or take 50 years). If it was from Chip’s point of view, I’d probably still want to take a look, but I bet I’d be more interested in Maude regardless.

VERDICT: would request, probably the full manuscript if the sample chapters looked good.

Adult Nonfiction:

I am an award-winning private detective in Maine and I’ve written a memoir. It’s called Stories I’m Legally Allowed to Tell You and I estimate it will be 50,000 words long. Attached is the full book proposal that outlines my marketing plan. I aim to start a podcast after the book is sold to increase my author platform. The book is largely about catching cheating husbands and wives, as well as parents keeping tabs on their kids. I’ve fully anonymized everything so there are no legal issues about telling these stories.

Here’s what this pitch has going for it: I do represent memoirs. It’s within a normal (estimated, which is fine, too) word count for the genre. And the title is great. Where this author might want to think twice about sending to me is that I say frequently that I don’t want fiction about private detectives. Does that mean this author should absolutely not send a non-fiction book about private detectives to me? No. It wouldn’t be an automatic rejection. (Few things are automatic rejections, remember.) But it might not be the strongest opening gambit for this author. If there was another agent here who was open for queries and liked non-fiction like this, they might be a better bet. It wouldn’t hurt to send this to me, but the author shouldn’t be super surprised if this comes back as a pass. The other thing that stands out is that I specifically say I’m looking for non-fiction authors with an established platform, and starting a podcast after a book deal, in the absence of any other platform, is probably not going to cut it.

Verdict: I’d look at the proposal to see if the author’s platform was bigger than stated in the query letter, but unless the writing seriously knocked my socks off, likely a pass.

YA Novel

Vampires in Space is about, well, vampires in space. My 96,500 word YA science fantasy novel is set on a generation ship in deep space and focuses on 16 year old Claudia, the only one aboard who has realized the random space debris they just put in the cargo bay has been tainted with a vampiric pathogen and the clock is ticking before the whole ship succumbs. And just then the home world signals that they’ve found a planet to colonize and the landing autopilot sequence has been activated. Claudia is the only one who can save the ship, and that whole, unsuspecting planet, too.

Vampires + space is pretty dead on for me. I am vocal about my love of Star Trek: The Next Generation on social media and on MSWL, and I have sold many, many fantasy novels, about vampires and otherwise. So this is a slam dunk, no? I’d read this in a second. BUT, you might have looked on Publishers Marketplace at my Deals, if you have a subscription. There you can see that I’ve sold 31 YA novels, which is plenty to establish that I am well versed in YA. If you click through to the actual YA deals, you might notice that the last one reported was done in 2021.

This book is so good, y’all. You should read it.

Tbh, I hadn’t realized it’s been that long, even though I now notice that the most recent, and more relevant YA deal is actually under Children’s > Fantasy from 2022, for Madeleine Roux’s latest A GIRL WALKS INTO THE FOREST, which just came out. That was a two book deal, which explains why there hasn’t been a follow up sale to this on recently. Should this give you pause, when considering submitting to me? Maybe! You get to decide. You can’t know why I haven’t sold more YA in the last few years. You might assume that I’m not interested anymore and seek out agents with more recent sales. You might look at the deals I’ve done in the meantime and seen that it’s been mostly adult fiction, and decide that’s ok because you want to write that later on, too. You might have no idea at all and say eff it and send anyway since the subject matter aligns so well with what I like and sell. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ All of those answers would be correct. The actual answer why I haven’t sold as much YA in the last few years is 1: my YA clients were also writing adult and 2: the YA market went down in general and 3: I was selling more adult, middle grade, and picture books. Not by design, mind you. That’s just how it turned out. I don’t necessarily look at my past deals and decide what to go after next to make sure everything’s “even.” Instead I talk to my clients, to editors, and read queries to figure out what to focus on next.

Verdict: would request, probably the full manuscript if the sample chapters looked good.

Agents and Books

Discussion about this post