My Literary Agent Story!

I’ve got HUGE news today, the BIGGEST NEWS yet for my three-year-old writing career. Today, on August 6^th of 2013, I’ve got an agent! *double happy dance with an ill-advised attempt at a breakdancing move*

I am now a client of Andrea Hurst& Associates, an awesome and experienced literary agency that I’ve been stalking…ahem, I mean querying for over two years. Well, all the hard work paid off when I accepted Andrea’s offer of representation TODAY!

Andrea Hurst is an amazing author and incredible literary agent with tons of experience finding publishers for her author clients. She’ll be working with me to expand the audience for the combined Dwellers/Country Sagas (all seven books), developmentally revise the books, and land a publisher to take my career to the next level. So first I just want to say THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU to Andrea for believing in me enough to take a chance on me and my books.

Next, for those interested, I’d love to tell the story of how I landed my first ever literary agent. Here goes…

It all started on a cold and rainy night many years ago…wait, sorry, wrong story. Bad author habit…

No, it started two and half years ago on a sunny day in Sydney, Australia. I’d recently written my first ever YA trilogy and the first book in my Nikki Powergloves children’s series, and I was full of confidence and energy. I was going to be the next bestselling author! No one could stop me!

So I started querying every last YA literary agent I could find. Surely one of them would like my ideas, my writing, my stories……right? Uh, not exactly. The rejections came in swiftly and knee-deep. Each one was like a stab to the gut, leaving me exhausted and frustrated. Those agents wouldn’t even take the time to write out a personalized rejection! They were form letters!

My confidence waned.

Enter Andrea Hurst, who might just be the female version of Clark Kent. Literary agent by day and superhero by night! She agreed to read Nikki Powergloves and provide me with feedback, even if she was unable to offer me representation for my children’s books. She read my book and loved it! We had a Skype call and she said super nice things about my writing style and the raw talent I had that just needed to be honed (like really really honed). She gave me barrels of tips and advice and sent me on my way.

I soaked her advice up like a sponge, and worked on my craft, churning out a new book every couple of months. I ceaselessly queried and watched as the rejections from literary agents and publishers piled up, climbing well over fifty. I received a couple of full manuscript requests only to have them rejected in the final rounds. My skin grew thicker. I should have been frustrated, but I wasn’t…because Andrea said I had talent; she was the only agent to give me the time of day.

I wrote the Dwellers Saga, then the Country Saga, and after months of giving away free books, promoting the heck out of them, and getting a whole lot of generous and selfless support from my growing group of readers, the series started to sell. Like really sell. TheMoon Dwellers began hitting the top ten on many lists of favorite dystopian books and books to read if you like The Hunger Games. Things were about as good as I could expect them to be without an agent. But they were about to get better.

Three things happened that pushed my books to higher highs:

First, a Buzzfeed article was published that listed 15 Series to Read if you Enjoyed The Hunger Games, and guess what? The Dwellers Saga was number 15! The other 14 were awesome bestselling series by big published YA authors. This did wonders for my sales and visibility.

Second, The Moon Dwellers began consistently being listed on the Kindle bestseller lists for YA dystopian, action and adventure, swords and magic, and science fiction books.

Third, Andrea Hurst was contacted by a film production company who was interested in the film option for The Moon Dwellers and who thought she was my literary agent! Of course, she wasn’t; at least, not yet.

Andrea contacted me to tell me about the inquiry and we restarted a two-year-old dialogue about possible representation. I filled her in on everything I’d been doing, my small successes, how I’d grown my social networking platform and Goodreads Fan Group (shout out to the 1,600+ awesome people I chat with every day!), and she was impressed.

What felt like two seconds later, she offered me full representation for my Dwellers and Country Sagas woot woot! Best. Day. Ever. Adele and I celebrated and laughed and hugged and a lot of silliness ensued, and then, when we’d calmed down, we read through the contract and agreed to it! So now, almost three years and more than 1.1 million words later, I’ve got a literary agent!!

I couldn’t be happier having Andrea and her team as my agents. I have no doubt that together we’re going to create something special. Thank you to everyone who has stood by me and supported me as I’ve grown as an author and person. I consider each and every one of you my friends, and I’m so glad to be sharing this journey with you.

I can’t wait to see what the future holds!

David Estes