If you’re lucky enough to have a choice between two agents, or maybe more, there are a number of factors you can think about in deciding which agent is best for you. Hopefully at this point, you’ve already checked in to make sure that they are not a scam artist or anything and are a legitimate agent. After that, there are a couple of things you want to consider when choosing the right agent.

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First, you don’t want an agent who is trying to be your best friend. Yes, you want to get along with your agent, that’s important to the relationship, but you don’t need to be the agent’s friend. Sometimes a friendship can get in the way of a partnership. You want an agent who is going to be professional and get the work done. Personally, I’d rather have an agent who is a little less friendly but does anything to bring results than one who slacks on the work and focuses too much attention on the friendship.

You also want to make sure the agent responds with urgency to your e-mails and phone calls. This isn’t to say that you bombard them with e-mails and calls after sending your query letter, wondering if they liked your work or checked it out already. That’s just annoying. But once they respond to you, if you have questions, they should answer them professionally and not keep you waiting too long. How long is too long? Anything more than 48 hours.

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You should also go to sites like publishersmarketplace.com and see what other books they have recently sold. This will give you an idea as to what genre they are involved in the most, other authors they’ve worked with, etc.

These are just a few factors that should be considered when deciding which agent will be best for you and will surely guide you in the right direction.

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Guest post by Jeff Rivera, who is the founder of http://www.HowtoWriteaQueryLetter.com. With over 100 clients to date, he has a 100% track record of getting at least 10 literary agents to request to read his client’s manuscripts and proposals.