GLA vs. Writer’s Market

Q. I queried an agent back in April using Writer's Market to find her. Her listing no longer exists on Writer's Market and she has requested a partial read of my manuscript. What does it mean when an agent is no longer listed with Writer's Market?
- Sonya

A. Great question. Writer's Market is filled with all kinds of markets for writers, such as magazines, newspapers, and agents. Because there are so mny listings that can be in that book, they only put portions of each section in the book. For example, you will see a thousand listings for magazines, but more exist in our database - we just couldn't fit them in the book! The same goes for agents. There is a certain page count set aside for agents in WM, and so we do our best to fill those pages with great agents open to new writers, and vary the listings from year to year. That said, we can only fit about 75 agents or so in the WM printed book, when we have many, many more agents in the database.
So - just because an agent is removed from the printed version of WM does not mean they're off the map or a potential scammer. We're just varying the listings from year to year.