Today’s post is written by regular contributor Dr John Yeoman.
To get a novel published today you need an agent. Of course. But why? It wasn’t always thus. When I began writing books 40 years ago I sent my ms directly to publishers. Provided I’d observed the proper rituals – double spacing, one side only, return postage enclosed, etc – I could be sure of getting back a signed personal reply within three weeks.
Few agents existed then and authors were advised to ignore them. Why pay 15% of your earnings to a middle man, who’d do little more than check your contract, when you could go direct? Happy days!
Today, only a handful of mainstream publishers will accept an unsolicited ms directly from an author. Agents guard the doors. And they’re overwhelmed by newbies. In fact, a whole new industry is about to emerge – the agent’s agent. First, you’ll have to impress a literary ‘scout’ who knows an agent, who might recommend you to their friend.
Is the traditional publishing route worth it?
Needless to say, you could walk away from all that nonsense, self-publish your novel like everyone else and work 18 hours a day to promote it. Your life will become a round of blog tours and social networking. You will become an habitué of Goodreads and AuthorsDen. You’ll discover, painfully, that paid-for advertising does not work for fiction. (Nor does spamming your book at Google+ and Facebook.)
But unless you have the sales skills of John Locke or the manic energy of J A Konrath – authors who each sold more than a million ebooks by their own efforts – you’ll be lucky to shift more than a few hundred copies.
What’s the remedy?
The publishing industry is in meltdown. However, for an author who just wants to write not hustle, the traditional route still has its attractions. Your books appear in bookshops (what few remain). Your name is sacralized by a respected publisher. (There’s more clout in having Transworld behind you than an unknown indie house.) Reviews appear in trusted journals. Even bad reviews are better than none. At least, you’re being noticed.
You’ll have ‘arrived’ as an author. And your local writing group will offer you $200 plus a free lunch to tell their members how you did it. Success!
So how do you find an agent?
The textbooks are right, up to a point, when they suggest:
1. Study those authors in your genre whom you admire.
2. Locate their agent. A Google search “[author]” + agent often works.
3. Check the agent’s website for their terms of submission. Not all agents accept new authors and many have quirky requirements.
4. Note the agents that accept email submissions. Emails are likely to be acknowledged faster. Hard copy is for masochists.
And email them your cover letter, terse synopsis (1500 words max) and first chapter(s) (say, 6000 words max).
All six agents at once? Yes. Multiple submissions are the norm today, although agents hate them. But it can be argued that agents have only themselves to blame for being dilatory in the past. Who can afford to wait six months to receive a rejection slip from agent #1 before approaching agent #2?
Is that all there is to it? No! Your submission will still be binned, unread, unless the first paragraph of your cover letter is exquisitely right. How do you do that? Start with a very personalised introduction.
Here’s a secret that few new authors knew.
Attend a literary event, it doesn’t matter what. Check that it will be attended by agents who handle fiction, it doesn’t matter who. Ask to be directed to the most famous agent in the room. Ask that grand person “who are the best agents in [New York] for [historical fiction] right now, would you say?” Relieved that you’re not going to pitch them, the agent might trot out three good names. Find another agent, and another, and repeat the question.
You can now truthfully write to a select list of agents along these lines: “The agent [Ann Brown] personally suggested that I approach you because…” You’ll have overcome the first, and most important hurdle. Your cover letter will get read.
What happens then depends on the quality of your work and the professionalism of your presentation. But you have a chance.
Is this obvious wisdom?
No. Agents will tell you that 99% of new authors spam them with “Dear Sir or Madame”-type submissions. They’ve taken no trouble to choose an agent or justify, thoughtfully, their choice. Those submissions move to the Delete folder at the speed of light. Any personal introduction is better than a cold call.
Does it work?
I used that strategy several years ago and had three agents vying to represent me. Which did I choose? None. Instead of finishing my novel, I went off to get a PhD in creative writing. Maybe that was not the best career choice but at least I’d found a way to get an agent. Three of them! That might have posed a problem. Which do I choose? But it’s the sort of problem all new authors should have…
I’m going to file this tidbit away for when I need it. It’s funny, but I always assumed that I would self publish any books I read. And, I just realized why… I assumed that I would always get rejected. Not sure why, but thats what I thought. Anyway, I can’t not do something out of fear, so I think I just might give the traditional route a chance and see what happens!
Kim, you could always do both. Prepare one novel for the traditional agent route and another that you self-publish. If your self-published novel takes off, you won’t need an agent. Publishers will come knocking on your door! That’s what Amanda Hocking did…
Won’t be able to get to a conference for a while, but the reminder about the personal introduction is appreciated!
–Ceejae
I did everything you suggested except attend the literary conference;well, if there is one close to home I may just do that.
However, I have written in every literary style, genre and for every age group, fiction and non fiction. The only missing type was a self help book which is going to be “Letters to Literary Agents, many Avatars,” So far I have twenty five, written in different ways, a different cover letter and a different synopsis and concept note for each one. Looks like energy never gets wasted, it just manifests itself in another form.
Excellent advice, John. I love self-publishing, since it stretches my wings in so many areas. But I think I probably will give the traditional route a go for the experience. Writer’s Digest West is coming to my town this fall and I’ve been thinking about doing the pitch slam. As an introvert, I like your idea much better!
Yes, Debra, that idea does work. Just don’t do what I do. I spilled wine on an agent at a festival (truly, it was an accident). And that initiated a discussion. You could always try passing him/her a peanut?
Dr Yeoman
Many thanks for telling the truth as it is – however, painful the truth is.I had to pay a substantial sum of money to gain the same knowledge from expensive week-end courses. I find the ‘personalised’ covering letters get much better results than merely dear sir/madam letters. I’ve also now leaned the hard way to get to know 1/2 literary agents at every opportunity at literary festivals, week-end courses, book-signing ceremonies at local bookshops etc. Your post will surely help many aspiring and novice writers, like myself, to conquer the first step to publishing their precious works. Thank you again for your post. Arun Debnath, London
Thanks, Arun. It’s a sad truth but a personal introduction will always open the door. Of course, the door being opened. Your work has to be excellent as well!
Sounds fine, but there is a huge problem with this. Even when a traditional publisher publishes your book, they still expect you to do all the promotion.
Ann, you’re right. And that’s why so many authors have gone the self-publishing route. Why do all that work for a fatuous 15%? That said, the virtue of having a novel published in the traditional way is that you have kudos as an author that reaches far beyond Goodreads, AuthorsDen and the like. Until the self-publishing route is fully accepted – and it’s happening – and we have credible online review sites in place to appraise self-pub’d fiction – and that’s starting too – the author who goes it alone will not escape the stigma of the vanity press.
For example, when I was running creative writing conferences at my university, just two years ago, my guest speakers were always those who had appeared under an established imprint. A self-pub’d author would have been unthinkable. In five years time? Who knows.
Those worries will be over once the industry has melted down and taken a new shape. But right now it’s an issue.
So you’re suggesting that a writer begin what is possibly the most important professional relationship of his career with manipulation and borderline dishonesty? What happens when they call up the other agent and ask whether they recommended you and what they think of you?
Alex, I’m bemused by your question. Where is the dishonesty? Where the manipulation? If an agent openly recommends an author to approach another agent – which was my suggestion – the author is entitled to say that they were thus recommended. If agent A calls agent B and asks ‘did you recommend this person?’ agent B will say ‘Yes’. Because it’s true. And that’s the way it’s often done. Ethically and openly. Please do read my post again!
When you approach subject A and ask for a list of “top agents” do you say, “And by the way can I use your name as a personal recommendation with these people?” And when you write to subject B do you say, “Subject A, who really doesn’t know me and has never seen my work mentioned your name to me in passing?” If you say “A suggested I contact you” you’re implying that he knows you, knows something about your work, and thinks you’d be a good fit. Now, maybe you’re scrupulous about all this, but the way you lay it out in your article sounds at least mildly deceptive. It would be interesting to email your article to top editors and publishers and ask how many of them would be possible being used as a reference on such tenuous contact.
Yes, it would be interesting, Alex. It might also be interesting to discover how many editors, publishers and agents have themselves used a similar method when approaching people of potential influence. There’s nothing deceptive in it, provided one is scrupulous in one’s language. It’s not confined to literature. It’s how the world works.
John,
Thank you for this post! While I was aware of many of these things since I took the time (and money) to work with pretty much literary scouts, I understood the personalization piece. The going to literary events was not a surprise what was a surprise is the approach in asking for top agents in your book’s field — tres chic!
At first I read it as deceptive but very smart. After reading your responses re: this question I fully understood that the world is a complex place and you move accordingly. You can also see if you could extend the convo a bit with Agent A and see if they would be willing to hear your elevator pitch so that you can lead in with Agent B that you pitched it to Agent A and they suggested Agent B would be a better fit. This way, there is no deception and since it is at a literary event Agent A knows he’s going to be ‘used’ in many more unscrupulous ways by people that NEVER approached him/her.
Thank you John for this excellent piece! I will get up my nerve and attend a writers’ conference coming next month and go to the Agent Pitch Slam (I’ll kill the butterflies in my tummy on the way there!) 🙂
What a great way to use “clever truth”. Does this apply the same way if one knows an established author?
I write nonfic and am already published, but a friend of mine writes fantasy/sci-fi and is not. Both of us know a (very) established author in suspense. Does the name dropping work when it’s an author, or izzit better to get a well known agent like you suggest here?
Kurt, any introduction is better than a cold call and one from an established author – ideally an author who is already represented by the agent in question – might work as well as one from an agent. Possibly better…
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Great tips, John. Many writers meet potential agents at conferences. Other places to find agents: I like agentquery.com. I also check every book I love for the name of the agent in the acknowledgements (versus doing the online search). And then there’s the friend route: talk to those you know if they’d introduce you to their agents.
Thanks, Rochelle. Another good place to find UK agents is: agenthunter.co.uk
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