Hello, friends! I hope you've had a good week with all of the things you're doing and just life in general. It was good for me to officially wrap up my classes, and now begin the transition into the new phase of looking for agents and starting my next book. Many of my friends have asked me questions about just what agents do and how they work for you as a writer. So I thought I'd blog a bit about that this week, while also discussing just where to go about gathering info about agents and trying to find the one that is best for you.
So, to start, here's a brief/simplified summary of what agents do and why they are helpful: Before, a writer used to be able to send their submission materials directly to a publishing house. Then, the editors would look through what was commonly called the "slush pile" and find your work and contact you. Of course, this is a bit of a simplified summary, but basically that's how it worked. Today, while some publishing companies still accept what are called "unsolicited manuscripts" when you just send your material in blindly, most no longer accept these, meaning you can't just send your materials in and hope someone will pick up your work. So this is where agents come into play.
Agents provide the link between authors and publishing houses. So instead of sending your materials to a publisher, now you send them to different agencies, hoping that an agent will like your letter and sample and want to see more of your work. If they then like your manuscript, and you both agree that you would like to work with one another, then your agent will be the one to reach out to the different editors at publishing companies and pitch your work. An agent thus serves as your representative, and in the eyes of the publisher, as someone who has pre-approved your work. Having an agent show your work to an editor may not mean it is right for their house or their current list, but it gives them the opportunity to receive a short pitch of the idea from a trusted colleague, rather than the more intensive process of sorting through the submissions themselves.
That's the short summary of what an agent does, but how do you go about getting an agent in the first place? Well, when you're ready to start the process of searching for an agent, checking to see who represents your favorite authors or books that are like the one you have written can be a great place to start. Thanks to social media and author's websites, a lot of this information is online. Authors tend to list their agent's name in their short bio of their Twitter page, or somewhere on their website or blog. Once you've collected a list of agents who represent your kind of work, it's worth checking into and reading the different agency websites to get a deeper idea of just what these agencies focus on, what they are like in terms of working with their authors, and what types of books they are currently looking for. Query Tracker is also a great resource for you to explore, as it allows you to sort through the lists of agents by genre or target age group, as well as providing a direct link to the agency websites, thus taking out a lot of the searching process.
For most people, finding an agent is an important part of the writing process. Of course, there are situations in which you could submit directly to an editor that you've met or established a relationship with, but with the way the publishing world is today, I would say that agents would benefit the majority of us writers out there. Particularly those who have yet to be published.
Putting your work out there can be a daunting task. You never know how many rejections you might receive, but you also never know just who might love your work and want to represent you. I'll be honest and say that while I've been preparing and planning to submit to agents for quite some time, now that I am here and my manuscript is polished and ready to go, I definitely have a fair amount of trepidation going into this. But I think those feelings of fear have more to do with how much I want to get published and less to do with the fear of rejection. Like many others, I know that I have worked so hard and poured myself into these pages, so the hope of them getting published and being read by others is so real that it can get a bit scary.
I personally believe that the best things in life, and the things you want the most, often are quite frightening when they finally appear in front of you. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't go for them, or that they aren't as good as you thought they were. I think this falls somewhere in that category. Searching for an agent could be the beginning of a wonderful journey that leads me to some of my dreams. And it could also be hard and not quite what I would have imagined. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't try and try hard. You have to work for what you want, and you have to stay true to what you love. So hopefully, one day, I'll be able to tell you all about how wonderful it feels when someone decides they want to publish my book. But for right now, the important part is just taking the first step and putting my work out there. So that's what I'm doing. And I hope you'll do the same thing, too.
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