You've written your manuscript. It's as good as it's going to be. It's time to get it out into the real world – and you need an agent.
Many mainstream publishers no longer read work that isn’t represented, which is where the literary agent comes in. Find yourself a good agent and they’ll use their experience to match your work with the best publishing house, and push to get the best deal for you.
If you’re new to the writing game, these are my five pointers, based on my experiences of the industry (others will have their own tips but these are mine and I'm sticking to them) – for finding yourself an agent:
- Know your writing By this I mean, consider what you have written. What genre is it? Which other authors' work do you admire? Try to match your title to an agent who is known for the sort of work you are aiming to get published.
- Be as original as can be
You’ll need your own voice if you want to be taken on by an agent, so don’t try too hard to emulate works already on their list. There’s a fine line between drawing inspiration from published authors and a lack of originality! – and it can be frustrating for an agency to receive imitations of the style and tone of their bestsellers.
- Speed read the thank-yousA quick way to track down an author's agent is to look at the dedication and thanks pages in their books - they normally mention their agent (particularly if theirs is a solid working relationship!)
- Choose your preferred style
Agencies vary in size, location and personal style. Although agents work happily with clients at any distance, consider how easy it would be to get to their offices. Would you rather be represented by a larger agency who has more services 'inhouse' - such as the ability to sell your work abroad, or a one person band, where you might develop a closer relationship?
- Refer to the experts. Use the Writers’ & Artists' Yearbook as a source of agents to approach (it carries a complete listing of all the UK agents you could hope for) as well as further advice from articles written by literary agents.
Finally, remember that if you sign up with an agency they should never ask you for money (read our post on vanity publishing vs self-publishing). But they may well suggest your work needs some editorial help, and will either make their own suggestions or recommend a professional who you would pay directly.
Good luck!
I am a first time author and have written a short childrens story and would like to send it off to an agent to get a professional opinion on how my story looks. I have found a few agnets which welcome childrens stories, but i am unsure whether my story will be worth sending in. It has just over 850 words and no chapters or great structure. It is intended for young children and, in an ideal world, I can see it having some colourful pictures on the pages. I was just wondering if anyone could give me any advice on whether you think my story will be worth sending in, without reading it obviously. I am confident that the story itself is good enough for children to read, but the quantity may not be up to standards.
I have a book being published by a vanity publisher as POD. It is a long, technical treatise for thinking youngsters across the globe who wondering what is happening to our civilization. It provides understanding of the fundamentals of what went wrong. I settled for a vanity publisher as this is my first book and it is most unlikely to sell well in the near future. I had tried to interest mainstream publishers without any success. A literary agent pointed me to this publisher. I now know that I will have to arrange promotion/marketing to supplement what the publisher will be doing. I am an Australian and the publisher is in the US. However, the book is intended for a global audience. I expect that in due course there will be a significant market in countries like China and India. I would welcome suggestions about marketing/promotion for this type of book. My finances are limited but they can probably stretch into this area if necessary.
Having spent lots of time getting details of agents from different sources like the yearbook and other writing sites, I researched each one by looking at their websites and looking at the clients that they were agents for. I also looked at how successful they had been for the client and then emailed several with a query and all have replied very positively to say they would take a look at the manuscript.
Recently I read an interview with an agent who talked about what they were looking for and the current trends which I believed was my work in progress, so once again I sent an email query and several days later came the reply that she would most certainly like to see it when it is ready. I can honestly say this gave me the most fantastic boost and I think if you at least do your research then you have nothing to lose sending an email query.