# Wondering- how many of you are looking for agents right now?



## MAndreas (Mar 18, 2012)

I was just wondering how many folks on here are actively looking for an agent, or plan to in the near future?
I'm in the midst of the rejection circuit and wanted to know who else I can whine to .


----------



## thetraveler (Mar 18, 2012)

Well, I'm finishing up final draft work at the end of this month, then going to spend April editing and/or shuffling my story, and then starting the 1st of May, I am going to start sending in query letters.


----------



## zizban (Mar 18, 2012)

I didn't need an agent for my publisher so I guess I by-passed that.

You can whine here. Just keep writing your next book while you wait for replies.


----------



## pmkava (Mar 19, 2012)

zizban said:


> I didn't need an agent for my publisher so I guess I by-passed that.
> 
> You can whine here. Just keep writing your next book while you wait for replies.


who is your publisher and why didn't you need an agent? also is your publisher looking for writers?


----------



## MAndreas (Mar 19, 2012)

Cool thetraveler- good luck on wrapping it up! Thanks Zizban, but for me I am going the agent route- for now anyway  (although one of my books is currently under submission with a traditional publisher that ONLY looks at agented works...unless you meet them at a conference and they ask for it ).  As for writing the next one, already there .  I seem to be a writer-aholic...I always have at least one, usually two projects going in various levels of completion.

pmkava- not sure who Zizban has but both TOR and Baen take non-agented subs.

Ok, hopefully more "actively/future submitting" folks will pop up- venting and whining is good for the soul- and doing it on my blog isn't a good idea .


----------



## zizban (Mar 19, 2012)

My publisher is Booktrope. Booktrope is a small ebook publisher so an agent won't be of any help here. No money for them to make form it. Booktrope is closed to submissions right now


----------



## zizban (Mar 19, 2012)

If you want help finding an agent I recommend checking in at AbsoluteWrite forums: Absolute Write Water Cooler - Powered by vBulletin


----------



## Telcontar (Mar 19, 2012)

Been submitting for around a year now. 

Now giving serious thought to self-publishing the thing, what with how the ebook market is opening up.


----------



## zizban (Mar 19, 2012)

There are tons of ebook publishers. You can try Barking Rain Press: Barking Rain Press | Books with Bite!

Many of the same people behind Virtual Tales run the place and I'd submit to them myself except I have to write four more books for Booktrope.


----------



## MAndreas (Mar 20, 2012)

Thanks Zizban- I had thought of checking out Absolute Write just for another resource.  I currently use Query Tracker, Agent Query, and up until I cancelled it two months ago, Publisher's Market (and of course now I'm thinking I may re-up my PM account....$20 a month, but you do get to see what's going on "inside").

For anyone interested, there is also a free Publisher's Lunch.


----------



## Devor (Mar 20, 2012)

zizban said:


> There are tons of ebook publishers. You can try Barking Rain Press: Barking Rain Press | Books with Bite!
> 
> Many of the same people behind Virtual Tales run the place and I'd submit to them myself except I have to write four more books for Booktrope.



What are the benefits of finding an epublisher over self-publishing online?


----------



## Telcontar (Mar 20, 2012)

The usual trade-offs I imagine. They take care of getting cover art done, book formatting, various other clerical tasks, for some percentage.


----------



## The Dark One (Mar 21, 2012)

Devor said:


> What are the benefits of finding an epublisher over self-publishing online?



The benefits are many, on one condition...that you use a quality epublisher.

There is a vast ocean of self published work out there, some of it good, most of it less than good (or at least unrefined). Publishers, whether they be traditional publishers setting up ebook imprints, or new online only publishers, will style themselves as islands of quality in the vast ocean - places readers can come where they can expect a minimum level of authorial talent, editing and production values. And this will be the case as long as publishers exercise good judgment in their commissioning, have a proper editing process, invest in decent production values and have a good marketing budget. The minute they drop their standards, their island will become indistinguishable from the rest of teh ocean and will sink beneath the waves.

The benefits for the writer are that your work will undergo a professional production process, will look really good, but most importantly...a lot more people will actually know it exists if you are with a decent publisher.


----------



## MichaelSullivan (Mar 21, 2012)

Telcontar said:


> The usual trade-offs I imagine. They take care of getting cover art done, book formatting, various other clerical tasks, for some percentage.



Any "good publisher" will provide editing (both developmental and copy editing) a lot of the e-book only publishers are taking just about anything and putting it up "as is" which I think if they are going to do that - you might asw well self-publish.  Industry standard for big-six is 25% to author, 75% kept by them. The small e-publishers usually are doing better with a 40/60 or 50/50 split. To translate a book from manuscript to ebook is super simple (can be learned in an afternoon and takes about 1 - 2 hours per book).  Cover designs can be found for $150 - $250.  So if all they are going to do is translate, make a cover and post - it's not worth giving them half the profits.  But...if they are going to do marketing and editing - then yeah I suggest going with them.


----------



## MichaelSullivan (Mar 21, 2012)

Back on topic...I had an agent who shopped my books for about a year.  Her husband became ill and she left the business. I then went to a small press - so didn't need an agent.  Once I started getting foreign offers I got an agent specifically for my foreign language deals and then as the books gained in popularity  I asked her if she wanted to represent in the US and she did.

Since then my agent has negotiated:

 A six-figure US deal
 Elven foreign language deals
 Bookclub versions
 Audio versions
 Got me a media agent for TV/movie rights (head of book-to-film division of ICM)

Some say not to use agents, just use an IP lawyer, but my agent works at finding new revenue sources for my works (such as game developers) whereas an IP lawyer will review the contract in front of them, but they aren't out there finding new gigs for your writing.


----------



## zizban (Mar 21, 2012)

I am too lazy and/or not talented enough to self publish. I have, but only a short story. Let someone else do the work.


----------



## Rikilamaro (Mar 21, 2012)

MAndreas said:


> I was just wondering how many folks on here are actively looking for an agent, or plan to in the near future?
> I'm in the midst of the rejection circuit and wanted to know who else I can whine to .



I'm in the thinking about finding an agent stage.  Go ahead and whine, it's good for the soul!


----------



## Lewis.Keating (Mar 22, 2012)

I just recently published my first fantasy novel in paperback. A helpful tip I received when it comes to finding an agent is to publish your work any way you can. eBooks, self-publishing, small independent publishers, etc. This way you build a “Writer’s Resume” and you will have a piece of work to showcase to any potential agent. Plus your hard work and dedication to your story will be reflected by you and help motivate the agent to assist an any way possible.


----------



## Kevin O. McLaughlin (Mar 22, 2012)

I believe we may be going back to an earlier mode, when it comes to agents.

For the last decade or so, the normal path has been "find an agent, who then tries to sell your book"; otherwise, you had to "settle" for a small press.

But it's gotten harder and harder to get an agent these days. Agents are forcing incredibly nasty contracts on writers. I don't know a single writer who's been working consistently over the last twenty years without at least one story of an agent who exploited or tried to exploit them.

That's the result of agents becoming a "mandatory" part of the process. Whenever a profession which is unlicensed, unregulated, has no special training required, and no oversight of any sort becomes "mandatory" to an industry, you have the potential for issues. Literary agents today have those issues in spades.

But I see things improving. Writers don't need agents to self publish and earn a decent living. Now, suddenly, agents need writers more than writers need agents. Which is how things ought to be, really.

So I see things shifting back toward the old standard, where agents were people highly successful writers hired to help them manage the business end of their career once they business got too complex for them to easily manage on their own.

My wild-ass guess for the future looks something like this:
- All writers will start off self publishing or publishing through some sort of "collective" that vaguely resembles a small press.
- Writers who achieve high levels of success this way will hire agents to help them manage rights sales to other venues.
- Publishers who survive will have radically different skill-sets from what we see today, and will be experts at taking writers who have already built successful fan bases and taking them to the "next level" through mass marketing, media exposure, and a powerful focus on marketing to readers.


----------



## MAndreas (Mar 23, 2012)

LOL!  Thanks Rikilamaro.  WHINE!!!  Sorry, just getting annoyed at the "non responders" (aka agents for whom designing a bot softwware to even send out a form "no thanks email" is too much- so they just don't respond. I was doing my subs in waves (to keep my sanity) and wanted to wait until I'd heard from all of my first wave....two frelling non-responders are on there. 

Of course I could just be stalling to hold off sending more submissions....nah .


----------



## MAndreas (Mar 23, 2012)

Michael- ok, I wanna be you when I grow up!  (well aside from the gender issue...and we're probably close in age...but you know what I mean!)  That's great that you were able to find such a great agent- that's what I need.  Someone who loves my work as much, if not more, than I do .


----------



## Rikilamaro (Mar 24, 2012)

MAndreas said:


> LOL!  Thanks Rikilamaro.  WHINE!!!  Sorry, just getting annoyed at the "non responders" (aka agents for whom designing a bot softwware to even send out a form "no thanks email" is too much- so they just don't respond. I was doing my subs in waves (to keep my sanity) and wanted to wait until I'd heard from all of my first wave....two frelling non-responders are on there.
> 
> Of course I could just be stalling to hold off sending more submissions....nah .



Persistence is the name of the game.

Also, I want to be Michael when I grom up too, but the gender thing may be a problem.


----------



## MAndreas (Mar 25, 2012)

Ah too true, I just need to be more stubborn than they are.  Yeah- gender issue with being just like Michael would be a problem for me too- even though I originally wrote "genre"  .

That being said...today I'll pull more targets off the waiting list and send out more subs...SIGH. I hate this part...hate hate hate it.

I'm thinking of having subs running for two books at once (because the pain of rejections from one book at a time just isn't enough!)  I wanted to return to submitting my fantasy book, but then an editor requested the Space Opera one, so I've been taking advantage of being able to put "so & so editor here has requested the full mss" in the query.  But appearantly SF/space opera books aren't selling right now...per many agents. 

SIGH- any of you running submissions for more than one book at a time? (separate letters and spaced out obviously ) Got any tips?


----------



## MichaelSullivan (Mar 26, 2012)

MAndreas said:


> Michael- ok, I wanna be you when I grow up!  (well aside from the gender issue...and we're probably close in age...but you know what I mean!)  That's great that you were able to find such a great agent- that's what I need.  Someone who loves my work as much, if not more, than I do .



Yes, I'm very pleased with my agent. Many have very formal relationships with their - and the "agent contracts" are usually more slanted toward the agent then the author (even though they work for you - go figure).  Me and my agent don't have a contract - which I really like - but some people may not be comfortable in such an arrangement.


----------



## The Dark One (Mar 29, 2012)

Kevin O. McLaughlin said:


> My wild-ass guess for the future looks something like this:
> - All writers will start off self publishing or publishing through some sort of "collective" that vaguely resembles a small press.
> - Writers who achieve high levels of success this way will hire agents to help them manage rights sales to other venues.
> - Publishers who survive will have radically different skill-sets from what we see today, and will be experts at taking writers who have already built successful fan bases and taking them to the "next level" through mass marketing, media exposure, and a powerful focus on marketing to readers.



Pretty much my view also, with the addition that online publishing will be an increasingly huge part of the equation, with books progressing to paperback as they become viable to do so.

I actually have an agent, who just happens to be one of the biggest in Australia. There are good and bad aspects to this. The good is that if she walks into a publishers with my ms it stands a 50000 times better chance of being accepted than if I send it myself. The bad side is that I have to wait for her to do things in her own time - her big clients make her lots of money so they get the lion's share of her attention. I have to wait for the scraps and it represents a major handbrake on my efforts.

In all honesty, I think there are so many opportunities now that you probably don't need an agent. But I'll keep mine for the present.


----------

