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

[MAndreas]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.