Do You Need an Agent?
Are you a poet?
If you are a poet, you do not need an agent. Poets submit and publish work in literary magazines and then, when they have enough for a chapbook or a book length collection, usually submit these to a contest or literary press, which does not require an agent. Major poets sometimes have agents, especially if they also write prose books or have a big online following, but most working poets do not.
Are you a prose writer?
If you are a prose writer, you may need an agent. Read on to find out when this applies to you.
Do you want to publish with a traditional, Big Five publisher?
If you want to publish adult or YA fiction with one of the Big Five publishers—Penguin/Random House, Hachette, Macmillan, Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster—or one of their many, many imprints you need an agent. That’s because these publishers are closed to un-agented material. They do not read it. If you want to publish with one of these houses, you need an agent to get past the gate.
Do you want to publish with an independent, university, or non-traditional press?
I’m not going to lie, some of the bigger independent publishers outside the Big Five still require an agent to get past the gate. Check their websites. But many medium-sized independent and non-traditional presses do not. That’s partly because these presses want to discover new writers and are less concerned with the bottom line. However, they also pay very little to no advance. Advances are how agents make money: they typically receive 15% of everything their authors make. Presses that pay little to no advance can’t really require writers be agented because agents won’t make enough money for their effort.
Do you publish children’s fiction?
Agents are still important in children’s lit, but there are some children’s houses that will read unagented submissions. In addition, children’s lit has a network of regional and national conferences at which editors from Big Five publishing houses frequently appear to look for new writers, and this is one way to get past the gate there. That is, if Jane Doe, editor at Big Press Five, speaks at the Northern Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Conference, she might tell everyone at her talk, “If you submit to me at Big Press Five for the next three months and explain in the cover letter you were at this conference, your work will get a read.” Note there is usually a time limit on such an offer. In addition, this doesn’t guarantee that your manuscript will get read by the editor. It might first get read by her intern or assistant, which is almost always the case with or without an invitation, but it will get a read. That’s why, if you write any kind of children’s fiction, these conferences are not only a great way to find out the latest information about publishing but also a great way to network with agents and publishers.
Do you want to self-publish?
If your goal is to self-publish, you do not need an agent. You will likely have to spend money on professional editing and book design as well as promotion, and you will need to work extremely hard to understand the production and marketing processes. Only a small number of self-published writers have met with significant sales success. But you will not need an agent to self-publish.
Content by Stephanie Vanderslice
Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0
Go to Table of Contents page