Keep those cards and letters coming :
“Hi Kerry,

I just checked out your website. Nice! Very funny blog.

How did you get your agent, Mary X (currently in the Literary Witness Protection Program)? I just started to look for representation for my first novel, and it is taking just as long as writing the book did. I understand the odds are steep, and I’d like to hear how you succeeded. Any tricks you are willing to share?

Mary S.” (not to be confused with Mary X)

Great question, and a perennial aspiring author favorite. I will attempt to answer it as uniquely as possible, bypassing the same old drivel you can find absolutely everywhere.

First off, “Why an Agent?”

Well, as I’ve said before, there are only about 6 or so major literary publishing houses in America and none of them will deal with unagented authors. None. The same goes for the 2nd and even the 3rd tier. They simply don’t have the human resources to respond to every query or submission that comes over the transom. Agents, good agents who can make sales, can only do so because they have credibility with the publishers. If they took on every single thing sent their way, they would lose all that credibility in an instant. Thus, they are the primary gatekeepers in this industry.

Should you care about being with the Big 6 or their little sisters? Well, consider this: Barnes & Noble and Borders — the brick and mortar stores, not the on-line stuff. Ever see their display windows? That space is “rented out” by the Big Boys. Those round tables when you first come inside? Same thing. If you are with a smaller publisher, you are on those miles of shelves in the back — not primo retail space at all.

So yeah, these guys are the Big Leagues. Are there success stories about writers from smaller houses? Of course. Everything I say, there are exceptions. But as Damon Runyon once said, “The race may not go to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.
But that’s the way I want to bet on it.”

So my advice is to at least try to get yourself a literary agent. Failing at that, you can always slip down a few tiers and still get published, but why not try first for the brass ring?

Here’s a common one: “When should I get an agent?” This is not as dumb as it sounds. In olden days, a writer could draft a few decent chapters on his Selectric and show them to an agent. Not today. If you’re dealing with fiction or memoir, you must have a completed manuscript or forget it. Don’t waste anyone’s time, including your own.

Non-fiction? Slightly different. A Non-Fiction Book Proposal — short definition of this is “big, long, detailed outline” — is the primary device. Works of non-fiction are still known to get agented without being completed. But not novels (fiction).

So you’ve written the Great American Novel and now you want an agent. Great. Where do you find one?

There are a million books listing agents, but here’s the rub — in this fast-paced world in which we live, that book you just bought for $34.95 is already out of date. How quickly do you think you’ll be deep-sixed if you query someone who has moved or has changed agencies? Faster than the speed of light.

I recommend the Internet, but even there, lots of things are incredibly old and unreliable.

The best site I’ve found is run by my ol’ pal Gerard Jones and entitled Everyone Who’s Anyone.

It is the Wikipedia of the literary world. It lists every agent there is. Its information is constantly updated not only by its webmaster, but by normal schlubs who are in the know.

Now, armed with this plethora of invaluable data, what should you do? Write a query letter. Yeah, don’t even bother sending out your manuscript or attaching it in an e-mail. It will cost you big bucks and/or it will cost you friends. You must ASK for permission to send an agent something. That’s how the game is played.

The query letter is as important as the novel you just wrote. You could be John O’Hara, but if you can’t write a decent query letter, no one will ever know — you’ll be a tree falling in the forest.

In my next post, I will teach you what I’ve learned about writing a great query letter.

Peace,

Kerry