Literary Agents
What Do They Do? Do
You Really Need One?
by Melissa Alvarez
You’ve finished your manuscript and are ready
to submit your romance fiction novel to a publisher. Do you need a
literary agent or should you submit the work to a publisher on your own?
The first question you should answer is if you have
finished the manuscript. If this is your first novel you should have
finished a complete work before you submit to anyone. Neither an agent
nor a publisher will take a chance on a first time novelist who hasn’t
finished a book. If this is your scenario, sit down and finish the thing
before you go any further.
If you have finished that work, make sure it shines
before you present it to a publisher or agent. Don’t submit sloppy
work or any materials that are less than crisp, clean and professional.
Have it critiqued to make sure you have kept your story going, that it
has a beginning, middle and end. Even if you have finished the work your
writing ability must shine through in the finished manuscript.
What do you need to know about a literary agent? First
they typically earn most of their income from book manuscripts. The
percentage they receive is between ten and fifteen percent of all
domestic sales of your work. Their job is to sell your book to a
publisher, to represent you and your work. But before a literary agent
will do this you must prove to them that your work is salable and that
lies within the pages of your novel.
But do you REALLY need a literary agent? It depends
upon the publishing house that you targeted. Harlequin Silhouette is the
largest publisher of category romance that works with both agented and
unagented authors. Their contract is standard and there’s not much an
agent can negotiate. If you’ve targeted Harlequin Silhouette then you
don’t necessarily need an agent. Many unagented writers have made a
career writing for this publishing house.
Some of the other publishing houses will only work
with agented writers. Why? All large publishing houses (Harlequin
Silhouette included) receive hundreds of thousands of manuscripts in any
given year. Some publishers only want to deal with authors who have
proven themselves to an agent first. If an agent has accepted your work,
then the publisher knows it’s gone through at least one screening and
that the agent feels the work is salable. Otherwise, the agent
wouldn’t have taken it on.
What should you do? First read the publishers
guidelines to see if they accept unagented authors. Next look at your
work. Is it a 55,000-word category romance that you could sell to a
publishing house that accepts unagented authors? Or is it a 150,000 word
single title that would fit better at a publishing house that handles
lengthy single title works or mainstream romance fiction? Your answer to
these questions will let you know if you should search for an agent or
give it a try yourself. It’s all in the publisher’s guidelines. Make
sure you read them.
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