To Agent or not to Agent?

Once you've written a book and you want to get someone to read it (besides your kid sister) and possibly give you money for your hard work and tears. So what now?

There are plenty of proponents for e-books, self publishing, and doing everything yourself. Should I try to get published with a big publisher? Should I get an agent? Should I submit directly to the publishers? Should I sell my book online and forget about both agents and publishers? Should I publish myself and spend my time selling the book on street corners? Should I start up my own publishing company?

These are some common questions. Though the last two may be less common. Today I'm going to share my views on the agent question. Should you get an agent?

For starters we should figure out what an agent is. The very idea of an agent means someone who does your work for your. A literary agent is someone who will do just that, in theory. Currently a literary agent will go out and represent your book to big publishers. A literary is not giving you a product, they are providing you with a service. In the current market you shouldn't be paying your agent up front. Instead you pay your agent a percentage of the money they get for you (Usually anywhere from 10-15%). In this sense an agent is good because they'll be trying to get more money for your book.

A publisher, on the other hand, is not an agent. A publisher is also a connector, but they aren't just representing you. A publisher is providing a product, the hard bound or electronic version of the book. They are licensing (or purchasing) the right to use your words. With a publisher it's also a joint venture. They want the book to succeed as well. The difference is that the publisher usually pays the writer, you, a portion of what they make off of using your words on their paper. And just like you don't want to give all of your money to the Agent, the publisher doesn't want to give all of their hard earned money to you. Usually the publisher has the upper hand here, so an agent also represents you in bargaining with the publisher.

In both cases, the agent and publisher, one of the things you are paying for is connections. Theoretically you could do all of this yourself, but the publishers and agents are levying their specialization to take the workload, and some of the money, off your plate.

Let's look at it this way. For my chosen genre, sci-fi/fatasy, it is highly recommended to get an agent. Many of the bigger publishers won't accept submissions without agents, and even when the do it goes to a slush pile. If you want to see a movie and you've got 5 to choose from but you've never heard of any of them the choice becomes much easier if you have a friend recommend one of them. If you've taken that friend's recommendations a number of times and been pleased every time then even more so. Now take that list out to 1000 choices and you see what a publisher has to face. As a writer you're like the movie company trying to get the publisher to check out your stuff. A good agent is like the friend that makes the good recommendations. I still send to some publishers, but mostly I'm looking for an agent.**

Why?

For one thing I don't have the same connections. For another I don't have the capitol to print 1,000,000 copies of my book. With the advent of the internet e-book and e-readers I may not need either. That's still up for debate with some heavy hitters on both sides. So the question still stands.

Why an agent?

Well, here's the one thing that I can't get. An opinion. I mean I've got plenty of opinions. But professional validation of my work means a lot to me. An agent who reads and represents books to publishers for a living knows something about what makes a book successful. A publisher who buys and sells books in a desperate gamble to make some money also needs to know something about quality, or else they are soon an ex-publisher.

I can e-publish my book and get validation from the readers (which is the end result I want anyway), but I have to convince a thousand people to read my book and respond. If I can get the half dozen people from agent to publisher to read my book and respond positively then I have professional validation. To me that means the same thing, but I didn't have to wait for 1000 people to find and read my book. Publishers and Agents may make mistakes, but if I have their validation then I can have some idea that I'm on the right track. (Again, this might be undermined by the e-book phenomenon, but I still hold publishers and agents in esteem for now.)

I have currently chosen to pursue publication with a traditional publisher, and I am seeking the representation of an agent. I don't want to send out my work unless it is good. I don't want the whole world to read my book if it doesn't meet a basic level of quality. Don't get me wrong. There are crappy books published both traditionally and as e-books. Proponents of e-books use this to downplay the importance of traditional publishers as gatekeepers. I'm not talking about other books. I want my book to be the best it can be. Could I e-pub? Possibly. That's a question for another post.

**I should of course make the qualification that Agents can also be that bad friend that Publishers duck behind the copier to avoid. Good agents have a good network and publishers that trust their recommendation (and so they will only recommend you if they think your work is worth publishing). Good publishers will only publish something they think will sell. You can be your own agent if you want to go to the conferences, keep up on publishers weekly, make your own connections. It's a personal choice, but I've made mine.