Many creative writers, honing their craft with one\nor more of Rochdale’s writing groups, will at some time have to consider\nwhether they need to be represented by a literary agent. These days some\npublishing houses will only accept manuscripts from an agent, even if the\nmanuscript is by an as yet unpublished writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, many publishers survive only as imprints of\nhuge conglomerates. The downsizing that has accompanied massive mergers over\nthe past twenty years has resulted in fewer editors, even as publishers churn\nout an ever-increasing number of books. Surviving editors are now so immersed\nin administrative tasks they have to shunt their actual editing work to nights\nand weekends, and have no time to sift through submissions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Literary Agents have become their filtering\nmechanism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ever-decreasing number of imprints still accepting\nun-agented submissions give them minimal priority. It can take more than a year\nto receive a response that will likely be from an intern or an assistant. In\nother words, no matter how good a writer’s manuscript, there will always be an\nauthor with an agent ahead of it in the queue. There are many, many more reputable agents than there were a couple of\ndecades ago, wielding far more power, though there is also an increasing number\nof fraudulent and incompetent agents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These days, though, established agents are\ninterested in writers with no track record of publication and no publishing\ncontract in hand. In fact, most first novel sales, at least to the larger\npublishers, occur through agents. If you wish to sell your first novel to one\nof the big publishers, your efforts are better spent searching for an agent\nthan submitting direct to the few imprints that will consider un-agented work.\nIt can take a long time to find an agent, but once you do, he or she can\ncut editors\u2019 response time to a minimum\u2013and just as important, get your\nmanuscript directly onto the desk of an editor who can give it serious consideration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I currently serve as the literary agent of one yet\nto be published writer; Louis Brierley, well known to these pages. Although I\nnow live here on Lanzarote, I contact UK publishers on his behalf with a\nsynopsis of his work. I then present that work to them in the format they\nrequire, leaving Louis to write his next novel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many creative writers, honing their craft with one or more of Rochdale’s writing groups, will at some time have to consider whether they need to be represented by a literary agent. These days some publishing houses will only accept manuscripts from an agent, even if the manuscript is by an as yet unpublished writer. Today, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[18,17,19],"class_list":["post-40","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary","tag-agents","tag-authors","tag-brierley"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/aata.dev\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}