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Why do books with contrived plots and tired characters fly off of the shelves of book stores while a publisher won’t even open your masterpiece? Because a crappy book backed by a literary agent will go a thousand times farther than a masterpiece without an agent. .

The first step in the publication process is to not write your book. STOP the presses! What? The goal is to get a book published not to write a book. Start with the end in mind not the beginning.

The second step is to find an agent. I am sure it happens, but I don’t know anyone who has been published without landing a literary agent. If you have already created your work of genius, don’t fret all is not lost.

You need an agent because the publishing world is a closed community. Publishers only accept books through specified channels, namely agents. Publishers let agents dig the diamonds out of the dregs people write every day. Getting an agent to support your work is your best avenue to publication. Sending a manuscript to a publisher is the quickest road to rejection.

Publishers consider manuscripts only after agents with solid track records recommend them. This makes agents picky about who they work with. It is not easy to land an agent, but once you do they will work tirelessly to get your book published. In return agents generally get 15% of the deal. Before you go ballistic at the thought of parting with a small fortune, remember 85% of something is a whole lot more than 100% of nothing.

I will talk about what to send an agent in more detail in part two of this series. For now remember agents don’t want to read your 500 page manuscript, they want to read a one page query letter that summarizes your idea, tells them who you are, and explains why you are qualified to write this book. The query letter is important because if you can’t write a good one page letter how can an agent trust you to write an entire novel?

Read the 2009 Guide To Literary Agents by Chuck Sambuchino to learn more about how to find a literary agent and stay tuned for part two of this series.

Jacob

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Tags: Getting Published, Literary Agent

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 8:50 am and is filed under How To, Publish. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.