Finding an Agent

Just what is an agent? In essence, an agent is someone who helps to sell your book to publishers. They know the publishers, they know how to talk to them, and they can help "smooth" the way of your book into an acceptance. Think of them as a paid salesperson.

I did hire an agent many years ago, to see how it worked, when I was writing a romance novel. I paid the agent a few hundred dollars. They told me about the book publishers they'd written to about my novel. They said none had accepted the book. After a while, with no results, I ended the relationship.

That's the problem. How can you really know that a given agent is going to do a good job? Just because they sell another person's book to a publisher, there's no guarantee they will sell yours. True, some publishers will only work through agents, for the same reason some companies only hire through headhunters. They don't want the grief and trouble of dealing with millions of bad book proposals. They want someone to "weed" through the applications for them, that they can trust.

Yes, the publishers could hire a staff of 20 people whose sole purpose was to read applications and figure out which were worthy. It's cheaper for them to go with agents - who they don't have to pay but who they trust - and have the writers paying the agents.

So it comes down to (as in most of life) money. The publishers want great, top selling books. They don't want to deal with millions of bad book submissions, the manpower is expensive. So they use a "free" cadre of agents. The writers pay the agents. So the book publishers get - for free - a weeded-down list of only the higher quality books, that they review and examine.

So ... should you hire an agent? I would really try contacting perfectly matching publishers yourself first. You can go through the Writer's Market and find the 5 or so most perfectly matched publishers, that would be perfect for your book. You can hone a perfect query letter and send it to them. You of course have to choose publishers that accept direct submissions, but there are certainly a lot of those out there. I would only resort to an agent if months of serious effort do not get results, and you decide that the only remaining perfect matches are ones that require an agent.

From Terrie - Homeschooling Author
Good agents don't charge up front. They take a percentage of the earnings. If you expect to sell to a small publisher, don't get an agent, because they don't work with them. The very largest, today, frequently work only with agents. Choose your hoped-for publishers, and then check their requirements. I don't use an agent because the type of book I write doesn't sell enough to interest an agent. If you write the sort that could become a best seller, however, an agent might be a good idea.

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