First entry of the new year. Hooo-RAY! I’m looking forward to the new challenges this year, especially giving the whole ‘signing with a literary agent’ thing another shot.
Once I’m happy with where my two outlines are, my next two goals are to start editing the second Star Brigade novel and then beginning working on signing with a literary agent.
Finding and signing with a literary agent is one of the hardest parts for an author once their novel is written.
When I finished my first book, I did some research on how authors get screwed royally by publishers, especially if they are first time authors. With this in mind, I decided to publish my book via Print-On-Demand. While it was a fun experience to get my book out to the public and get reviews, it was not very lucrative for a number of reasons (pricing, no placement in brick and mortar bookstores, etc.)
Two years later, I decided then to try and sign with a literary agent. One of the reasons why this is so important to any author is that the agent (a good agent, that is) will serve as a buffer and advocate for the author when it comes to the publishing company. They will look out for the author’s best interest when getting deals, and can get your manuscript through avenues that an author might not even know about. Agents also make sure that the author is getting thebest deal possible, which makes sense because the more the author gets paid the more the agent gets paid.
I sent out a dozen or so query letters…and the only responses I got were rejections. Looking back at my query letters today in 2011, I’m not terribly surprised. So for the time being I abandoned the agent route and continued focusing on my second manuscript. But now I’m at a point where writing is a full-blown passion of mine. So I’m going to give this another go, write a better query letter and get it revised as many times as I have to so that I can finally score a literary agent. That’s the goal. Time to make it happen!
Leave a Reply