agents
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You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
You are currently reading a thread in /lit/ - Literature
anyone out here got a literary agent? how'd you find them? what was the query process like?
agents are really big on following each other on twitter
I would also like to know.
>>7433788
I think everybody wants to know
>sending out queries
>all no's if I get a reply at all
>keep trying
shit sucks
>>7433086
The short answer is that no one has a literary agent. All literature is turned out by a global ministry of information and the people going on book tours/appearing on the back cover are actors. Literary agencies and publishing houses are elaborate cover systems.
>>7433904
Even if you have a good, marketable manuscript, expect to hear no a LOT.
Most first time writers will tell you they queried around a hundred times, with maybe ten replies. I think Harry Potter was even turned down about 50 times before an agent read it.
I've sent queries out before, wasn't real crazy about the quality of them, got no responses. Over the last year or so, I've done nothing but study query writing. I'm definitely no natural at it, but I'm making progress. Think I might be close to sending an acceptable one out.
>>7433086
Agents are pretty easy to find and contact, actually getting their interest and enticing them is a whole 'nother story.
Anyone submit to any lit mags? Anyone published?
>>7433653
ive noticed this too. my twitter game is weak but seems like i need to learn
>>7433904
correct
>>7434036
sounds right
>>7434047
yeppers
>>7434523
4 ezines here. the dead tree glossies want saleable names only. Playboy, Esquire, Atlantic, New Yorker, you basically have to be handed to them by your MFA leader who is buddies with the fic ed, or have a book in trade paper already.
I had an agent for about a month. It took me 24 tries. Over 2 years. She was never gung ho, told me editors were getting bored with my pages in the second "act" and she was now afraid that though she "got it" the sagging middle would hurt sales, and returned me to the world of the unaligned with a gracious note and phone call.
My touch with immortality.
>>7434801
What are your opinions on self-publishing? It's obviously hard to be distinguished from a good majority of the half-assed ebooks out there.
>>7434855
There is a stopgap in between, called Kindle Singles. It retains a selectivity, is geared to short fiction, and is a vehicle for building a /platform/ of support.
Looking back, I would have gone that rout for my shorts, while working my novel.
Self pub is a lottery ticket. It's greatest weakness if that it foregoes the brutal gauntlet of agent-editor-galleys-marketing plan-tour which separates the mediocre from the good from the great. It's greatest strength is that it identifies the lottery ticket winners who would have been crushed by that exact system.
There are two doors, The door on your right leads back to the drudgery of the NYC system, and the salvation of your credibility for your second project. The door on your left leads to self publishing, to immediate satisfaction, and the end of your ambitions.
