As might be expected of a profession where they rely on
people providing material for them to represent, agents make it very possible
to find them and contact them.
However, here be dragons. There are “agents” out there who
will charge a reading fee. Now, the time of an agent is valuable. They are professionals
and experts in their fields. Clearly their time is valuable. It seems
reasonable that they will want paying. It might initially seem wholly
reasonable that they would charge for their time. Of course, they do charge,
typically about 15% of any profit on sales. When you approach an agent, you are
asking them to give up some of their time in the hope that what you have to
offer will pay them in the long term.
There may be perfectly decent and honest literary agents
that charge reading fees or submission fees. However, there are certainly many “agents”
that have never or rarely spoken with a publisher and make their living reading
submissions by hopeful authors. This is a kind of vanity press but without the
benefit of getting even a limited print run at the end. I did my research and didn’t approach anyone
offering such a deal. A lot of honest agents offer a similar warning on their
websites so it seems that it is a widespread issue and that honest brokers do
not like those that follow this practice.
So, how do you find a reputable agent? Google or another
search engine of your choice will certainly find you agencies. Wikipedia has a list
of them too. As always, if something seems too good to be true, it generally
is. I decided not to talk to agencies that were all about how they could help
me and how much they loved submissions without talking about published writers
that they represent or genres that were of interest to them. Essentially, you
find an agent or agency and then research them.
If they check out then you
approach them.
You can save yourself some time by using a service such as
Agent Hunter (http://www.agenthunter.co.uk/)
which collates a lot of information about agents including what sort of fiction
they like, whether they are looking for clients and so on. The fee for this
seemed modest and so I decided to pay it.
Was this the right approach? Hmmm. I don’t know. Ask me when
I have an agent.
I did my research. I found an agent that I thought would
like the book. I studied the submission guidelines. I read the twitter feeds of agents that had
them. I found someone that I thought would be perfect. I discussed the choice
with my friend.
It was at this point that I made my first mistake. Well, the
first that I knew about anyway. I like to think that I learn from my mistakes. I learned a lot.
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