questions for authors

[DV81]

1. what literary agency has the most success rate?

2. what is the average word count required of a novel?

3. most important Q- should one go with a vanity press or regular publisher? What if someone has designed a book cover?


Laurel, if this is not the right forum, move this thread.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

1. what literary agency has the most success rate?

Ostensively, the William Morris Agency.

2. what is the average word count required of a novel?

Depends on who's requiring, but between always more than 60,000 (and in case of first works, hardly ever more than 100,000)

3. most important Q- should one go with a vanity press or regular publisher? What if someone has designed a book cover?

A regular publisher, obviously. And regular published book have covers too, so the answer is still the same. All you need now is a regular publisher interested in the book (and the cover).

 

[Rumple Foreskin]

Ostensively, the William Morris Agency.


Depends on who's requiring, but between always more than 60,000 (and in case of first works, hardly ever more than 100,000)


A regular publisher, obviously. And regular published book have covers too, so the answer is still the same. All you need now is a regular publisher interested in the book (and the cover).

What Lauren said: Game, Set, Match.

I'll add one thing, the odds of a first-time, unknown, fiction author getting on with WM is mind boggling.

Rumple Foreskin

 

[CopyCarver]

What Lauren said: Game, Set, Match.

I'll add one thing, the odds of a first-time, unknown, fiction author getting on with WM is mind boggling.

Rumple Foreskin

Absolutely true. In fact, the odds of a first-time, unknown, fiction author getting accepted by any legitimate agent range from dismal to none. It's probably easier for a newcomer to get published than to get an agent.
(With rare exceptions, agents who do welcome submissions from unknowns will be have 146 imaginative cons to extract cash from your pocket.)

 

[Guest]

 

[cantdog]

Ostensively, the William Morris Agency.

ostensibly.. I know everyone says it like that, but it's really not.

 

[DV81]

Absolutely true. In fact, the odds of a first-time, unknown, fiction author getting accepted by any legitimate agent range from dismal to none. It's probably easier for a newcomer to get published than to get an agent.
(With rare exceptions, agents who do welcome submissions from unknowns will be have 146 imaginative cons to extract cash from your pocket.)

so how does an unknown writer get their first story published?
I went to Borders and looked at the Writers Market book for 2007 and I plan to send manuscripts to the big contenders- Bantam, Dell, Penguin, etc.
I would choose a vanity press only because I created a cover design which is fitting for the material.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

You don't want to go with a vanity press because publishing is all about marketing. Repeat: publishing is all about marketing. In a vanity press you'll do your own marketing, which means you'll sell copies to your family and friends and that will be it. Your book will just sit there with the hundreds of thousands of other self-published books, cover or no. No one will even know it's there.

I admire your optimism in sending stories to big publishders, but (1) they won't touch short stories, and (2) they won't read anything that doesn't come to them via an agent they already know. Most big label publishers deal only with agents now. They don't have the time to read unsolicited manuscripts. They rely on agents to do the screening for them.

So how do you get an agent?

Start publishing for money wherever you can, preferrably novels. (Vanity and Print-On-Demand outfits don't count. Anyone can publish anything through them and they do.)

You don't need an agent to publish short stories, you just submit to the magazine itself, and most agents don't handle short stories anyhow unless you're a very big name because there's no money in it for them.

Once you have a few novels published, you start querying agents who handle the kind of material you write, citing your list of publications and describing your latest book and sending them the first three chapters.

When looking to publish your first stories, don't forget the small art presses and lit magazines. They're listed in Writer's Market.

Writing is actually very hard work and you have to work many more than 40 hours a week at it if you want to make any money at all. It's pretty fucking brutal.

Good luck.

 

[Lauren Hynde]

ostensibly.. I know everyone says it like that, but it's really not.

Damn it.