Before going into how to find a literary agent, first let us understand the work of a literary agent. The literary agents are the representatives of the writers. They arrange and negotiate the writer’s deal with the publishing house. In return, they receive a certain percentage in advance from the payment that the author gets. The literary agent gets the author’s manuscript to different editors and publishers and makes sure the author’s work is published. These agents are well known in the business with the editors and publishers and, therefore, they can easily get it handed over to a good editor to get the book published. Therefore, they play a very vital role in writer’s career.
If you are in search of one such literary agent, you must know that it is not that easy to get your hand on a good literary agent. It might happen that they might not want to sell your writing. These agents are also in search of authors whose work is known prior, and their books sell. There are different kind of agents who are interested in specific kind of manuscripts, you must understand it and find an agent for you accordingly.
The very first thing that you must realize is your place in the writing world. If you are not a celebrity or very well known, you will have to have a fully complete, proof read and polished script, depending on what you are writing, memoir or novel. You must also have a good proposal and pilot or sample pages if you are writing a nonfiction story line. You need to prove yourself to be very consistent and polished again.
So after reading the above paragraph, you must have definitely polish your work like a shining new book. When you are finished and confident about the quality, now you can search for a literary agent. But before that the most important thing you must do is understand the working of the publishing business. Many budding authors think that a good quality or interesting book is enough to get your book published, and start minting money. But it is not true. Before you go on board, on your search for a literary agent, you need to spend a lot of time, I mean many more hours, to understanding yourself and the business, editors, literary agents, and anything that is concerned with the writing worked and its working pattern.
Due to modern times, you are lucky enough to get all this information on the internet. You will get all the detailed information on how to go about it on the internet. In recent times, just writing a good book is not enough, you need to understand that this is a business along with a passion. You just cannot work in the four closed walls of your home. You need to get out, make links, write blogs and read blogs, go to conferences, and know other authors. If you are known even a little in the writing market your chance of getting a good literary agent increases. So in short, along with writing good quality work, you need to be known socially.
In order to find literary agents you can try many ways. Recommendations are very crucial in the literary agent hunt. If you want to hire a more experienced and well known agent, recommendation is essential. If you are in connection with someone, whom these agents admire, they will consider your work with more attention. So recommendation does make a difference.
Now the question is how to get a recommendation, well it is more of a work of art. First thing you can do is join any writing community groups. This will expose you to many other writers and their connections. You need to be good in communication and try to present yourself well, which will make you look like an established writer.
Therefore, along with good quality work, you must invest your time in creating an audience for yourself to get the attention of a legendary literary writer.
Claretta is the President of Innovative Publishers in Boston, Massachusetts and an author. Find out more about Innovative Publishers at http://innovative-publishers.com
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