Literary #agents Reinventing Themselves

With so many (inexpensive) options available to authors who are not traditionally published (and even those who are), literary agents are having to reinvent themselves. An interesting post from The Passive Voice.

Unpublished Writers: Now’s Your Chance

Literary Agent, Janet Reid, announces the Liz Norris Pay It Forward Writing Contest. If you’re not represented by an agent, and if you’re not self-published, here’s your chance to snag a literary agent. The prize offered is Registration for the Backspace Writing Conference in NYC (May 24-26), travel stipend of $300, and a three night hotel stay

Click here for details.

NY Literary Agent Seeks Book Submissions

Happened to come across this on Craigslist.Hopefully it’ll be of use to someone:

Erin Harris, a literary agent at the Irene Skolnick Literary Agency in Manhattan, seeks book submissions in the following areas: literary novels with compelling plots and international settings, thrillers, mysteries, and noirs, especially starring strong female protagonists, and YA and Middle Grade novels that transport her to magical places. Please visit the company website, http://www.skolnickagency.com, for more information. Queries may be sent to: submissions@skolnickagency.com. Be sure to paste the first ten pages of your manuscript in the body of your email. Attachments will not be opened.

Literary Agents Relevant in Digital World? An Agent’s Thoughts

Authors can now publish their own books via Amazon, B&N, Smashwords etc. They even get to keep a larger percentage of their royalties than if they went the traditional literary agent-publisher route.

Are literary agents even relevant anymore? Agent Wendy Lawton has some thoughts about this in her blog post. While I agree with most of her points, authors who can network and market and are generally savvy can manage their own careers quite successfully.

Also, keep in mind, not all agents know what they’re doing, or have good contacts. Plenty of authors have got burnt due to clueless agents. And then there is the huge cut of your earnings the publisher and agent takes. Versus what Amazon et al. pay if you can make the sales. Tough choice.

Here’s Wendy’s post.

Do Your Worst: Come Up With A Horrible Story Idea

If you can, there’s a contest in it for you. The only rules – the story should be encapsulated in 60 words or less (also called a logline). Chuck Sambuchino (of the Guide to Literary Agents) and Literary Agent Rachelle Gardner are getting together to give you the opportunity to do your worst.

 

Click here for details.

Shady Literary Agents

Is there such a breed? There are scammers, no matter what the industry. Literary Agent Rachelle Gardner has some common sense suggestions in her post.

Click here  for the post.

Researching Literary Agent’s Track Record

Googling “Literary Agent” brings up 3,060,000 entries, to give you an idea of how intimidating all of this can be to a writer wanting to get published.

Not that there are as many agents, but there are enough to confound the best of us. To make matters worse, there are scammers out there ready to help gullible writers part with their money.

Remember – you *never* pay an agent up front – not reading fees, not any other fees.You pay when the agent sells your book. The industry standard is 15% of your earnings (20% in case of foreign sales). See the “Literary Agent” section for a sample contract.

The agent doesn’t have to be a scammer to be bad. Plain incompetence on the part of your agent can easily destroy your career. So how do you begin to research the agent?

Click here for a great article on researching track records of agents by Victoria Strauss.

In addition to the sources Victoria lists, I’ve found the forums on Absolute Write invaluable. Just googling the literary agent often brings up a thread on Absolute Write.

Reputable Literary Agents

A terrific compilation of reputable literary agents:

http://lisa-laura.blogspot.com/2009/12/happy-agent-day.html

http://everyonewhosanyone.com

 

Literary Agent Offering Contract Review

Literary agent Peter Cox is offering to review contracts for authors. This is apparently in response to the recent trend of literary agents setting up their own publishing imprints – a potential conflict of interest situation, if ever there was one.

The service, called Project FreeAgent, will be run out of his Redhammer agency. The interesting thing is, he won’t charge a cent for it.

This is a terrific thing for authors, like a second opinion on their contracts.

Click here for a very provocative post by Mr. Cox.

Literary Agent on Pitching Your Manuscript