A literary agent is an author’s best friend in the traditional publishing process.

Traditional publishers receive countless numbers of submissions from hopeful authors every day. They are looking for trusted voices to help them locate the most promising prospects.

That’s where literary agents come in.

Literary agents serve as trusted voices and gatekeepers that provide marketable and saleable proposals to traditional publishers.

Literary agents perform functions such as:

1. Negociate contracts;

2. Liasion between author and publisher;

3. Collaborate with authors on their careeer.

As a literary agent, I love working with authors and traditional publishers to bring great projects to market!

Great question!

First, literary agents work with traditional, royalty-paying publishers. If you are self-publishing or indie-publishing, you don’t need a literary agent because there isn’t a contract or royalties to be negociated.

Here are a few times when you do want to reach out to a literary agent:

1. When a traditional publisher expresses strong interest in your proposal or manuscript;

2. If you’ve received an offer for your proposal or manuscript from a traditional publisher;

3. You’d like to establish a career in traditional publishing and you have a marketable and salable idea.

HOW TO CONTACT AN AGENT:

a. Make sure that an agent represents projects in your category. Check the agency website to confirm.

b. Pay attention to the agent or agency submission guidelines. If you don’t follow the guidelines, you will likely not receive a response. 

c. Writers conferences are a great way to make personal connections with a literary agent.

As a literary agent, I am looking for three essential ingredients in a potential client and project:

1. “WOW” Concept – I’m looking for fresh book ideas with unique and universal appeal to the writer’s target audience. This means that novels must have a strong hook and non-fiction proposals must have a strong unique selling proposition. You can read more here.

2. Compelling Writing – You should have a defined audience and specific message or genre that connects with them. (Just for clarification, your audience should not be everyone.)

3. Platform – In order for a publisher to feel like they can be successful with a book, they require an author to have an established audience, also known as a platform.

If you have written a proposal, novel or memoir, you will need to have established an email list and social media before submitting a query or proposal to me.

Here is one of many articles on our Books & Such agency blog on the topic of platform.

Here are the most common avenues that create opportunities to connect with a literary agent:

1. Submit a query or proposal via email. (If you aren’t familiar with how to write a query or proposal, click the links for more information.) 

2. Attend a writer’s conference. This is one of the best ways to introduce yourself face-to-face to a iterary agent. Here is an article on how to pitch yourself to an agent during an in-person appoirntment. 

3. Join a writer’s collective. There are writer groups that often invite literary agents to visit and address the members. You can check out membership groups like Write That Book, Red House Writer Collective, Hope Writers, Compel Writers and Flourish Writers.

There are other ways to meet literary agents, but this list is a good place to start.

Literary agents sell unpublished manuscripts and proposals to publishers, but literary agents do not take the lead role when it comes to marketing an author’s book.