Literary agent or straight to publishers?

[Wayne Stinnett]

The chances of being picked up by a publishing house are very slim
The chances of self-publishing it are 100%.
The royalty you'll get on the slim chance will be 20% of 70% at best.
The royalty you'll get on the 100% chance will be 100% of 70% at worst.

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[Decon]

I wouldn't bother with either, especially now with bookstores 30% down on sales. I would think agents would be finding it difficult just now finding publishers in this climate, as would going direct yourself as an unknown

On the 1% chance you'd get picked up by either, it would probably take 1 year at least to get it published add to that how long it would take to find someone to push your book forward and it'll probably end up at 2 years for that 1% of submissions that are accepted. Even then it's a big if with 99% rejected. Think how many books you could write and publish  in that time on your own.

Just think of the stress in hanging about waiting for replies and the dispondency when it's rejection letter after rejection letter. Go for it if you must, but I personally wouldn't unless they came to me, and that'll never happen cause I'm not an indie bestseller.

[Simon Haynes]

Also, many (most?) trad pubbed books don't make back the advance. So you lose the rights pretty much forever, unless you manage to get a reversion. (Good luck, with POD and ebooks never going out of print.)

That means you won't see any royalties after the initial advance.

I had the experience of seeing my trad-pubbed books vanishing from stores, never to be restocked. It was like a burst of enthusiasm followed by what's next. Self-pub is more like a bunch of kindling that might build into a decent, everlasting fire.

[jb1111]

Just think of the stress in hanging about waiting for replies and the dispondency when it's rejection letter after rejection letter. Go for it if you must, but I personally wouldn't unless they came to me, and that'll never happen cause I'm not an indie bestseller.

Or, you don't hear back from them at all. I sent out numerous query letters that were completely unanswered, to this day, several years after the fact. The one rejection letter I got was at least an acknowledgment that they received the correspondence.

[ShawnaReads]

Or, you don't hear back from them at all. I sent out numerous query letters that were completely unanswered, to this day, several years after the fact. The one rejection letter I got was at least an acknowledgment that they received the correspondence.

Same. I had an editor in Scholastic interested in reading a partial of a book I'd pitched to her. I sent it and never heard back. I eventually followed up to ask if she'd received it, she told me to send it again, which I did, and I never heard back.

[markpauloleksiw]

I was total newbie 5 years ago when I started looking for an agent.  Totally shocked me how convoluted and wasteful the process is. By the time you get an agent and deal you could easily have 2-3 novels in the marketplace.

The query letter process is archaic.

Mark

[chrisstevenson]

I was total newbie 5 years ago when I started looking for an agent.  Totally shocked me how convoluted and wasteful the process is. By the time you get an agent and deal you could easily have 2-3 novels in the marketplace.

The query letter process is archaic.

Mark

That's if you get a deal at all. I've made most of my deals. My agent has stepped in to garner advances and improve the contracts. I'm the more aggressive.

[Frank the author]

Once again- THANKS AGAIN for the comments and opinions.
I'll focus on self publishing

[jb1111]

I was total newbie 5 years ago when I started looking for an agent.  Totally shocked me how convoluted and wasteful the process is. By the time you get an agent and deal you could easily have 2-3 novels in the marketplace.

The query letter process is archaic.

Mark

Yes, I think it dates back to the years when dinosaurs still walked the earth. One would think that with the advent of email they could at least have sent correspondence saying "thank you for your query letter.... we'll get back to you..." but even before corona they seemed, from appearances, to be living in the 1950s, as if everything was typed on a Smith-Corona and they'd run out of ink ribbons.

Yeah, I'm probably exaggerating... but not that much.

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