Most traditional publishers will not accept “unagented” submissions, meaning you’ll need a literary agent to pursue a publishing deal with them.
For their part, literary agents are rigidly selective in what projects they’ll take on. They must be confident they can sell your book to a publisher. Pursuing a literary agent requires a game plan, an understanding of the market, diligence, and well-crafted materials.
The first task is compiling a list of agents who have experience in and passion for the genre of your work and likely will be disposed toward representing you and your project.
Second is preparing the materials needed to query the agents on your list. While every agent has their own requirements, generally speaking the core materials are:
- query letter (initial sales pitch)
- book synopsis (provocative summary of the book)
- biographical summary (establishing author credibility for the work).
For fiction, some agents want to see the entire manuscript and for non-fiction, most want to see manuscript excepts and some a book proposal (discussed in a separate service link). You might also need a summary of your marketing plan.
I am happy to jump on the phone to explore the process with you as an initial step.
