Before I hit the “away from this computer” road, a new post from another writer who has learned about agents. This person is very smart, a fine writer, and is learning quickly. The link is the first of three posts about her three agents, all before she turned 19.
Got to go read this one, folks.
http://hannahmosk.blogspot.com/2010/08/agent-story-part-1.html?spref=tw
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than one hundred popular novels and well over two hundred published short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and has also ghosted for a number of top bestselling writers.
Dean has also written books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and has done scripts for Hollywood. One movie was actually made.
Over his career he has also been an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He is now an executive editor for Fiction River.
WMG Publishing Inc. is now my major publisher of all my coming novels, collections, and short stories.
$6.99 electronic and $15.99 trade paper editions of Fiction River: Unnatural Worlds are available at your favorite bookseller..
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$2.99 electronic and $4.99 trade paper editions available.
Just click on the image for more information and links.
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$2.99 electronic and $4.99 trade paper editions available.
Just click on the image for more information and links.
Thanks for the shout out, Dean!
Glad she eventually found an agent she likes, but I’ll pass. Don’t need one, don’t want one. Could that change? Sure. At that point, I might go hunting for an agent, but my feeling is that if I ever really feel the need for an agent, the agents will most likely come calling on me. In other words, my own personal level of success would have to be quite a bit higher than it currently is.
Until then, I like what I’m doing.
The “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing” information has sunk deep for me. If it ever comes to it I won’t bother with the agent unless there is a very special situation. I’ll go with the literary lawyer. At least I would know they were on my side as my employee.
Off the top of my head, the only place that I would disagree with her (other than wanting an agent at this point) is rewriting to an agent’s request. It sounds like it’s working for her though. It’s not something I could do. Rewriting for an editor makes sense to me, i.e. “If you do this, this and this, I’ll buy your manuscript.” With someone who isn’t buying my work, it does work in my brain for some reason.
Not trying to be critical of agents but I know from experiences in writing classes that I become too conscious and shut down if I try to rewrite without a good reason. So to each their own, I know that Ken Follett has done something like this with Al Zuckerman for years (actually, I think Follett and Zuckerman are collaborators in everything but name.)