Writers, Are You Wasting Your Time Submitting to Agents?

If you’ve read my blog or my books, it’s no secret that I skipped straight to self-publishing in December of 2010 without seriously gearing up for an agent hunt. I put my first two novels out as ebooks and eventually print-on-demand paperbacks. A little over a year later, I had four novels and several shorter works out and was able to quit the day job. Now, in March of 2013, I have seven novels out in addition to the shorter stories. Even though none of these have rocked any best-seller lists, the royalties are generous for independent e-publishers. I just finished doing my taxes for 2012, and it turns out that it was the best income-earning year I’d ever had (it also turns out that I have to send a heaping big check to the IRS here shortly).

Naturally, I’m pretty rah rah with self-publishing, and I pointed out, a year and a half ago, that the best way to find a traditional deal these days seems to be to publish on your own, promote the heck out of your work, build up an audience, sell lots of books, and then look for a deal (or wait for a deal to come to you). Of course, you may decide you don’t really need a traditional publisher at that point, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Now that it’s 2013, I’m not the only one saying this (I’m sure I wasn’t back in 2011 either; it just wasn’t as popular of an opinion). A couple of days ago, Dean Wesley Smith, an author who’s been in the biz for decades and has more books out than Genghis Khan had children, wrote up a post called, “The New World of Publishing: A New Slush Pile.”

Here are a few highlights from the post, which not only talks about how things are today (and why it’s a great time to be an author), but also goes back and shares some of the history of the industry (like why it’s called a “slush pile”):

So near the end of the 1990s, the traditional publishers switched to “No Unagented Manuscripts” and shut down the few slush rooms that were left. In other words, they outsourced the slush to the writer’s own employees. A really, really bad idea since it had the appearance of putting an employee in charge of the employer.

The reasons to go to traditional publishing have vanished. And with the reputations of traditional publishing being tarnished by traditional publishers like Simon and Schuster and Random House going into vanity press scams, even going to traditional publishing for a rubber-stamp of quality has vanished.

The slush piles of old are all now indie published. And the readers decide what is good or bad.

Instead of costing a writer money to mail it to a huge room in New York as we did in my early years, or send it to an agent, writers now can indie publish their work both electronic and in paper and make some money in the process. It might not be a lot, but it is some money. And if the book starts to sell, it will draw the attention of traditional publishers and they will come calling with an offer.

If you follow an old model, you send your manuscript to either an editor or an agent:

In essence, this is what you are doing: Imagine yourself standing at the door of a restaurant in ragged clothes, hat-in-hand, begging for some food. You have no bargaining power, no position to try to get a decent contract (meal). And if you are with a slush-reading agent, imagine that you now only get a part of what little bit of food they are willing to toss you.

If you follow the new, indie-publishing model:

In essence, this is what you are doing: Imagine you own your own business. You have money coming in the door, have customers, and a growing list of products. A representative of a major corporation shows up in your store and asks to buy some of your product for their company. You know what the product is worth and you know you can get decent contract terms. They have come to you, into your business, and it is an even bargaining position for both of you, business to business. They want what you are selling. You can decide if the money and terms are worth you selling it.

I’ll stop pilfering from Mr. Smith’s post now — I just get excited when people in the know are thinking the same things I’m thinking. It makes me feel like I have some sort of clue. If this topic interests you, make sure to check out the whole article and toss a dollar in the tip jar on DWS’s site.

Related Posts:

Using Your Self-Publishing Success to Find an Agent with Elizabeth Mock
Best Way to a Traditional Publishing Deal: Query Agents or Self-Publish?
Facebook or Twitter, Which Is Better for Book Promotion?