On Pushing One's Career Off a Cliff
Not for the faint-hearted
Will somebody please say something comforting? Or pass me a chocolate eclair. No, make that a double.
You see, today I had an email from an agent about my book, 'The Credulity Nexus'. It seems they had read the MS in a single sitting, thought it was "a wonderful book", and now want to represent it for me.
And I turned them down.
Hitting the send button on that rejection email was like pushing someone off a cliff . Whatever regrets I might have about this in the future, the deed is done and there is no snatching it back. I now have to face the future knowing there is a body lying down there among the rocks, one that will haunt me if things don't go well.
Anyone who has heard me whining over the past few months on Twitter about how few agents there are left in the world who want to handle science fiction any more, will probably wonder if I've lost my marbles. Any writer who has ever spent years trying and failing to hook an agent in any genre, will probably be printing out my author photo right now so they can throw darts at it.
Yes, I know how hard it is these days to get an agent. We've all seen the agent websites that say they are closed to submissions, their lists are full, they are no longer representing our genre, or they have dropped fiction altogether. (My favourite is this one, currently displayed by a Florida agent, "We are currently giving priority to authors published by major houses.") So why did I just turn down someone who, despite every trend in the industry, really wanted to represent me?
Well, I've thought about it long and hard. (It is now 4:30 am. There will be no sleeping tonight.) And the answer is: ambition.
When I looked closely at the sales this agent had achieved, I was disappointed. There were some decent books placed with one mid-sized publisher and many more with small-to-micro presses. I asked myself if I would be happy with the best this agent seemed able to achieve, and the answer was 'no'. Seven months ago, when I first queried this agent, the answer had been 'yes'.
Since then, I have learned that I can reach and negotiate with publishers of this size on my own. I realised that I don't need an agent to get published. I need an agent to get me into the big-name publishers who won't even look at an unrepresented manuscript. I need an agent to open doors that were slammed shut on writers several years ago and are not even open to the majority of agents. That's why I want an agent, because I'm ambitious. And that's why a poorly-performing agent won't do.
Of course, I realise that by taking this attitude, I've just made my life so much harder. So hard, in fact, that I may never get the kind of agent I now know I want, and never get the chance to see my work pitched to big-name publishers. I also know that hubris is ambition's evil twin. However, I also realised something else while I was soul-searching and failing to sleep. I am actually happy with where my writing career is at the moment. I'm working with some great people who are bright and enthusiastic, creative and highly motivated. I'm getting my work out and enjoying the company. If I ever do take a quantum leap into publishing's stratosphere, that will be very cool, but it's pretty good at ground level too. Not a bad place to be while I wait.
