I Was Warned

They told me it would be difficult to get an agent to represent my book. Famous authors often talk about the struggles they went through to get their first book published, starting with the travails of finding an agent willing to represent them.

The book business has changed, like everything else, and getting something published in the traditional way has gotten more difficult. Of course, self-publishing has never been easier, and if the old-fashioned way of getting my brilliant prose into people’s hands fails, I can always take the modern route.

I have a couple of observations about my quest, so far. I realize it’s probably risky to mention these things, but it would be difficult not to notice. First, there are a lot of literary agents out there! Lots of literary agencies, and most have ten or so agents. Second, most of them are women. By “most” I don’t mean 51%. I would say it’s over 80%. That’s not surprising or troubling, but interesting.

Third, an overwhelming majority of agencies and agents strongly encourage authors from “underrepresented” groups to submit manuscripts. Women authors are favored by many of the agents.

Here’s something interesting about women authors: About half of authors are women, but only a third of published books are by women. Yet, about 65% of books are purchased by women. I could analyze all that, but there are too many factors at play to draw any conclusions.

So, my situation is that I’m in an over-represented group of male authors, I’m not part of any underrepresented groups, and I really don’t know if my book is great or horrible. As the number of queries I send grows, with no positive response, I think it is probably not so great. Maybe there is an agent who will see some possibilities in it.

The thing is, even though there are thousands of books for sale out there, most books don’t get published. I imagine that most songs that are written aren’t recorded and that most artwork that is created isn’t sold.

Whenever I see a successful musician performing, I think about all the people who play and sing better than that person, but don’t have the drive or the interest to pursue stardom.

It’s comforting to know I’m not alone in trying to get the attention of an agent. Right now there are probably thousands of writers hitting “send” on an email to an agent, hoping she or he will be the one who sees something in their writing that the other agents couldn’t see. I take heart in knowing that I have a much, much better chance of getting an agent than I’d having winning the lottery, so there’s that.