Edwin Alexander

The question of whether a writer needs an agent to succeed is right up there with the chicken-and-egg one. Those with an egalitarian turn of mind will always reply that a good writer will succeed no matter what happens while the more cynical will point out that writing and publishing are now so bean-counter controlled that it is, these days, next to impossible to get a book deal unless you are represented by a good agent.

The fact is that while an agent is a great amount of help when it comes to getting a contract fast and negotiating with a publisher without seeming to be too greedy, a good author will always find a home. The trick lies in perseverance and just the kind of self-belief an author needs to have in himself in order to keep on writing in the first place.

The moment a book has been written and provided it is the best possible effort a writer an make at the time of writing (and this is a shifting goal post throughout a writer’s career) the next step is to find a publisher. For this a writer needs to be as hard-nosed and ready to talk and think business as an agent working for him would have to be (which is why you get an agent in the first place). As a writer you may not have the advantage of direct access to a publisher’s editors but you can still ferret out those publishers who bring out books similar to the one you have written and then proceed to approach each one in order to see if they have openings in their publishing schedules and if they are able to consider one more book.

It is quite at this point that I am often asked about the methodology a writer in search of a publisher should employ. While the following list of actions is far from being comprehensive it should allow you to form a sound starting point to launch your assault upon the publishing world.

1. Go to Amazon.com and check out which publisher brings out which books. Make a list of those who publish what you are writing and then go online and get each publisher’s address details and whom to contact and how. Not all publishers accept electronic submissions so be prepared to go the paper route at least in one of them.

2. Do submit to as many publishers as possible at once. Do not accept this as permission to inundate every single publisher on Amazon with unsuitable material. Weed out those who are not suitable and send each submission out like you are paying $1000 for it. Make sure that your targeting is precise. Once you have your list do not hesitate to send your submission to all of them at once. Publishers say they hate this but then they take three months to even think about it so you don’t really owe them any kind of allegiance at all.

3. Go online and look for agents. You need to fill the gap between waiting to hear from a publisher and deciding what to write about next. Agents respond faster, they judge a work by asking if they can sell it or not and know how to get a response from a publisher quickly.

Every writer looking to get published has to go through this process and it requires a certain amount of patience and a little bit of luck. If you don’t do it however the sure thing is that no publisher is going to come beating down your door and asking to see a manuscript from you.