If you’ve Googled “How Do I Get A Publishing Deal”, you’ve probably learned that the first step is getting a Literary Agent. You’ve probably also learned that this is not a simple task. Publishing has its own way of doing things, and although they sound complicated and terrifying, there are lots of resources out there to help you, including this one!
First things first, the absolute golden rule: you do not have to pay anybody to get published.
Do not pay to submit. Do not pay to be represented. Do not pay to be published. Do not accept an invitation to “make a contribution to publishing costs”. Do not part with a single penny of your income – agents earn a percentage of your income; they don’t get paid until you do.
You also don’t have to pay to learn how to be published. You can – there are plenty of people who will take your money for a two-hour seminar where they will explain the process and allow you to ask agents questions afterwards – but believe me when I tell you that you are not going to learn anything from a paid course you can’t learn elsewhere for free. In fact, I felt so strongly on this matter, I’m going to be The Bookseller this week giving out about it.
The quick answer to How Do I Find A Literary Agent? is: you identify a suitable person, you go to their website, you follow their submission instructions exactly (which usually means sending a covering letter, synopsis, and first three chapters), and you settle in for a long wait.
The longer answer I’m going to cover in a series of blog posts. It’s going to be the usual jazz: where do you find suitable agents; what you should and shouldn’t do; what is a synopsis and how much longer will I be trapped in this hellscape trying to write one? You know the stuff.
My qualifications: I’m a writer with an agent (the lovely Emma Shercliff of Laxfield Literary) and, unusually, I have no publishing connections or writing qualifications. I don’t have an MFA, I’m not a Faber or Curtis Brown Creative Alumni, and I’ve never spent a single penny on professional editing, agent one-to-ones, or manuscript assessment services, mainly because I don’t have any going spare. I am a random dyslexic person with word processing software: I know exactly how hard it is to get an agent from a cold query.
So, welcome to my guide to the hows, the wheres, the whys (oh God, the whys) of getting a UK Literary Agent. I’ll link each post to this page as I write it, but if you have a question or topic you’d like me to cover, feel free to leave a comment or send a note via the Contact form. I treat everything in confidence, but if you feel more comfortable contacting me anonymously, especially if you’ve got concerns about anything, that’s totally cool!
Coming up:
- Why Do I Need A Literary Agent Anyway?
- Cover Letters – wtf?
- The Synopsis Includes The Ending, Right?
- They Didn’t Even Read to the End – What Matters in Your Writing Sample.
- Agent Habitats and Authentication Guide
- Dude, You Should Just Self-Publish: How to Know if it’s Right For You.
- Things You Can Pay For If You Really Want To.
- Publishing Normality and Adjusting Your Expectations
- Self-Respect For Writers, or Why You Don’t Have To Jump Through Every Hoop
- “Useful” Links (we cannot vouch for the usefulness of any links)
(Although this guide is and will always be free, if you find it useful, please consider donating to the ongoing Humanitarian Crisis in Ukraine. The Ukrainian Institute has a good list of ways to do so.)
Theo Malings 