Anybody can decide to be an agent (or a publisher for that matter). Needless to say, it's a mixed bag. I've had friends sign with an agency that sent al their clients to the same publisher - that publisher turned out to be crooked, ghosting and not paying royalties due... and still the agency sent authors over. Cosy relationship...
Anyone can, but I would check someplace like agentquery.com first if I were looking and read up on their credentials and authors. That's no guarantee they'll help you, though.
The Absolute Write Watercooler is a good source for gossip. People vent on there. Authors are notoriously coy about criticizing the industry for fear of being blackballed. And of course check Victoria Strauss's Writer Beware blog.... I would also recommend contacting fellow writers directly to learn about their experience with so-and-so.
Agents don't read queries. It makes no sense they would. They receive an absolute avalanche of queries each week, possibly in the hundreds, maybe thousands. Only a tiny fraction, something like .01%, are from clear-thinking, market-oriented pros. Those who MIGHT have a publishable ms. Might. One in a thousand for a "might" is far too few to bother with.
Your tale of woe is not unusual. I know a published author who never had luck with any agent she found, yet she manged to find a publisher on her own and published a crime fiction series. I won't bother to look for one.
It's definitely a choice to make. I've worked un-agented with independent presses and one university press and was treated much better, had more input to cover design, etc., and never felt like a number.
Yes, there was a time when one "had to have an agent," especially for book-length work, because they were presented as essentially being "first readers" for the major publishing houses. I spent way more time and energy researching, querying and sending work to them than turned out to be worth it. I had an agent for a while for one novel, her first foray into fiction, that was not alas, successful (either on my behalf or hers). I got a full manuscript back from an agent once (when it was all paper-based) and it had multiple chapters of some other poor bastard's novel interspersed with mine. One of the later trends agent-wise that make them seem even more dubious: those who will only entertain queries from those among us who already have a "platform" on social media of tens of thousands.
Yikes. I had an editor cancel my book the day before Thanksgiving. She actually said she needed to get it done before her vacation. Like you, I've done fine without an agent and my best-seller has sold foreign rights in 15 countries and is over 300,000 copies sold--all sans agent. :-)
Anybody can decide to be an agent (or a publisher for that matter). Needless to say, it's a mixed bag. I've had friends sign with an agency that sent al their clients to the same publisher - that publisher turned out to be crooked, ghosting and not paying royalties due... and still the agency sent authors over. Cosy relationship...
Anyone can, but I would check someplace like agentquery.com first if I were looking and read up on their credentials and authors. That's no guarantee they'll help you, though.
The Absolute Write Watercooler is a good source for gossip. People vent on there. Authors are notoriously coy about criticizing the industry for fear of being blackballed. And of course check Victoria Strauss's Writer Beware blog.... I would also recommend contacting fellow writers directly to learn about their experience with so-and-so.
All good advice, and one can still get shafted. The agent of mine who turned on my friend was well thought of, etc. before going off the rails.
Encouraging news for those of us without agents.
Agents don't read queries. It makes no sense they would. They receive an absolute avalanche of queries each week, possibly in the hundreds, maybe thousands. Only a tiny fraction, something like .01%, are from clear-thinking, market-oriented pros. Those who MIGHT have a publishable ms. Might. One in a thousand for a "might" is far too few to bother with.
On agentquery.com, there are many boxes to tick in your search, and here are three of them:
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR AN AGENT WHO ACCEPTS EMAIL QUERIES?
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR AN AGENT WHO IS A MEMBER OF AAR?
ARE YOU LOOKING FOR AN AGENT WHO IS ACTIVELY SEEKING NEW CLIENTS?
Thanks Lev. Of course they say they read unsolicited queries. They have to.
Your tale of woe is not unusual. I know a published author who never had luck with any agent she found, yet she manged to find a publisher on her own and published a crime fiction series. I won't bother to look for one.
It's definitely a choice to make. I've worked un-agented with independent presses and one university press and was treated much better, had more input to cover design, etc., and never felt like a number.
Yes, there was a time when one "had to have an agent," especially for book-length work, because they were presented as essentially being "first readers" for the major publishing houses. I spent way more time and energy researching, querying and sending work to them than turned out to be worth it. I had an agent for a while for one novel, her first foray into fiction, that was not alas, successful (either on my behalf or hers). I got a full manuscript back from an agent once (when it was all paper-based) and it had multiple chapters of some other poor bastard's novel interspersed with mine. One of the later trends agent-wise that make them seem even more dubious: those who will only entertain queries from those among us who already have a "platform" on social media of tens of thousands.
Sadly, that's what legitimate editors want: a social media platform. I'm glad I'm not starting out now because publishing gets crazier all the time.
Someone told me 100,000 followers is the tipping point, and I believe them. You will be approached, even if not a writer. That part can be fixed : )
Yikes. I had an editor cancel my book the day before Thanksgiving. She actually said she needed to get it done before her vacation. Like you, I've done fine without an agent and my best-seller has sold foreign rights in 15 countries and is over 300,000 copies sold--all sans agent. :-)