Literary Agents Tell All: Everything You’re Dying to Know About Submissions — Part 1 of 4
Insider tips and tricks about getting that elusive ‘Yes!’ to your query letter
If it feels like traditional publishing requires you to jump over one hurdle after another, you’re not wrong. The first and possibly most important hurdle is signing with a literary agent.
Having a literary agent is a MUST at most large and medium-sized publishing houses (not so much for small ones, though a few might not accept unsolicited, a.k.a. un-agented, submissions).
The publishing world treats literary agents like quality control specialists. Publishing houses don’t want to spend time sifting through thousands of bad manuscripts to find one gold one (or sometimes even one that could be polished).
Instead, they don’t allow unsolicited submissions. Translation? No literary agent — no consideration for your book. Literary agents are the ones left to sort through the mounds of manuscripts that get sent their way each year.
Like any good business interaction, first impressions matter. In book publishing, your first impression is your query letter. Speaking from my experience as an editorial assistant to a literary agent, one of the worst offenses in your…
