Agent Zombies

Okay, I’m on a rant about the sad state of the publishing industry. Such rants are rarely interesting to a wide audienc. Feel free to skip directly to the cartoon at the end of the post. I’ll get over this eventually. Promise.

Okay, and onto the rant: Maybe there are good literary agents out there, but I have despaired of finding one in my lifetime. For years I went along, zombie-like, following traditional wisdom which was, like a message from on-high: YOU MUST HAVE A LITERARY AGENT TO GET PUBLISHED!

So for about two decades, I went sent off submissions to agents, waiting months for a reply, only to be turned down. As are most writers, I was insecure enough to take the rejections as note that whatever it took to be a novelist, I didn’t have it.

It was only when bypassed the whole agent process, skipping over agents entirely that I finally got published.

Two things pushed me over the edge: One was letting a friend — a lifelong science fiction reader — read a manuscript. She insisted my manuscript (The Unselfish Gene) was worth publishing, despite the agent rejections. The second thing that encouraged me was that the agent>publisher chain seemed to be selecting — over selecting, IMHO, for vampire romance novels. Why? After some thought and a little study, I decided it was agents, perhaps out of necessity, place the almighty buck over love of writing. So they — and the publishing industry in general — wants to go for the big bucks, the sure thing. The easily marketable thing. Anyway, I finally said screw the agent process altogether, and sent submissions in one form or another, to publishers of sci-fi fantasy who will accept un-agented submissions in one form or another. These publishers include Baen Books, Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, NY.(TOR books). Soft Skull Press, Prometheus Books, Penguin -Ace/ROC Immanion Books, and DAW. (Let me know if you hear of others, please.)

I may still get rejected, but by cutting agents out of the loop, I will have saved myself months of waiting and reading irritating rejection notes.

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