Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Where Literary Agents Don't Bother To Tread

Solid writing said the agents who declined to represent the manuscript. No advice can be given, there's nothing wrong with it, not for me.

From Inkwell Management came a piece of advice, to go directly to small indie publishers with the novel.

My first attempt to interest a little publishing house has been turned down after a four month wait.

They're busy, as you'd expect, so there's no editorial suggestions or reasons given. Maybe the book will appeal to a niche audience (those who wish there were good novels to read that tell a story in clear English without gimicks), but it's going to take some doing to find that audience.

I've reached the next stage of the querying process. Having run out of literary agents who are interested in historical fiction filled with characters they've never heard of because it's not their nation's history, I will shift my research to publishers who accept unagented manuscripts.

Where else to turn but the first place I went to when I needed a list of agents sorted by genre preference.

Agentquery.com has a tab that will bring up a list of small publishing houses, some of which accept fiction. One by one, starting with 'A' most likely, I'll prepare sample pages and synopses and start stuffing envelopes.

The cost of postage and the limits of the budget will dictate the schedule of submissions. Needless to say, I can't afford a blizzard of paper so I won't hit them all at once.

In the meantime, I'll work on something else, keep writing, because I keep finding new story ideas where I least expect them, and my head just gets so clogged with words that I have to write or risk an explosion.

No comments: