Do I really need a literary agent to get my book published?

By Joey Smith, Stratagem Innovations writer

You’ve worked hard on your book, you’ve spent months, maybe years to dedicate time and effort to crafting a masterpiece. You’ve readied your manuscript so many times you remember every small detail of your book. The step then is finding representation for your manuscript. There are publishing houses that do not require a literary agent but having an agent work on your behalf to allow you to acquire the best deal and targeted marketing for you and your book.

A literary agent is a person who represents your literary work. Agents can represent more than just a book such as poetry and other literary mediums. Literary agents usually do not represent stage plays, screenplays for television pitches but there are other agencies that focus on this kind of work.

Your literary agent will function as your advocate, your middleman, between a publisher and your book. Literary agents understand publishing contracts and will be able to negotiate the best deal on your behalf. Literary agents get about ten to fifteen percent for selling your book’s publishing rights to niche focused domestic and foreign publishers. Agents will be very invested in your success, because when you succeed, they succeed.  

Do you need an agent to get published is a question we hear all the time, and the answer is no. You can publish through independent and small presses as well as self-publish. Submitting your manuscript is an intricate process that can be time consuming and stress. To learn more about submitting your manuscript to literary agents you can read our post here, How Do I Submit My Manuscript to a Literary Agent or Publisher? One thing you want to make sure of is that your manuscript is polished to perfection. Make sure your manuscript has been thoroughly edited and reviewed by a professional. There is nothing worse to an agent seeing typos or story plot holes.

Not everyone has the luxury to take the time outside of work to market and publicize themselves and their book which is crucial for a book to gain success. A Literary agent's job is to do things that you don’t have time or experience with. Without a literary agent, as you submit your manuscript to various larger publishers it will fall into what we call the slush pile. A literary agent gets you past the slush pile, the pile of emails, digital and physical manuscripts that publishers put to the side.

How do you get a literary agent you might be wondering? A long and tedious google search will begin your process or you can let the writing team here help craft you an amazing Query Letter and Book Proposal that makes you stand out among the thousands sending their manuscripts to agents. We focus on target searches based on your book genre, agent qualifications, and experience. .

Our mission is create the most efficient strategy to get you further published or take you on the next level in self-publishing. Not sure where to begin or have questions send us a message, we’d love to hear your story.

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