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by Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D.

 

A question that many writers ask is whether to pitch a project to publishers, agents, or both, and often the last resort is self-publishing.

While many writers think having an agent is critical, it isn’t, though there are times when having an agent is ideal. But at other times, you are unlikely to get an agent, or even if you do, an agent can’t help very much.

Working with an agent is ideal if you are already very well-known through the media, have a large following of people in the social media (ie: 50,000 or more followers on Twitter), or are a regular on the speakers circuit with thousands of people attending your programs. An agent is also ideal if you have hit the news jackpot and are part of a big story in the national news. Sometimes, too, an agent may help with a breakthrough first book if you have a strong platform as an expert with a hot topic that is likely to do very well in the marketplace. Then there are those few books that spark a nerve, so an agent will take the ball and run with it. Finally, if you have already sent out queries to publishers and have gotten a big response, you may find an agent can help you negotiate a better deal or can contact other publishers they think would be interested.

 

However, in most cases, a direct pitch or a pitch to both editors and agents may work well. A key reason for this is that agents tend to have carved out a certain niche for themselves and contact the major publishers they know who handle that type of book. But if your book doesn’t fall in that niche or fails to sell after an initial pitch to the agents’ main circle of contacts, they will be less active in pushing your book – or they may put it on a back burner for awhile, so your book can go nowhere. You are in a kind of “agent limbo.”

 

By contrast, when you do an email query to editors directly, you are likely to contact many smaller and medium publishers who will be interested, but they are not on your agent’s normal radar. Thus, rather than striking out with the big publishers, you might well get a contract with a smaller or medium publisher who will get better sales for your book, because the publisher will give it more attention and do more to promote it, though in both cases, publishers now look for authors – except for rarified big names with million dollar book deals – to do much of their own PR.

 

Another advantage of reaching out to publishers directly is that you will often get a faster response, since it may take an agent a few weeks to a few months to decide and prepare to rep your book. Then, you still have to wait for the publisher to offer to publish your book. By contrast, if you send a query to publishers, your query goes directly to an editor or publisher who can decide whether to pursue your book – and sometimes you can get a decision within days.

 

For example, that’s what happened with my latest book: The Lies of a Sociopath, which had developed out of two graduate seminars for an MA in Communications. In this case, I didn’t even send the pitch to agents, since I thought the book could be too academic to go to a big publisher, even though I proposed dropping the footnotes and re-editing the manuscript for a trade audience. But a day after I sent the pitch, a publisher from a smaller company called personally, loved the already written chapters as is, and offered a small advance. The same thing happened for one of my clients who was writing a book that combined a memoir about his wife’s terrible experience with the criminal justice system with additional chapters critiquing the criminal justice system. The agents he pitched turned the book down claiming that it should be a memoir or critique or not both, that he wasn’t well enough known to write about the criminal justice system, or that memoirs weren’t selling these days. But then a smaller publisher in the South, near where he lived, expressed interest and will bring out the book in a few months.

 

At times, a query to both agents and publishers can be ideal for a person who is new to writing and needs someone knowledgeable to act as an interface between an author and publisher to not only get a better deal but keep any deal from going off the rails. That’s what happened for another writer who sent out a query, got a response from about 50 publishers, and found an agent, who helped her with follow-up. Otherwise, with the agent, her initially unreasonable demands might have undermined the publisher’s initial interest. Also the agent added another dozen editors he knew to the mix. So by combining a pitch to both, she was able to secure a deal.

 

In short, you don’t always need an agent, and in some cases, pitching a project to both editors and agents can help.

 

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GINI GRAHAM SCOTT, Ph.D., is a nationally known writer, consultant, speaker, and seminar/workshop leader, who has published over 50 books on diverse subjects, including business and work relationships, professional and personal development, and social trends. She also writes books, proposals, scripts, articles, blogs, website copy, press releases, and marketing materials for clients as the founder and director of Changemakers Publishing and Writing and as a writer and consultant for The Publishing Connection (www.thepublishingconnection.com). She has been a featured expert guest on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including Good Morning America, Oprah, and CNN, talking about the topics in her books.