Would someone please give me names of good publishers that don't require agents?

Snowbooks is an award winning independent publisher in the UK with an open submission policy and they don't require agents. You probably know already, Lulu and Create Space are self-publishing, right?

Almost no reputable agents charge fees. They are paid with a percentage of your advance and royalties.

For fiction, the current standard order of operations goes something like this:

-write a book
-rewrite the book
-edit the hell out of the book
-have some highly literate someones read the book for you and recommend changes
-edit the book at least one more time
-query an agent who represents the type of book you wrote (you'll probably have to lather, rinse, repeat on this step at least several times, but maybe not if you're very good, very well-researched, and very lucky)
-agent agrees to take you on
-the agent shops the book to publishers
-publisher offers contract
-heaven and nature sings
-publisher pays agent, who takes probably fifteen percent and passes the rest on to you.

Some publishing houses will accept submissions without an agent.

What have you written? That will be vital in directing you toward any specific agent or publisher.

1) What's your genre?

2) Any agent who wants a fee is a scammer.

3) Go to a bookstore. Find books similar to yours. Get the guidelines for those those publishers. If the publisher's guidelines say they require agented submissions, find out who represented those books you found in the bookstore, get those agents' guidelines, and follow them to the letter.

4) Write another book.

5) Starting with Lulu or CreateSpace isn't a good idea.

James D. Macdonald said:

4) Write another book.

5) Starting with Lulu or CreateSpace isn't a good idea.

Click to expand...

This.

Any book already published with an ISBN is pretty worthless to agents and editors as you can't offer them First Publication Rights.

Write another book, make it even better and go buy a copy of W&A Yearbook.

MagaliFuentes said:

Thanks to everyone that replied. I've already changed the status of my books 2 of them in CreateSpace to Incomplete so those are going nowhere. I will follow your advice. My genre is fiction and I would classify it as drama.


Love
Magali.

Click to expand...

Drama is more of a movie genre than a book genre. When you go back to pitch editors (or agents), you'll probably want to find a genre more standard within the publishing genre.

gothicangel said:

This.

Any book already published with an ISBN is pretty worthless to agents and editors as you can't offer them First Publication Rights.

Click to expand...

What is an ISBN? Are blogs considered an ISBN?

Ms Behaving said:

What is an ISBN? Are blogs considered an ISBN?

Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number

No. Blogs do not have an ISBN.

An ISBN is the number you find printed above the barcode on the back of the book. It's impossible to sell a book through retail without an ISBN.

It's a sales thing, nothing to do with blogs.

MagaliFuentes said:

Can't just throw that away.

Click to expand...

It's just possible (okay likely) that I don't know how this works but... if they were never sold/published couldn't you pull them down and submit them to actual publishers and agents? That's not "just throw[ing] them away" that's taking a different road. Or did they not get caught soon enough and you've already lost first publish rights?

James D. Macdonald said:

1) What's your genre?

2) Any agent who wants a fee is a scammer.

3) Go to a bookstore. Find books similar to yours. Get the guidelines for those those publishers. If the publisher's guidelines say they require agented submissions, find out who represented those books you found in the bookstore, get those agents' guidelines, and follow them to the letter.

4) Write another book.

5) Starting with Lulu or CreateSpace isn't a good idea.

Click to expand...

I'd do this if I wuz you.

Thanks for your help CaroGirl and gothicangel
I have trouble deciphering some of the acronyms people use in their posts.
I am always going to the The Absolute Write Dictionary in FAQ's.

The number one reason anyone buys a book is that they read and enjoyed something else by the same author.

The converse is also true. Making anything that isn't publishable available just in order to Have It Out There risks having someone read it, discover that it's ... not very good ... and never again reading anything that you write.

How do you know if your work is publishable? Find someone who's willing to give you money up front to publish it.

James has it right (as well he should -- he's a career writer and he knows what he's talking about.)

Most writers finish a few novels before they write one that's really worth selling. The first are practice. Valuable, but just a warm-up for The Real Deal.

You can and should throw your fledgling efforts away -- or at least throw them in your sock drawer until you've learned more of the craft. Then you can go back and revise them, and turn them into novels you can sell to real publishers.

It sounds like you have a lot to learn about the publishing industry. Don't be discouraged! We all start out knowing nothing about it, and learning any new skill or niche is fun! You've come to a good place to get sound, realistic advice on the industry.

Ms Behaving said:

Thanks for your help CaroGirl and gothicangel
I have trouble deciphering some of the acronyms people use in their posts.
I am always going to the The Absolute Write Dictionary in FAQ's.

Click to expand...

No problem, Ms B. Stick around and you'll learn the lingo in no time!

James D. Macdonald said:

The converse is also true. Making anything that isn't publishable available just in order to Have It Out There risks having someone read it, discover that it's ... not very good ... and never again reading anything that you write.

Click to expand...

Oh, so true.

MagaliFuentes said:

You said something about my work not being publishable.

Click to expand...

Nobody said that. They said that nobody knows for sure if their work is publishable until it's actually selected for publication--and that work which has already been self-published is only incredibly rarely selected for commercial republication.

As for finding an agent who doesn't charge fees, look at AgentQuery.com and QueryTracker.net, as well as the "Bewares and Background Checks" subforum here. There are literally hundreds of legitimate agents in the US, none of whom charge their clients fees.

No-one here is trying to say your work isn't good. How could we know, since we haven't read it? I really don't understand why you wouldn't want to try to get an agent as your first step towards publishing, though. A lot of agents do queries by e-mail now, which is completely free, and those who still insist on paper queries only cost you the price of a stamp (if an agent is asking for any money beyond this, RUN, do not walk, away). A lot of the biggest and best publishers no longer accept unagented submissions, so working without an agent shrinks your possibilities considerably. Yes, agents do charge a percentage fee of your advance and royalties, but would you rather have 100% of nothing or 80-85% of a great publishing deal?

Most good agents will also work with you to get your book as good as it can possibly be for the publisher. They have an intimate knowledge of the market and of what each publisher is looking for, and are thus able to recommend changes from a place of knowledge that no writer, beta reader, or freelance editor can hope to match. This alone may make the difference between a publisher accepting or rejecting your book.

There are some large publishers who still accept unagented submissions (at least, several of my target publishers did last time I checked, which was a while ago), but they have massive slush piles which usually result in response times of 8 months or more, and accept extremely few of the unagented submissions they receive. Taking all this into consideration, I can't see why directly querying a large publisher would be anything but a last resort.

MagaliFuentes said:

Last night I spent the whole night thinking about how to reply to your comments without offending you because I don't intend to do that at all. You are very nice people. However, I must tell you that some of these comments have made me feel that I can't write. You said something about my work not being publishable. Well, I don't think that's true because everyone who has ever read anything I've written says that it's great. Again I don't mean to offend you because I love you all but that's how I feel.


Thank you for everything, though.
Love
Magali Fuentes.

Click to expand...

There isn't a day when I have thoughts that I can't write and the work isn't publishable. Now I've been writing for 10 years with poetry, articles and essays published. It's the novel that has eluded me.

If you're having doubts about whether your good enough, that's great. It means you care and you'll work hard to improve - just like I did. What is worrying is when new writers think they can produce a bestseller in draft one and don't think they have anything to learn.

Magali, what people are trying to say is that you could potentially be shooting yourself in the foot by attempting to promote your two stories this way. If they're not avaliable yet those stories could be sold in the future. That's not wasting them, that's making sure they DON'T get wasted! Once a story has an ISBN and is out there that's it. You wouldn't be able to sell that in the future unless you did end up being the next Steel or Meyer, because publishers are seldom interested in second publishing rights. It has nothing to do with whether the story's good or not. The folks here speak in generalities, so please don't take too much offense It all comes in the interest of giving a new writer like yourself the best possible chance to see success in your writing career. Thinking that self-publishing books will help a writing career is a big myth, one that's a little too propagated on the internet. Being unpublished is far better than being self-published