Agent or Publishing House?

[Stacey Sweeney]

Is it better to send your manuscript to an agent or publishing house first?

I was thinking that it might be better to send it to agents first because if I try a bunch and they all reject my ms, I am still able to edit it further without crossing any publishing houses off the list of possibilities.

Is that what you guys do?

Thanks,
Stacey

[victoriastrauss]

Agent, at least if you're trying to sell adult fiction to a large publisher. Here's why I think so.
(http://www.sfwa.org/beware/whyagent.html)
- Victoria

[Garpy]

Agent, agent, agent, agent...in summary, agent.

You will get a much better deal, and be treated with greater proffesional respect by a publisher if they can deal with an agent instead of directly with you. And anyway.....the vast majority of publishers (I'd say ALL...but there's always an exception here and there) will NOT deal with unsolicited MS from un-repped writers. Period. Yeah sure....you occasionally hear of a sensational story of some writer walking into a publishers and swinging a deal...but I suspect stories like that are mostly publisher-spin.

Publishers pretty much expect agents to be the first quality filter. If a manuscript arrives from an agent, they can reasonably assume it's in the top 1% quality-wise...and can go from there. There's a maxim that getting an agent is the biggest hurdle, getting a publishing deal thereafter is like falling off a log. Sort of true....maybe the publishing deal ain't quite that easy, but certainly getting the agent is the first hurdle, and usually the toughest one to jump.

Agent first, really.

[Valona]

What about young adult novels? I've heard most agents don't want to work with unpublished YA writers.

[Christine N.]

Then where do all their clients come from? LOL Seriously, at least some of a YA agent's list, statistically, have to be un pubbed - right?

[Valona]

Some, I'm sure, but I've heard most agents want writers of YA material to find a publisher first, then with contract in hand, they will consider taking the writer on as a client.

[Christine N.]

That's hard to do when the big YA publishing houses don't accept unagented subs.

[Valona]

True, but many still do, sparingly. Also, many, if not most small houses that publish YA literature still accept submissions through the slush pile.

[Katiba]

I don't believe that 'get the publishing contract and then get the agent' is true for YA submissions anymore. At one point I believe agents were reluctant to take on YA authors but I don't think that's true nowadays. If you go to agentquery.com you will find many agents accepting queries from new writers in YA.

For what it's worth, I'm an unpublished YA writer and I signed with a legit agent with a great sales record in July. And I sent out queries to other agents before I signed, and received a number of requests for fulls.

I would say the rule is the same for adult submissions: try to get an agent first and if you can't, then submit to small publishers.

[Garpy]

With regard to the comment that agents are keen for YA authors to come knocking with a publishing contract in their back pocket....it may well be that agents are being flooded with YA author wannabees, and that's the stock answer they hand out in an attempt to stem the flow of slush manuscripts.

On this forum....I've noticed a hell of a lot of YA authors....seems like everyone right now is busy working on their YA fantasy trilogy. The only advice I can offer is that you find someway of tweaking your query and/or book to make it sound different to the rest of the herd. I'm afraid though....if it features a dragon, or some kiddie going through magic-school...you'd be better heading back to your desk to work on that next project.