James,
Thank you for your words of wisdom. I've been playing the writing game for 15 years, and have come very close to securing an agent, but it just hasn't happened yet. I use all the online resources to find the best agent (as well as researching agents for popular authors with similar books), but thus far have been unsuccessful. I query pretty much every agent who represents science fiction when I've completed a novel. Do you think the chances of securing representation would be better now that I have an offer? Would it be wise to query some agents and see if they're interested? Any advice is wonderful. Thank you for your time!
Your chances of securing an agent are
always better after you have an offer. Only a relatively few years ago, the majority of writers got an offer first, and an agent second. The ONLY reason this changed was because so many publishers stopped looking at queries and manuscripts from writers without agents. If publishers won't look at your queries or manuscripts, you can't get an offer, so you usually have to go after the agent first.
But having an offer means an agent can earn a percentage without having to shop the book around. She just has to negotiate the contract, and she has 15% in her pocket. This is always an incentive.
You will also find out more about this publisher by letting a couple of agents know about your offer than you would doing months of research.
I disagree with Old Hack about advances. For most writers, the advance is tied to what they expect a book to earn. Period. This is based on what similar books by other new writers have earned.
Each publisher has a standard advance for a given type of book. Even the Big 6. And as huge as they are, even the Big 6 does not often offer huge advance to new writers. They use the same model. How much have similar books by new writers eared? They're big enough that one of their books will earn more than a similar book from a smaller publisher, but they still won't make you rich with the advance.
But the advance is also tied to a pure business decision which is called How Little Will the Writer Settle For? It just is.
With extremely rare exceptions, marketing for new writers comes AFTER a book starts making a splash, not before. This is even true for big 6 publishers. All a new writer can expect is to have his book in the publisher's catalog, and to have it available to the distributor. For a good book, this is enough.
If the book starts selling better than expected, you'll get more marketing dollars.
The size of the advance you're getting isn't huge, but it's not tiny, either. I'd be surprised if a bad or unscrupulous publisher would put this much advance money into books. On a comparison basis, publisher size for publisher size, a $2,000 advance from a small, or even a midsize publisher, is pretty much equal to the typical advance from one of the big 6. Maybe even a little better.