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Mildly Disturbing
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There has to be something worthy in the slush pile, eventually.

Added: not to be flippant, but I did, several times. I've sold short stories to anthologies, and a novel to an erotic romance publisher. I did my research, narrowed down possible candidates, and only sent off my query when my work was as reasonably polished as I could make it. I had some rejections and two offers, and I settled on what seemed to be best one for me.

No secret weapon. No magic formula. Just a lot of work.
 
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Jamesaritchie

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I've sold over a hundred short stories, and five of my novels, directly to publishers, with no agent involved.
 

job

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My first book went directly to a publisher. It was a publisher that accepted unagented manuscripts.
 

jjdebenedictis

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Technically, they don't buy the manuscript, they pay for the right to publish it.
 

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I sold the rights to my novel directly to a publisher, but only after 2,345,912 other publishers rejected it first.

I wasn't happy with the others :)
 
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Brightdreamer

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Judging from my bookshelves and the existence of Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other distributors of published books, yeah, it has to have happened to someone at some point. ;)

There's a subforum here, the AW Library, with info on stuff by AW posters. You can also see lots of covers and such in the signatures/footers of people's posts.

Is there some specific aspect of submitting, querying, or publishing you wanted to ask experienced authors about?
 

Jamesaritchie

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Technically, they don't buy the manuscript, they pay for the right to publish it.

If you're really lucky, it works out pretty much the same way because the book will keep selling and selling, and stay in print forever.
 

PeteMC

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Yup, last year. This was a publisher who had explicitly opened to unagented subs for a short period of time though. Most big publishers don't accept direct submissions at all.
 

Thomas Vail

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There's a reason why so many poster have links, images, and other references to particular written works in their sigs... :D
 

quicklime

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There's a reason why so many poster have links, images, and other references to particular written works in their sigs... :D

yeah, generally because they are their books. that said, many of them ARE in fact agented.

OP: yes, people have. But it might help to know why you're asking: the fact it can happen does not always, or often, make it the best route, for many various reasons. So yeah folks have done it, but assuming you're really looking at if it is a good option for you......there's a lot of additional variables at play.
 

Jamesaritchie

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The only reason I've been able to sell novels on my own is because I first sold novels with an agent, and still, in fact, have an agent. I did sell two novels when I was between agents, but only because the publisher had already bought books from me through an agent.

Two of teh other books I sold on my own nevertheless went through my agent after I made the initial deal, and which happened at all only because an editor I'd worked with had an idea he thought I could handle, and contacted me about it. I listened, said it was something I'd love to do, and to send my agent a contract. She hammered out the details.

The fifth book was a true anomaly. I won't go into intricate details, but I had an idea in a genre my agent had no experience at all in, so i asked her if she would mind if I contacted an editor I knew on my own.

It got pretty complicated after that because, well, for a lot of reasons, but I ended up selling that book completely on my own.

At any rate, you can sell a book directly to many publishers, if you have a book that's good enough, and if you have the experience to know how to get that book in front of a good acquisition editor. This is easy with some publishers, very difficult at others.

I know a writer who manage to get a deal with a big five publisher all on his own, and with no prior publishing experience, but a whole chain of events had to happen, none of which were under his control. Something like this is extremely rare.

But with small to mid-size publishers, you really don't need an agent to get a book deal. You do need a very good book, and a lot of patience, but it can, and is, done fairly often.
 

G.G. Rebimik

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The only reason I've been able to sell novels on my own is because I first sold novels with an agent, and still, in fact, have an agent. I did sell two novels when I was between agents, but only because the publisher had already bought books from me through an agent.

Two of teh other books I sold on my own nevertheless went through my agent after I made the initial deal, and which happened at all only because an editor I'd worked with had an idea he thought I could handle, and contacted me about it. I listened, said it was something I'd love to do, and to send my agent a contract. She hammered out the details.

The fifth book was a true anomaly. I won't go into intricate details, but I had an idea in a genre my agent had no experience at all in, so i asked her if she would mind if I contacted an editor I knew on my own.

It got pretty complicated after that because, well, for a lot of reasons, but I ended up selling that book completely on my own.

At any rate, you can sell a book directly to many publishers, if you have a book that's good enough, and if you have the experience to know how to get that book in front of a good acquisition editor. This is easy with some publishers, very difficult at others.

I know a writer who manage to get a deal with a big five publisher all on his own, and with no prior publishing experience, but a whole chain of events had to happen, none of which were under his control. Something like this is extremely rare.

But with small to mid-size publishers, you really don't need an agent to get a book deal. You do need a very good book, and a lot of patience, but it can, and is, done fairly often.

James, good info and success story!

g.g.
 
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