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- Feb 16, 2014
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In the early nineties I was under contract with a literary agency where I stayed for over a decade. About a year ago, I signed a contract with a new agency. Way back when I wrote my first novel, the general wisdom was: you write a book, you get an agent, you get a book deal.
It never occurred to me that this might be antiquated thinking nowadays. However, lately I am noticing that more and more people do not seem to have an agent at all. I belong to RWA, for instance, and in their new release section there are quite a few listed that say "self-published." Also, I see quite a few presses that allow authors to submit directly to them. I do not recall it being this way twenty years ago. Add into the mix that it feels like every time I do a search for a book to read on Amazon I get tons of books that were made through CreateSpace (I think that is what it is called). It has made me wonder.
I love my agent and am not considering going agent-less. Having an agent works for me. I am just curious, with the digital age and all, is having an agent not as much the gold standard as it was say twenty or thirty years ago?
Hope this is the right place to post this question!
It never occurred to me that this might be antiquated thinking nowadays. However, lately I am noticing that more and more people do not seem to have an agent at all. I belong to RWA, for instance, and in their new release section there are quite a few listed that say "self-published." Also, I see quite a few presses that allow authors to submit directly to them. I do not recall it being this way twenty years ago. Add into the mix that it feels like every time I do a search for a book to read on Amazon I get tons of books that were made through CreateSpace (I think that is what it is called). It has made me wonder.
I love my agent and am not considering going agent-less. Having an agent works for me. I am just curious, with the digital age and all, is having an agent not as much the gold standard as it was say twenty or thirty years ago?
Hope this is the right place to post this question!