Should I seek an agent?

I've been self-publishing for a while now. I've published five books on Amazon Kindle, the sixth one is around the corner, and I'm about to finish the manuscript for the seventh. After that I'm going to start a new series, and I'm wondering whether to use that as an opportunity to stop this whole indie business.

I've tried basically everything an indie is urged to do. NOTHING I have tried spending money on has had the slightest effect on my sales. I'm seeing a very mild uptick after I started frequenting Reddit's Fantasy page last summer, but I'm still far from being a success.

I went indie precisely because I was utterly sick of query letter hell, but I know basically nothing about the whole agent business. What can I expect if I go looking? Will having several books already out, and positively reviewed, help? Would it help more or less in just going straight to publishers again?

Old Hack said:

You'll need a new book, that's not part of any of your existing series.

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Ah, so I'll need to actually finish my next novel before even starting to talk to agents?

Having lots of good reviews might help. But note that "lots" is important here. If you only have five or ten good reviews I doubt that would be helpful; if you have over a hundred then yes.

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Well, I'm currently at 41 Amazon reviews, with an average of 4,3 stars. One hundred is still a ways off.

If you want a trade deal it almost always makes sense to look for an agent first, and only approach publishers direct if you fail to attract representation. Because the publishers you can approach on your own aren't usually going to make as many sales for you as a bigger, agented-only publisher; and because an agent can sell foreign and subsidiary rights for you, so you get more deals, too.

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Thanks for the advice.

Old Hack said:

If you want them to sell your self-published books in your home territory you'd need to have a very hot property to interest the better agents; if you want them to handle new works, then yes, you'd need it to be finished, and then query in the usual way.

Some writers I know self publish in the English language then have literary agents to handle their foreign and subsidiary rights. Alison Morton is a great example here: she publishes historical stuff, very good books, and BFLA handles her other rights. But this isn't common and much depends on your works, I think.

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I'm actually an Icelander writing in English, because the Icelandic market isn't worth bothering with.

That's better than a lot of people have, you know.

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I know. That has been pointed out to me. Gotta appreciate what you do have. But I'm pretty sure that number isn't going to wow industry people.

Clarify what you want an agent for, then we'll be better able to advise you.

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WeaselFire said:

And, if you self-published because you didn't like querying and the responses you got AND your books aren't selling well enough to make you happy with self publishing, you may want to work very hard to make the one you submit to agents much better than the last series. Self publishing is hard work, most of it not writing, so I understand the impulse to go more traditional routes. But breaking into the trade publishing business is just as hard, so be prepared.

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I just clearly don't have whatever skill is required to draw attention to my work. Social media seems to be a big one for indies, but I have never had anything to do with social media, nor any desire to. I find trying to think of something to say to faceless strangers on the internet an absolutely soul-crushingly experience, and I'd rather spend my time writing. At this point I would really, really like to handle the whole marketing thing over to actual professional publishers. And I guess the publishing houses are more likely to listen to an agent than to Unknown Author Number Five Thousand.