Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

To Seek Agent or not to Seek Agent...?


Okay, so I bought this happy little fellow last week - Jeff Harman's 'Guide to Book Publishers, Editors, & Literary Agents. First of all, I've never heard of Jeff Harman in my life, if anyone else has please feel free to enlighten me. But, the dude did manage to put together a 800+ page book listing a massive collection of literary contacts. From what little I've gathered on the subject, at this time, it would be most advantageous for me to seek representation - aka an agent. Since I have little knowledge on how to negotiate a contract with a publisher (should this pie in the sky event come to pass) I probably will need someone legit who can do just that on my behalf. I've read the average commission for an agent is around 15%, some are higher some are lower.
Google literary agent and see what results pop up. Uh-huh, some pretty shady shit. Yep, I'm guessing if someone wants me to pay them for representation up front they aren't operating in good faith. Hence the reason I dropped $30 bucks on this book. Who knows if it's fools gold or not, but, at least it had some good testimonials on the back.
By the way, anyone ever have tequitos at 7-11? Absolutely delicious.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Welcome...

Well, so a friend of mine recommended I get some kind of web presence in the works for the fore running to my attempted release of my novel. In this early phase there isn't much to say except the sucker is written and at this point I'm just waiting for the last of the major edits to be returned from sunny Arizona where my mother resides. The woman (who also happens to be an English Prof) has been editing my writing since I was in the second grade, so I figured why stop now. Above is the hard copy of my manuscript which I printed out at roughly $35.00 worth of damn ink. As I move into the submission phase of my agent search I hope to hell that any interested parties (if any) will want an e-mailed copy, otherwise I might have to take a second out on the house.

Stay tuned... In the weeks to months to come I hope to utilize this space as a place to update and document my progress as well as any random musings I might have. :)