Opined Doors

I'm reminded of the Taxi episode in which Jim brought a few of his co-workers to his home. The camera showed an interior of a room, empty, except the walls were made entirely of doors. Dozens.

When one queries agents, one is in a room just like that.

You don't know which one gets you outta there, so you try them in turn, and wonder which one is an actual door that'll let you out.

What you're trying to leave is New Author Purgatory.

To get published, you really need an agent. Almost no publisher of any worth will take direct contact with a budding author.

That next-to-last word is more prickly than you may realize. I digress, and for a reason.

There are... hundreds? of literary agents running loose, and it's generally not a tough chore to identify which may be open to your work, and how to properly approach them.

There is not one, but two kickers.

You may need to query many of them--if not a bunch of them twice over the course of time--to get one interested enough to represent you.

Kicker #2: I'm a published author. Not a budding author... a real one. THE KNUCKLEBOOK was published without an agent, through a bizarre and convoluted string of events that reflects the subject, the wandering orb known as the knuckleball. I got the advance, earned it out in a few months by personally setting up signings at a couple dozen bookstores and talks in front of regional baseball fan groups. A website, too. Radio, print, and TV interviews. Initial print run was 1,000, and after four + years, it's sold over 3,000. In short, I've had at least a cup of coffee in the major leagues.

When it comes to rounding up an agent for OTHERS, that experience doesn't count for jack squat, it appears. You'd think that agents would have a strong interest in a manuscript backed by an author who already has a track record for pushing a book, one that earned out the advance (which happens seldom) and in a few months. No, they just want to know about that one manuscript, and you'd better serve up the taste just right, or your query is ash-canned. Sometimes, what that "just right" is supposed to be is foggy, and even when requirements are clear, following them to the semicolon doesn't seem to boost microscopic odds.

For an author doggedly working and planning to get a novel published and on the bestseller list, the path is a lengthy and constantly uphill one.

The authors on that bestseller list? They got there with very little luck, and mostly skill and persistence and refinement of the battle plan, it appears.

Oh, I did meet one author who wrote just a couple of queries and got an agent SNAP, but it was not a rookie accident. This author is a medical doctor, and she had to go through that educational proving ground and develop skills and experience and years of training to get that title... which helped her author her series of medical mysteries.

How ya gotta pay your dues is a universal mystery, but ya gotta pay them, somehow.

I really think I've paid them already, but apparently not.

Still trying doors.

--Dave