Where to Begin Researching Agents

Researching literary agents and traditional publishing-house editors takes time! 

A common question I hear from aspiring authors -

❓Do I need a literary agent ❓

 - You don't have to have a literary agent. However, it is ideal since the majority of publishers don't take unagented writers, unless the editor has met that pre-published author at a conference. Sadly, editors are overworked, and so it is tough for them to find time to read ALL the submissions they'd like to consider. 

Since editors  know that agents vet their clients work, this serves as a good filtering system. An agent will only present polished manuscripts to editors, and the agent will tailor presenting manuscripts that match an editors preferences (yes, agents are matchmakers - clients to editors' tastes). Agents get to know the type of work a particular editor is looking for. This helps narrow down the quantity of work in their inbox, so the editor can be the most productive. 

BACK TO YOU! With agents, you will want to vet and make sure you are the right fit for an agent, and the agent is the right fit for you. This will be a long-term partnership and business relationship. It is worth investigating.

You can begin your research by finding agent names. Then you'll deepen the research by finding articles. But where to even begin? Check out any of these valuable resources:

#MSWL (Manuscript Wish List)

Publishers Market Place This is a fee-based site. However, you can sign up for their free editions of Publisher's Lunch email newsletter

The Guide to Literary Agents (GLA) (book to buy)

Query Tracker (free!)

CWIM which stands for Children's Writer's & Illustrator's Market (book to buy)

Writers Digest (website or subscribe to magazine)

Literary Rambles Agent Spotlight Interviews (Blog)

Nathan Bransford "how to find an agent" Blog

The Literati Podcast

SCBWI click on EVENTS: The faculty list at past and current SCBWI conferences (there you'll see the bio of presenting agents and editors. Research them! See if you can find interviews with them and consider how they might be a good fit for you!)

12x12 website featured AGENTS

How Much Money Does an Author Make

How much money an author makes is a layered question and usually involves the author's agent who has negotiated the sale and served in many important capacities. The agent will receive/has earned a 15% cut.  To simplify the following information, I'll talk about the publisher and author, but please know that the agent is a very important part of the mix. 

When an author writes a book and sells it to a publisher, the publisher pays money in "advance" of the book's publication. That means that the publisher will pay the author a sum in advance of the actual publication date. Once the book is published and is sold at bookstores, the author begins earning royalties from each sale (typically 10% of the book's list price). Those royalties are tallied, and a royalties report is provided to the author every six months. Since the author already received the "advance" money, they will not get an additional check until their advance is earned out.  Let's break that down.  

A debut picture book author who is not a celebrity, not an influencer, and who does not have a

substantial platform might receive an advance of approximately $1,000 - $3000 from a small indie publisher; or they might receive somewhere between $5000 and even (super-wild without a platform) $50,000 from a traditional midsize or big five publishing house. The 10% royalties are split equally between the author and the illustrator (5% each).  Therefore, let's imagine that the author received an advance of $10,000, and the list price of that picture book is $18.99. Every time a normal copy of the book (not a book club copy, not an ebook, not an audiobook etc. because those have different royalty rates) is sold, the royalties are $1.89 (10% of 18.99). The ten percent is split between the author and the illustrator (5% each), therefore the author earns around ninety-five cents (.95) per copy sold.

That means that approximately 10,526 copies of the book will need to be sold to earn out the advance. After that, the author will receive royalty checks for any copies sold beyond the 10,526. Of course, I mentioned at the beginning that this is a layered conversation. Foreign rights, book club sales (like Scholastic Book Club or Junior Library Guild), and other factors also help earn out the advance, but those are a conversation for another day.  

While you are here, I want to push the topic further. Discussing money often feels taboo. I don’t ask my neighbors how much they earn. But publishing is different. Transparency in publishing and those awkward money conversations can be very important.

This five-year-old article in Publishers Weekly  still feels relevant. It features author L.L. McKinney and notes that she created the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe (around June of 2020) as “an outgrowth of conversations she’d had with friends about Black authors historically being underpaid.”  The conversation took off, and 

McKinney and author Tochi Onyebuchi (author of Riot Baby and Harmattan Season) created The Transparency Project.

To properly understand the background, various publishers’ responses, and what inspired more than 2,000 authors to share their pay on this public Google doc, check out the article in  Publishers Weekly.

To see the spreadsheet, go here.

 

Do yourself a favor and read books by L.L. McKinney such as A Blade so Black and A Dream So Dark . You can visit her website or your local bookstore!

Also, WOW! Check out books by Tochi Onyebuchi such as his upcoming, Racebook, “an original memoir in essays that interrogates how identities are shaped and informed in online spaces and how the relationship between race and the Internet has changed in his three decades online.” You can also find a list and links to his publications here.