Acquiring An Agent After Self-Publishing

from the QT Festival Of Questions

Question #1:

I'm a self-published author who has sold a few hundred copies, via family and friends but have failed to get an agent interested. Currently, the book is doing the rounds of the office where I work, and being passed back and forth in the staff room of the college, where my sister teaches. I haven't sought any praise, but the reaction has been truly fantastic, with comments almost in the realms of hyperbole. This being the case, can you tell me how I should go about getting an agent?

Absolutely! Write a second book.

That's not the answer you thought you were going to get, but it's the best way to attract an agent. You've shown some success on your own, but many agents are going to see the publishing pool for this novel as having been tainted by your self-publication.

Writing that moves people to tears and earns unasked-for praise will inevitably attract an agent's attention. If you've got that kind of talent, surely you have more than one book in you. You can then leverage your self-publishing success in order to show an agent that your work has wider appeal.

Therefore take a two-pronged approach: promote the heck out of your self-published work. Get it reviewed as widely as possible, and do whatever you can to connect with others who will love your book. Raise those sales number.

And at the same time, write a second novel unconnected to the first. Put the same effort in as you did for your first. Polish it, and then query agents with a fabulous query letter and an appealing hook. In your bio paragraph, you can note, "I am the self-published author of {Title Redacted} which has sold 5,000 copies."

Ah, but what you wanted was to get your current title in front of thousands of readers. A second book would help in that regard: those who read and love your second book will see mention of your first in your bio, on your website, and in your interviews promoting that book. Consider the second book to be free publicity for the first. You'll sell more copies. And if you sell enough copies of Book One, the publisher of your second book may decide it's worth publishing too.

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Jane Lebak is the author of The Guardian (Thomas Nelson, 1994), Seven Archangels: Annihilation (Double-Edged Publishing, 2008) and The Boys Upstairs (this December from MuseItUp). At Seven Angels, Four Kids, One Family, she blogs about what happens when a distracted daydreamer and a gamer geek attempt to raise four children. She is represented by Roseanne Wells of the Marianne Strong Literary Agency.