Support for Indie Authors discussion

I'm wondering which stage of writing should a person contact a literary agent. Should the author be contacted after the book has been written or while it's still being written?

Mark: It depends whether your book is fiction or non-fiction. If fiction, the work should be done and have gone through several revisions so that it is polished and free of grammatical errors and typos. The opposite is true for a non-fiction work. Sell an agent on the concept before writing it. Your sales pitch should be why the world needs that particular book, who the intended audience is, and how the book compares to others in that field.

Only after it is finished, edited, edited, and then more edited. And then, odds are that you will get forty or fifty generic rejection slips. That is why there are so many of us "Indy" (Independent self-publishers.) And we don't necessarily know how to market as well as we write. If you go self-published, for God's sake stay away from vanity publishers. These are companies that prey on people who desperately want to see their book in print. They charge you for a batch of books, and send them to you for you to deal with, and often contractually bind you to deal with only them, thus giving up your rights. Most of these victims wind up having garage sales with their boxes of books and giving them as Christmas gift to friends and relatives.

If you want to retain your rights, and see you book in print, go with Create Space, a print-on-demand publisher. You can order one copy or a hundred, and they will also sell one copy at a time through Amazon. Amazon lets you sell you paper back book and eBook book, too.

If you need help getting your eBook formatted to get ready for amazon. let me know.

Best regards, Morris

Morris wrote: "Only after it is finished, edited, edited, and then more edited. And then, odds are that you will get forty of fifty generic rejection slips. That is why there are so many of us "Indy" (Independent..."

^ This guys is in my head. That's almost word for word what I was going to put as a response.

I couldn't agree more with Morris and Riley.

Overall, I'd be wary of agents in general at this time. In following other authors' experience (indies and those who have been traditionally published for years), the impression I get is that things are changing so fast that most agents don't any better handle on the markets than anyone else. They are guessing, just like we do.

If you think contacting an agent is a good fit for you, and the person is reputable, by all means do it. But in fiction (especially), no one has reliable vision of what sells, why it sells, or how to sell it these days. If an agent claims to have those answers, I'd stay away.