Forbes - Jeremy Greenfield, Contributor - 2 August, 2013
It’s the year 2000 and you have a great book that you want published and sold in bookstores everywhere. It’s a lifelong dream and, besides, this book is great and important and everyone should read it.
So, what do you do? Best first move is to get an agent. Agents know editors. They have a track record of getting work bought and published by publishers. Publishers trust agents to bring them the good stuff. If an agent likes your manuscript, it’s no guarantee it will get published but it’s better than the alternative. The only drawback is that agents take a 15% cut of whatever you make, which is fine because, hey, you wouldn’t make much if anything without one.
The alternative? If you can’t get an agent, then you can send your manuscript into a publisher along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope, which will likely be used to send it back to you with a pre-written rejection letter — if you’re lucky. Most likely you won’t hear from the publisher at all. In very few cases, a summer intern will come across your masterpiece in the “slush pile” (made up of agent-less manuscripts like your own) and love it like you do and champion it to her boss, likely an assistant, and maybe, just maybe it will see the light of day.
And if that doesn’t work, you can always publish it yourself with a “vanity” press. That’s what self-publishing used to be known as — vanity publishing.
Today, the options look very different. The ability to self-publish through Amazon, Barnes & Noble NE -0.75%, Smashwords Smashwords, Author Solutions, Lulu and dozens of other distributors and retailers has not only given the hopeless hope, but given talented, blue-chip authors (and everyone in between) options when it comes to publishing their next work.
My question is, where does that leave agents?
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