Hey — I’ve just finished re-posting my former PNWA blogs all the way back through the pieces I did on all of the agents and editors who were scheduled to come to the 2006 PNWA conference. So if you are looking for background information on these fine folks, before or after you query or submit to them, it is finally available again! Phew!
Anne –
Would you please speak to the issue of finding an agent after an author has published a first book through a traditional publisher without one? I love my current publisher, a small regional press. They claim the feeling is mutual. (I make a point of being very easy to work with. ) However, I want to make sure my next book – a romp through a farm, similar to Bob Tarte’s “Enslaved by Ducks” – is represented by an agent because it is possibly national, even international in appeal. Should I stick with the publisher I love but try to interest an agent anyway? Will my publisher think it is bad manners to bring an agent in? They’ve already invited me to submit again. I don’t want it to appear that I don’t appreciate and trust them. Of course, there’s always the chance they won’t even like this book. It would be presumptuous of me to assume so.
BTW, I loved your PNWA blog.
Thank you so much,
MooCrazy
I would LOVE to address this issue at length in a blog post, Moo, and I think that you don’t really need to justify your desire for more exposure for your work: what writer does not want to have MORE people read her books? So this is the last place such a desire would require explanation.
So I can better address the question, though, I should ask first: does your publisher prefer, as a matter of policy, to work with unagented writers, or are their offerings a mix of agented and unagented both?
Anne – My publisher states that they will and do work with unagented writers. I don’t know that they don’t want to work with agented writers. They do work with both but mostly unagented. They get 2,000 submissions a year and publish 12-15 books a year, suggesting they really enjoy the slush pile.
Thanks,
MooCrazy
Okay, good — that’s what I needed to know. I’m formulating a reply even as I write this. Should be posted within the next day or so.
And anybody else — have you found yourself in this predicament? How did you handle it?