Why Most Aspiring Authors Should Forego Querying Agents

Best Practices for Pitching Your Work Directly to Editors

Your manuscript is done, your proposal (if you’re a nonfiction writer) is complete. You stand at a publishing crossroads as it’s time to decide your next step. I wrote a few weeks ago about hybrid publishing vs. self-publishing, so this post is explicitly about traditional publishing, the most elusive of the publishing paths.

In my experience, most writers aren’t realistic or ready to confront how very real a barrier lack of author platform is when it comes to getting traditionally published. The publishing industry sets a high bar when it comes to expectations on this front. They want you to have lots of followers, to be actively engaged on various social sites, to have previously published work (either books that show sales or online essays or stories that are published on prestigious or well-read sites). Other things that might tip the balance when it comes to platform: a popular newsletter or blog; podcast; a popular YouTube channel; a post or story you’ve written that’s gone viral.

Still, countless writers who don’t have this kind of platform set their sights on traditional publishing. I would never tell someone who wants to try this route not to, but knowing what I do about the publishing industry, I do often encourage writers to forego trying to get an agent and instead to shop directly to editors.

Why?

It’s important to remember that agents only make money when they sell your book to a publisher. If you’re a novelist, your agent will have to fall in love with your writing and think you have the ability to break out into a super crowded market. If you’re a memoirist or other nonfiction writer, your author platform will be what carries you forward—since the prevailing sales strategy in book publishing is to leverage the author’s contacts and platform.

Agents don’t really want to represent authors unless they think they can get a six-figure deal. This doesn’t mean agents don’t represent authors who get far less than that. But this is the calculus, since a $100,000 advance will yield the agent their 15% = $15,000—not much money for the work most agents put into projects they represent.

If you’re a less-well-known author, and you have little to no author platform, the chances of selling your manuscript for six figures are slim to nothing. An exception might be that your fiction writing is so superb that it wows everyone who reads it; or if your personal story is so extraordinary that nothing of the like has been written before; or your nonfiction concept is so timely or has such a strong built-in audience that an agent can overlook the lack of an author platform to envision the readers who will clamor to buy that book.

For the average aspiring author, the more realistic prospect is to present yourself as a good bet to a small or indie press, to expect a modest advance, and to make your case directly to an editor. The process of shopping the work is exactly the same. You still query. You still follow submissions guidelines. You simply send your work to an editor at a publishing house that accepts unsolicited manuscripts rather than to an agency or agent. (Unsolicited just means “unrepresented,” and that you come over the transom on your own, without an agent.)

In the world of traditional book publishing, there’s the Big Five (Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Harper Collins, and Macmillan), and then there’s everyone else. To penetrate the walls of the Big Five, you have to have an agent. And while some smaller presses don’t take unsolicited manuscripts, many/most do. When I was an acquiring editor at Seal Press, before it got acquired by Hachette, I fielded equal numbers of agented and unrepresented authors. Editors acquire directly from authors—and there are countless small, indie, and university presses out there publishing in your genre. You just need to know where to look, and to make sure you’re pitching to publishers who actually publish the kind of book you’ve written.

Best practices for pitching to editors directly:

• Make sure you understand their publishing house. Editors are tasked with cultivating a list. If you show up and you don’t get their list, if your book is not a good fit, you will be dismissed. Take this into consideration and make a case for why you belong at the house you’re approaching.

• Do not send to slush. Yes, publishing houses have submissions platforms and processes, but you can find out an editor’s name and aim your query directly to them. You can flatter a given editor (and you should) by doing some research into what they’ve acquired and name those efforts. It’s better if you actually read one or two of the books they’ve acquired. Editors are proud of their lists, of the authors they’ve acquired, so giving a nod to that in a query letter goes a long way.

• Don’t write off university presses, or presses that don’t offer advances, of which there are many. What matters most is the kind of work a press is doing, and whether you can imagine your book being on a given list. Order their books. Look at them closely. Are you happy with the quality? Talk to some of their authors if you’re not sure.

• Be patient but not too patient. If an editor’s not getting back to you, or if you have to follow up more than three times, it’s time to move on. The experience of shopping a manuscript lends great insight into whether an editor thinks they can sell your book. Rejections, in my experience, have much more to do with lack of author platform or a book not being a good fit for a given publisher than they do with the quality of the author’s writing.

• Give yourself a time limit. Shop around, but don’t shop forever—or your book may never see the light of day. If you’re going hard at pitching your work, I would say if you don’t get a deal after 50 or 60 queries, it’s time to engage a back-up plan (like hybrid or self-publishing). I’ve known many authors who’ve gone for 100 or more rejections. How much you keep at it will be dependent on your own tolerance for the process, and no one can tell you when to be done. That said, a back-up plan never hurt any author I know.

Resources for writers looking for small presses:

Poets & Writers small press database
https://www.pw.org/small_presses

Publishers Marketplace
https://www.publishersmarketplace.com

Nonconformist Magazine’s Big, Big List of Indie Publishers and Small Presses (last updated in 2022)
https://nonconformist-mag.com/the-big-big-list-of-indie-publishers-and-small-presses/

Association of University Presses
https://aupresses.org/membership/membership-list/