on the necessity of an agent

What Victoria Strauss talks about in her article “Why a Writer Needs a Literary Agent” probably won’t apply to people outside the U.S. For those of us who live inside its borders though, this is very applicable. When I was looking up publishers and weighing out whether or not it would be a good idea to get an agent or not when I haven’t sold anything yet, I found a lot of opinions on the matter. For some, an agent screwed up their career and cost them money. For others s/he saved them a ton of money and even created income in the contract. And there were some who said they couldn’t get an agent even with a book contract in hand. However, one thing stayed the same: an agent, for those who want to be published by a major publisher here in the U.S., has become a necessity. The wonderful thing about this article is that it explains why.

I’m still not sure if I want to get an agent. In my genre, there’s still some publishers who will accept unagented material but after reading this and a few other articles on the subject…I’m still not sure. I think it’s because I don’t know which direction I want to go yet in this “career”. All I know is I have an urban fantasy novel and I think it’s good enough a publisher might want to print it. We’ll see how it goes from there.