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So I'm starting the search for a literary agent for my fantasy adventure novel. I haven't sent out any queries yet-- I've got at least one more round of beta readers and I still need to perfect a query letter-- but I've been looking through manuscriptwishlist and querytracker for prospective agents. Now this didn't come as a surprise or anything, but the ratio of female to male agents is something like 7:1. And making some assumptions based on biographical elements, I'll wager that the ratio of female to straight male agents is something like 15:1. And despite the fact that as a catholic I'm already pretty redpilled culturally in spite of my neoliberal principles-- wow is the performative support for alphabet + "marginalized" (read: nonmale, nonwhite) identities off the charts. It's genuinely pretty disheartening.
Now I could, in principle, present myself as exactly the kind of person these agents want: a brown author with a story set in a non-euroamerican inspired fantasy and female gender-non-conforming main character. (She actually conforms pretty well to the gender norms of her own culture, but I made a concerted effort to have all my cultures be strange and bizarre.). I even address a "socially relevant cause" (immigration) as a secondary theme. But the idea of contorting myself into their box disgusts me. And besides that, my treatment of the theme draws intentional parallels between immigration and imperialism, and poses the question of tradeoffs: security vs prosperity, the right to preserve your culture vs. the need to enforce uniform standards of good behavior, the interests of the immigrants vs. the interests of the locals, etcetera. And also the main character is genuinely racist. I don't think that'll go over well with the kind of people who "care deeply about supporting marginalized voices" and specify, "NO MORE BORING CIS WHITE GUYS" in all caps.
Despite that, I'm still going to go through the submission process. I'm not going to cope about sour grapes-- most probably, if I can't get an agent, it'll be because my manuscript just isn't good enough. Or, even if it is, it might just not be marketable enough, for reasons completely unrelated to politics. I was this close to listing "made in abyss" as a comp title; my level of politics-neutral degeneracy is high enough that I'll be genuinely surprised to earn out an industry-standard $10,000 advance.
But still-- if anyone can point me to resources for finding agents who aren't NPCs, I'd appreciate that. I'm also thinking about direct submissions to conservative-leaning mid size presses but worry those will just pose the equivalent-but-reflected problem.
Okay. I have a lot of thoughts about this, gathered over the years of my own (unsuccessful) attempts to be a published author.
To be clear, my failure is mostly lack of commitment (I have not written that many manuscripts, I have only intermittently tried to shop them around, I still mostly treat it as a hobby). I will assert that I am a good (publishable) writer. My posts here on the Motte may not reflect that, but I don't put much effort into writing here. I've been in critique groups, a few writing workshops (these are mostly worthless) and read all the books on writing (both the "how to write novels" ones and the "how to get published" ones). Feedback and my own (obviously not impartial) assessment is that if I really wrote like an author who is determined to be published and kept trying, I'm good enough to get published. (FWIW I did make it all the way to Baen's final round with one of my manuscripts- I got personalized feedback from the editorial committee telling me why it was an "almost but not quite." If you have researched publishing, you know that getting anything other than a polite "This showed real promise but it is not what we're looking for at this time" is rare.)
So first of all, you are right about the overwhelming bias in literary agencies. Fortunately they mostly advertise their biases, so you already know if they are looking for "diverse voices, especially from marginalized and underrepresented communities blah blah blah" there probably isn't much point in submitting to that agent. Most agencies list each agent's preferences, and usually there is one person (most often the one man) at the agency who specializes in things like science fiction and epic fantasy. If his (or occasionally her) profile doesn't flash all the same LGTBQ flags and "craving stories about found family, non-heterocentric romances," etc., then they just might be the sort who is looking for the next Brandon Sanderson or George R.R. Martin, and you have a shot.
But yeah, I would estimate that about 80% of literary agents today have a shingle that says, not quite in so many words, "If you are a straight white dude writing fiction that would appeal to straight white dudes, don't bother me."
It's always going to be a long shot no matter what. Always has been.
I would strongly recommend against misrepresenting your own identity. (Yeah, I've considered that myself.) It will come out eventually, and then your agent will dump you and you might become the next scandal/cancellation in the literary sphere. Also, you do want to eventually be known under your own name, right? Getting your foot in the door by pretending to be a queer BIPOC neurodivergent she/they will only ever look like you were trying to pull a stunt.
So a lot of people are telling you to skip trad publishing and go indie. This is a more viable option than it used to be. But the thing you have to realize about the real money-makers are that they either got extremely lucky (yes, that includes Larry Correia and John Scalzi and Matt Dinniman- hitting it big with a self-cultivated fanbase isn't just about writing a good book, it's often just about timing and catching a wave) or being a grinder. The real moneymakers on KU are people who churn out a book every month or two, whether it's werewolf romances or LitRPGs or harem fantasies, and while some authors can grind out passably entertaining stories at that speed, none of it is good writing. Their audiences are looking for more-of-the-same-please brain candy, not quality writing. Those authors also, of course, are doing it full time if they've started to make enough to live on.
The elephant in the room with self-publishing that hardly any of the self-publishing advocates really want to address is that you and ten million other people are all trying to do the same thing, and nowadays that includes five million Indians using AI. Kindle Unlimited was always looking for a gem in a sea of muck, and now that is true more than ever. Writing a book and throwing it online and hoping it gets "discovered" and builds an audience organically is an even bigger long shot than getting chosen by a rainbow-haired non-binary polyamorous pagan literary agent for your right-wing Catholic epic fantasy (I know that is not how you described it). So that means you have to do all that social media stuff and marketing yourself and getting "in" with various review and lit circles and hanging out with other aspiring self-pubbed authors who will boost each other and... if this sounds like a shit job to do what you really want to do (write) yeah, and everyone in that sphere will tell you tough shit, that's the game.
If you are serious about wanting to make a living from writing... you know that every single book on writing tells you the same thing ("don't quit your day job or have a supportive working spouse") for a reason, right? Even if you do get published (traditionally or self-published), your odds of making enough money to live on are extremely long. Successful authors, big name authors, authors you know, mostly do not live on their writing alone. If they do, it's because they do lots of other writing besides novels. They hustle for freelancing and editing and teaching gigs, they are constantly selling short stories, they do some journalism, they maybe get a gig writing a superhero comic for Marvel or DC. The number of authors who actually make a living, let alone a decent living, off their novels alone is tiny relative to all published authors. Absolutely, dream about becoming a Rowling or a King or a Sanderson, but don't set that as a realistic life goal.
TBF it's not "right-wing", but "catholic epic fantasy" is close enough to the mark. I knew exactly what I was doing with the scene where the main character consumes the blood and body of an undead demigod.
But yeah, I'm aware that "quit my job" money is a long shot. My mindset is that each book is essentially a lottery ticket. The EV is <1, and it's even lower if I go for trad publishing over self publishing. But my utility curve isn't linear with respect to income here: I see the biggest bumps at, "convince a small number of dedicated people to invest a lot of effort into understanding my book" and "make enough money to quit my job." In-between, there's not a whole lot of difference between making 5 or 10 or 20 thousand dollars.
I AM interested in your experience shopping your books around. Are there any (politics-independent) tricks you picked up querying or submitting to contests?
I don't know anything about how the publishing side of it works, but Catholic fiction is A Thing That Exists and seems generally hungry for volume- Taylor Marshall and Raymond Arroyo have both published stuff in it, and if it's worth their time, it's almost certainly seeking authors that aren't quite so big name already.
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No special tricks, I'm afraid. It just boils down to doing a lot of research and due diligence. Actually read what the agent or contest says about what they are looking for (and what they are not looking for). A huge number of people will just ignore someone who says "I am looking for feminist utopian optimistic SF featuring communities of color" and send them their military space opera. Or worse, send their military space opera to the agent who mostly reps romance authors.
You already know about QueryTracker and similar tools. Make use of them. Sending out 100 queries without a single response is normal.
Look at the books you like (and the books similar to yours) and see if you can find out who that author's agent is. (Often you can find this on their Twitter or their website).
Networking is a thing. Most of the leads I actually got were from other authors who were willing to connect me to their agents.
There are very few publishers who take unsolicited submissions directly. Most of them are small presses. If you are in a very particular niche you might find the right one.
I was very close a few times. But it takes persistence and volume.
Also just so you know, Baen does take submissions but they take literally years to respond. (I think I got my first "you made it out of the slush pile" email two years after I submitted the manuscript, and then it was like two or three more years before my final rejection.)
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Your best bet is to go indie. If you absolutely must attempt traditional publishing, skip the agents and try submitting directly to Baen.
But, seriously, go indie.
Trad publishing would be hard enough if you were willing to play the idpol game, because you'd be competing with all the other people who are also willing to play the idpol game, and trad publishing is a tournament market where a few well-connected authors make it big and everyone else waits tables. But the fact that you are not willing to play makes it hopeless.
You are like a student applying to Harvard on the strength of his SAT and AP scores, unwilling to do extracurriculars or networking because that's not what education should be about, refusing to disclose his URM status and without a legacy family member to vouch for him; it's not going to work.
I see from the sibling comments that you don't want to publish serially. That's not ideal (you are leaving money on the table), but not quite a dealbreaker; while serial publishing on Royal Road or similar supported through Patreon is the usual way to fund a work in progress, once it is finished the standard practice is to delete the free copy and put it on Kindle Unlimited, so you can just jump straight to that.
And I also see that your goal is to make enough money to quit your job. As you correctly note, if an online novel gets popular enough it will eventually be acquired by a trad publisher anyway. If not, it is very unlikely that it would have ever gotten traditionally published in the first place, or that it would have paid back its advance if it had. None of those self-published guys you see at your local's writer groups would have made it big if they had tried trad publishing instead of online publishing; they would have just failed.
If you are serious about this, you have to commit one way or the other. Make a desperate all out effort to get traditionally published, including ticking the idpol boxes, and understand that you will most likely fail anyway. Or put all your effort into being an indie author, including adapting your writing to the serial format, and understand that you will most likely end up as a midlister doing his own marketing and outreach and never making as much money as you are currently making in a well-renumerated job.
And if neither of those are acceptable to you, just quit now, before you waste any more time on this.
Good point, I should be thinking about direct-submission places too... I have a pretty limited view of the publishing industry because frankly I mostly just () books. After a brief look I've already found the litRPG publisher Aetheon, and I think it's pretty interesting that they phrase their inclusion statement as
... which is implicitly meritocratic. Ironically, I bet that their output is far more varied ethnically than the bigger publishers. (Some of those Indians CAN write, haha. And they're doing it on royal road instead of kindle unlimited.)
I'm willing to serially publish in principle, but this book in particular isn't designed for that; it's too short and dense to be serialized, so instead of butchering it I'd rather start from scratch.
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I strongly agree with this, especially for someone with the cultural attitudes of the median motizan. The gatekeepers to the existing paths to success are largely all held by people who are actively looking for NOT YOU and view keeping you out as an active good, and while alternatives such as Baen exist they are but one port and that is just a different tournament model of which of the legions of authors applying to them get picked.
Kindle Unlimited and other self published routes have a bad rap in a lot of places because the lack of gatekeepers means the quality can be pretty low, but there are a lot of people who have been a success who would not have been able to make it otherwise. You probably don't want to do this because it seems low status and sends a signal that your book isn't good enough for traditional publishing, but try to be Larry Correia. He self published his first book, marketing it primarily by sharing it on the gun enthusiast forums he participated it, and now is very successful in the trad publishing world (largely through Baen, but still) on the basis of that success. If you self publish and make a follow up post with the link here I will pre-commit to at least giving it a look.
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This is entirely obvious advice but I would read the bios of individual agents on literary agency web pages and then research any who seem promising -- you'll likely be able to find e.g. video of them speaking on panels. When you find a hit, write to them in earnest as if you are someone they'd want to talk to outside of a business transaction. Given the economics of publishing, you are shopping for them not the other way around.
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Self publishing is much more profitable:
Trad pub has a much higher risk of failure, but if you pick the right lottery numbers it massively magnifies your success. That's why even the most popular selfpublished works eventually get aquired and sent down the traditional route-- because they know they'll benefit from the investment of institutional resources.
If I wanted side-hustle money, selfpub would be better. But I'm aiming, however foolishly, for quit-your-job money, which is a much higher bar since I'm already well renumerated. To that end, I'd much rather have 10 trunk books or flops trying to pen a bestseller than 10 books that get a modest audience but require a permanent time commitment for marketing, events, merch, kickstarter, etcetera. I'm not interested in the fate of all selfpublishing authors I know in my local writer's groups. Death or glory. Nothing else.
Why do you worship jackpots?
I already have 30th percentile income and wealth. Making an extra 10k or 20k a year would be nice, but I could earn that for less effort by focusing on interview prep and certifications for my profession. That's why my utility curve is logitic in this case. If I get published at all, I get an initial surge of utility just from the status effects. Then there's a long doldrums of, "I'm happier the more money I make, but this doesn't seriously change my life." Then there's the jackpot of, "getting famous enough to do nothing but write." I've already taken most of the low-hanging fruit for improving my live within the confines of my current circumstances; setting a new utility basepoint would require dramatic changes in capabilities beyond what I already have.
Fair enough! Not badgering, but curious: At what point would you be comfortable investing additional resources into this as a vanity business? And why do you care about status effects like being published considering the fallen state of these "institutions"? Is this an issue of living a "double" life where you care about public respectedness and signalling though you private disagree with it?
No matter how much you may despise "the institutions," I don't think anyone who wants to be a writer could deny, down deep, that seeing your name on a book in an actual bookstore, published by a real publishing house, is a milestone we all aspire to.
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I don't disagree with signaling, I just disagree with the particular signals I get from literary agents. I would still love to be able to signal that I am not just a writer, but an Author; I want the cachet that comes with being able to tell people to look for my writing in their local bookstore.
... and also, this is entirely petty, but I have to defeat my nemesis. I have a (2nd or 3rd degree) cousin who is published, does make their living writing, and has their book in my local Barnes and Nobles. (They live in another country entirely). They're also about my age. So despite the fact that they have no clue I exist, and that at a glance I don't have any problem with their writing, I've determined that they're my rival and made it my life goal to surpass them. (Only partially kidding.)
As for a vanity business... probably never. I'm either going to approach the problem with killing intent or not at all; if I just want status and creative freedom without regard for income I can go write fanfiction.
How do you know of this cousin but not reversed? Why don't you reach out? I have many distant cousins who I've only gotten to know in the last few months, it's a rather nice experience!
My grandpa mentioned her-- he keeps track of all the successful people he's related to/otherwise knows in order to flex.
I plan to reach out only after getting published; it would be intensely gauche to show up like someone pretending to be long-lost family of a lottery winner when I have no similar accomplishment to call my own.
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I believe the standard advice nowadays is to ignore the traditional publishing process, and instead publish for free in serial format (possibly with a Patreon) to drum up interest, before depublishing that preliminary version and publishing a final version on Amazon.
>>>/lit/wng says:
>>>/lit/wg says:
I can say that, over the past few years, I have purchased several books through this pathway.
I'm a big fan of serial novels, and I've previously written (fanfiction) serially before. But as an art form, it's like comparing a TV show to a movie-- for all the things that are similar, there's still plenty of things that change. For example, I'm committed to polishing to book to a mirror finish, which means obsessing over line-level prose, snipping dangling plot threads, and cutting out fat like I'm sculping a character from greek myth. But all of that goes directly against the grain of serial fiction, which favors expansive plots, slower development, excessive-- almost extraneous-- detail, and update rate over polish.
I'm not going to rule out publishing serially in the future, but this book specifically would only work as a traditionally published work
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