Quote:
Originally Posted by darryl
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http://www.sfwa.org/why-a-writer-needs-an-agent/
"But things have changed. A lot. Many of those older publishers now survive only as imprints of huge conglomerates. The downsizing that has accompanied these mergers has resulted in fewer editors, even as publishers churn out an ever-increasing number of books. Time-crunched editors, who must devote their days to administrative tasks and have to shunt their actual editing work to nights and weekends, simply have no time to sift through submissions. More and more, they’ve come to rely on agents as a filtering mechanism."
https://www.thebalance.com/what-does...lished-2799883
"Do You Absolutely Need A Book Agent To Get Your Book Published?
Technically, the answer is no. BUT...
If you want your book to be published by a traditional publishing house, you WANT a literary agent to represent you."
You can find lots of opinions on both sides. Many Indies do everything themselves and have an absolute disdain for anyone who has anything to do with the traditional publishing world. Other authors like having someone else who handles all the business aspects and lets them focus on writing. Both can be successful.
Publishing is a business and there are a lot of would be authors out there. You can get taken to the cleaners if you don't have an agent to guide you through, you can get taken to the cleaners if you have a bad agent, heck you can even self publish and be perfectly happy with the results.
When my sister's husband died, the probate court judge wanted her to use a court appointed attorney (who just happened to be a buddy of his) to handle things. Since my sister is an attorney, she thought she could handle most of the filings herself. The judge proceeded to show her the errors of her ways by making her post a huge bond, and then dragging the process out for a year and a half.
Does that mean that you should always take the court appointed probate attorney? No, it just means that this particular probate judge was a jerk who did stuff because he could get away with it. You run across people like that in every business. Some people have good experiences with literary agent and big publishing houses, some people don't. Neither prove that there is one true way.