The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author - Chapter 9

The Tears and Triumphs of a New Author

Chapter 9

OK, so if your chances of winning the lottery are greater than being picked up by a publisher, what’s the next choice?
Research showed that publishers more readily accepted authors represented by an agent, so maybe I need an agent to promote my work.
It certainly made sense. Even the King of Rock-N-Roll, Elvis Presley spent two years playing small clubs and state fairs until he met Colonel Tom Parker. Within a year he became a household name and one of the most famous entertainers in American music.
I went back to the internet and started collecting names of literary agents.
As I perused their websites, it seemed that whoever constructed the publishers websites also worked for the agents.
Same song, second verse. “We do not accept new authors”. “Submissions by referral only”. “We only represent previously published authors”. Etc, etc, etc!
What’s wrong with this picture?
It’s a closed system! That’s what!
Publishers won’t look at unagented submissions and agents don’t want you unless you are already published. What an impossibly vicious circle!
The only way for a previously unpublished author to break into the inner circle is to be a famous personality.
Publishers are scrambling to print Sarah Palin. I entered a bookstore recently and there were four Sarah Palin books displayed right in the front of the store. She has booksigning dates all over the country and none of this is due to her literary skills, but to her celebrity status.
And I’ll bet there are literary masterpieces languishing at the bottom of some agent or publisher’s “slush pile”, or even worse, still in the “My Documents” section of some discouraged writer’s computer.
As my character, Walt, would say, “Where is the justice in this?”