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<blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 1827712" data-attributes="member: 5171">Fast Learner: Heh.Scribe Ineti: Both of the novels currently sitting with publishers are also sitting with agents. I've gotten generally nice comments from agents, who usually respond faster than publishers, but no hits yet.&nbsp; One agent said that he didn't do mysteries (and the Victorian Fantasy Mystery fits as well in the mystery section as it does in the fantasy section), and another agent said that he just plain wasn't taking any fantasy until the market stabilized.And yes, I'm checking references.&nbsp; I've had two bad experiences (neither of which resulted in me losing money) with agents who were fronting for rewrite services (ie, &quot;Your manuscript was rejected because it was too rough and unpolished. Would you like to try this rewriting service?&quot;, which might have gulled me, had the three agents before that person specifically said, &quot;This reads smoothly and quickly, like a professionally authored manuscript,&quot; even as they rejected me.).&nbsp; At this point, I'm making use of my SFWA membership (which has some neat directories for members) and only actually trying agents who represent authors I like.So yeah, I'd love an agent -- but with most publishers restricting submissions to agented material, the agents have effectively become first readers for the publishers.&nbsp; Their response times have lengthened, and they're much more selective -- or at least, the ones who are worth having are much more selective.Not an insurmountable problem -- the more novels I get out there, the greater the chance that one of them will hit.&nbsp; Eventually, if I keep writing, it'll happen.&nbsp; An agent would speed things up -- they get responses more quickly, and they're allowed to submit to more than one market at a time -- but it's also much easier to get an agent after selling the first novel... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile&nbsp; &nbsp; :)"&nbsp; data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="takyris, post: 1827712, member: 5171"] Fast Learner: Heh. Scribe Ineti: Both of the novels currently sitting with publishers are also sitting with agents. I've gotten generally nice comments from agents, who usually respond faster than publishers, but no hits yet. One agent said that he didn't do mysteries (and the Victorian Fantasy Mystery fits as well in the mystery section as it does in the fantasy section), and another agent said that he just plain wasn't taking any fantasy until the market stabilized. And yes, I'm checking references. I've had two bad experiences (neither of which resulted in me losing money) with agents who were fronting for rewrite services (ie, "Your manuscript was rejected because it was too rough and unpolished. Would you like to try this rewriting service?", which might have gulled me, had the three agents before that person specifically said, "This reads smoothly and quickly, like a professionally authored manuscript," even as they rejected me.). At this point, I'm making use of my SFWA membership (which has some neat directories for members) and only actually trying agents who represent authors I like. So yeah, I'd love an agent -- but with most publishers restricting submissions to agented material, the agents have effectively become first readers for the publishers. Their response times have lengthened, and they're much more selective -- or at least, the ones who are worth having are much more selective. Not an insurmountable problem -- the more novels I get out there, the greater the chance that one of them will hit. Eventually, if I keep writing, it'll happen. An agent would speed things up -- they get responses more quickly, and they're allowed to submit to more than one market at a time -- but it's also much easier to get an agent after selling the first novel... :) [/QUOTE]

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