: Re: Publishing fiction: when do I start looking for an agent? I am just about finished with the first draft of a novel I've been working on. I've been writing novels for about ten years and I've

@Speyer920

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There are some good answers here already, but I wanted to contribute a couple of things based on my experience.

1: The story itself tends to drive it's level of polish.

Let's just admit it, we are all human. We are apex predators genetically programmed to conserve energy when not pursuing a critical task. In other words, we instinctively put in as much work as seems reasonable, but no more. A manuscript needs a hell of a lot of work to become fully polished. 90% of the books that have ever been written were not engaging enough to get all the way to being fully polished because they did not drive their author to do it. So if your book won't leave you alone, and you feel as if you owe it, as if you would be letting it down if you didn't polish it, then you know you have a book strong enough to be published. You will share it with people, you will receive feedback, you will read it aloud (read it aloud!!!) because all of that will organically come from what a powerful and compelling story it is.

2: Don't just submit to agents.

It is exactly the same amount of work and same kind of work to submit to agents as publishers. In today's world, there is precious little information that cannot be gained by a smart person willing to do research (stackexchange anyone?), and there is less and less of a good reason for agents to hold their mystery-religion sway over writers. Many publishers do not accept unagented submissions, but some do. Those that do are hungry and have not built out a stable of cash cow books, and are willing to throw a few more at the wall to see what sticks. An agent can be compared to a real estate agent: if you can't sell your house alone, they are probably necessary, but if you have a buyer in hand, why bring one in just to give them a cut? I sold my last book myself without any help from an agent, and I have found that the publishers who are willing to look at unagented submissions tend to have much better response times than most agents do anyway.

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