How to Land an Agent for a Self-Published Book

land an agent for self-published book

Note from Jane (January 2022): Even though this post was first written and published in 2017, I stand by it and my advice remains the same.


One of the most frequent questions in my inbox is: “I’ve self-published my book, but now I want an agent. How do I get one?” Usually the writer wants an agent (or traditional publisher) because they’ve been disappointed by their sales or have experienced frustration in getting readers. Other times, the author’s plan was to self-publish first and magically attract attention that would lead to a traditional book deal—something that is even more of a rare occurrence than landing a book deal through the slush pile.

If you’ve given up on the self-publishing route and want to try traditional, then there are several approaches you can take.

1. Query agents as if you didn’t self-publish.

This is the most sensible approach if you put very little time or effort into self-publishing your book, haven’t been on the market very long, and believe self-publishing was a mistake. (I would also advise taking the work off the market before you query if it was indeed a mistake, but that’s not required.)

Prepare a query letter and synopsis (or a book proposal for nonfiction), and research agents who are interested in your genre, just as you would for an unpublished work. Then pitch and see what responses you get. If you’re able to secure interest, you should disclose the history of the project; if the agent is genuinely interested, that history is unlikely to affect their enthusiasm for the work, especially if the work received little or no attention while it was on the market.

2. Query and mention your self-publishing effort.

If your self-publishing effort has resulted in some recognition or sales, then you should query agents just as you would for an unpublished work, but mention in your query what success you’ve enjoyed with the project. It’s important to note when you released the book, what price it’s selling at, how many copies you’ve sold, how many reviews you have on Amazon or Goodreads, and your average rating. Do not send a copy of the book with your query. Instead, wait for the agent to indicate in their response what they’d like to see—the first chapter? First 50 pages? The entire book? Be prepared to send the work in manuscript format if requested.

If interested, the agent will closely scrutinize the work on Amazon and Goodreads—and probably thoroughly research your online presence—so make sure that you’ve spiffed up your website and are putting your best professional face forward.

3. Continue marketing your self-pub work.

The honest truth is that most agents (and publishers) have little or no interest in acquiring self-published work unless it’s receiving significant attention in the media or hitting bestseller lists. In other words, if you’re doing well enough to merit a traditional deal, agents and publishers will come to you, not the other way around. Usually, your best bet is to continue looking for ways to gain attention and visibility for your work—to try and make waves. If that seems like an exercise in futility, then…

4. Query with a new project.

Aside from hitting bestseller lists, perhaps the best way to land a traditional deal for a self-published work is to secure an agent for a brand-new work. Should that happen, the agent will have a conversation with you about your vision for your career and all of your existing work—and will strategize with you to decide how to handle your existing self-published oeuvre.

Approaches to avoid

  • As stated before, do not send the book to the agent unless they specifically request it.
  • Do not attend writers conferences or industry events with your self-published book in hand and try to sell agents or publishers on it in person (unless there is an explicit invitation to do so).
  • Do not lead your query or your pitch with “I self-published this book and thought you might be interested.” The likely reaction will be I am not interested in your self-published book. In other words, the fact that you self-published is almost never a selling point. Pitch the merits of the work, not its self-published history, unless you can say, “I self-published this book and have sold 50,000 copies so far.”

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cherrilynn Bisbano

Jane, Great advice. I am an acquisitions reader for an agent. He does not want self-published books unless the book has remarkable sales. Selling a self-published book to a publisher is difficult. Some great books have come across my desk with limited sales, I had to turn them down. It breaks my heart.

John Grabowski

> Some great books have come across my desk with limited sales,
> I had to turn them down. It breaks my heart

This is why, in my opinion, the industry is broken.

Agents and publishing houses make their decision based on criteria no reader browsing shelves for their next purchase would care about.

Rlee

I agree John. It is broken, and a shame too. I am a self-published author who has achieved moderate sales, but recently am looking for an agent. I want to pitch my beloved self-published books to an agent or traditional publisher, but it seems the article is saying to disregard my work and push it to the side because agents don’t want to know. So basically I am left to write a completely new novel, one that isn’t self-published, and the agent will more likely look at it.

Steven Hutson

John, what would you suggest as a better plan?

Mike Reininger

Hey John, I’ve got a great self-published book. I’ve sold over 1,200 copies. I’ll send you a free copy if you can get me a literary agent. You can see older versions of the book on Amazon.com. It is titled: “The Life Story of Hubert Dielen, 1855-1926, an autobiography.” The original is in Dutch.

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I would love a list of agents who work with self publishing authors

T.L Mumley

coreylamontberry, I’d like to correct Jane here. There is a growing list of agents and traditional publishing firms not only accepting self-published authors, but there is a top dog at one of the most successful literary agencies in New York in hot pursuit of self-published books to represent to mainstream publishers. Google agents accepting self-published authors, and you’ll find many. There’s a huge attitude shift and not everyone in the literary world is so old school as the snotty attitude self-published authors are somehow “below” a “bestseller” with a traditional publisher. In fact, many of those titles were corporate bought to get such status and their book sucks.

The fact is, agents and the top 6 publishers today realize if they don’t tap into the self-published list, they will lose tremendous market potential.

One top agent, Terra Chalberg states: “I wouldn’t ever turn a compelling project away because it had been self-published. It holds no stigma for me.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/booked/2010/10/01/literary-agents-open-the-door-to-self-published-writers/#493cbfcb7daa

John Grabowski

Great column. Thanks, Jane.

Mel

I’m with John Grabowski…What is the justification for turning down a really great book because it was originally self published with limited sales? Is it because it was self published? One can see why more authors are going down this route. Or is it the limited sales…Which may be the result of insufficient and ineffective marketing. Some pretty mediocre and badly written books end up traditionally published. Some pretty horrendous self published books become block busters. Is this fifty shades of mixed up?

Mel

Yes, I see what you’re saying. I suppose it wasn’t clear in the initial post that the books were rejected because there wasn’t a market for them rather than the fact that they were self published. It makes sense that a self published book would only be picked up by a traditional publishing house if it was already successful. It wouldn’t make sense to use prior self publishing as a pitch but I’d be interested in clarification about why it would make the pitcher come across as not knowing what he really wants. Thanks Jane.

Mel

This is such an interesting insight, Jane. I’m pleased to have accidentally come across your blog. Confession time… I self published nine months ago. I did it because, when I looked into the process of traditional publishing, I found it pretty intimidating and scary. I lacked confidence in my own ability as a writer and storyteller. In a nutshell, too scared! What fragile egos we have! I decided to test the water at the coalface…What would the readers think? I was pleasantly surprised and have since published a second book and have readers eagerly awaiting the third. About to go on sale. My reviews are excellent but you’re absolutely correct, self publishing is a very difficult job. It’s a lot of work, which takes away from your writing time. It’s hard to discipline oneself to market when one’s brain is busting with stories. Confidence wise, I feel braver now, I may pitch the next book down the traditional route but I would take care with my approach. We are allegedly in a golden age for self publishing, there’s success to be had if one puts in the effort. I shall definitely read through all your past posts. Many thanks.

Rlee

Great article Jane, and thanks for offering your insight into this tricky grey area for many of us. Your post has helped to clear up and clarify a lot of stuff.

Ross Eberle

Jane, you said: Why did this person self-publish in the first place if they wanted a traditional deal? …To which I’ll respond with: Because I’ve tried going the traditional publishing route over and over again. And every time, I was turned down.

It was depressing and deplorable. You see, I’ve come up with the impression which, quite frankly, most traditional publishing houses have gotten WAY to big for their britches. I’ve come to the conclusion they close their doors to nearly EVERYONE if they don’t meet certain criteria…Like having an agent to start with. Or by forcing the writer to adhere to certain guidelines (Such as a certain word count, certain genres, or a specific writing-style). If I did this to my work every time I wanted to submit it to a traditional publisher, I’d never have it in a final-draft state! I realized this YEARS ago.

By comparison, self-publishing (At least when using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing) is practically a walk in the park!! And I can make changes to the already-uploaded manuscript anytime I want, and then re-submit it for publishing there. They don’t care, as long as I’m using their services. This is all which matters to them.

What is driving me BONKERS is getting folks interested in reading my already-published works. This is why I’m so darn eager to get an agent. I figure it this way: If I have a literary agent, he or she will know how to sell more copies of my published works. And don’t say something like: “Why not offer the first one for free?” because Amazon won’t let me do so. If I did this, they wouldn’t make any money off my ‘sales’. You dig?

Ross Eberle

Hi again, Jane.

Thank you for making this important clarification to me. For quite a while, I did not entirely understand how an agent worked or if me and such a person would benefit from one another. Also, I’m sorry for not responding in a few days. I’ve been pretty busy with writing and ‘regular’ stuff as I would call it.

At any rate, since I now know agents won’t sell my book to readers, then how do I, as a self-published author gain this kind of attention? And if publishers don’t always sell to readers either and instead focus on selling to booksellers, librarians, and other middlemen, then how does a series attract so much attention? And thus, what avenues of revenue would a self-published author have?

And finally, would you be open to read a few sample chapters of some of the books I’ve written over the years and give your input on them? You can do so by voting and commenting on each of them. (Either on the site I wrote them on or here.) I do appreciate all feedback I receive, as long as it’s not overly-critical. If you’d like to do this, here’s my profile: https://www.wattpad.com/user/RossEberle

Thanks for your understanding and response.

Ross Eberle

Hello once again, Jane!

I’ve saved the site you sent me as a favorite, and have already begun reading the first part. Can I send you copies of my query letter and synopsis? I understand you’ll provide feedback on such materials. Thanks again! =Hugs you= 🙂

Cassie Beebe

I know this is an old article, but I wanted to share my experience. I self published my first book after trying the trad route (I didn’t try very hard, though, to be honest). In doing research, I felt self publishing was a better path for me.

But now, 5 books later, I think self publishing is not the right path for me. It’s really disappointing, because my most recent trilogy I think is really great, and I wish I had tried to query with it. But since I had already chosen the self publishing route, I never even attempted to query with those books.

I’m not going to lie, it’s really disheartening to know that agents don’t even want to consider self published works. I feel like I might have made a mistake by self publishing that story instead of trying to query with it, and now it feels like there is no way to remedy that.

Samantha

Hi, Cassie, I read your post and I had to respond since all the others are so old. I don’t mean this against this particular agent in any way at all….But…Of course agents don’t like self-publishing. It means that there are other avenues for writers to take, foregoing all of the politics of trad publishing, marketing, etc from which they make their money! Literary agents will always make it seem like you are wasting your time by being an indie author and that it makes much more sense to go the trad route. How many first time authors do you know that land a deal with an agent after sending them an email? 1? 2? None? Agents put an awful lot of stock in their own importance and ability to find manuscripts worthy of their time. By rejecting or ignoring queries (which isn’t always their fault considering the amount they get) you’re supposed to come away with the lesson that it wasn’t good enough. It’s not marketable. People wouldn’t like it, etc. That’s bull. Think of all the amazing authors who were only published posthumously. Agents/publishers read and rejected their work constantly. Were those agents/publishers wrong? Yes! I applaud your efforts as an indie writer. You’ve decided that you don’t need to wait on some agent to take your email out of their ‘slush’ pile. The fact that they call it that in the first place says a lot about what they really think about new authors with no names and no contacts. If everyone self-publishes and finds new ways to get readers for writers that forego the agent’s main mission which is to make money for themselves, there would be no need for the middle men and they’d all be out of jobs, their resumes in someone else’s ‘slush pile.’ An agent would read this and say, hmm, sounds like someone’s very bitter about being a lousy writer who can’t get an agent. Snarky things, aren’t they? Hang in there, Cassie. You don’t need an agent to tell you your worth as a writer or the worth of your work. Keep writing and doing it for the love of the craft and you’ll succeed. You are a writer, girl! 5 books says it all. Anyone who says different, put them in your mental slush pile and hit delete! Best of luck to you!!!

Mimi

What if the reason is to break into foreign markets? How would one attract an agent for that?

Lp Johnson

Yes…well…I went self pub because I wanted my series Published, not with any real concern for ‘best seller lists’, and ten years of traditional queries in a market lacking access for 90 percent of Writer’s was a Drag. I’m not marketing much at all, and Romance/Drama African Diaspora Novels are not all that common, but my series is doing fine on its own, according to My Own standards. I also think Traditional Houses are still very snobbish about selecting lit…since I too think some truly Horrid tales with very little relation to real readers have somehow managed large advances. I’m Never turning back, and am now helping others realize their dreams!

Emilio Corsetti III

Jane, I would like to suggest that you stop using the term self-published. A self-published book is something that you print out at your local Kinkos and put in a three-ring binder. How about independently published? You’ve heard of independent films, right? They are films made outside the studio system. An independently published book is a book that was written, edited, and produced outside the main publishing monopoly. No one has ever purchased a book based on who the publisher was.

Steven Hutson

Agreed. If you self-pub’d a book, you shouldn’t be afraid to own it.

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Cindy Brandner

I find much of information about whether one should make the leap from self-publishing to trying to land a traditional contract rather puzzling. I had an agent approach me a couple of years back, and he told me that I’d need to sell in the six figures within a relatively short period of time in order to get mainstream interest. In the music industry if an indie recording has 20,000 downloads the music industry takes notice because they realize something is happening with that song. Yet books- which traditionally sell in far smaller numbers than music- have to sell in the six figures? The stats even for the traditional industry are sobering- I read that the average traditionally published book sells 3,000 copies over its entire lifetime. The stats for self-publishing are, of course, even worse than that. Yet I, as an indie author, have to sell in the six figures to garner any interest? I’ve sold more than 40,000 copies of my books- the vast majority of those in the last three years and yet it’s nowhere near enough for the mainstream industry to be interested, but it’s more than publishers expect the books on their own lists to sell. I mean the average book not the bestsellers.

Cindy Brandner

Thank you for the response. The 1,000 copies- gah, it’s worse than I thought.

Scott Hawthorne

Hi Jane, do you have any examples of anyone selling a self published book and then having a traditional publisher take it out? If so, did they change the book title? Change the author’s name? You mention as a tip (and I think it’s a great one) taking down the online presence of the book, but Goodreads will never do that, even if the book is removed from Amazon. Any reply appreciated. Thanks!

Scott Hawthorne

Good to know. Thanks very much!

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