This book has a lot of interesting info and "real world" statistics. Also useful information on what you can negotiate for in a book deal and what's standard and what isn't, etc. But all in all, it is totally discouraging. His first chapters are so depressing that you might never overcome having read them if you haven't finished your book yet. For example, he says that stats on unsolicited manuscripts sans agents are at least 5,000 a year per publishing house and he says it is simply not economical for them to hire readers, because less than one in a thousand amounts to something the house might want to publish. They all get sent back without being looked at. That is, if you send a self-addressed stamped envelope.
And he says agents don't want anyone who is not already published. Next to no chance of getting one unless your cover says something like "I invented the submarine and have written a book . . . " So--you can get a loan if you have money in the bank. And you can get a literary agent if you've been published. The same old story. It sounds very certainly impossible.
From what Curtis, an agent of 20 or 30 years says, there're tons of manuscripts that can't even get read and it has no relation whatever to what is good and what isn't. I'm ready to quit the entire idea and I'm only 1/3 of the way thru the book.
According to Curtis, it takes an agent. Period. And if you have no way of finding one of those without the same blind mailings you'd send to publishing houses, you may as well put the "grand novel" away and hope in 4 or 5 or 10 years, by some luck, you run into someone who is connected.
So I'm left wondering, why does anyone bother to write at all, much less buy Mr. Curtis' depressing book? There must be SOME way to get through, right? He offers precious little hope, I'm afraid.
I don't know if this writer-editor-agent meant to be so discouraging, but wow! Completely! Avoid this book if you want to keep writing.
And he says agents don't want anyone who is not already published. Next to no chance of getting one unless your cover says something like "I invented the submarine and have written a book . . . " So--you can get a loan if you have money in the bank. And you can get a literary agent if you've been published. The same old story. It sounds very certainly impossible.
From what Curtis, an agent of 20 or 30 years says, there're tons of manuscripts that can't even get read and it has no relation whatever to what is good and what isn't. I'm ready to quit the entire idea and I'm only 1/3 of the way thru the book.
According to Curtis, it takes an agent. Period. And if you have no way of finding one of those without the same blind mailings you'd send to publishing houses, you may as well put the "grand novel" away and hope in 4 or 5 or 10 years, by some luck, you run into someone who is connected.
So I'm left wondering, why does anyone bother to write at all, much less buy Mr. Curtis' depressing book? There must be SOME way to get through, right? He offers precious little hope, I'm afraid.
I don't know if this writer-editor-agent meant to be so discouraging, but wow! Completely! Avoid this book if you want to keep writing.
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