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Warm-Enthusiasm-9534 t1_iwcx5iy wrote

Did you have an agent from before? If so, did you keep the same agent, or did you have to switch when you switched markets?

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franhawthorne OP t1_iwd3iny wrote

It's a true cliche that publishing is a business of personal contacts: An editor will simply pay more attention to the recommendations of an agent she/he knows. And I suspect that it's rare for an agent who's been specializing in, say, business books for 10 years to have good contacts as well among children's book editors. That was definitely true in my case: My (happily successful!) nonfiction agent had no experience in fiction, when I switched genres.

I hope this helps. Thanks for logging in to my AMA.

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Warm-Enthusiasm-9534 t1_iwd53z2 wrote

Thank you for the response. I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

So you did switch? I wasn't 100% clear.

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franhawthorne OP t1_iwd7zye wrote

Hmm, I replied but it doesn't seem to have registered. I'll try again:

I ended up happily getting both my novels (so far) published by a small university press that doesn't require an agent. There are, fortunately, a slew of small traditional presses like that.

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