First off, I'm an unpublished novelist myself, so take the following advice with however much salt you think it warrants. Without having read the essay in question, this sounds sketchy to me. Publication is a difficult enterprise, and as such there's no guarantee that paying for these services will get a person anything more than a form rejection from literary agents. That is, you stand to spend a lot of money, after which you still can only sit around and hope that someone wants to represent your manuscript.

I'm leery of publicists working with unpublished writers. If you don't have a published book, you really don't have anything to publicize. According to what I've read about agents, the best way to get one is to write a dynamite book, then hook them with a dynamite query letter.

Publishing is rife with scam artists who misinform writers that it's impossible to get published unless you give someone lots of money for stuff you don't need (publicity) or stuff you can get for free in any decent writing group (editing and critique). I'm certain there are many reputable freelance editors out there, but there are enough predators where I wouldn't want to chance it.

This is a great post on Neil Gaiman's website regarding literary agents: http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/01/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about.asp
I also recommend visiting Preditors & Editors (http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/), a great listing of who's reputable and who's not. Finally, Miss Snark (http://misssnark.blogspot.com/) is a great blog by an anonymous literary agent, discussing publishing, query letters, and landing a literary agent. Be forewarned that a lot of the advice is in the form of ridiculing reader questions, but there's a lot to be learned by reading through the Snarkives. My apologies if all this information was common knowledge, or if I came across as an obnoxious know-it-all. Like I said, I'm not published, but I've tried to educate myself about publishing the last couple years, and I found these resources very helpful.

Thanks,
Bill


jud nirenberg <[address removed]> wrote:

Fellow writers;

I've read an essay on the Internet suggesting that if one is willing to pay
for the help, some literary publicists can help pre-publication and even
help to approach agents. Has anyone used a publicist to get to an agent?

Any advice welcome.

Jud Nirenberg





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