I'm in the middle of writing a book but it's no where near completed. I was wondering if it's worth approaching agents to gauge interest? Would an agent take me on if my works not finished?

I heard about an author who hadn't finished their book but approached an agent and got given a £300,000 advance to finish it... obviously I'd love that to happen as I could give up the day job and finish it asap.

How realistic is this though - should I just finish the book then work on finding an agent? It would mean working for another year or so as I work long hours and don't get much writing time, but if they were willing to give an advance I could finish it much much sooner. Would they accept that as a proposal if they liked my book idea?

Hi Viky,
you don't specify what kind of book you're writing - is it fiction or non? I think agents (and publishers) are generally more inclined to accept authors of non-fiction with strong proposals. As for fiction, it's possible to get signed up without a full mss, but it's still very very difficult. As for the advance, I think you may have got things round the wrong way here. Agents don't pay advances, publishers do but rarely anything more than a couple of percent of the book's expected budget.

Send it out, don't give up the day job and keep us posted to your progress.

all the best
Luke

Personally, it's just something I'd never do. I'd be afraid of rushing a story to reach a deadline, and getting tangled up in contractual obligations before the work was even completed. Take a step back from your desire to be published and re-evaluate your goal.

Try not to be naive. It's hard enough to get an agent or a publisher to look at your work as it is, let alone take it on. With the work unfinished, there's no way it will possibly be as good as it has to be to raise interest. Sending your work unfinished may even come across as a touch arrogant.

In every book about writing for publication I've read, it is always stressed to send out your best effort. Also, in most of the entries in the Reader's and Writer's yearbook/handbook, most agents and companies request a full MSS. That means fully written, and edited to a high degree. I don't know about you, but I find it nigh impossible to edit something that isn't complete. I wouldn't know what I had until the last page was down, but we are all different.

Once an agent has rejected a work, it is more difficult to approach them again, so you have to make your shot count.

Anyway, that's my two pennies worth. Ultimately, it's up to you, but good luck!

JB

Vicky,

First of all – agents DON’T pay advances. They only make their money from a percentage of what you sell once your book is accepted by a publisher. Agents have a massive workload so, generally, they’re only interested in finished products. By ‘finished’, I mean polished until you can see your face in it.

The other point is that, almost inevitably, what happens in the later parts of the story can alter what you’ve already written at the beginning. A manuscript isn’t finished until you’ve written it, rewritten it, edited it sentence by sentence, edited it for continuity, edited it for punctuation, edited it for style consistency, and edited it for… well just to make sure it’s shining like a diamond. Then don’t forget to make sure it’s properly formatted.

I heard about an author who hadn't finished their book but approached an agent and got given a £300,000 advance to finish it.

I would treat this story with a very large barrel of salt… it’s akin to picking up a lottery ticket in the street and discovering it’s the sole ticket for a quintuple rollover… believe me I know how you feel… you REALLY want to believe in it. DON’T. It’s not worth that cold-shower wake up moment!

Finish writing your novel. Edit and polish it until you know it so well you can quote huge passages from memory. Only then should you think about sending it out. It’s a shit world for new authors nowadays but, if you’re really determined, you won’t lose hope that you’ll strike gold.

Good luck

Dee

Viky,
I second and third everything that has been said here. You must remember that those stories of 6 figure advances for unfinished work by first time authors MAY occasionally happen but they are very, very rare. If you are a bestselling author then yes, you can get a commission based on your name alone but for someone unpublished? forget it!
Dee is right: finish your manuscript and work on it til it is absolutely as good as it can be; and believe me, even when you have finished it you may find, after a few weeks or even months, that you want to scrap half of it, rewrite the ending, add new characters, all kinds of stuff. And believe me, you don't want to have a contract and a deadline to get all that work done. There's nothing so unsatisfying as delivering a manuscript on time because of a deadline, but knowing it needs more work. I've done that and I couldn't bear to even think of the books afterwards. Take your time and do it properly.

The publishing world is extremely hard to break into; keep your expectations low, concentrate on finishing the work in hand, don't give up the day job, and one day you may get a big break.

It took me roughly 30 rejections to get offered a publishing contract, and as gruelling and heartbreaking it was to get there, I've been assured by plenty of others that this is, in fact, highly lucky.

My book won't come out until the beginning of January 07, and although the time lag used to grate on me, I'm now very happy about it. I have time to make the novel the absolute best it can be, and with professional help. Believe me, the process is anything but glamourous!

As for an advance - forget it. Advances are for sure fire hits, which generally come from safe bet writers. As an untried, it's highly unlikely you'll get a bean until your book sells some!

But if you stay positive and professional, and most of all determined, you can get there!