I know this is probably the zillionth post about agents but indulge me anyway! I've been reading a book by an 'insider' apparently of the publishing trade and he says that unless you can get an agent who is fairly big you will be just as successful at submitting your work as any of the smaller agencies will be.
I think what he meant was that the smaller agencies don't have that much clout (there are exceptions I'm sure) so you might as well do it yourself.
What do you think? Surely getting an agent, even if it's not one from the bigger agencies, is still better than trying yourself?

Don't forget that some of the best agents work pretty much on their own - David Godwin, or Mic Cheetham, or Gillon Aitken until a few years ago - and that 'big' can mean that you're handled by a junior agent who may or may not be good.

It is true that editors do get to know which agents' submissions are worth giving time to, but that's a personal thing to do with the agent, not necessarily the agency. The contrary argument to the one you've heard is that it's better to be a bigger fish in a smaller pool than say a small fish at PFD, no matter how terrific Simon Trewin is.

The other thing of course is that more and more publishers simply don't accept un-agented submissions, in which case having an agent of some sort is simply the only way to get your envelope opened at all. That's a relatively new development, and I think many commentators don't realise it, not having trawled the publishers' webpages on submissions as recently as some WWers have!

Emma

The other thing worth bearing in mind is why we have agents. In ye olden days a writer could pitch direct to an editor in a publishing house and hope to get somewhere, but as the editors' desks started to fill with unwanted manuscripts they got sick of wasting time reading scripts that were clearly not up to scratch. In comes the agent saying, "look, I filter through the crap, so the scripts I send you are the cream of the crop." "Great," says editory, "No more slush pile for me."

But that's not the end of the story, because these days, almost everyone has the means (ie a computer) to knock out a script, so there are more submissions than ever before, which means our agents are getting more scripts than they can handle. (Simon Trewin gets 3000+, Caroline Sheldon gets 2000+)

And so... up pops the editorial service, who will take on all kinds of scripts (for a fee) and say to the agents, "We filter through the crap too, and help authors improve, but how about this, if we find anything good, we pass it on."

Worrying times, because now some agents are only accepting submissions through editorial houses, or from writers who have a proven track record or some kind of recognised qualification (say, an MA in Creative Writing). This makes the work of wading through the slush pile easier because they only need to skim through the cover letters to get an idea if that first page is worth a read, which is why so many people around here put a LOT of emphasis on getting your introductory letter perfect, and your pitch professional, and your first page shit-hot!

Another thing to note is that a lot of new agents do not include themselves in the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, simply because they don't have the time to deal with 2000 sumbissions a year. Well... would you?

Colin M