Sunday, January 14, 2018

non fiction - How to find the right literary agent in the USA?


I want to publish an English language book in the USA as a foreigner. Someone told me that the USA is mainly interested in American subjects, so anything else is quite hard to sell. Besides the fact of what America does towards non-American books written by a foreigner, how can I, out of the buttload of literary agents, find a literary agent that is interested in my book without having to check out all the literary agents? I've tried selling internationally by contacting literary agents nationally, but they have either no knowledge or interest in selling internationally.


The book is psychological non-fiction. It's about two subjects, rulers and mental weakness.


When I search for other psychological non-fiction books to know which agents other authors haven chosen, I get 1193 results under 'non fiction psychological' on 'goodreads.com'.


P.S. Thanks to the comments I understand now what an agent wants and why. A writer who goes to an agent has no name that people know about. No story starts as a bestseller. The first people who'll buy from an unknown source, in this case an author, are the ones who are interested in the subject, not so much because it might be entertaining. Once you manage to make your target audience buy your product, in this case a book, they'll refer it to other people. Other people might be less interested in the subject, but if your product, in this case your book is entertaining, regardless of the subject, the majority will like it and your product, in this case a book, will become a bestseller.


This has been proven in the past, for example 'Philosopher's Stone', you know who wrote that. The book was denied by 12 publishers. The 13th time was successful, because the daughter of bloomsbury, who liked the book, told her father to publish it. 12 publishers denied the book, because Rowling wasn´t able to sell the story to the target audience, so the publisher wasn´t interested.


Since it is most important to sell it to a target audience, for anyone out there who wants to publish there first story some day, be sure that the message that you sent, so your query letter and if required your proposal are professional and conforming to the submission rules of the agency that you sent it to, so sent it to an agency who's interested in your subject as well.



Read the following articles for more information


https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/getting-published/how-to-ensure-75-of-agents-will-request-your-material


https://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/pubtips-query


https://youtu.be/Ctda91oOboQ




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