Reply #4: That can be a tough nut to crack

[Amerigo Vespucci]

I've read quite a bit of advice from literary agents, and a distressingly high number of them suggest that the best way to get them to represent you is to be introduced to them by one of their existing clients.

But it's like anything else in life...there is a ratio of "what you know" and "who you know" that determines your ultimate degree of success.

Some people are so intensively "networked" that their actual skills or talents are almost secondary.

Then there are others who have such a highly specialized, unique form of skill or knowledge that people seek them...they don't need to network.

Then there's you, and I, and the other 95% of the population that doesn't fit into those two groups.

One of my current projects is a Website I am developing for a local church. I had several initial meetings with them, which included my proposal for what I thought would be an ideal site for them. At the end of the third meeting they tasked one of the members of their church council with looking at my portfolio and contacting two references I had provided (my contact persons at each of the other two church sites I've built).

Turns out this woman was the wife of one of my other clients. She had my brochure and pointed to his organization under my list of clients and said "This guy built your site" and he said "Yep" and I was in...they didn't bother calling the refernces. Who knew? I sure didn't and had quite a laugh when I found out.

I don't know how you feel about the company of fellow writers and networking in general, but the more people you know, especially if you create a favorable impression, the greater the odds that one of these people might have the ability to go to bat for you, to pick up the phone or send an email or broker an introdction to someone who has the power to get you into print.

And networking is best done in the manner of that joke about "how do you eat an elephant" (one bite at a time)...unless you are just really driven to get out there and start connecting with people on a large scale.

So you had the drive to write the book...congratulations on that. There are many, many people who start a book and never finish it, or come up with endless "woulda, coulda, shoulda" excuses about the book they'd "like to write someday." You didn't do that...you wrote the book.

When your drive to get it into print matches the drive that you had in writing it, it will get printed.

:patriot: