Do you really need a literary agent?

The pros and cons of having an agent and publisher versus self-publishing

Last week we shared the letter we wrote which secured us a literary agent along with tips to help you write your own query letter.

But do you really need an agent in the first place?

The truth is, it depends what you want.

If you want to self-publish your book and are prepared to handle all of the design, editing, sales and marketing yourself then you probably don’t need an agent.

There are some very successful self published author/illustrators out there but this option does take a huge investment of time and money.

However, if you want to be traditionally published, you will probably need an agent which also takes a huge investment of time but won’t cost any money.

It is possible to be published without an agent, but it’s important to be aware of what the benefits and drawbacks would be.

In this post we share what the pros and cons of having a literary agent and publisher are verses choosing to self-publish. And we explain why we decided to seek representation too.

What are the pros of having an agent and being traditionally published?

• Agents have contacts at all the major publishers. Most publishers won’t accept unsolicited manuscripts (which means submissions from authors/illustrators who don’t have agents). Some do, but it does tend to be fairly limited