Young Writers Society

Will any agent who accepts young adult fiction accept a novella? I have been searching today and I don't know if they do or not. It wasn't exactly made clear to me. If not, where would I submit if I were to submit?

Novels and novellas tend to be much different markets, so I would not make that assumption. Especially with the variety of people working in the publishing industry.

I'd try to look at the Writer's Digest Writer's Market (and, if you can find it, the Novellas edition), which you could find at your library or bookstore (online is a bit of a pain to find, but you can try). The Writer's Market lists what each agent/publisher will accept.

Here's what I know about publishing:

In order of difficulty getting published, with 1 being the most difficult, it goes:

1)Short Story Collection
2)Novel
3)Book of Poems
4)A single short story
5)A single Poem

I would imagine that novellas would be somewhere between Novels and Short Story collections. For some odd reason it seems the shorter the fiction, the less publishable it is. A lot of young writers seem to believe that getting a work published is as simple as mailing it to a publisher. In reality it's a lot more difficult than that. The only way to publish a novel or short story collection (and probably a book of poems for that matter) is to get a literary agent. Publishers won't even skim the first page of your book without one. You could have the next Catcher in the Rye on your hands, but if it isn't presented by a credible literary agent it's going to get a one way ticket to the recycling bin.

The good news is that credible literary agents won't charge you a dime (if you are paying your agent, congratulations you are a victim of financial fraud...and an idiot). The bad news is that pretty much the only way to get a literary agent is to already have something published, ie a short story in a magazine or journal.

What's good about this is that anyone can submit work to a magazine or journal. What's bad about this is that anyone can submit work to a magazine or journal. When you send your short story to a magazine you are in direct competition with hundreds if not thousands of other writers. Most of them are terrible, but a great deal of them will be even more talented than you, and even they won't get published.

You will be rejected....a lot. But keep trying. Send your work to as many publishers as possible and someday, if you're lucky, you'll get some feedback from the publisher along with your rejection letter. Publishing is a difficult and often thankless endeavor. I've been published once, by a university magazine and even on that micro-scale the competition was fierce. The average yearly income for a professional author is somewhere in the ballpark of $4,000, but we do it anyway because...because....actually I don't know. There's probably something wrong with us.

BadNarrator wrote:The only way to publish a novel or short story collection (and probably a book of poems for that matter) is to get a literary agent.

Actually, no. An agent can certainly help if you have a good agent, and not all of them are. Good, that is. However, you can ditch the agent and do it yourself.

Twit wrote: Actually, no. An agent can certainly help if you have a good agent, and not all of them are. Good, that is. However, you can ditch the agent and do it yourself.

Literary agents exist for a reason. Insurance companies rely on insurance agents to bring them business in order to keep uninsurable people from defrauding them. Publishers rely on literary agents to bring books to them in order to weed out unpublishable work. Are there authors who are their own agents? Absolutely. Is it impossible to get a book published without going through an agency? I'm sure theres at least a handful of people in recent years who have done it. But that doesn't mean that an agent's job is easy or that just anybody can do it successfully. And if you go at it by yourself you will be in direct competition with thousands of others who all have agents. Getting a book published is a full time job in and of itself and since most writers have day jobs very few have the time or skills necesary to do it well.

I'm not trying to discourage anybody with my posts. I think it's great to be optimistic about your work, but if you are serous about achieving your goals you must be pragmatic.

There are novel and collection markets that accept unagented submissions, if you know where to look, and some of those markets only accept unagented submissions.

That's the thing, though. You have to know where to look, and that's where agents are really useful. It's their job to know what markets are around, what those markets are accepting, and where your work will stand the best chance of being accepted. You can find out all that information yourself, but if you're planning on making a living off your writing, it's easier to just get an agent; leaves you more time to focus on writing.

Of course, you could go with my dad's method. Buy some sturdy three-ring binders, print your work and distribute it yourself.