This past weekend I attended the Florida Writers Association Conference here in Orlando.  WOW!  What a wealth of information I managed to glean.  I’ve got stuff to post about for quite some time, so hold on to your hats, folks!

While at the conference, I paid a little extra to get an appointment with a literary agent so I could pick her brain about the direction I should take my career in.  I don’t have an agent and have never tried to get one.

So here’s the bad news ….

Turns out an agent isn’t interested in anything I’ve already self published.  Since their job is to help get me published, in their eyes, they see my self published work as “already published.”  Dang!  Talk about taking the wind out of your sails.  So basically, if I want to get an agent I’m starting at square one.

The really bad side of this is that I need an “unpublished” manuscript to shop around to get an agent, to use to entice an agent to book me.  The agent will in turn take that manuscript and shop it around to publishers.  So the book I’m currently working on, I’ve decided to not self publish and use as that unpublished one.  That’s hard!  I mean I love this book already and really want to send my baby out into the world, but alas … the world will have to wait.

This really sucks because it could take me six months to a year to find an agent (if I find one at all) and then have to wait another six months to a year after that to get a publishing deal.  My book might not see the light of day in a bookstore for a few years!!  Yes I said YEARS!!

Sigh …

But that’s the way it is and there’s no use crying about it.  What it really means is that I need to crank it into high gear and get this book written to perfection and send it on its merry way so I can focus on another project.

So I’m curious … What are everyone else’s thoughts on this whole process??  Do tell.

-Jennifer

Jennifer Geoghan, author of The Purity of Blood Novel Series and If Love is a Lie: A Party True Love Story