I am in an interesting situation. I decided to go ahead and do the research and begin writing the manuscript for a major nonfiction book -- serious narrative nonfiction, history, that sort of thing -- and have spent years at it. I mean YEARS. Nonfiction authors aren't supposed to do this. They're supposed to PROPOSE a book to an agent, get signed by the agent, then PROPOSE the book to a publisher, get signed, then get paid an advance, then go do the research and in a couple months or years, out comes the book. Ha. I didn't wanna wait. So I went and did the research, and am already deep into the manuscript.
I've been querying for a while now, a couple of form rejects from lower-level obscure agents, radio silence from the rest. I spent a ton of time being very picky about the agents I queried: only those who demonstrated an interest in and existing clients doing real serious nonfiction, big history books, biographies, current events on technology, the internet, that sort of thing. I contacted every agent who'd repped my favorite nonfic books on my bookshelf, basically.
Some of these agents are superstars, of course, since my favorite nonfiction books are for the most part bestsellers over the past 10 years. We're talking ICM, WritersHouse, Janklow & Nesbit, WME, etc.
It's kind of frustrating trying to get info on agents in a world nearly saturated by fiction writers. Like in forums like these
Even in the nonfiction world, so much of nonfiction is not the years-of-research journalistic kind of nonfiction, but self-help, how-to, memoirs, and other sub-genres. So it's hard to find a place where the long-form, serious, narrative/journalistic nonfiction writers hang out.
I'd love to know of any other forums where such nonfiction folks hang out, if anybody knows.
As for platform: I've spent 30 years researching my book's subject, a subject I have personal involvement in, and knew where to look and who to talk to. Did tons of travel, spent over $150K on expenses over the years. This is a major thing. No-one has ever written a book on the subject I'm covering. All of this is fresh, new info, that's going to upset a lot of establishment authors, magazines, and media types, because they've been pumping out a version of history for many years that utterly ignores, deliberately in some cases, the subject of my book. So when my book comes out, I expect quite a lot of scrambling on their part and even on the part of the Big 5 publishers who've been publishing books for years that omitted any mention of the subject of my book.
Anyways. It's going to be interesting.
Oh, why "on the fence" as a user ID? Because I am teetering on the fence with the decision to abandon agents and publishers altogether -- this waiting and begging is absurd, imho -- and go the Amazon self-publishing route. The clock is ticking and I'm giving agents about 30 more days and if they haven't responded, adios muchachos.