Be Your Own Literary Agent: The Ultimate Insider's Guide to Getting Published - Softcover

Levin, Martin P.

3.5

16 ratings by Goodreads

9781580083386: Be Your Own Literary Agent: The Ultimate Insider's Guide to Getting Published

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1580083382 ISBN 13: 9781580083386

Publisher: Ten Speed Press, 2002

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Why sacrifice ten to fifteen percent of your book advance to a commissioned agent when you don'�?t have to? If you'�?re a talented writer with a head for details, you can prepare your manuscript, pitch it to publishers, secure an offer, and negotiate your contract without using an agent or spending hundreds of dollars on a publishing lawyer. In this revised and updated edition of BE YOUR OWN LITERARY AGENT, fifty-year publishing veteran Martin P. Levin walks first-time authors through the intimidating process of selling their work with a clear, intelligent, and supportive approach that works. Sample letters and proposals show you exactly how to write a query letter, compile an author bio, phrase a book summary, organize a sample chapter, and more. With a clean manuscript in your hand and BE YOUR OWN LITERARY AGENT in your pocket, publishing success is virtually assured.‚Ģ Includes a glossary of publishing terms, a list of publishers most likely to read and accept a first-time author'�?s book, and a handy manuscript submission record.‚Ģ The new edition covers how to get published on the Internet and protect electronic rights, and includes new copyright terms for authors.‚Ģ Original edition sold over 20,000 copies.

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About the Author:

As a publishing executive, MARTIN P. LEVIN was involved in publishing books by Stephen King, Erica Jong, Ken Follet, Gay Talese, and many others. After his retirement at sixty-five, he passed the bar and joined a prestigious intellectual property law firm. He is an adjunct professor at the New York Law School, a teaching fellow at the Stanford Professional Publishing Course, and the 1999 American Association winner of the Curtis Benjamin Award for lifetime achievement in publishing. Levin lives in New York and Florida.

From Booklist:

It is becoming the rule these days that first-time authors have little chance of getting published without assistance from an agent. Overworked editors at understaffed publishing companies look upon agent-sponsored projects as a means to "discovering" desirable product and avoiding the tremendous volume of manuscripts flooding their offices. The literary agent plays a major role in evaluating, developing, and marketing practically all fictional works published today. Levin, after a full publishing career at Grosset & Dunlap and the Times Mirror Company, studied law, passed the bar, and is now a counsel to (what is called in the business) an intellectual property firm, representing authors and negotiating contracts; he believes a first-time author can still independently make it to the editor and get his or her work successfully published. Levin shares some of the tools of his trade here, covering the crucial territory the literary agent negotiates so successfully. Some particularly useful material includes Levin's eight-step program for selling a book, a model book proposal with an excellent example of each of its parts, and a discussion on negotiating a contract with a clearly delivered discussion of the poor, fair, and good deals. Leon Wagner

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