Managing Your Property - Part I

One theme that we will visit frequently is the issue of managing your intellectual property. Anyone who writes a book with the intent to publish usually has financial renumeration as a motivating factor, even if that particular factor is secondary to fulfilling an artistic desire, advancing one's non-literary career, or achieving some form of personal satisfaction from the process of creating a literary work and seeing it through the business process of getting it to market.

In an ideal world, you'd present your work, or a proposal regarding the work you'd like to create, to an agent. The agent would gush over your work, immediately sign you to a contract, and hook you up with a publisher. Your book would get lots of marketing exposure. You'd schedule scores of book signings, sell a gazillion copies, get massive royalty checks, and then go shopping for a water-front condo in a community with awesome restaurants and a reliable mechanic to service your Jaguar.

Now get over it. Fantasy Land is a fun place to visit, but it won't stock your liquor cabinent.

Chances are you will not find a reputable agent that will want to represent you, and you certainly do not want a disreputable agent. Even if you do find a decent agent willing to take on you and your work, there is a very good chance they will not find a publisher interested in taking your work public. And even if you get to the point where your work gets published, chances are you will not make a substantial, "Rock Star"-like amount of money from it. I'm not trying to rain on your parade; you need to accept how the world is.

You should still try to find a reputable agent to represent you and your work... not just try, but try very hard. Because while the odds of your achieving a high degree of financial success are very much against you, your best bet for achieving that financial success is still with the traditional agency/publisher process.

However, rejection by the traditional agency/publisher community does not mean that your work has no financial value at all. Our goal at Net Novelist is to help you unlock the value of your property that the agency/publisher community has overlooked or decided to ignore.