More on the Previously Published

In order to understand this post you’re going to have to read the one before it.

Did I or did I not say Nathan Bransford was nice? Instead of offering up a bit of snark to my comment he, like the nice fellow he is, said this:

"I agree with you. I wish publishers would stick with writers and that chains would order based on their guts rather than on how the previous book did. I just don't think it's fair to pin this on agents. We go to war with the industry we're given. Unfortunately I can't force a publisher to publish anyone's book.”

And of course I don’t expect any agent to take on a project they can’t sell. I don’t remember saying that at all. What I did say is published authors are better bets than just anyone from the slush and it pays to work them (and be respectful to them and not make them feel small on blogs or yell at them in caps) even if their project isn’t quite ready for prime time. Certainly published authors are better risks than those who have never published.
Case in point: An author friend of mine lost her agent (her agent died) and she started to query. She shared many of her rejections with me and while there were many nice ones, there were a lot of patronizing ones as well. She got very little credit for being a previously published . (Ps she had five starred reviews and scads of great reviews, Sales weren’t stellar but she wasn’t in the basement either.)
Trouble was her book had a slow start so that’s why it was rejected. (over thirty times.) A newbie agent finally took her on and helped her shape it. The author, being a pro took her suggestions and ran with them. In a matter of two weeks she’d fixed it. It ended up selling in a major deal and made the NYT best-selling list, the first of five bestselling books.

Moral of the story: Sometimes it pays BIG to take on published authors because even though their project might not be perfect they got the chops and patience to fix it. Now I realize big-time agents don't have to mess with this sort of thing but you'd think the newer ones would be a little bit less dismissive.