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Despite OwnVoices, Traditional Publishing Is Still a Deeply Privileged Industry
I spend $142 a month to land a literary agent
Most people have no idea what it takes to get their book on bookstore shelves.
Here’s the short version: You spend a year (or three) writing your novel and synopsis. If you’re publishing non-fiction, you write a book proposal — a massive document that outlines what you’re writing, why people should care, how many TikTok followers you have, and how you plan to strategically market your work. Memoirs require all three: manuscript, synopsis, and proposal.
When those are done, you edit them. When they’re perfect, you research comp titles and write a query letter. When your query letter is perfect, you research literary agents, find ones that are open to your genre, and follow their individual pitching guidelines to a T.
You pitch them. You wait months. Most of them won’t respond.
If you do manage to bag a literary agent (the odds are one in 6,000), you edit your manuscript per their suggestions. Then the pitching process starts all over again with publishing houses.
You do all of this work without payment and in addition to your day job.
