Publishing agents, more often called literary agents, serve a valuable service as a go-between for authors and publishers. Good agents are veterans of the book market with the knowledge and contacts to connect an author with the right publisher. In recent years, publishing house editors have come to depend heavily on agents to sift through the mountain of manuscripts produced each year and only pass along to them projects they might be interested in. Contracting with an agent doesn’t ensure a book will be bought or even read. But it certainly does raise the odds of an author being considered exponentially. Reputable agents can be found through The Writer’s Market published annually by Writer’s Digest Books.

The average rate an agent charges is 15% of all revenues produced by an author’s work. Legitimate publishing agents work on a contingency fee and do not charge anything up-front. Nominal copying fees may be charged for sending full manuscripts to a publisher but will only be billed after you have been contracted by a publisher and received advance payments for your work. Stay away from any agent who:

1. Seeks up-front fees before they will represent you. The most common scam is to charge reading fees to read your manuscript. The truth is a reputable agent doesn’t need to read your whole manuscript to know if he or she wants to represent you. A good query, proposal, and the first 50 or so pages are all they need to make an assessment.
    
2. Offers to consider you after you pay a fee to have your work critiqued. While there are book doctors and other professionals who specialize in offering advice they are not agents.
    
3. Sends you word a publisher wants to sign you if you will first pay for marketing costs.

The key thing to remember is that agents are there to make money for you and themselves from publishers. If you have to pay them anything up front, pull out that Writer’s Market and find someone else. Can you land a publishing contract without an agent? Sure; but the odds are slim. Most writer’s aren’t business types and don’t want to be. Less than 10% of all novels ever earn substantial royalties for their author so an agent who can negotiate a reasonable advance is essential. First-time novelists need an agent more than anyone else for this very reason.