So last week when I was out in New York for the Writers Digest Conference, I gave a talk on why successful indie authors might want to partner with agents.
As I was putting together my talking points, I actually came to the conclusion that why they partner is the wrong question. The real question might be when should indie authors partner with an agent.
If  indie authors are becoming successful, an agent can accelerate their exposure in a big way. For example, I couple of weeks ago I took on self-publishing phenom Jasinda Wilder. On March 16, she released her 18th novel FALLING INTO YOU.
In less than one month, she sold 140,000 digital copies of this title.
Yes, you read that right.
That’s a crazy number of copies in a short period of time. She hit the NYT and USA Today list for several weeks in a row.
She decided to partner with me. My job is now to accelerate her exposure in any way possible. Within a week Publishers Weekly did a feature story on her and I imagine this won’t be the last coverage given her extraordinary success.
Would Jasinda get coverage without me? Sure. But there is no doubt I’m stomping on the gas. This can be incredibly beneficial in talking with publishers and for foreign deals.
Congratulations to you both! I suspect the media is going to trumpet this as an “overnight self-publishing success,” but with eighteen books out, Jasinda must have worked for a long time to build this following. Which, is now paying off amazingly, so congratulations again! 🙂
This may be a bit off topic, but do you find that most of the people who do fantastic business (such as your latest client) as indie writers are concentrated in one genre?
I have been an indie writer and I feel a sucessful one. I have written two very dfferent novels. “The Perfect Dress” and “Gorko! Mississippi Mud and Moscow Madness”. My first novel, the “Perfect Dress” sold over 1000 copies on Mariner of the Seas cruise ship in addition to the copies I was “out there” selling. It is a romance mostly geared toward women in their 30’s and above. It is also a hit in India thanks to a publisher friend I have over there. I would love for Kristin to read it and ‘agent’ it.
My second book “Gorko”! Is the recent winner of the Great Southeast Book Festival-honorable mention. It is a dark and dangerous coming of age story.
My present book is “Length of Stay” which is almost ready to go about my husband’s 50 years in all aspects of psychiatry. No, I do not feel any of my writing sticks to one genre.
Thanks for following up on Kyra’s qusotien, Jenn.Kelly, I agree that PULSE doesn’t qualify as YA, since one of your MCs is an FBI agent (and I’m pretty sure they don’t hire seventeen-year-olds:) ). Actually, I’ve been thinking about your WIP lately and wanting to interview some agents who might be interested in it, so I’m on the lookout for agents who rep adult fantasy and science fiction!