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Should I Get an Agent? Forget it. There may be some "agents" who will send your poetry around for a fee (instead of the conventional 10% of the sale price), but these are seeking to exploit you. Few respectable agents handle poetry at all, and then only for writers who are successfully selling prose and for whom poetry is a sideline. $5 on a $50 sale a few times a year or $50 on a $500 advance is not enough return to make poetry worth an agent's time. For a poet, an agent would be like an accountant for a boy with a paper route. When you get to be Rod McKuen you may need an agent to handle your business affairs – and maybe a chauffeur to drive you around. I hope you never get to be Rod McKuen. If you indulge your vanity and engage an agent you will be charged accordingly, for the only ones who will take your work hope to profit from you directly, not from your poetry. |