How to Snag a Business Book Agent: Where to Target Your Queries

Business books are a big market in the book publishing industry. If you are writing one you know that getting the right literary agent, one that has a specialty in the business genre division, is crucial to your book's success or failure. Competition is brutal and the fight for the slots at the publishing houses can get messy. You need a competent agent going to work for you, one who knows the market trends and which houses are seeking what type of manuscripts. They can more easily find a home for your book than you can, they can also get your foot in the door of the publishing houses that don't even look at unsolicited manuscripts.

This market sees authors such as Zig Ziglar and books like the gazillion selling Freakonomics in the ranks. If you are thinking about putting out a business book, whether it is marketing, economics, or an office manual, you'll need to gather your information carefully. Without a marketing plan and a power house book publisher (the kind that you can only get with an agent), your book may be lost among the masses. Business writers either need to be big money professionals, stock market whizs, Infomercial kings like Tony Robbins, or co-authored by a well named source in either of these fields. Average writers, no matter what their skill level, will not have much credibility in the big markets. You will need a serious platform for this market. Make sure you have a web presence and a good speaking platform where you can do conferences and seminars on your topic once your book is out. Have an ezine, a newsletter, or a high ranking website under your belt. Give talks in your community. The better you look on paper, the easier it will be to get that business book proposal into the sell pile.