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franhawthorne OP t1_iwd3iny wrote

Reply to comment by Warm-Enthusiasm-9534 in I’m Fran Hawthorne: I used to write award-winning nonfiction about consumer activism, the financial world, and the drug industry, but now I’m having much more fun writing novels. AMA about writing by franhawthorne

It's a true cliche that publishing is a business of personal contacts: An editor will simply pay more attention to the recommendations of an agent she/he knows. And I suspect that it's rare for an agent who's been specializing in, say, business books for 10 years to have good contacts as well among children's book editors. That was definitely true in my case: My (happily successful!) nonfiction agent had no experience in fiction, when I switched genres.

I hope this helps. Thanks for logging in to my AMA.

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Warm-Enthusiasm-9534 t1_iwd53z2 wrote

Thank you for the response. I appreciate you taking the time to answer.

So you did switch? I wasn't 100% clear.

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franhawthorne OP t1_iwd7zye wrote

Hmm, I replied but it doesn't seem to have registered. I'll try again:

I ended up happily getting both my novels (so far) published by a small university press that doesn't require an agent. There are, fortunately, a slew of small traditional presses like that.

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