No agent
required.

A good agent earns their commission. They know which editor at which house wants a book like yours. They get manuscripts read faster than a stranger can. They negotiate terms most authors do not know are negotiable, and they stay on your side of the table for a career.

None of that is magic, and all of it is work. Submitting without an agent means taking that work on yourself: choosing the right houses, presenting the book well and reading the contract with care. In exchange you keep the commission, usually 15 per cent of everything the book earns, and you spend your own time and judgement instead.

What you are not giving up is the possibility itself. Many publishers, particularly independent houses, read direct submissions, and books are bought from them continually.

Most large publishers accept submissions only through literary agents, though several run open imprints or occasional submission windows. Independent publishers are far more likely to read direct, either year-round or in announced reading periods.

The freshest source is always the publisher’s own website: the submissions page states what they read, what to send and when. In the UK, the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook remains the standard printed directory, and it is worth an afternoon with a recent edition.

Then match the list before you submit anywhere. Read what a house actually publishes and ask whether your book would sit naturally beside those titles. A submission to the wrong list is not a lottery ticket. It is a month of waiting for a no that was certain on day one.

Every house tells you what it wants. Send precisely that: the covering letter, the synopsis, the sample length they name, in the format they name. Nothing extra, nothing missing. The guidelines are also the first test of whether working with you will be straightforward.

The covering letter itself stays short: what the book is, in a sentence or two, who it is for, and why you are the person who wrote it. The synopsis and the sample do the persuading.

Simultaneous submissions, sending to several houses at once, are normal and sensible unless a publisher explicitly asks for an exclusive. Say in your letter that the book is under consideration elsewhere, and if an offer arrives, tell everyone else holding it the same day. Nobody serious resents it; this is how the trade works.

One rule protects you from the worst corner of this industry. In traditional publishing, money flows towards the author: the publisher pays for editing, design, production and marketing, and earns it back by selling books to readers. You should never be asked to pay a reading fee, a publishing fee, a contribution to costs, or for a print run of your own copies.

Paid publishing services exist, and self-publishing, entered into knowingly, suits many writers well. The problem is only ever the disguise: a services company presenting itself as a traditional publisher, with an acceptance letter as the first step of a sales process. The acceptance is flattering, and the invoice follows. If money moves from you to them, whatever the letterhead says, you are the customer, not an author being invested in.

This is easy to check. Ask what you will be asked to pay, in total, in writing. From a traditional publisher the answer is nothing.

An offer arrives as a contract, and publishing contracts reward careful reading. Have any offer reviewed before signing: the Society of Authors does this for its members, and a publishing solicitor can do the same. Either costs far less than a bad clause. Look hardest at:

• Which rights you are granting, in which territories and languages, and for how long
• What happens when the book stops selling: when rights revert to you, and how
• What the royalty is, and what it is calculated on
• What is promised for editing, production and marketing, and what is merely hoped
• Who decides the title and the cover, and whether you are consulted or simply informed

None of this requires an agent. It requires patience, a copy of the contract in advance, which any serious publisher will give you, and a refusal to be hurried. A publisher who pressures you to sign quickly is answering your most important question for you.

Verlagi reads direct submissions as a matter of course, and the terms we offer are the same with an agent or without one. There are no fees of any kind, not for reading and not for publishing. You send a covering letter, a synopsis and an opening sample, and you have an initial response within 30 days.

We are a new house reading for our founding list, and we do not hide it. What we publish, and what we are looking for, is set out across this site. If your book belongs on our list, we would like to read it.