Have Literary Agents Become An Irrelevance?

You finish draft number eleventy or whatever.

Buy the latest Writers And Artists Yearbook and trawl through the pages of Literary Agents, trying to work out which is least likely to reject your book.

Or do you?

I did it with my first 3 books, but since I quite frankly couldn't be arsed.

It's not just the waiting that put me off.

Three months of nothing, followed by an almost guaranteed rejection in the form of a curt, mass produced email or letter, I can handle.

I'll just fill that time writing something else.

But I've heard stories lately of writers with agents who just aren't getting it done. Their books still aren't selling. Publishers aren't picking them up. They're having more luck going it alone on Kindle.

So, although agents still seem a good way to get an experienced pair of eyes to look over your manuscript, I'm going to continue to stop bothering them.

They've got enough on their plate (desk) without me adding to their slushpile.

That nothwithstanding, if any agents are interested in Seller V, or The Ghost of Christmas Threeve, or The Pub Gardeners, or the forthcoming Dead Headz... blah blah blah