Finding the Next Rowling. She is Not Going to Find You.
What do you do when you want to find a business or service in your community? You google it. What do potential authors likely do when looking for a publisher or agent? They google it. If that is true, you would think that major publishers would be competing to be the top search result on google — or at least on the first page. It sure doesn’t look like it. If you search “book publishers” or “book publishing” on Google.ca, the big five houses don’t show. If you add “Canada” to your query, Raincoast shows up midway down the list. The smaller houses are there. Some of the self published services are even paying to be there. Why none of the big guns?
I hate to say they couldn’t be bothered, but I think that is true. Afterall, who wants to read the slush pile anyway. Besides aspiring authors can go to the ACP or they can search for an agent. That is the way it has always been done.
Right.
There is going to come a time when, if you are not findable on the internet, then you don’t exist. That time is here already, it is just not equally distributed.
A shout out to Carolyn Swayze (www.swayzeagency.com) who does surface in the top10 results when you search “literary agents”. Her site is all text. It is not pretty but it works.
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