Do I need one?

You probably need one if…

You want a contract with a major trade publisher — the houses that still occupy the centre of the British and American industry. Their fiction editors, and many of their nonfiction editors, do not have an open slush pile. The agent is the door. You also probably need one if the deal is likely to involve competing offers, a meaningful advance, or a thicket of subsidiary rights. That is the work you are buying with the commission.

You might not need one if…

You are submitting to a small or independent press that reads unagented work. Plenty of excellent books live there. You are self-publishing, and your problem is production, marketing, and stamina, not access to an acquisitions meeting. You write poetry or short stories for magazines. You are a journalist pitching features. You have been approached directly by an editor — it happens — though even then a solicitor or a late-arriving agent can still earn their cut on the contract.

Children’s picture books, academic titles, and some illustrated nonfiction have their own customs. Do not generalise from a thriller writer’s advice.

The expensive middle

The worst place to be is half-committed: querying agents with an unfinished novel while also uploading a rough file to a self-publishing platform “just in case.” You have now created a messy rights picture and a first impression that looks like impatience. Choose a route for this book. You can choose a different route for the next one.

Film and TV

A spec script without credits is a hard sell cold. Many writers reach a script agent after a short, a radio play, a writers’ room assistant job, or a novel that someone in film already wants. If you have none of those, spend your energy on the work and on pathways that create evidence, not on a mass email to every name on a Hollywood list.

A blunt rule

If the buyers you want will not read you without an introduction, you need an agent. If they will, you need judgement, a clean manuscript, and the willingness to walk away from a bad contract. The directory will not make that decision for you. It will only stop you writing to the wrong country about the wrong job.