List Of African American Literary Agents
The truth is that there are not too many African American Literary agents. And yet they should be more. Especially when the trends in the market just now favor the African American writer more than any other time previously. And so hopefully literally agents focusing on this market should grow in the days to come.
For starters major publishers are now seriously looking at urban fiction and the African American writers immersed in this genre. Their creativity is also being finally recognized. Sadly every time you take a closer look at the new black writers being signed up all the time by the majors and try to find out who their agent is, you will find that they are not being handled by a black agent like them. The main reason is because there are simply too few African American Literary agents out there.
So why are there such few blacks in this business? It has a lot to do with the age. The average age of a good literary agent would have to be about 50. Just factor in the time it takes to finish college and build the right contacts and network to succeed in this kind of business as well as raise the resources and you will appreciate why this is so.
Now a casual look at the education system and the black community will tell you that they have come a long way and this is definitely a sector where we will see many more African Americans venturing into in the future. There are many encouraging statistics that support this possibility. Like the fact that over the past three decades the number of African American students enrolled in higher education institutions has been consistently on the rise.
Authors, editors and all those in the industry today should take note of the trends and dive into this unique window of opportunity for African American literary agents that has just began to open up.
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