Submitting without an agent

This Nathan Bransford post is a few days old, but perennially useful--especially when we are permitted to submit to an editor who attends one of our conferences.

Here's the top:

So I thought I'd tackle the topic of submitting to editors without an agent. And I'll start by saying something you might not expect to hear from an agent: submitting to editors without an agent isn't always a bad thing!But first, and most importantly: there some serious perils involved that you should be aware of if you're considering submitting to editors directly.

The biggest: If you query a lot of editors simultaneously with your agent search you may be inadvertently killing the submission process if you eventually find an agent. This is because most agents I know won't resubmit to a publisher who has already considered a project, even if it was sent to the publisher unagented, and even if it subsequently undergoes a revision (unless the editor specifically asks).

Read the rest.