“I’m a novelist who has secured an agent to represent me, but I’m not yet published. “
I think I see what you mean. The agent likes your work and believes he can sell it, even though you haven’t been published yet.
Exactly. While there are exceptions, as a general rule it's nearly impossible for a writer to get the attention of a major publisher without an agent. Publishing houses get truckloads of unsolicited manuscripts, referred to as the slush pile, and the vast vast majority of them are utter garbage. As a result, even if your manuscript does get picked out of the slush pile by one of the publisher's readers, reality is that they're expecting it to be garbage before they read the first word. Having your work submitted to a specific editor by a fellow publishing professional adds credibility and makes it much more likely that the manuscript will get a fair reading.
Agents are hard to get because the vast vast majority of manuscripts submitted to them are utter garbage, too. :-)
And lest I forget, all the difficulty outlined above is exacerbated if the work contains any kind of conservative element, because as a whole the publishing industry is uber-liberal.
I fought the fight hard for years and decided to break from it for a couple years. The tech thriller I'm working on right now will be my best ever and I'm hopeful that it's the one that gets picked up.
MM (in TX)