Unfortunately, finding Books Agents is not much easier than finding publishers. Good book agents are almost as in demand as big publishing houses, and trying to get book agents to pick you up is almost as difficult. An author has to send out cold submissions, which are basically proposals for a work which has not been asked for. You must send anywhere from one to three chapters, along with a cover letter and a synopsis, and sometimes a bio. Then you must wait for up to six months for a rejection so that you can go to the next name on your list of Books Agents and go through the same headache again. Most book agents, like most publishers, do not accept simultaneous submissions.
But if you opt to just send out cold submissions to publishing houses, your prospects are even bleaker. Send your submissions to Books Agents and there is a good chance that the agents will read them. Send them to publishing houses (assuming that you can find publishing houses looking for what you are writing which accept cold submissions) and they might not even make it past an intern or junior editor. You don't just need writing talent or marketability to be picked up off of a cold submission. You need an incredible run of luck as well.
Faced with the difficulty of ever becoming “discovered”, many authors are conned into what is called “vanity publishing.” This is where they are convinced to pay for publication of several hundred copies of their own book, sometimes with assurance that the publisher has a great reputation, and only picks up works by talented yet undiscovered geniuses like themselves. They will waste hundreds, or sometimes even thousands of dollars to see their name in print. And because they aren't given an editor, their vanity books which they can then pawn off on their relatives, are often shoddy. I'll stick with Books Agents hunting, thank you very much.