Agent Hero
Literary agent Tim Bates via ALCS News:
I’m a literary agent not a writer and while I like to take time and care over my words, I do not have the skill to create beautifully crafted sentences or perfectly structured books. That is a writer’s job.
I’m a literary agent not a publisher, and although I spent a decade working in various roles in publishing houses, including as a commissioning editor, I do not have the complete set of skills or the knowledge or the sales networks or the PR and marketing teams to call myself a publisher.
So why is it that more and more writers believe they can do these highly skilled and time-consuming jobs themselves?
. . . .
But can anyone be surprised that in an era when digital and self-publishing opportunities mean that writers are questioning the worth or very existence of publishers, they are also wondering whether they need an agent.
The debate about the future role of the large publishing houses is outside the scope of this piece (but, for the record, they are, in my view, absolutely essential to the long term well-being of the professional writer), but in these complex, shifting multi-platform and truly global times, a good agent has never been more necessary.
Can you answer the following questions?
Should you sell world rights in all languages to your UK publisher, or sell the rights directly to individual foreign publishers? What is the industry standard author share for sub-licensed audio rights? What royalty can you expect for special sales? Is 52.5% a reasonable starting point for high-discount royalties? How should you word an out of print clause when the usual threshold of 150 or so copies in the warehouse is meaningless in a digital era? Is it sensible or fair to sell e-books for 20p? Should my publisher control the merchandising rights to my books?
Even if you can answer some or all of the above questions, do you have the time to consider these issues when your publisher is putting you under pressure to deliver your next book, or promote your current work or to increase your following on Twitter?
. . . .
Editors move on. Publishers change direction and the sales expectations are very high – increasingly the large trade publishers are only commissioning books with a real chance of an “upside”, i.e. the possibility of achieving bestseller status. Authors can no longer expect to have a life-long relationship with their editor or publisher.
. . . .
Agents are a constant presence in an author’s career. We don’t tend to move on. We don’t shift our focus simply because the market changes. Yes, we can negotiate contracts but more importantly we can offer constant and continuing career advice. We try to help plan for the short, medium and long term. We are in it for the long haul.
Link to the rest at ALCS News and thanks to Diana, who blogged her response here for the tip.
, Amazon will pay Passive Guy a small affiliate commission on any of your purchases.
“So why is it that more and more writers believe they can do these highly skilled and time-consuming jobs themselves?”
This is the wrong question. The right question is, “If I do these highly skilled and time-consuming jobs myself and keep an additional 55% of the gross as a result, will I come out ahead?” There’s no right or wrong answer to this question; it depends on the writer’s skills, experience, inclinations, goals, and many other case-by-case factors.
Another way of asking the right question is, “Will an agent increase the value of my career by more than 15%?” If so, the agent is worth 15% (at least).
But the main thing is to properly frame the issue. If you start off asking a misleading question, it’s hard to derive a useful result.
I guess this agent wants a result that may be more useful to him than his clients.
I think it’s unfair to assume every literary agent is a shark. Just because I’m self-publishing doesn’t mean I really grasp every aspect of the business end of publishing (I don’t). I can certainly see how a good literary agent can make sure his/her customer gets the most they can, especially if the agent’s percentage is riding on it.
Isn’t it best to assume they are – and take precautions instead of assuming they have your best interest at heart and be sheared like a sheep?
I don’t subscribe to “all x are y” as a worldview. Tribalism is dangerous in its own right.
That’s true, Christopher. But I don’t see what’s wrong with Barry’s question above — in essence asking any agent, “So what do you bring to this that justifies paying you 15% of my income?” And I would expect the agent then to provide the numbers showing that she/he will not only increase the money I could make by at least 15%, but serve as a satisfactory advocate for me with the publisher.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of stories about agents not meeting those clear expectations, so we writers need to ask the right questions. The good agents should be willing to answer them.
Barry’s question was right on point. It was the follow-up comment I was responding to.
The problem is the attitude of the agent. While most may not be sharks, most have this attitude, ie – you would be lost without me.
It’s the tone of haughty derision that I object to.
Excellent point about framing. A questioner controls the answers through the framing of the question–the question dictates the forms the answer can take. Why is it we think we can do these jobs? First of all, we do not necessarily think that. What some of us do think is that we’re capable of figuring out which jobs need to be hired out, including the negotiation of foreign rights and all those other esoteric tasks Mr Bates is certain only he can do for us. For 15%. For ever.
Should you sell world rights in all languages to your UK publisher, or sell the rights directly to individual foreign publishers? What is the industry standard author share for sub-licensed audio rights? What royalty can you expect for special sales? Is 52.5% a reasonable starting point for high-discount royalties? How should you word an out of print clause when the usual threshold of 150 or so copies in the warehouse is meaningless in a digital era? Is it sensible or fair to sell e-books for 20p? Should my
publisher control the merchandising rights to my books?
The big question here is does this agent or your agent for that matter know the right answer to these questions. These are questions for PG or another IP lawyer. Getting the wrong answer can cost a writer for years to come.
Yes, I can answer all of these questions, and since I am my own publisher, I’m not too worried about ‘publisher pressure’ to write the next book keeping me from knowing my own business.
‘Sales networks’ are becoming more and more meaningless in many area of fiction, where the sales are increasingly digitally driven. Up to 50% of sales of romance titles, in some cases.
Editing (content and line) and cover design don’t have to be in the author’s skill set. Or the agent’s. Hire those out for a flat fee. In fact, my former editor with a NY publishing house has left that house and is now freelancing, as I hear an increasing number of NY editors are doing…
PR and marketing? Surely a savvy agent should know that the publishing houses have shifted most of that to the author’s shoulders. Except for the big bestsellers, of course.
And, sorry to say, agents move on and shift their focus all the time. They refuse to represent things they don’t think will sell. The title of yours that they were excited about at first loses momentum after a string of rejections and they no longer are enthusiastic about it, leaving plenty of stones unturned.
Nice try at spin, but for most of the educated readers here, it doesn’t wash.
“The title of yours that they were excited about at first loses momentum after a string of rejections and they no longer are enthusiastic about it, leaving plenty of stones unturned.”
Actually, in my consistent experience of working with four literary agents over the years, before I quit the author-agent business model (which turned out to be probably the single best business decision I’ve ever made in my long-term, full-time, self-supporting writing career), I found that it could take as little as -one- rejection for an agent to declare a MS unsaleable and refuse to send it anywhere else. I never dealt with an agent who maintained any enthusiasm at all for a project (no matter how enthused at first) past three rejections. And I never worked with an agent willing to submit a book again after four rejections.
One of the many reasons I ceased working with agents was this it was MUCh too hard to sell books via agents, who tended to balk and flag whenever a project didn’t sell quickly to the first place it was sent.
Additionally, as has already been mentioned in this discussion, my experience is that most agents actually don’t (and, when asked asked, CANNOT) address most of the topics that this agent is declaring you need an agent for. Additionally, as a number of people have noted, there are numerous viable and productive ways to handle the subjects he raises WITHOUT donating 15% of your income to someone on a perpetual basis. You realize JUST how flawed that system of payment is when you’re still paying commission to am agent for an old deal long after the association is terminated and you are, in fact, now paying someone ELSE fees to handle business problems in that deal because the agent, though still collecting money from you, no longer works for you. This sort of thing gets very, very expensive (especially on occasions when you have to pay a lawyer to clean up the mess made by your former agent on the deal for which your former agent is indeed still collecting 15% of your income).
As cover art/editing, so rights questions. Ask these that you can’t answer to a competent IP attorney, again for a flat fee, and forget the eternal 15%. Then ask what, if anything, an agent can do for the project.
I’ve maintained for quite some time that the smart agents and editors will set up their own businesses and offer writers services on a flat-fee basis. I need to find a good copy editor for my next book, as well as a good proofreader. I won’t be hiring someone for a percentage of my sales. Ever.
Meryl,
I normally don’t plug suppliers except on my own site, but since you indicated a need, Neal Hock did an absolutely outstanding job on both my books. His website is here:
http://www.hockseditingservices.com/p/about-me.html
I have no connection with Neal except as a very satisfied consumer of his services, and I recommend him without reservation.
I appreciate it. Book two will need a good editor in about six months. Book one is about to be published. I will be bookmarking your suggestion, so thank you.
I just can’t bring myself to care about yet another agent’s crusade to justify their own existence by implying that no one else can possibly do what they do.
I hear ya, Dan, and yet I’m still fascinated to watch them try. When I got my first agent, back around the time of Pompey’s long-delayed triumph into the big city, no agent would have dreamed of saying anything like this. It was assumed we needed them to sell our work except by crusty old pros who remembered that in their day you did not, necessarily, need an agent until the publisher presented a contract.
I considered the C.O.P.s out of date and out of touch (much as I am now), and even wrote a four-part article in a column I maintained then titled “You Do, Too, Need an Agent.” Such was the prevailing wisdom among writers coming into the field in the 80s and 90s. I like watching things change, and watching some folks cling like grim death to the way they were before.
It’s funny to watch the realization that they are slowly becoming irrelevant. Or maybe not so slowly.
“Should you sell world rights in all languages to your UK publisher?”
I would have thought that the obvious answer would be “No!”. Unless your UK publisher paid you “walking away money”. i.e. enough money that you can accept that you’ll never earn another penny from your work ever again.
Also what decade is this expert living in?
At the moment I publish directly with Amazon’s KDP and via SmashWords to most other eBook stores, including Apple’s iBookStore.
Amazon is somewhat limited in the number of countries that they will sell to. But the iBookStore sells to 120 countries and, as far as I know, SmashWords and the other ebook stores will sell to anyone with an internet connection and a credit card or PayPal Account. So why the heck would I be selling foreign rights in the first place?
Foreign *language* rights.
Which matters for the kinds of “bestsellers” the traditionalists drool over. But may or not matter at all for a lot of the recreational reading genres.
“How should you word an out of print clause when the usual threshold of 150 or so copies in the warehouse is meaningless in a digital era?”
I confess I find that interesting considering that writing contracts is ordinarily a lawyer’s role and not an agent’s, so this agent is basically saying you should hire him so he can practice law without a license. Perhaps I’m missing something.
[Shameless plug for my own post on agents vs. lawyers: http://bit.ly/MWsIce
Plus, what he’s really trying to talk about here is the reversion clause. Which, obviously, should now be hooked to a time and/or $ threshold, not an OOP statement.
Tim, I would give anything to have an agent! I’m definitely in need of those skills. After years with a predatory subsidy press, then a publicist/producer with an upstart publishing co., I realize how little I know of the industry. Worse, despite the protests of my readers, I’m continually shoved aside for other projects. One thing she did do was approach film companies about my book – before even getting me back into print! Finding an agent, however, is an overwhelming task. I’ve been studying the procedure online. Any words of wisdom?
Mary, you’ll probably want to reply to Mr Bates via the link to the original article.
An agent might be very useful for authors, but for those of us who were rejected by all of them, we have have no choice but to go it alone. I’m kind of tired of them trying to tell us how valuable they are, all the while, they keep the gates locked up tight, and by some agents’ admission, they spend a whopping 14 seconds per query. Look, I don’t hate agents, but they are irrelevant to me now. I’ve done well selling my books on my own, and while I might have done better selling with the help of an agent, we’ll will never know. My only other option was trunking the novel I queried. Instead, I self-published it and two sequels.
Well, the world is changing and this article is a definite example of that.
Even a year ago, an agent would not have written an article defending his profession. Agents would have been above that; of course they were essential, and writers were the dime-a-dozen applicants.
So, what I find even more interesting than the article itself, is that fact that it was written.
How long before we start seeing agents compare tips on how to write great query letters to potential clients?
I have two agents, a primary one and the other who wants to read my work if my “real” agent passes on it. They’re both well respected. The validation I’ve received and praise have been great. But I’m over it. Having an agent love your work doesn’t mean they can sell. Their common refrain is, “you know ten years ago this would have sold and maybe started a bidding war, but today…” Whatever. As if that’s supposed to make me feel better. Instead it’s made me seriously consider self publishing.
And… as of today, I am a self-pubbed author of five romance/erotic short stories under my pen name, Elias True. Now to get my web site up to par. Two novels will be coming out next month.
I have an agent, and she stuck with me for a year trying to sell a hard-to-sell book that we both loved. Suddenly what was unsalable in the past became hot, and I now have a 6 book deal with Simon & Schuster/Gallery Books. I also continue to self-publish.
There is no way I could have done that or negotiated those contracts or the advance without my agent, so IMHO she is worth the 15% commission. She takes no commission on my self-pub books and even encourages me to put out what I want.
She also is looking at my career as a whole, which is awesome. And I know if I need someone to have my back in the NY traditional publishing world, she will. If she can help me make connections and money that I couldn’t make on my own, it’s worth 15%.
I usually don’t jump in here unless I know the subject well but since I dismissed the whole agent idea early on I wonder if anyone can expand on this here and help me.
I’ve been told that agents were/are an american invention and that they didn’t come into existence elsewhere for many years after they took hold here in the states. I have a friend in Germany who says they have little to no agent presence in his country. I was wondering if this was still the case outside the US and if so why? Just when did they first appear on the scene anyway?
My friend also says we’re all fat so if you’re worried about calling him a ninny don’t be. Thanks.
As I have queried a German agent to try to sell German rights to my book, as well as about twenty other foreign rights agents around the world, I can say that your friend is misinformed.
We don’t have agents in Slovenia.
I’d be a lot more impressed if the tone of the article wasn’t so condescending. More and more, this is the tone I’ve seen a number of agents adopt. (Not meaning to be harsh or tar all agents with the same brush. There are some decent, wonderful agents out there. They just aren’t always the loudest.)
I don’t doubt that in certain circumstances, having a good, honorable agent is a valuable asset.
Literary agents can be very good at what they do (although I still think they should have to have a degree in law if they’re going to be advising/negotiating legal contracts), but that doesn’t make them foolproof either. The thing is, most authors aren’t children. If we don’t know how to do something, we can learn or hire those things out for a flat rate.
The other thing is that no author/book deal is going to be 100% like another. I’ve seen a number of people dropped by their agents or who have gone through one or more, so I don’t think it’s necessarily accurate to say that “agents are a constant presence in an author’s career.”
I don’t understand why authors wouldn’t want to know the answers to the questions he poses–both sides of the questions so as to make better informed choices.
OMG – He expects me to pay for advice??? Sorry, I have Google…
Working for myself, I have all the time in the world to attend to these minor details…
Sounds to me like one long “Please don’t make me get a reeeel job.”