Yesterday I got a nice note from Joshua Bilmes about these chapters.
As I have said before, I knew some top agents were reading these chapters and I hoped that a few of them would take the lead in some changes that need to happen. I did not know Joshua was one of the agents stopping by.
Now, understand, I am not saying everyone should run to Joshua here, so please don’t take his courage to speak out on these topics as a sign you can all flood him with submissions. I’m sure Joshua has a full list and finds new clients in his own fashion.
But I can say this: In all my years of being in publishing, I haven’t heard a cross word about Joshua, and I know he’s one of the old style top agents working who really believes in taking care of his clients. And I have always enjoyed Joshua’s company personally over the last two decades.
Okay, that said, now go read the post on Joshua’s blog about these chapters, then come back. Read it first before going any farther.
http://brilligblogger.blogspot.com/2010/08/why.html
Okay, let me talk about a few of Joshua’s comments one at a time, again thanking him for the nice comments about these chapters and also his fairness and thought. I will try to do the same and only allow the same in the comments section. No horror stories in this discussion, just discussion, all right, gang?
Now, granted, in some of these Cows posts I felt a little angry about some story or some event that happened to a friend, and also Laura and I would be pretty harsh in the comments at times talking about agents in general and forgetting to exclude the good ones. But let me be clear right here, there are top, honest agents like Joshua, who are great people and do some writers great jobs. Not all top agents are good for everyone, and not all top agents are honest. But a large number of agents are like Joshua, a top agent who is honest and hardworking.
And also, remember, both Laura and I have said over and over that the agent model is a fine model if you understand what you are walking into and handle it as a boss and with saneness of business practice. And we have been clear that every writer is different. We just want writers to take control of their own careers. So keep that in mind, even though at times when looking back over these agent chapters, there may seem to be slanted anti-agent. They are not, just anti-stupid-practice.
Now to some of Joshua’s great points.
1) Joshua said: “One of the posts talks about the “hundreds and hundreds” of scam literary agents. Which would be almost all of them.”
Well, no, not really. At one point a year-or-so ago I tried to do a rough count of the number of agents I could just find names for from all the agents inside William Morris all the way down to the single agent agencies and I stopped counting when I hit 500. And I didn’t begin to find them all. (And come to think about it, I forgot to look in the back of the Writer’s Digest magazine, the place where many scams hang out.)
At one writer’s conference I attended, there were 32 agents on the guest list. So I have a hard time believing that one-sixth of all agents were at that one conference that weekend. Not likely. I would wager that RWA has a tally of just romance agents that number in the hundreds and hundreds. So I stand by my statement that there could be a couple hundred scam agents out there. Easily. There are a huge number of writers.
2) Joshua said: “But perhaps as important, the posts often have enough of a kernel of real truth which is good and valuable and important for people to know, that I don’t think anyone should just dismiss what Dean has to say out of hand.”
Thanks, that is very much appreciated coming from a top agent such as Joshua. And he pointed out a number of places he agree with basic concepts of what I was talking about. Again appreciated. And also he said nice comments about the workshops and Kris and Pulphouse. I’m just glad some people remember Pulphouse. (grin)
3) Joshua said: “And for all the good points Dean makes, his underlying dislike of literary agents blinds him to the fact that the community of arts and letters and culture is as a whole a better place for writers where more writers make more money than they would otherwise.”
I agree with the second part about how writing is a wonderful place and the culture is a wonderful place. I agree completely.
I just disagree that I have an underlying dislike of agents. I actually don’t (even though at times I’m sure it sounded that way with me trying too hard to shout out a point). I have had three top agents in my career, all did me a great job. I had zero issue.
However, having that good experience has given me the ability to sit back without emotion and watch the practices of agents in dealing with hundreds of other writers around me, including my wife and many young professionals who have come through our workshops. And it is that observation that got me going on the practices of the bad agents. And the new breed of agents coming in who think they are the boss and control writers.
Laura Resnick on the other hand has had only few good experiences with agents, so we made a great tag team at times. And I’m sure we sounded strident at times, but honestly, we both hope to just inform writers so that they can make decisions, whatever that decision may be.
Now, granted, for me, there are some practices about the agents in general I have come to hate, such as the practice of handling all the money and paperwork before the writer sees it. If that one practice alone was somehow changed, (which I understand it will never be and the reasons why) most scam agents would vanish. And that would help even more the community of the arts that I love so much, and clearly, Joshua does as well.
So my strident attitude about a few practices made it seem like I dislike agents in general. I don’t, not in the slightest, at least the top ones, the honest ones such as Joshua. I loathe with a passion anyone who will take advantage of a young writer’s dreams to make money. And the lower scum agents and book doctors do just that. And a few of those scum have well-know agencies that draw in and cater to the young writers.
4) Joshua said: “Would the world be better if we all did our own appliance repairs, hemming, and taxes? Of course not. And the world wouldn’t be better for writers without literary agents. Most authors I know just aren’t, at heart, Dean Wesley Smith.”
Oh, trust me, I would never want anyone to have my career. I think Kris just shuddered at the idea that there would be more than one of me. She has enough trouble with just me. (grin)
And trust me, I do understand that most writers need a ton of help. It is why we teach the workshops Joshua mentioned. And thus why I have never said that agents should be shut out of the process. I have told writers to do one of three things: Get help from an agent, a literary lawyer, or do it yourself. Very few writers, as Joshua said, will have the ability to do it themselves, especially early on in a career.
I do worry about the agent model in the coming changes in publishing, but that’s another topic.
5) Joshua said: “They (many writers) don’t have his skill and talent and passion for adding so much of the agent skill set to their own repertoire. They want to write and let somebody else handle the negotiations and the paperwork and keep track of the markets here and abroad and the many other tasks that fall to competent literary agents, and in the totality of things authors are better for having a good agent do the agenting, while they do the writing. Dean is strongly DIY on this topic, thus he writes with a negative undercurrent so fierce that it drowns what could be a more constructive message.”
Well, frighteningly enough, I’m going to agree with this point. To a degree. I have been forcefully advocating a belief system that states “The writer must learn the business they are going to work in.” So yes, I have pushed the Do It Yourself mentality maybe too far at times. Granted.
But sadly, those of us who have been around for twenty years and more are the writers who learned the business, and over the years I’ve watched hundreds of writers, many of them my friends, drop away because they didn’t want to learn it. I’m not saying that writers need to be me, or Laura, or Nora Roberts, or James Patterson, or any of the other writers who know this business. You can have a fine ten-book (or so) career with someone taking care of you. Happens all the time. But if you plan on a long career, you have better start learning everything you can, including the agent’s job, from day one. You don’t have to do the agent’s job, just know what they are doing so you can understand and be in control of your own work. That is my belief system, I freely admit.
Joshua is famous for taking top care of his writers in thousands of ways. It’s what makes him such a top agent, actually, because does exactly as he describes.
But my rebuttal has two points to it.
#1) How do writers, who don’t want to learn, who just want to write and not learn the business where their money is coming from, find a top agent like Joshua and how do they tell apart an agent like Joshua and a scam agent in the Bernie Madoff mode without learning? Seems that luck for them has to play a huge part, and I believe in being prepared because luck favors the prepared.
#2) What happens to all the clients who are being taken care of by an agent when the agent gets hurt or retires or leaves and those writers are left with no real understanding of the business and no one to take care of them? I have seen that happen far too many times already to writers, even before this current business climate of publishing. And what normally happens is that the writer’s careers are done.
So on this one point I’m going to have to take issue. I believe that if I go to an auto mechanic, sure I don’t expect to know what they are doing down to the detail. But if I own and run the garage the auto mechanic works in, I damned well better know what my employee is doing. That’s just common business sense. And that’s my belief system. Writers own the work and hire the agent.
What Joshua is describing is someone who wants to have a business, but knows nothing about it and has no time or desire to learn it, so hires others to run and make decisions about the business. Sure, writing is an art, but when the art is done and created, the writer needs to become a business person.
Anyone who expects to make hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions over a career, and not learn and understand the business they are in is just asking for problems (in my opinion).
So I’m not letting writers off the hook on that one. If your goal is to be the top in your field, then I disagree with Joshua. A writer should expect to have to do the learning. And fine, hire good help, but learn the business and have no expectation that you will be taken care of your entire life.
I just thank heavens my doctor doesn’t think that way. (grin) Or the guy who owns the garage where I take my car.
Again, I want to thank Joshua Bilmes for the great comments and for giving another side of this. And I agree, I think it would be wonderful as time allows to have great discussions about some of these points. I hope Joshua and I can do that. I would love to keep learning from him.
Thanks, Joshua!
(Again, folks, comments are welcome, but keep them civil and no agent horror stories in this one. Discussion time now.)
Interesting that you brought up the ads in Writer’s Digest.
I have often wondered why a magazine that is seemingly devoted to helping the writer accepts ads that are obviously not on the up-and-up and prey on the desperate. One would think a magazine with a somewhat captive audience would raise its standards and decline advertising that is merely designed to give false hope to an unsuspecting writer.
Your thoughts?
Randy, you are not understanding the business model of Writer’s Digest. They want to make money, not help writers. Their goal is to make a living from this niche, so they take anything that produces income anywhere close to the topic.
They do pretend to have standards and they “claim” they check their advertisers when checked, but of course they don’t and never have. You can get some nifty stuff from Writer’s Digest, great writers write for them and always have, all the way from Hubbard in the 1930s to the current columnists. But the writers must take responsibility for their own careers when reading the magazine, take what helps them and ignore everything else. I try to look at Writer’s Digest every month. And if I get one new thing, one bit of information from it, it’s worth the price.
Hmm, agents have their place and are perfect for some writers. I don’t personally feel the need for one currently, but I also feel like I’m operating under a non-traditional business model.
If I were to strive to make it into one of the big NY publishing houses, I would likely go agent hunting. I did have that goal at one time, but not at the present.
Why am I “non-traditional?” Well, because I’m working with smaller print publishers with whom I don’t feel I need an agent, or I’m self-publishing digitally, and again, I don’t feel I need an agent.
That being said, the current upheaval in publish tech and the business models does give me a couple of big concerns: What are the new scams going to be? And, are we digital writers/publishers putting all our eggs in one basket?
New scam models are going to happen. I haven’t noticed them yet, but I’m sure they’re on the way. I could easily see how “book doctors” and the like could make money from some self-publishing writers, not that there aren’t some real freelance editors out there who could be a tremendous help. That’s just one example. Other will arise, probably scams no one has even thought of as of yet.
As for the eggs-in-one-basket scenario, what would happen if Amazon went out of business tomorrow? Or what if the major publishers worked out some deal with Amazon and Smashwords so they’d no longer accept “unlicensed” writers or some such? Yes, yes, it’s not very likely to happen, but such a tragedy or something similar isn’t beyond the realms of believability. I guess I’m just saying writers need to diversify our money streams (and some have done this). The days of sticking with one publisher for an entire writing career, or even for a decade or two, are likely over (and possibly have been for some while). Brian Keene has recently mentioned something similar on his blog as he’s stepping into digital himself after deciding to leave Leisure.
Could a solid agent help a writer to avoid such difficulties? Possibly. Probably. And this might be part of the future for literary agents. Though I don’t feel the need for an agent right now, I have in the past, and perhaps I will again someday. I’d like to think they’ll still be around if I ever feel the need for one.
Ty, good questions. I think the role of agents in this upcoming shift is going to be a big question. Again, I believe some of the big publisher ships will change course and change their business model enough to adept to the new world while also holding onto the old. And some won’t. And top agents like Joshua will help his clients by staying on top of the changes as they happen, sometimes daily.
How agents will fit into electronic publishing is another question. Realize that a ton of new publishers are springing up almost daily and that many writers are going to want to have help with the new publishers. And understand, this is normal for publishing. Big giants at the top collapse or combine leaving room for younger, newer publishers to grow underneath and become major publishers. You will see a great deal of that in the coming years.
I sometimes sell vintage books on eBay and you learn a great deal about history of publishing by looking at the names of the publishers back then. Most are gone, many of the big ones today started as a father and son operation. And that cycle will continue through this next transition in publishing. How agents will fit? Depends on the writers and what they want an agent to do, basically. And what is needed when we get to the next new normal, which no one knows yet what that will be.
No agent, no horror stories.
I’d say, simply, that Mr. Bilmes and agents like him have a problem, because being a parasitic agent is simpler than being an ethical one. I’m not sure parasitism makes more money (because when an author does well, so does the agent), but it is simpler. If you don’t like biological terms like “parasitism,” think of it as a version of Gresham’s Law: bad agents drive out good.
This is a problem in many fields (including the ones in which I’ve made most of my money), and the solutions aren’t easy. One part of the solution is for ethical agents to identify each other and band together. Another solution is to have a code of enforceable ethics, plus the transparency to enforce them. The general point is to make it easy for authors to identify ethical agents, and to make it possible for agents to keep each other honest (or for some other party to do the same).
The third part of that solution is for honest agents to demonstrate that they make more more money for their clients than scammers do. Awkward, yes?
Well, the interesting thing is that my partner works in a highly regulated field, while I work in a poorly regulated field. Her work is a lot more exposed than mine is, and oddly enough, she normally makes a lot more money than I do. Something to think about.
heteromeles, all of that sounds great until you look at it from the writer’s side.
#1, as the boss, no way in hell would I want my employee telling anyone what I make. Nope, not going to happen. And that fact alone stops any agency organization from having any clout. No organization would ever be formed with the power to look into my records if I had an employee from that employee side.
#2, the agent that stole money from Kris at the time was the president of the agent’s association. So that banding together thing would force some sort of disclosure and again not going to happen.
This has to be regulated from the client side, meaning the writers, not the agents. The agents are employees and the good agents’ hands are tied by ethics and law. And thus lies the problem. Until the writers wake up and climb out of these myths, which will never happen sadly for most of them, nothing is going to change. That’s why I am doing these myth posts. Not to change everything, just to help each writer willing to listen to save themselves some grief. I’m not after the entire system, just trying to help the smart writers.
I’ll start, but it will be difficult to ask my question and have it not seem horror story-like. I’ll do my best. If it’s no good, I’m sure the Dean censor will save me.
I very much enjoyed Joshua’s post, and I strongly encourage and support an agent with his mindset. Given his credentials, and the endorsement given by Dean, I’m sure he’s an outstanding agent with his clients’ best interests at heart (because he knows the best way to assure the satisfaction of his own interests is through satisfying his clients’).
While I recognize that this might be an impossibility for business reasons, I’d very much like to part of a discussion with Joshua were we converse about only the payment path from publishers to writers. Dean has said that changing that model so that authors are paid first would be an effective governor for the system, weeding out scam agents, and I agree.
That said, I also recognize that not every agent who wants it that way is trying to steal from her clients; more often than not, I’m sure they want it that way “because it’s always been that way.” That’s a very common response to such questions. There is also the fact that a smart business wants to get all that extra money, so they can earn money on the float. That’s a legitimate money-making strategy, and I don’t fault agencies for that, but they will not do it with my money — I lose enough to Uncle Sam that way.
So my question to Joshua is, are you averse to an author being paid first, and cutting a check to the agent; and if not, do you have existing clients that do so? If you support the other model, can you give good business reasons (for the author) for handling payments in that way?
I can see no logical reasons, but I’d love to hear your perspective.
Jeremy, I asked Joshua the same question. I don’t think there is a response beyond what Joshua already said about writers wanting to be taken care of and that’s part of the service. Again, remember, most writers don’t mind, and when you have an honest agent such as Joshua and others like him, there isn’t a problem. The problem is that the practice is solid and thus allows the scammers in as well.
Back to a previous question, how could agents help police themselves. Actually, the answer would be to stop this practice. The honest agents could all agree to stop the practice, leaving the scam artists out in the cold with their pants down, so to speak. That would work and solve 99% of all the problems.
There is an agents’ organization. Maybe for domestic sales, the agents’ organization could suggest this switch at a future meeting. There are valid paperwork reasons to keep the practice in place at the moment for overseas sales, but for all domestic sales, splitting would be easy, with sets of paperwork going to both parties.
Much as I love the great posts themselves, I think I enjoy and perhaps learn even more from all the comments as well.
Thanks, Dean *and* Joshua!
I had two pretty bad agents.
Then I met Joshua Bilmes.
Joshua is a fabulous agent.
I was fortunate enough to work with him for a few years. After the Master Class however, I realized that I needed to take far more responsibility for my own career; that I was one of those writers Dean refers to as wanting to be taken care of.
The only way for me to progress was to jump. Really. No parachute except for the one I’d be sewing in flight.
Argh.
I hope in my journey to real professionalism in this field that our paths cross again — on a new project — and that I’m mature enough as a client to take advantage of Joshua’s superb experience and kindness.
Joshua Bilmes, thank you for the well thought out comments, as well as agreeing that the agent is the employee of the writer. That was a nice refreshing viewpoint coming directly from an agent.
It was nice to see an agent chime in calmly from their point of view. So far, the most I’ve seen is knee-jerk emotional responses. I hope this discussion continues, as it would be nice to continue seeing an agent’s POV not only about the items in the “Killing the Sacred Cows” posts, but also about the future of agenting in the new digital age of publishing.
Good points on both sides. But I do agree, Dean, that some of the examples Joshua gives of farming out help deals not with an employer/employee or contractor/contractee relationship, but with getting another business to do work for you that isn’t financially viable for you to do yourself. I can’t be knowledgeable about every business I use in my life, but I should be knowledgeable if I intend to run a business.
The less an employer knows about what their employees do and how their business works, the bigger the chance of being taken for a ride, and the greater the likelihood they’ll fail in short order. Anyone who runs a business has to learn how that business operates or they’ll end up making stupid decisions, even if they hire employees with specialized skills to take care of them. As an bookkeeper in several businesses, I’ve seen that happen far too often.
That said, I appreciate the input Joshua gives, and to hear of an agent who does a good job. We probably have been bombarded with too many examples of the bad ones. But it goes back to the point of the last KSC post. Good agents like Joshua should be pushing for standards and transparent business practices so that he and others like him don’t get lumped in with the scam artists and the good agents can be found. As it is now, it appears a writer just throws a dart on the dart board and hopes for the best in selecting an agent. I’m not too keen on tossing my work and career into the air and hope I get lucky.
I agree, Dean, I just can’t understand writers who have absolutely no interest in the business, yet claim to want careers in it. And wanting to be an “artist” is not an excuse. Most of the best artists in other fields knew what was going on–from da Vinci to David Bowie.
Joshua really just hammers home the point that a good agent is good and a bad agent is worse than no agent at all.
To me, it is all fun and interesting and as much or more of a challenge as crafting a great book. You think it’s hard writing a book? Selling one probably takes even more passion and creativity and experience–and a little luck.
Scott Nicholson
http://www.hauntedcomputer.com
Just a clarification Dean: I meant that the agents had to make their finances transparent, not necessarily the authors (although there’s a reason that firms going into strong contractual relationships ask for mutual audits).
If this is objectionable, one could ask that agents pass a specified audit from a qualified auditor every year (although in interest of mentioning horror stories only in passing, I’ve worked in one firm where I still can’t believe they passed the audit they were bragging about). The basic idea is to have an independent mechanism that demonstrates that ethical people are, in fact, ethical.
I agree with you that it probably ain’t going to happen, and to me, that’s too bad. There’s a salable value in expending money and effort to be seen as trustworthy, especially since so many of the myths you are talking about here center on betrayals of trust.
heteromeles, the problem again with what you are suggesting is that the agents combined client list is what generates an agent’s income, so no way to audit an agent without getting permission to open up all the writers on his list accounts. Never going to happen.
No way on the planet you can go into an agent’s accounts. That route will never happen and should never happen. There are other ways to make sure agents are above board, and that’s not allow them to touch the money first. Then there is never an issue.
Very interesting stuff.
I may be off base here, but it seems to me that Joshua pretty much said what he needed to say. I have a great deal of respect for his willingness to give DWS credit where it was due, but that really isn’t the whole of it.
The point is Dean is attacking his profession on some level (and rightly so in my mind) and as gracious as he seems to be, Joshua is probably a little riled by the idea of guilt by association and feel defensive.
This seems pretty natural to me and wholly understandable. Working as hard as he does and doing as well as he does, I doubt Joshua enjoys having his profession put under the microscope. Again, understandable.
All that said, I still have to stand with Dean on the point of authors needing to take the reigns.
Joemontana, thanks for the comment and I took out the one comment because I actually believe that a good agent, when the writer is in control, and the agent is doing their job correctly, is worth every penny of the 15%. Never said they weren’t, so just took that out in this comment section. In my normal comment section, would have left it and answered it another way. (grin)
But that said, I have a huge problem with an agent charging 15% as Laura and I talked about and then doing nothing but making a phone call and then collecting the money. Now that I get upset about, but that has been hashed out in other posts and that would be the place to take that discussion, back to other comment sections. Thanks again.
It should be noted that an audit doesn’t necessarily mean to divulge all the agent’s records. It could mean something as simple as an accounting agency has verified that the agent’s financial records are in shape, no hidden kitties of cash, no skimming off the top, contracts match payments, etc.
Sure, scamming agents could make it appear as if they had passed an audit, but if it was by a verified accounting agency, it could weed out some of the scum.
And by transparency, which I’ve mentioned in previous comments, I’ve meant that the agent is transparent with the author, not necessarily the public or between clients. IOW, the agent sends copies of the statements and all with payments. Again, that can be scammed, which is why it makes sense, as you say Dean, to simply split the payments. Then it is fully transparent to all parties. I can’t see anything unethical about that.
After months of reading these posts, and chewing on this issue, and being called certain things by certain people for expressing my own opinions, I’ve arrived at a place where I think if I can’t have a Bilmes-calibre agent, or someone working for a Bilmes-calibre agency and hewing closely to a well-established, word-of-mouth reputable set of internal agency policies, I don’t want an agent.
Sure it sucks being just one of a hundred thousand other unsold want-to-be novelists out there, vying for attention. But in the same way I decided I didn’t want to be a published short fiction writer unless I could be published in some long-time, reputable, “big” publications, I also do not want to be agented unless it’s by a long-time, reputable, “big” agent. Because anyone beneath that is, well, beneath that.
Might as well just do it myself and see what happens. If I get to work with a Bilmes-calibre agent, cool. It will be an experience and, hopefully, yield positive results. If I never get a Bilmes-calibre agent, well, I’d better darned well know how to change my own oil. If you know what I mean.
I agree completely, Brad. There is a frighteningly old saying. “A bad agent is worse than no agent at all.” I heard that back in 1975 and it was old then. It applies even more today. By factors.
The key if you choose the agent route is to not get in a hurry. Sell your own book first, then decide if you need an agent’s help and if the cost is worth the help. As has been shown lately by a number of writers, (stunned me) the low level agents might turn you down even with a book deal on the table. But the better agents will look at it and be interested because they know their job.
And yes, learn to change your own oil in this business. Only way to make it long term. And Brad, have fun. See you on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Joemontana said, “I may be off base here, but it seems to me that Joshua pretty much said what he needed to say.”
I’m not sure I agree with that. His comments are very well thought out, and I understand his perspective. And I also understand that we very likely will see no further comment from him here or anywhere else.
However, I think just the most recent question of the possibility of having payments split for domestic accounts is valid. As Dean and Laura have said, abolishing that practice would leave the scam agents exposed, and solve the difficulties agents have closing deals with some writers (albeit a vast minority of them).
Additionally, while I agree with Joshua’s comments about how we all don’t do our own work in certain areas, I am also painfully aware that it is he who doesn’t have at least a rudimentary understanding of auto repair who gets taken for a ride at an unethical auto shop, and in some neighborhoods, he might just be far better off just doing the work himself.
Furthermore, if there is no agreement among the up-and-up agents to make some effort to discern themselves from the not-so-ethical ones, then it’s very difficult to see how one can safely hire any of them, especially considering the fact that word of mouth has often proven unreliable in the past, through little or no fault of the person giving the endorsement.
Sure, a strong case could be made showing how an agent will help and provide an excellent service that an author cannot provide for himself, but they all say that. It is therefore very difficult, if not impossible, to know the good from the bad, even with good historical results from a particular agent.
I’m very skeptical at this point, so I’d love Joshua to change my mind. Of course, I’m not worth his time as I’m not currently marketable, so I don’t expect an answer. But if it is the case that the outstanding agents won’t consider taking on an unproven client, then it is perhaps best to go it alone until reaching a point that the top agents come to you.
Jeremy, yes, for domestic accounts, it is valid. Overseas sales are another matter completely at the moment, but even that might change in time.
Jeremy, the problem with your thought about up-and-up agents making a deal together is that they don’t know who is who. Only writers tend to know the scam agents after being taken. I told my agent one day about how a certain agent stole from us and how it was done. The agent, who is as honest as the day is long, as the old saying goes, was stunned. The agent had thought the other agent honest, yet every long term professional writer in a certain genre knows better. So agents just can’t regulate themselves. They are our employees and we shouldn’t expect them to. That’s the point I keep hammering home. If the boss won’t take responsibility for an employee, how can we expect a bunch of employees who work for hundreds of different bosses to do it? Not possible in any real or imagined way.
And your point about top agents not taking on unproven clients is just flat wrong. They do it constantly. Every top agent I know, unless they are close to retirement, has a number of unproven, but promising writers on their lists. It’s normal and the way things are done.
Those are good points, Dean. I didn’t write what I meant when I mentioned an agreement between agents. I meant more like what you propose, which is that ethical agents adopt better business practices that set them apart from scam agents. Of course, as you’ve said, that will almost definitely not happen.
I stand corrected on my later points, and happily so.
I was told once in the Navy by an old sailor, “You know, Jones, if you listened half as much as you talk, you might learn something.”
I forget that from time to time.
I should clarify my first point there (again). I mean to say that agents should independently make these adjustments, rather than come to some sort of collective agreement to set themselves apart from those who would do writers ill.
And as to my comment that this will probably not happen, I mean to say that there is not a significant enough market pressure to make that change, as most writers will not request it. So why would they? I don’t mean to imply that anyone who doesn’t is crooked, or that you asserted that, Dean.
Words can be dangerous. I know that.
First off, I just want to say thanks Dean for your website. Back in February I decided that I was going to work on becoming a professional writer with all my spare time. But so many websites said it was next to impossible to break in, not many made a living at it. This was discouraging so I stopped for a time.
Then I found your website and others like Konrad’s blog and I havent looked back since. Every free moment is now spent on letting the characters in my head paint their lives on the canvas of the written page. It is awesome and liberating. You are doing a great service to all aspiring writers by your website. Same with all the other great writers like your wife and Laura that deserve more recognition than they get. (Just read the story G-Men in an anthology by your wife, awesome).
Its great to know that if I do break in, there is so much information on how to handle agents and the publishing world. When I get a sale I now know that I have many opitions (agent, literary lawyer) and how to avoid the scams.
Thanks to all Dean and all who contribute to these discussions, definately encouraging to all aspirant writers like me.
I had a fantastic agent who then went back into publishing, which left me stranded at the big hydra publisher not having much contact with anyone there but my editor, who of course now had other books on his plate. Not a good situation. I made mistakes because I just did not know enough about the industry, despite having studied various aspects of it for a long time (which was how I got the good agent in the first place).
Now I am with a middling sized publisher instead, where it is easier to navigate the waters on my own, and feel a sense of greater control over my writing. I know who to contact in publicity when I need something, for example. I have actual relationships with the people in various departments because I have not relied on a go-between.
Let’s note, first of all, that Joshua Bilmes blogs under his own name, as a respected publishing professional, rather than hiding behind anonymity.
He may just be a habitually courteous man, but I note that he is reasoned and civil in his comments, rather than using a shield of anonymity to engage in snide insults. Commenting publicly under the auspices of one’s ACTUAL professional identity and name has a tendency (though it’s not 100% reliable) to encourage one to comment more responsibly. It also gives visitors the opportunity to learn the blogger’s ACTUAL professional credentials as the basis of his/her commentary.
Also, kudos to Mr. Bilmes (who I met briefly 2-3 years ago, but do not know) for expressing such a courteous and open-minded response to what have certainly been some extremely frank and negative comments here (my hand goes up) about his full-time profession. I hope (though doubt) that I would be as gracious if a literary agent decided to comment publicly about what made him quit working with novelists, the way I comment publicly about what made me quit working with literary agents.
However, I don’t agree with his comparison of using a literary agent’s services with using the services of an expert such as accountant (trained and licensed), an auto mechanic (trained and licensed), or a tailor (trained technical skills). Additionally, MANY people do a portion (often a substantial portion) of their own auto maintenance/repair or their own sewing. Not everyone, certainly, but a significant percentage.
I use an accountant because I’m self-employed; but my accounting bills are low because I do so much of the work myself and only pay her for the advanced/expert tasks. Meanwhile, a number of my salaried friends don’t use an accountant at all. An accountant dropped the ball on another self-employed person I know, who had to learn in about 72 hours how to clean up the mess herself; now she does all her own taxes, has no more trouble, and doesn’t intend to hire another accountant. Meanwhile, someone I know living strictly on investment income spends about 20 times what I do on bookkeeping and accounting, because she chooses not to read a single piece of paperwork or write down a single number (she even pays someone to write most of her checks and pay most of her bills).
So it all depends. Not everyone needs or wants the same thing.
But my own experience as a writer has been that there is a pervasive assumption throughout the industry that all writers DO need exactly the same thing: a literary agent. And this simply isn’t accurate. Yet the assumption is pervasive enough to be a real headache to any writer (my hand goes up again) who had one bad experience after another with that business model, who eventually decided (despite much alarned advice, personal and general, to the contrary) to quit using that model, and whose career has improved substantially in all relevant ways since doing so (response times, sales, advance levels, contractual terms, subrights business, payment times, etc.).
Obviously, yes, there are plenty of writers who don’t WANT to manage their own careers. And I don’t quarrel with that. I argue with the assumption that writers should NOT run their own careers or that writers MUST have a literary agent. But what someone WANTS to do is entirely up to them.
But I do strongly believe that when writers do NOT want to run their own careers, then they need =more= options and =better= alternatives available what the industry currently offers, which is ONE SOLE business model in which their career management, the representation of their work, their contract negotiations, and their money are all handled on a commission basis by a profession (literary agents) whose members have no standard training, no formal qualifications, and no licensing.
Dean write: “#1) How do writers, who don’t want to learn, who just want to write and not learn the business where their money is coming from, find a top agent like Joshua and how do they tell apart an agent like Joshua and a scam agent in the Bernie Madoff mode without learning?”
This is a really important point. Would standardized training (including contractual expertise and ethics), formal qualifications, and licensing (including established practices appropriate to the handling of money) be a good solution? It’s not a perfect safety net, but it certainly seems likely to be a better than the complete absence of one that characterizes the profession now.
And also: “#2) What happens to all the clients who are being taken care of by an agent when the agent gets hurt or retires or leaves and those writers are left with no real understanding of the business and no one to take care of them?”
As a corollary to this, it’s an increasingly common phenomenon that writers are being dumped by their agents and unable to find a new one, or leaving their agents (for very good reasons, such as bizarrely bad, counter-productive, apatehic, or unethical behavior) and then unable to find another.
I say that “I quit the agent-author business model,” since it was a conscious decision; but it might be just as accurate to say the business model quit -me-. I’ll never really know, since my hunt for a fifth agent was brief and abortive (I only tried five agents), then I quit, things turned around completely for me within a month or so, and I have never looked back since.
At the time, I was dragging around a recently canceled contract and dismal sales figures on my most-recent release. So it struck me as self-explanatory that the agents I queried weren’t remotely interested in me (and at least a couple of them were downright rude). My own experience throughout my career has been that agents don’t like heavy lifting. My experience had consistently been that when the chips were down, getting (or keeping) an agent was like trying to get a date with Johnny Depp; and when my career was going well, getting an agent was as easy as falling off a log.
So I thought of myself as “quitting” the author-agent business model because after pulling my career out of of a ditch and getting it back to full fighting weight and sheen on my own, I could then easily find another agent if I wanted to. I just didn’t want to.
However, what’s apparent to me NOW is… I could easily be DEAD WRONG about that. Because I now know too many writers whose careers are NOT in trouble who can’t get an agent. I -think- of this as my choice… but based on how many writers, including steadily working/contracted writers I know who CAN’T get an agent though they WANT one and have been TRYING for months (or longer) to get one (and who wind up selling books on their own because no agent they queried would handle them–indeed, most wouldn’t even RESPOND to them!)… I’ve realized that even if I had dearly wanted an agent and tried to find one after getting my career back on track by myself, and again being the sort of writer who -used- to find it easy to hire an agent (i.e. selling and earning steadily)… Things have changed so much in the agent market that I certainly might be UNABLE to get an agent.
So it’s a darned good thing I can (and want to) run my career myself. Because I might not have a choice about it, after all (though I have THOUGHT of it as “my” choice for quite some time now). I know this because I am talking to too many writers these days for whom self-representation is NOT a choice, it’s just what they’re stuck with.
This is the subject of my next two NINK columns–you WANT an agent, but you can’t get one, and you’re discombobulated and scared, so WHAT NOW?
And because so MANY writers are in this position now, it needs to be discussed a lot more. Because being agentless and running your own career are not JUST a choice; it’s also the unsought, unwanted REALITY for a growing number of publishing professional writers out here now… and not JUST for writers who are having career problems (it’s typically been a non-choice reality for writers having career problems); it’s also becoming the non-choice reality for a surprising number of writers with active, busy careers.
Laura, when you get those NInc blogs up, would you link them here? Looking forward to them and great comments.
(They’ll be in my NINK column, not on the Ninc blogs. I get paid for the column, so what I write there is a tad better spelled and more coherent than what I write on the internet. Still, a lot of my thoughts in the column on what to do without an agent–the mindset and the practical tasks–as a mid-career professional are very similar to a lot of things we’ve discussed here.)