This series of posts is taking the wonderful series on The History Chanel called Life After People and using the format to take a look at different areas of publishing. So far I’ve done two on Life After Returns and one on Life After Agents. This is the second part of Life After Agents, taking up where the first one left off. Please read the first post right below this one or this one will make no sense.
Again, I am not suggesting that agents as people should go away. I have many friends who are agents and I like them all. I’m just talking about what would happen if their job suddenly vanished from the face of publishing.
Life After Agents: 1 Week.
Writers would still be in a panic, at least all the newer writers and writers who believed the myth that once they got an agent, that person would “take care of them.” Of course, taking care of a writer is not an agent’s job, but after one week, the writers who believed the myth would still be in a panic or giving up.
Established long-term professionals (meaning writers with more than ten or twenty novels published) would be just going on, more than likely trying to calm down their younger writer friends. The vanishing of someone doing an agent’s job to these long term writers would be nothing more than an annoyance. Most of them had been without an agent at one point or another in the past, this would be nothing different.
Book publishers and imprints would be going along with getting out their lists, bookstores and readers wouldn’t even have noticed.
After one week, one focus would be inside the publishing houses concerning the slush pile. Publishers had suddenly been forced back into doing their own searching for books and dealing with the mass of slush manuscripts. Of course, this will end up being a good thing for the entire industry, but after one week, the struggle of setting up new systems will be a focus of many meetings.
What kind of slush systems might fill the gap?
1) Slush piles, more than likely situated out of New York, with hired assistant editors to go through the piles. More than likely these assistant editors would be hired by the editors in New York and would work directly with assistants. Of course, the only way the assistant is going to escape the warehouse outside of New York and get into the main office is to find good manuscripts. Sort of a training system for all the Vassar grads going into editing. This would be a return to an old system and I doubt many publishers would use it except for a temporary solution.
2) E-mail/web-based systems of forms. The writer fills out a form exactly, meaning there is a certain number of manuscript pages included, a certain length synopsis of the book, a certain length of bio material. This form would be done online in some fashion. This form would then be slotted to an editorial area where the assistant editors would spend a percentage of their days weeding through the e-mail submissions and sending form rejections. More than likely this system of exact forms will soon replace the agent system anyway, since agents are blocking far too much these days from editor’s eyes. (See my last post as to why this is happening.) This form system is already in place in a number of publishers.
3) Editorial contests where other readers read what a writer has posted on a site and vote and if there are enough votes, editors take a look. This system is already in place in a number of houses and more than likely will fail as an overall system.
4) Closed system completely. Many houses without the agent block would just shut their doors to any new work coming in. Of course, to fill their lists, they have to see new work. Sounds like one excludes the other, but it doesn’t. The new system would be for the editors to find the writers in any way they want. More writer’s conferences, talking with their existing writers for names of new writers, following the short fiction for new writers publishing in the magazines, buying writers away from other houses. Again, this system is in place already in a few houses and is a throw-back to an older system. I was asked for my first novel because an editor had seen some of my short fiction in magazines.
So, after one week, what other issues would be starting to crop up without the writers having an agent as employee?
The main job an agent does is negotiate contracts. Writers, for numbers of reasons, don’t want to learn business and publishing contracts before stepping onto a national stage. This is like saying a surgeon doesn’t want to go to school before doing an operation on your brain. Yet writers fire out manuscripts all the time and don’t understand a book publishing contract when it is offered. They will sign it, often with a beginning agent saying it is all right, and then complain when the term of the contract screwed them.
I can’t begin to say how many times I have read contracts for friends who had younger agents who actually made contracts worse for the writer. Having an agent negotiate a contract is critical, but having the wrong agent do it can make things worse. Most beginning writers don’t understand that they need to learn contracts and business, not leave it up to their agent. Of course, with agents being gone, they would be forced into learning or leaving.
A side note: Agents are not regulated in any fashion and are not required in any way to take any training, including learning publishing contracts or money management. Yet young writers who want someone to “take care of them” put all their faith and complete income into agents’ hands. As we all discovered recently in the financial world, having an unregulated group of people control money is always a route to disaster. Agents are unregulated and have no required training. Just keep that in mind.
Agents have played the roll of protecting the baby writers who don’t have a clue, even though experienced agents don’t like to do it. Somewhere around the fifth contract, new writers start gaining some knowledge about what they are signing. This learning curve is backwards from what it should be and leads to disaster more often than not, especially when there are young and inexperienced agents helping them. As credit card companies have discovered, the stupidity of the consumer in not reading or understanding contracts can make a lot of money for a company.
Publishing companies will be no different than credit card companies at this point without any agents in the picture. Long term writers won’t be hurt at all because we all understand contracts, otherwise we would have been gone long ago. But newer writers who hoped someone would “take care of them” would have no clue, and not even know where to go learn publishing contracts, and even worse, not even think they had to. Publishers would have a field day, a feeding frenzy, until this knowledge gap found a new way to get closed.
Life After Agents: 1 Month
Writer’s organizations, at least the powerful ones, would be trying to step in to fill the education gap on contracts. Standard contracts for each house would be circulating and lists of intellectual property lawyers would be forming. Lawyers who understand publishing contracts (your local attorney wouldn’t have a clue) will be able to help on the negotiating the contract, but writers would have to learn how to stand up for themselves. After one month, this might not be clear yet, but many writers with contracts in the pipelines would be discovering the problem.
A personal aside here. As I said last post, I have sold over 90 novels. My agents never sold a one of them. I sold them all. But I had a top agent on almost every one of the contracts to negotiate it for me. This is the area that agents will be missed the most. In the current climate of thinking that agents are needed to sell books and take care of writers and help them rewrite books, this true job of negotiating contracts with writers has been lost in the noise.
Now understand, a long term professional writer like me would have the same problems of spending more time on things we used to let our employee do. Unlike the beginning writers who expect agents to take care of them, I use an agent to not only negotiate the contract, but do some of the work I don’t feel like doing on a book. If agents suddenly vanished, I think I would miss that employee side the most.
On the slush side, at one month, the publishers would all have new systems up and running and in various stages of testing. Younger pros and beginning writers would still be in a state of panic that their myth-like crutch has been taken away. Older pros would mostly just be searching to make sure channels were open to their overseas publishers and that they liked their new lawyer.
A side point here. Agents take 15% and 20% overseas. Writers using intellectual lawyers tend to pay far less for the negotiating and contracts side, thus this would be a raise for writers, which would make up for the extra time we would have to spend.
After a month, another aspect that would be shoving hard would be the writers going directly to print in one form or another. POD publishing would be increasing. Kindle and other e-book forms of writer-as-publisher would be increasing as well. It would be a small push, but it would get a lot of press among the writers feeling lost without their caretaker agent.
A huge positive side of all agents suddenly vanishing is that the low level scam agents would also be gone. The “book doctors” and other scam fee agents would no longer be around to feed on a young writer’s dreams. A very positive thing.
Life After Agents: Six Months.
Publishing houses would have completely leveled out and got their slush under control in one way or another. The lists of books have to be put out every month. Having agented submissions or regular submissions will mean nothing to publishers after a short adjustment and a few new systems.
Writer’s organizations would have gained in power and would be doing their best to step in and start new educational programs very focused on contracts, negotiating and other aspects. Romance Writers of America already does much of this, but after six months, most of the writers organizations would have lists of lawyers, would have standard contracts, and would be having more experienced professionals running contract and negotiating workshops.
But there is no getting around it, during the transition, some publishers would take advantage of writers in contracts and subrights. But after six months, this would be starting to level out.
At the moment, agents block many books from getting to editors, and make writers who let them rewrite a book into sameness. Without this blockage, editors after six months would be discovering some fine new talent flowing at them, some new and very different voices. This can only be good for publishing and readers.
At six months, the publishing industry would be chugging right on without agents as if they had never existed.
At the moment, agents and their relationship with publishers is one area of publishing that is seriously flawed. Agents work for writers, yet they have relationships with publishers and are forced on writers by the publishers. I want an agent who understands clearly that they stand on my side of the contract in negotiations.
Some agents act like they are in charge of their writers, that they know more about writing fiction than their writers do, that they can hire and fire writers, or make them rewrite books. Silly, just plain silly. They are an employee, nothing more.
And this belief that agents are the only people who can mail books to publishers is also silly, just flat silly. And the growth of that belief is hurting publishers in so many ways that are just starting to show. For example, I heard of many, many agents over the past four months who were deciding to not mail out their client’s work because this was a “slow time” in publishing. Think of that in business terms, in employee terms. You are running a production plant and your employee says “I’m not sending any product to our customers because I have a feeling things are bad right now.” As the boss, you would laugh and fire the employee and get an employee who would send out the product you produced to your customers. Yet many writers are letting agents get away with such things. See how fantastically silly things have become.
This is a new problem to publishing, growing over the last ten plus years. It is a problem that writers organizations, publishers, and the writers have to fix. I don’t want agents to vanish from publishing. But I do believe that writers need to get back in charge of their own employees.
Coming next: Life After Publishers. And yes, I will do Life After Writers at some point, just for kicks.
The more I think about it, the more I think you’re right–having publishers shove their slush piles onto agents doesn’t make business sense in the long run. And it definitely makes no sense at all from the writer’s perspective to have one’s agent tied up with that mess.
You didn’t have a chance to cover it in the essays, but I’ve also been wondering about how the fact that many agents have more than one client influences the dynamics of the writer-agent relationship. An agent may be a writer’s employee, but the writer probably has to deal with the agent having other employers at the same time.
I think that’s what makes temporarily feasible the “I’m not going to submit manuscripts right now”–the various revenue streams coming in from different writers. In other words, the individual writer (employer) is going to hit the cash flow crunch before the agent will, since the agent has multiple employers.
The multiple employer aspect of things does cause some lack of worry about cash flow, also many of these agents are on salary with an agency so those don’t worry about it for their own bread and butter. But mostly the problem comes from agent thinking they are in charge. And writers letting agents get away with such crap. So, the bottom line is that it’s the writer’s fault.
You can’t blame an employee when business goes bad when the boss lets the employee do stupid things and doesn’t either stop them or fire them.
Fact: No editor can buy a book or story they haven’t seen.
And under this current system, they aren’t seeing a lot of stuff these days. And most writers just don’t understand the business enough to go around this closed door.
Cheers,
Dean
“You can’t blame an employee when business goes bad when the boss lets the employee do stupid things and doesn’t either stop them or fire them.
Fact: No editor can buy a book or story they haven’t seen. ”
Very true. Makes me twitchy thinking about all those manuscripts sitting around in agency offices not going anywhere.
And I think you talked about it in a previous post–agents who refuse to send out a particular manuscript to a publisher because they think it won’t sell no matter what. And the writer lets them do it instead of getting a new agent.
I always think of Tony Hillerman when I hear a writer talk about letting their agent do that. He had to fire his agent at the time he finished THE BLESSING WAY because she refused to sell it unless he got rid of all the Navajo characters and setting.
Thanks for taking the time to write this series.
Cheers, LM
I think that the main problem with your scenario is your assumption that publishers will hire extra assistants to deal with the slush. They won’t. The number of employees, or head count, in publishing has been steadily decreasing because publishing is essentially an extremely low-profit business. Already there are editors telling me that they aren’t buying anything until 2010, not because they don’t have the money to do so – there’s always money when a B-list celebrity comes along and wants to sell a bio, right? – but because they physically cannot handle the workload at this point and there is now no room in the calendar to schedule the books.
Most editors I know spend 100-120 hours a week on their job. 70 hours in the office and the rest of that time reading at home. No real reading gets done in the office; there are too many other administrative tasks to do and meetings to attend. The editing gets done at home, on their own time.
With so many editors and other publishing professionals being laid off, the book backlog is huge, and inventory is getting spaced out further and further apart. An editor who may have been working on 10 books a month now has 20 or 30. Editorial assistants ARE editing; they no longer have time for slush and nobody is going to bring in a new stable of helpers anytime soon.
You’re right that the agent works for the writer. But it should be a partnership for the relationship to work best. Agents can also fire clients who behave unprofessionally.
The query system is flawed, absolutely. I often hear unpublished writers complaining that “agents are paid to read queries.” In fact, we are not. We’re not paid at all unless we sell a book. Every moment I’m reading a query letter is a moment that I’m not working for my clients, not following up on submitted manuscripts, not going over a contract, not building relationships with new editors, not advocating for my client in publicity and marketing meetings.
But queries are one way I can find – and have found and sold – new talent.
So until the shareholders of large publishers decide to loosen the purse strings and allow publishers to hire the staff they actually need to operate a business in a reasonable manner, many writers will have no choice but to look to agents to help them get a foot in the door.
Oh, and actually – most agents are not salaried. Most of us also do not have heath benefits. The vast majority of us are commission only. A large percentage of us work second and third jobs for the first 5-7 years of our career in order to make ends meet.
Those with a salary tend to be assistants, office managers, contracts managers, and book keepers. Some agents in large agencies – primarily those who have been in business for many years and have a reliable royalty stream coming in – are on a draw against commission. This is not the same as a salary.
Just clarifying.
Colleen, thanks for your comments.
As you know, the publishers would have no choice if their lazy trick of shoving the slush off on agents suddenly vanished. They have to fill the lists month after month, and I agree they will do it as cheaply as possible, which is why I said I doubted the old slush pile system would return for any length of time. But there are new systems possible these days that are cheap and easy and don’t require a writer to hire an employee and the publishers, with the sudden loss of this system, would be forced to find new, cheap ones quickly. That was the premise of my posts.
Oh, trust me, I know how long editor’s work every week. Been there, done that, bought the tee-shirt. Luckily, I am able to write novels and could escape. As I always say, they do the work of the gods without any real pay. They love books, and I do understand how the industry has changed in the last decade,and over the last century, since I am a fan of the history of publishing, which is why I know how agents got started in the first place.
I completely disagree in any kind of partnership with an agent. That assumes the agent brings something to the table that is as valuable as the writer’s fiction. That’s like saying that the owner of a great idea should allow the mail room and the attorney in the legal department of his business be a partner because they do the jobs they were hired to do. Hogwash. I can negotiate a contract just fine, I know more about contracts than most agents I know, and I certainly can mail my own books to an editor. I hire an agent for the job they can do for me, the time they can save me, just as anyone hires an employee, nothing more. This idea being fed to new writers that they need a “partner” or someone to control their career is where the problem is. It’s a myth and just bad business.
And, of course, agents take no risk. How many writers get just dumped by agents when their books don’t sell, or when a manuscript gets rejected eight or ten times? Some partnership.
It’s not your job to find new talent, it’s the editor’s. Your job is to work for me, the writer who hires you. That is also where this system has gotten so screwed up.
You are right, big companies are not going to change this or loosen up. Not in their nature until forced, but as many editor friends of mine are saying to me, they are not seeing the new books, the creative new voices they used to see, and that has them worried. (They have to fill those lists.) Their own system of forcing their slush on writer’s employees is starting to show cracks. Unless agents stop forcing the new talents to rewrite to mush and start doing their job, this system will fail and the new system might well exclude agents.
Thanks a bunch for your reply. It pointed out very clearly the exact problems I wanted to point out. And I know that on the two sides of this desk we never will agree. And I do know my shouting into the dark about this won’t do any good since the myth of this new system is so strong with new writers. It plays into their insecure natures perfectly, and thus will be impossible to break until the publishers set up the next system.
Cheers
Dean
The salaried positions I mentioned were in big agencies, as I mentioned. A draw against commission at a set amount per month sure does take the pain out and allow agents the security of a salaried position. I know how the system works, just figured in the space of things it was easier to not try to explain it and just call it a salary.
And granted, the solo agents don’t have that, which should worry the hell out of most writers, but they never think of that. A solo agent has cash flow issues just like any other business, has insurance issues, and the cash that does come in is from publishers paying writers. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve talked with writers who were ripped off by an agent, always a solo agent, who had cash flow problems and didn’t pass some of the money through. One major scam that one agent pulled for years was telling his new baby writers that they didn’t need to sign any contract from overseas because it was in another language. Of course, as Berne says, all contracts must be issued in the home language of the author. This agent was forging names on contracts and keeping part of the advance and all the royalties. Yup, happens all the time.
If it didn’t cause so much trouble inside publishing houses, I would have every writer split contract money in the publisher’s accounting department. 15% to the agent, the rest directly to the author. But I do tell authors that all money should be sent to the author and let the author pay the agent, as it should be. That often gets solo agents to scamper down the road.
A side point here: I have been an editor with a number of companies and been the publisher of the 5th largest publisher of science fiction/fantasy/horror. I escaped as I said and since those days have sold just under 100 novels, over 90 as I like to say, across every genre and under a bunch of pen names. Many New York editors are close friends of mine and I have good relationships with my former agents, both of whom I would call in a heartbeat if I had a project that fit their special skills. I love this business, all sides of it, and my only hope with these articles is to get a few writers raising their heads up above the myths and looking around. Questioning is a good thing. Especially when it comes to these agent myths.
Cheers
Dean
Colleen, you said…”there are editors telling me they are not buying until 2010…”
Let me simply say “Yikes!” Does that mean you are one of the agents I have been hearing about who are not mailing their writer’s books? I would hope not.
One side point. Kris and I teach workshops for young professional writers who are selling but haven’t clicked over the top yet. In the last four months six different writers who were students of ours sold first novels into top New York publishers. Only one had an agent when they got the offer. Of course, all six have agents now, as they should. Top agents with top agencies who will negotiate the contracts and such.
Luckily, you are flat wrong about editors not buying. Otherwise, I might have to go get a real job, and since I’ve been making a living writing fiction for over 20 years, I’m not sure what I could do.
Cheers
Dean
Hmm.
First off, I don’t recall the quality of material coming in from agents to be higher than that of straight submissions, mainly because there are enough rubber-stamp agents that anyone who tries long and hard enough -will- find an agent to submit their work.
Second, a world without agents means screaming fights between authors and editor about money and deadlines and cover art etc etc., which can destroy the creative partnership necessary for a creative and financially successful work. The editor, remember, is the agent of the publisher and is out to get the most from the author for the least money – that’s the job. Not all authors are the kind of professionals you and Kris are; many simply do not deal with the world on an adult, professional level and greatly need the agent to interface between them and the editor and publisher.
Third, a world without agents is a world where authors’ have to spend their time learning to read publishing contracts in detail, manage foreign and other subrights themselves, etc. To quote -you-, in fact, “A writer -writes- and finds someone trustworthy to delegate -every other- aspect of their career to.” Someone acting as their own agent falls, to me, under the same restriction as a lawyer representing themselves having a fool for a client.
Optimally, a agent serves the function of a business manager – handling everything so you don’t have to.
That said, suggestion for another topic: LIFE WITHOUT NOVELS. Us fiction writers and fans tend to forget that a novel, defined as a long piece of narrative prose where the author is not purporting that the events described actually occurred, are occurring or will occur, is a smaller section of the book market than non-fiction is. The novel itself is by some lights less than 300 years old; just as there was a huge market for short stories in the 18th, 19th and early-to-mid 20th Century that has fallen by the wayside (at least in prose) leaving only small remnants, the same could easily happen to novels.
What happens then?
Dean, what’s the difference between the intellectual rights lawyer you would hire and an agent?
A lawyer who knows publishing contracts and can market your film and foreign rights, etc. is performing all that an agent would do, just under another name.:)
Like I said, you and Kris and, I hope myself are adults and professionals, but not all authors are like that – I agree with you that it’s an invidious and unfair stereotype that all writers need hand-holding. But remember that authors are not hired on the basis of the stability of their personalities but on the basis of how well they write and how well they sell; there are divas in any profession (and of any sex).
I grew up in the Soho art world, and while I would definitely NOT say that the more successful artists were in any way more unstable than the unsuccessful ones, being unstable was not a detriment to a wildly financially successful career. My father made a very good living hand-holding the nutcases, calming them down and making sure the were okay from a legal perspective, often despite themselves. Again, it’s not that severe personality disorders are somehow more prevalent among creative types than among other professions, it’s that the other professions -screen them out- and creative ones don’t.
Example: Keith Herring was a very nice, very pleasant person with SEVERE OCD. He wound up drawing those figures of his all over the city not because he’d thought up a brilliant way to break through but because he couldn’t stop himself. If you were chatting with him he’d be drawing them in the air, or on the arm of his chair with his finger, or wherever. A lawyer, doctor or accountant who behaved like that would not make it in his career without treatment; In Herring it was considered “quirky” and let pass.
That said, it’s simply not cost effective for a writer to do all that other stuff. If you get paid by the book, the more books you can write the better, and any time taken away from that is a cost in income. There are people you can hire to handle business stuff – only Dean Wesley Smith can write a Dean Wesley Smith novel.
One last note:
You wrote:
“Where you and I don’t agree is that some writers need to be taken care of.”
That is correct; it is my experience that some writers need to be taken care of, and that whether an author needs to be taken care of has nothing to do with whether they are successful or not; the ones who need care who don’t sell you can get rid of; the ones who need care but sell very well you can’t. Even an author who is generally fun to work with can be a problem if the money negotiation leads to bad feelings or lingering resentment (on either side).
Anyway I would rather the authors who are cool and fun and easy to work with like you and Kris and Mike spent your time -writing- rather than negotiating subrights deals.:)
Ahh, John, I think you helped me make a few of my points just great. Without agents, authors who survived would be required to learn the business, learn contracts (which they should know anyhow because it’s their signature on them), and learn business. Without agents, I would hire an intellectual attorney to negotiate my contract for me, so I also agree there.
Where you and I don’t agree is that some writers need to be taken care of. In an international business, writers who survive are the ones that can stand up and who learn the knowledge, granted often from hard-knocks as Kris and I did, be we learned and are still here. I would hate to have you say to a writer’s face like me or Kris or Mike Resnick or others like us that we have to be taken care of. Of course we don’t.
And as a writer, I find it insulting to my business title that many people out there think writers need to be taken care of. I teach young professional writers to stand up and take care of themselves, to not depend on some unregulated person to handle the money, to take care of their living and everything that is important to them. At the same time, I tell young professionals to get an agent the moment they have an offer, and to have done their research on the agent ahead of time, just as any good employer would look into an employees background before hiring them. And I use agents as you suggest, and as I suggested, to do the work I don’t want to do. Doesn’t mean, as any good employer, I don’t know how to do it. I just feel it’s worth my time to hire someone else to do it for me for a fee. I know everything my agents do, often a ton more. I hire them for the work, not to be taken care of, so I can, as you say, “write.”
Although, I will admit the idea of lounging on a deck chair being served by servants my every desire does have its nice moments. But I would be bored in ten minutes.
Darn-it, John, I sure enjoyed working with you as an editor and I don’t remember us having any fights over anything. And I don’t remember when you were the writer and I was the editor I felt I had to take care of you. In fact, I remember Kris being worried about what we would come up with and what trouble we would get into every time we were on the phone together. When are you coming back to editing? A lot of us really miss you.
And Life Without Novels? Hmmmm, I like that idea. I’ll try to detail it out a little, see if I can tackle it. Interesting…
Thanks for the great comments.
Cheers
Dean
Sorry, don’t mean to rant on, but all my brilliance doesn’t come to me at once.
To deal with the slush pile, what I would suggest is crowdsourcing. Let 1000 people sign up to be your review board. The first three chapters of the submission are sent to everyone who signed up.
They must either refuse to get more of the book, thereby voting no, or ask for more of the book. You track what percentage of people read through the whole thing, 3 chapters at a time. (People who simply don’t respond are kicked off the board and replaced from the waiting list).
Books that 1/3rd of the crowdsource board read all or most of the way through are then worth the editor’s attention. Or perhaps it would be better not to give out more than 1/2 the book – that way those who thumbs-upped it will have to buy the book – perhaps at a special discount.:)
Whatever the details, that seems to me like a fast, fun and sales/publicity-generating way to sort through the slush.
It would take legislative action to create a licensing board for agents (it did in Hollywood). People ask me “what do you need to be an agent?” and my reply is always “stationary.”
But just as it’s unfair to judge all writers by the few loons, it’s unfair to judge all agents by the scummy ones. In all “hopeful” fields like acting or modeling or whatever, there are scum who take advantage of newbie ignorance.
Hey, John, forgot to answer one thing you said above. “What’s the difference between a literary agent and an intellectual properties attorney?”
Actually, a great deal. An attorney only negotiates the contract and for a set hourly rate. They do no marketing at all, just contracts and negotiations. A number of pros have gone this way lately because, for one reason, we can market our own work, second, it’s a ton cheaper than paying 15% for the life of the work. Lawyers are one fee and done.
But again, you can’t go to your local attorney on a publishing contract. A couple months ago over dinner I handed a fairly standard publishing contract to one of the best business attorney’s in the state. He read a little bit, looked up at me and said “I don’t have a clue what I’m reading.”
That’s how different publishing contracts are from other contracts. So you have to go to a special attorney who works in this field.
Cheers
Dean
Hey, Dean:
Loved the discussion between you and John. Good stuff.
John, you didn’t say if you’re coming back to editing. I for one miss your touch with a certain well known franchise.
Russ
I completely agree. Most of the agents I know are great people who love books and do their best. None of them have fallen deeply into the “I must rewrite my client’s work” myth, mostly because that just takes too darned much time and they are too busy. I never meant to say that all agents are problems, and I have said I would miss agents if they vanished for the reasons you suggested, mostly I like to have them help me with the work that takes time.
But I hate the fact they are not regulated and handle money so freely, without most writers even questioning or even staying on top. As the melt-down in our economy just illustrated to us all, having an unregulated group of people deal with money is a bad, bad idea in general. And with writers falling more and more into “I must be taken care of” myth, which is what I think that is, the chance of scam and money issues goes up. Duh. Of course it does.
So I shout into the wind, hoping the younger writers at least stand back from the agent myth a little and look at what they are doing, question the system, and then decide what works for them. I know what works for me, Kris knows what works for her, and we are different when it comes to agents. But neither of us would ever just hand over our career, our entire money flow to an unregulated person and say, “Here, take care of me.” And it scares hell out of me when I watch a friend do that.
So if the newer writers reading this take anything away from all this fun, they should take your answer to what it takes to become an agent. “Stationary.” If that doesn’t wake up a few folks and shatter the myth, nothing will.
Cheers, Dean
John, I like that idea of crowdsourcing. It’s an extension of what a few publisher’s are trying these days, and much more logical. That one just might work. You might want to suggest that idea to a few folks in your fine city. Who knows, it might just catch on.
And I agree, I would rather be writing than dealing with the business, which is why on every novel I sell I hire an agent. And I said in my blogs I would miss them if they suddenly vanished. But I wouldn’t miss all the newer writers complaining about agents, and pros complaining about their agents yet afraid to fire them (sometimes for years and years), and the agents without skills taking advantage of the newer writers. I am a believer of survival of the fittest, but this system with all the myths writers are lead to believe doesn’t even allow the fit to survive unless something along the way kicks the writer out of the agent-as-boss cycle and puts things back into a clear perspective of agent as employee.
So, yes, I like having the help on the business and use agents for exactly that, since I’m not often the one who needs to be taken care of. Not often.
Back in law school I took contracts law, and the professor talked about how some of us in the room would make entire careers out of getting people out of messes with contracts, all because they signed contracts they didn’t understand and often didn’t read. Writers sign the contracts, agents are unregulated. It is a system set for ugliness unless some of the writers, and the writers’ organizations start putting some sort of guidelines on the mess. That way the writers who do need to be taken care of because of their talent (snort) can at least have some safety before an agent runs off with all their money.
Yup, and those guidelines are going to happen real soon now. (double snort)
Cheers,
Dean
Thanks, Russ. Not going back to the editing thing any time soon. Doesn’t pay enough and to be honest, it’s kind of a been-there/done-that for me (looking back over my life, I have changed careers every 10 years or so, so I’m on to marketing now and will be opening an art gallery soon.
First of all, thanks for a great and provocative series here. Lots to talk and think about.
On to a few specific points that have fallen by the wayside:
I think L.M. May makes an important point about how multiple clients influences the author/agent relationship.
I think the problem here is that we think of agents as a long-term relationship, like a family doctor, of a church, or an employee working in a position of importantance inside your company.
There is, or in an ideal world, should be some truth to that. But in practice, it often works poorly, if at all, and the multiple-client thing has a great deal to do with that.
Fact is, literary agents are independent service workers, with all the problems that go with this. Don’t think of them as your priest or rabbi, think of them as your lawn guy or the person who comes in to tend your office plants. They’re on-board to provide an on-going service, and they do so for a lot of people in addition to you. But all that you really care about is, are they providing the service to YOU.
In a perfect world, you and the service provider are going to have a long and happy relationship together. They’ll be good at their job, attentive, and reliable. Moreover, they’ll get to know your individual needs, and apply their expertise to solve problems and offer services you never would have imagined without their help. They’ll make a fair bit of money, and you’ll get your needs taken care of in a way you can count on.
If the lawn is half-mowed, if the plants aren’t watered, if the weeds aren’t pulled, if the spider-plants aren’t being trimmed back, then YOU have an issue, and you need to respond –immediately. You need to dump your service provider and find another one to do the job (or in Dean’s world, do it your own damned self).
But under this model, what a lot of writers are doing now is staring at the dead, brown, plants, or the waist high dandelions, and worrying that they’re going to LOSE their treasured service! Or worse for them, they’re not even paying attention enough to know if the job is done or not. They’re just paying the bills as they come in and forgetting about it.
Meanwhile the newbies are looking for a service, ANY service, they can sign up. Never mind that they don’t own a watering can or a mower, and aren’t even sure if the green side of the plant goes in the air or the dirt.
The model is completely broken, and on some level, I think agents know this. At least some of them play the misunderstanding for all its worth.
Or, looking at things from another angle, here’s a different problem with the long-term-relationship idea. We all know there are good agents and bad agents.
A lot of bad agents are bad agents and always will be. A few bad agents learn and grow into good agents. But I can’t think of many good agents that at some point haven’t been bad agents.
Again and again I hear stories of this agent or that “melting down” or “blowing up.” Some get full of themselves and start to believe their own press. Some get a mega-client who eats all their time and attention so they neglect everyone else. Some of them get wacky ideas about how they can “manufacture” best-sellers like cuke-slices out of a Salad Shooter.
More often though they just have a personal crisis. They have money problems, or cash-flow problems, or health issues, or family issues, or addiction issues. Sometimes these problems drive the agents into unethical behavior. But most of the time, it simply causes them to fall down on the job. They stop sending books out, fail to return phone calls, start letting details fall through the cracks.
And nine times out of ten, the clients are the LAST people to find out about this. Only after deals are blown, checks and contracts lost, opportunities missed, correspondence waylaid, editors misinformed or offended, will the writers discover what has really been going on.
And even then, many of them are wringing their hands, wondering how they can avoid losing their treasured agent.
Part of me wishes the business were set up on a model where you hired an agent on a contract-by-contract basis. You were okay on my last deal, but if you want to handle my future work, know that you’re in competition with every other agent on the planet, and you’d better make it worthwhile for me to return. Most of us would be getting better service, for less money, and the power in the relationship would be where it should be, with the writer.
That may not have always made sense, but in the modern world, I think it does. Not that this is likely to change any time soon.
John O. also makes an interesting point about the disconnect between fiction and non-fiction. I’m not sure how it applies to the current topic, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about lately. Fiction and non-fiction are related in that they’re both words, which have traditionally been sold in a similar package, and marketed through the same retail channels.
But I’m not sure that makes them automatically the same business. I’ve been wondering, if ebooks take over, will they STAY the same business? Looking around the house, breakfast cereal and slug-bait come in almost identical boxes. They probably use a lot of the same kinds of machinery for packaging and transport. Heck, they even LOOK a bit alike (uck!). That doesn’t mean that make sense living under the same company roof.
Fiction writers really do fall into the trap of thinking the book business is the same as the novel business, when that’s not at all true. When “book sales are down by 10%, we assume that applies to fiction equally, but nothing at all says that will be so.
If ebooks take over, will the two areas just naturally separate and find their own levels? If they aren’t being marketed through the same storefront or book-rack, do they have that much in common at all?
Something to think about. Maybe if, as I suggested, you do a “Life After Print.”
Thanks, John. All the best with the art gallery. Our loss is the art worlds gain.
Cheers,
Russ
Exactly how I feel about editing. Reading slush from 1987 to 2005?(6) was just too darned long for me as well, not counting the six-plus years in the publisher’s chair. Happy to stay soundly on the writer’s side of the desk as well.
Cheers
Dean
Good points, Steve. And I think if writers did think about their career as a growing, changing thing and an agent is the person who helps it grow and helps you keep it looking good, then a lot of problems would be solved.
However, the myth is that you get an agent and your stuff will sell, you get an agent and they will take care of you, and recently the myth has added in “agents are the only way to an editor with your book.” All very powerful myths that blind so, so many beginning writers and early pros.
This has happened to almost all of us at one point or another. Two wonderful people, impressive selling writers, spent years, and I do mean years, talking about firing their mutual agent every time they got together. The conversation got so bad, I refused to take part in it any more after two years. This was in the early 1990′s. This issue has been around and growing for decades I’m afraid, it ain’t going away any time soon.
Cheers
Dean
Dean, this is a great series I’m learning a lot.
Are you entertaining suggestions? I’d love to see you tackle The End of Copyright.
A fascinating discussion – thanks to all who are contributing for al the thought-provocation!
A question for Steve: am I missing something in your comment about e-books, or does nobody read non-fiction on an e-reader?
Steve -
There are a few agents who work on a project-by-project basis. But the downside to that model is that if you are a prolific writer, someone who is doing three or four books a year (many romance writers, genre writers, and media tie-in writers are doing three, four, even five books a year) then you are left with multiple agents doling out your royalty payments for as long as each book is in print, because the contract stays with the agent even if you leave.
Best,
Colleen
Mario, actually that’s one of my upcoming topics if I can figure out a way to frame it. “Life Without Writers” would almost be the same, but I think your idea of “Life Without Copyright” might be a better way of going at it. Thanks!
Cheers
Dean
Thanks, Steve for those points. The agent myth is deeply ingrained in the writing comunity I see on various discussion groups.
One thing you have to admire about agents is they are expert marketers of their “services” in order to perpetuate the myths as long as possible.
Already several major NY publishers are exploring ways of bypassing agents. Some even publizse direct contact to editors. The use of e-mail, blackberry’s, e-readers, and e-slush piles is expanding expotentially and will, I expect, end the agent is the only person that must submit work to the publisher myth.
Russ
A suggestion? “Life After the Advance”
Again, you are so right.
Writers need to grow up and accept the responsibility of all that goes with crafting, polishing and selling one’s book.
I especially like that you continue to remind us that agents have and require no formal training, nor do we have any regulating agencies that oversee how they carry out their profession.
Cheers again for a thinking out of the box, uplifting article.
You are more than welcome, and thanks for commenting. This agent one was like walking a slim tightrope in a strong wind. The myths around agents are so strong these days, people tend to get really upset if you do anything to challenge a hard held belief. It has become the third rail of publishing.
Cheers
Dean
Patrick. Thanks for the suggestion, but nothing would change I’m afraid. Advances paid ahead of writing won’t stop most writers from writing under contract and getting paid. Advances are just loans against contracts, nothing more, and having them vanish would be annoying for many writers but no big changes at all I’m afraid.
I’m working on “Life After Copyright” which pretty much blows everything up. More fun.
Thanks again.
Cheers,
Dean