Sep 15 2009
Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing. Agents
The myth is simply: YOU MUST HAVE AN AGENT TO SELL A BOOK
To be clear, I like agents and have no desire to bring them harm. But the myths these days about agents are so thick and have become so ugly to new writers, I figured I had better tackle at least one of them next. And yes, there are more than one.
And in the last 20 years, the biggest myth that has blown up into a damaging myth is that you need an agent to sell a book.
This is, of course, complete hogwash, but I have no doubt some of you reading this are already resisting this idea. You want someone to do the dirty work for you, to do the research, to just “take care of you.” Yeah, that’s going to happen.
So to explain this myth clearly, I need to back up just a touch and run through some history to get to why this myth even exists and then move on into how to fight it.
Basic history. Book agents came over from theater and movies from 1900-1950. They were used by writers to help with the contracts, to get the books into movie and early television (in New York) and overseas, and to go get the coffee. They were simply a lower level employee used by writers to do some of the busy work.
It never occurred to most writers to have an agent sell a book for them. Writers worked directly with the editors, and the idea that anyone needed to be in the middle of that was just thought of as silly. Both the writers and the editors and publishers on the other side never stood for it back in those early agent times.
But then, as the industry got bigger through the baby-boom years, fewer writers lived near New York and thus mailing manuscripts to editors started to become the norm. Editors and writers still worked together, and the agent did the deal, negotiating the contract, helping with contacts overseas and in Hollywood. But up until the early 1990s, book deals between editors and writers were often done across a dinner table with a handshake, with the agent left to deal with the details later.
Also in those days, in the big New York publishers, there were rooms and rooms full of what is called “slush.”
Now the term “slush pile” came from the early days of publishing. An editor usually sat at his desk and writers brought him work. But when the editor was gone and the office door closed, the writer still wanted to leave the manuscript, so they tossed it through the small window over the door. The top of the door is called a transom, so thus the term “over the transom” came into being.
When the editor returned to the office and pushed open the door, the manuscripts on the floor would be pushed into a pile which looked a lot like a pile of dirty New York snow. Thus the term “slush pile” came about.
In the early 1980s, publishers had tried to slow down the growing wave of manuscripts coming at them by putting requirements that no manuscript be sent unless it was solicited. A simple thing to ignore, and it stopped only the really stupid new writers. Huge rooms of book manuscripts filled New York buildings and many, many assistant editors were hired to dig through the slush to find the gems among all the trash. And many, many major writers you read today came out of those slush piles.
Then in the 1990s lots of things happened in publishing, not the least of which was a complete distribution system collapse. Publishers had to cut back, larger presses ate smaller ones, and at the same time New York real estate prices went up and up and up. Publishers could no longer afford the huge rooms full of slush, or the assistant editors to wade through it all.
At this point in time, agents were doing more and more for writers, and the top writers had very powerful agents, simply because the agents worked for the top writers. (Agents always get their power from their clients. They have no power on their own.)
And also, writers became more of an unknown to publishers, a vast sea of people with a computer and a stamp who thought they could write and should be rich even though they had never spent any time practicing their craft or even learning how to spell. Very few of these new writers ever thought of going to a writer’s conference and actually meeting an editor, so editors became somewhat fearful of the nutballs out there.
Something had to be done to stop this massive wave coming at the money-worried publishers and overworked editors. So someone, somewhere came up with the idea “Let the agents handle it.”
So onto the guidelines went the simple line. “No unagented manuscripts accepted.”
Thus, for the last ten years or more, agents have been getting buried with the vast amount of slush. Older agents went into hiding, knowing their job wasn’t to read slush, and new scam agents popped up everywhere, taking advantage of this new guideline from publishers by milking the writer of their money and crushing their dreams.
Let’s step back for a second and look at the relationship of agent/editor/writer/publisher.
First: A writer sells a publisher a manuscript and there is a contract between the publisher and writer. In simple business terms, the writer produces a product and goes into a partnership with a publisher to produce and distribute the product.
Simple.
Second: The editor works for the publisher. Paid by the publisher, represents the publisher’s needs.
Third: The agent works for the writer, represents the writer’s needs. Nothing more.
Agents are hired to do certain chores a writer needs done, to help in negotiating contracts, to be a pit bull with late payments, to have connections with Hollywood and maybe overseas, although that job is falling away as well. They are the business contact between the publisher and the writer on business items, leaving the editor and writer to work on the craft side.
So suddenly, because of the situation, the publishers are demanding that a writer hire an employee before they will look at their product.
Excuse me?
Let me look at why this system is about to fail and fail big.
First off, it forces agents by the nature of the requirement to be the gatekeeper for all the bad stuff publishers don’t want. That’s not their job. When I hire an agent, I don’t hire a slush reader doing someone else’s work, I hire someone who negotiates contracts for me and has good contacts. I don’t want MY employee reading slush.
It allows young agents to think they are the boss at times over writers. Of course, no longterm writers think this, and no respected, longer term agent thinks it either, but beginning writers and early professionals fall into this trap, and even go so far as to rewrite a book on demand of their agent.
Excuse me?? If the agent could write, they would be, instead of taking 15% of what a writer makes for writing. Yet beginning writers and young professionals who don’t understand how the business really works fall into this ugly rewriting trap all the time. Agents are your employee, they don’t tell you what to do, you tell them. Duh.
This guideline also helps young agents believe they have a lot more power than they really do, and it makes new writers buy into that belief. I have heard new writer after new writer get excited about “getting an agent” and the agent is 26 years old, a former editor who got laid off, and has hung out a shingle. The new agent wouldn’t know how to negotiate a contract if their life depended on it, let alone have any contacts except for maybe a few people in the place they were fired. But as a former editor, they think they know what makes a book better, so they think their job is to have new writers rewrite. And thus years are wasted and no one makes any money.
Point right here: Anyone can be an agent. There are no rules, no regulations, no training. The old joke is “What does it take to become a book agent? Stationery.”
Yet new writers put their entire business, their entire dreams, their entire hope for a future on someone who only needed stationary to get started. See how silly this all is? And sad.
Also understand that agents are not regulated at all. We all have watched in the financial world how well unregulated people do with money, yet new writers, without research, hire an agent and give them control over all their income. If you don’t think the Madoff types don’t also live in the agent world, you are sadly kidding yourself.
Another reason this system is showing major cracks and about to fail is that editors are not getting the new and innovative books they are looking for. They are not seeing the new talent, the new dangerous voices, because the agents and the system itself are blocking these voices. Often these new voices fall into the rewriting trap shoved on them by a new agent in the business and if the editors see anything, they see the watered-down manuscript that fits into the next vampire/Da Vinci Code want-to-be.
Writer after writer after writer I have met are getting discouraged and when I ask how many editors have rejected their book they say “None. But I sent it to 30 or 40 agents before giving up on it.”
No editor had a chance to buy the book.
Makes me want to cry for all the good books lost in this last decade.
So, a few basics here that are standards of this industry and you can infer what you want from these standards to help your own writing and your own fight against this myth.
1… An agent is your employee and makes 15% of what you earn, nothing more. Their job is not to sell books or help you rewrite it. You are the writer. Trust your own voice and talent. If your employee won’t do as you ask, fire them and find another employee.
2… Money always flows to the writer except for education and research. Never hire an agent, or a book doctor, or any other scam artist and send them money. Money only flows to the writer. Period.
3… Editors need new books. They have to fill a list every month. Just in case your book is the next “big book” they have to look at your pitch or query or pages. If they don’t look and you become the next Dan Brown, they will be fired. Remember, they work for corporations, their job is to find good books, fill lists, make their publisher money, not dismiss a book out of hand because there is no employee on the letterhead.
4… A form rejection these days says simply “We do not take unagented submissions.” It means exactly what every other form rejection in the history of publishing has meant: Nothing. It means that the manuscript, for one reason or another, didn’t fit their line. Maybe your manuscript sucked, or maybe it was brilliant but didn’t fit. (More than likely you haven’t learned how to do a good query letter or decent proposal and no one got to your book to see how good it really was.)
5… Most agents you can get as an unpublished writer is not an agent you are going to want once you actually sell a book. This statement alone kills more writer careers than anything I have watched over the decades.
6… Books sell themselves. Agents can’t force an editor to buy a book. The book has to be good enough and fit the line before it will sell. Nothing more. Having an agent will not give you a magic way in. Actually, it often won’t help you at all find the right publisher, because the agent may have ideas where the book fits and never try a publisher that might be just looking for a book like yours to start something new.
7… Editors never know what they want to buy until they see it. An agent who tells you he or she knows exactly what an editor wants is just full of crap.
8… Agents who blog regularly (Other than a very occasional education blog or guest blog) are dangerous, since they clearly have enough time to not work for their clients. It usually means they are selling very little. Caution!! Think it through. If you had a business and your employee was blogging all the time about your business, would you as an employer stand for that? Not hardly.
Hint: Top agents are hard to find, their agencies have static web sites, and you won’t be able to get one until you have an offer from a major publisher in your hand. Then you simply call them to hire them to help you with the contract and such. (Oh, my, have I stuck my foot into it there. Here come the angry e-mails.)
9…What a publisher is publishing is frighteningly easy to figure out these days by either simply walking into a bookstore and looking at the shelves or going to the publisher’s web site and looking at their book lists. That’s not counting all the writer resources there are these days.
10… Lower level and new agents (meaning someone you can get without a book offer from a publisher) simply mail your book like a writer would mail their own book. It goes into the same piles as everything else the editor gets, including your manuscript that you talked to the editor about at a writer’s conference. But there is something you don’t know. Bad agents are often hated by publishers and editors and anything from that agent is automatically rejected. Also, sure, I agree that sometimes agents have contacts, but often they have made enemies as well, thus cutting off some places you could get to with your manuscript on your own. In other words, if you are letting your agent try to sell your work, sometimes having an agent can be a lot, lot worse than having no agent at all. The chance of this goes up the younger the agent.
11… Young agents don’t know contracts and how to negotiate a contract, which is the main reason you hire an agent. A short time back, I was reading a contract from a student of mine who had gone and gotten a young agent, even though he sold the book himself and could have gotten a top agent when he had the offer in hand. Everything, and I do mean everything, the agent added into the contract hurt the writer and helped the publisher. The young agent was new and a former editor. I have a hunch the young agent forgot which side of the fence he/she was working on. More than likely just didn’t know. Happens all the time I’m afraid. Nothing much I could say to the writer since the deal was already done. The writer had made the decision on the agent that got him a very bad contract.
So, in closing, I would like to state my credits. I have been selling books regularly since 1992 (one in 1988), I have sold almost 100 novels, not quite, but almost. I have been represented by three of publishing’s top agents, one for 17 years. I am friends with all three of them and would call each of them if I had a project I knew fit their interests that I had sold.
I have three years of law school and know contracts, especially publishing contracts, and am an expert on copyright law. However, with only a few exceptions (all work-for-hire that couldn’t be changed) I had an agent represent me for all of my books. I would never think negotiating a contract without an agent on board.
But all that said, I have sold every one of my books myself. None of my agents have ever sold a book for me.
Am I any different than any of you? Nope. I just don’t believe in the myth that an agent has to sell a book. And because of that, I’m still here, publishing regularly, and making a living with my fiction.
——————
Notice below that I have added onto this series of chapters a donate button where you can donate if you feel these chapters of this upcoming book helped you in some way and you want to keep me writing them and putting them up here. And if you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this article along to others who might get some help from it. Every week I will be adding a new chapter on the myths and sacred cows of publishing. Stay tuned. Upcoming are chapters on bestsellers, workshops, and so much more. This business has a lot of myths. An entire book full.
Thanks, Dean
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith has written more than ninety popular novels, both his own and tie-in projects, including well over 100 published short stories. His novels include Laying the Music to Rest and X-Men: The Jewels of Cyttorak. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he is the coauthor of The Tenth Planet trilogy and the motion picture novelization X-Men, along with more than a dozen Star Trek books and two original Men in Black novels. He has also written novels in a number of gaming universes, including Vor and the novelization for the movie Final Fantasy.
Currently, he is writing thrillers and mystery novels under another name.
Great stuff.
Dean Wesley Smith, pissing off all of New York one blog post at a time.
Another great post, Dean. I think you could use Scott’s comment above as the subtitle for the book that comes from these posts
Or maybe just the USP for the posts.
This is probably kind of sad, but I’m sitting here laughing maniacally as I wait for the angry responses to flood in.
One heads up that I’ll I give the angry posters (if there are any), keep in mind that this isn’t just Dean’s opinion here. A lot of long time pros feel this way about the author-agent relationship. Actually, I can only think of one long time pro who feels differently off the top of my head.
So think a little before you fly off the handle and do some research. A lot of the people out there promoting this myth either have never published anything (it amazes my the self proclaimed experts in this business that have never sold anything or have sold very little but present themselves as the end all be all) or are still fairly new.
Once again, just my two cents, and love the posts Dean. This is how I’m getting my ‘fix’ until the workshops start up in February.
Steve
What’s interesting is that I’m not bothering anyone who has been around for a while at all. I’m just trying to save newer writers years of dream-crushing problems.
We put up a sign at our major workshops. It says simply “You are responsible for your own career.”
When you follow that simple reality, you often don’t turn to an agent to “save” you and do the work for you.
By the time I’m finished, I should have an interesting book at least.
Cheers
Dean
I’m having a special on bodyguard and protective services this week, Dean …
Steve
Thank you for this installation, Dean. I love your and Kris’s advice about agents, and about writers being in charge of their own careers. I never liked the idea of agents as gatekeepers to editors, and there was the fact that they were getting 15% for the life of that work.
Do you go with an agent or with a publishing-savvy lawyer to negotiate and go over contracts? I’m interested to know what the pros/cons would be, as I would guess lawyers get a set fee and not a percentage.
Sophie, I always use a top agent when I get a book contract. You can use an intellectual property attorney, but never just a local attorney. Again, when you have a book offer in hand from a major publisher, it is very easy to just call a major agent and ask them to handle the book negotiations for you. Doesn’t mean you have to sign your life over to the agent, or rewrite your next book for them. They are an employee, an important one, which is why this myth hurts writers so much.
So I have no opinion one way or another with going to an IP attorney or using a top agent. I use agents at the moment, but many of my friends use an attorney. Plus and minus both ways.
Cheers
Dean
Fantastic stuff! I write for magazines and other such publications and I’m currently working on my second novel (which will probably be the first I try and sell). In preparation, I’ve been skipping all over the internet trying to figure out how to accomplish this so I’ll be ready when the time comes. The vast majority of the agent blogs make me angry, either immediately or at some point soon after I begin to read the content.
Now I realize why. When I pitch a story to a magazine, I only deal with the editor. Of course, the contract is simple, I certainly don’t need an agent to help me with it. But a novel is another matter. I don’t want some agent trying to rewrite my work, that’s what editors try to do; but I would certainly hire an agent to negotiate the contract, and I hope at some point you can share what we should know about that exchange.
You’ve pretty much unlocked why I get so angry at snarky agents, they almost had me believing that they were right and I was wrong.
You have a new follower, thanks for the information.
Dave
David, thanks for the comments. Always nice to hear from another professional writer.
Marketing novels is different from non-fiction in many ways. Kristine Kathryn Rusch (who used to be a full-time nonfiction writer before turning to fiction) and I teach a week-long workshop (twice next year) on just this topic. It includes how to write query letters (which I am sure you are good at for nonfiction), proposals, how and when to find an agent and what they will do for you, including the negotiating contracts, and also a bunch of the new technology fiction writers are starting to move toward. It takes us a full week to make sense of everything in this area for everyone and put it all together, so it’s hard to even talk about in a blog post I’m afraid. This agent post alone got very long, and that was just on agents selling books, a very small part of the marketing picture these days. An ugly part for writers who buy into the myth, granted, but a small part.
So more than likely I won’t go into agents much any more in the chapters of this book, except to talk about yet another agent myth that people, especially young writers, believe. That agents know the markets better than you do and you, the writer, shouldn’t have to learn them. Snort, that’s so damn silly a myth, it’s hard for me to even talk about, yet younger agents claim this all the time. That’s a future chapter down the road.
Thanks again for the comments. Much appreciated.
Cheers,
Dean
Great post on agents! Thanks for sharing your wisdom.
I have a question. I understand where the “no unagented submissions” rule came into being. How closely do publishers adhere to this rule? Will publishers actually look at an unagented manuscript if their guidelines say they won’t?
Obviously if a writer pitches a book at a conference and receives an invitation to submit, the editor will accept it. (And add it to the pile.) And if you’re D. W. Smith, you have a great track record as a writer and you’ve probably got a relationship with the editors you’re targeting. But what about Mr. Joe Unpublished who hasn’t had the opportunity to meet editors at conferences? Aren’t agents (good ones, with good manners and professional contacts) able to get Mr. Unpublished’s book onto an editor’s desk, where he can’t on his own?
Ginny, I seldom know or have met an editor I submit a manuscript to.
Let me put it this way. If a book package is really good, it catches the attention of whoever opens the envelope, you think they dare reject the next Dan Brown simply because there isn’t an agent name on the envelope?
The standard form rejection these days is simply. “No unagented submissions.” It means nothing more than any other form rejection means.
My attitude is simply this. I write a good book that could make them a lot of money in a partnership with me, if they follow some stupid rule like forcing me to have an employee before I submit to them, it’s their loss, not mine. I hire an employee when I want to, not when they tell me to. I hire an agent to negotiate book offers for me. Not before. I know more about my manuscripts and mailing them then any agent. That simple.
Cheers
Dean
Cheers
Dean
Hi Dean. I like the points that you make here reminding writers that they are ultimately responsible for their own career. I do have more questions about this post than for the other ones. Thankfully, you seem to welcome questions
1. You say several times that this agent system is about to fail catastrophically. What is your basis for saying that, and what are the symptoms that you see?
2. You talk about “top agents.” What is your criteria? Number of sales? Skill at writing contracts (and how do you judge that)? Size of their average negotiated advance? Why do you say as a blanket rule that none of the top agents take writers without a book deal? Is it simply an assumption that the good agents are in such demand that they can handpick their clients?
3. I get what you’re saying about the “no unagented submissions” form letter being just a form letter. I’m wondering though — how many unpublished writers do you know of who submitted to a publisher with a clearly stated “No unagented submissions” policy and got a book deal?
Thanks for reading through all my questions. Basically, there’s just so much contradicotry stuff floating around the internet that at this point I’m trying to get hard numbers behind the arguments
I understand if you don’t have time to answer them all in detail, but in case you have time 
Livia, let me try to answer your questions as best I can, without redoing the long post.
First off, as I detailed in the chapter, any system where the employee takes over a business is doomed for failure. Plus, agents are a huge roadblock, stopping a lot of high quality manuscripts from not even being mailed. Also, the system forces new writers right into the hands of scam artists. This is a huge industry, it won’t allow this for much longer. Cracks are already starting to show.
Top agents are the ones that work for writers and make a ton of money for their writers, not by spending months rewriting, but by negotiating great deals and good contracts and selling overseas rights and so on. There are about 10 Super Agents, but no need to bother with them. These folks don’t even look at a deal under a half million. And those folks don’t handpick million sellers. Writers are in charge. The bestsellers find them. Again, you are very, very confused as to employee, employer relationship with your questions.
As I said somewhere, I teach young professional writers here at the workshops we do, and in the last 12 months, six of the new writers we teach have sold novels without an agent on the sale to major publishers with that “unagented” rule. A couple others did have an agent first, but two of those mailed their own books and just had their agent do the contract. Honestly, I’m not making this stuff up. Editors need good books. If you write a good book and put it in the hands of someone who can buy it, and it fits their program, they will buy it and not care if you have an employee or not.
Understand, these myths are fantastically strong, especially the rewriting and agent myths these days as they feed back and forth for new writers. But they are myths.
I will have one more post about agents here. Take a look at a few of the posts I did between the Killing Sacred Cows post, and the Life After post about agents last spring. It might help fill out the picture.
Cheers
Dean
Despite my argumentativeness, I actually agree with much of what you’re saying. A writer friend of mine was recently treated very badly by an unprofessional agent. No permanent damage to her career, but it was alot of unnecessary trouble and headache.
And I get what you’re saying about employer/employee relationship — my handpicking question was more referring to the phenomenon you mentioned in your response — that some really good agents are so much in demand that they don’t even look at low figure deals, or writers who don’t have a contract. But I think that answers my question.
Do you ever plan to do a post (or maybe I haven’t seen it) on how to evaluate a prospective agent? I, for one, would find it very helpful.
As for my question about the system cracking — I was more wondering specifically what the cracks you see are. I currently don’t seen any sign of it — the number of publishing houses officially accepting unagented manuscripts doesn’t seem to be decreasing, and the number of agencies doesn’t seem to be drastically decreasing either.
Your numbers from your workshop regarding writers submitting directly to editors was exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.
Again, the same disclaimers today — I know you have many things to do besides responding point by point to my questions — so while responses are appreciated, they are by no means expected.
Actually, a couple days back I had a couple friends have issues with agents yet again, and these are working professionals. It made me just flat angry, how many stories about agents doing this or that, and often with the writers letting them get away with it. So maybe, if I’m really stupid, one of these days I’ll do a post about the conduct of a writer’s employee, and what an employer should expect from their employee. That ought to stir up some trouble, which I’m just not looking for to be honest, but this situation is getting so bad with agents, it’s gone way past funny and some of us older professionals need to start standing up and saying “Enough.” We shall see.
Oh, talking behind the scenes is how I know the system is cracking. Talking to editors who aren’t finding the good stuff, who are angry at all the scam agents, at the trash agents are sending them. It seems that by moving the slush piles to agents, the publishers hurt themselves and still ended up with slush piles, only with a billion different untested and poor agents names on the envelopes. I could have told them that was going to happen.
Also, do the math of what an agent makes, and if the agents are buried under slush and making their writers rewrite, that takes time, thus it decreases their income. You will watch a large number of agents quit over the next year as this math hits hard. They will, of course, blame it on the business and the recession, not their poor business model. It’s just starting. It will be interesting to watch.
Cheers
Dean
This post is both encouraging and discouraging because it confirms what I believe (that I interview a possible agent, not the other way around) but then in reading a comment from Betsy Mitchell at Del ray in her blog post about her 2009 acceptances where she says this:
And I’m left discouraged because it seems like editors encourage the agent-as-gatekeeper model. And so I would never mail Ms Mitchell a manuscript directly because that would put me on her blacklist (for ignoring her direct wishes).
Although I suppose the “other odd ways” could be taken as code for “unagented manuscripts.”
Alex,
Not trying to convince anyone, just trying to talk sense. And trust me, you send Betsy a novel that is fantastic, and will make her company a ton of money and is perfect for her line, she won’t reject it because you don’t have an agent on the thing at first, but you will after you get an offer. And if she does, you just have to take the attitude of “It’s her loss.” And if your book is good, it would be her loss. And then when you publish it someone else, in this modern world, you might mention that her policy kept her from getting the next Twilight. Yup, that’s what an editor wants.
They are fantastically busy people, and they do the work of gods, of that I have no doubt. But they still need good books from good authors, and that honestly is the bottom line.
Good luck to you.
Cheers
Dean
Thanks Dean – that’s what I was thinking. This has been an awesome series to read – exactly what I needed at the beginning of the year to give me the injection of energy-confidence to plow through the year ahead.
Cheers,
Alex
My question seems like a silly one but it popped into my head.
How much do you send. Query letter and 50 pages or whole book?
I would think the whole book is going to get tossed quicker than the 50 pages might.
Everyone has said I need an agent before I can even think about sent out my mss as a first-time author. Being a cynical old so-and-so, I had doubts, for exactly the reasons you outline – for which many thanks.
However, being located in Australia would appear to be a distinct disadvantage, if only in terms of sheer expense of postage to a publisher or publishers in the USA. Frankly the whole think just fills me with a sense of despair.
So I keep writing my murders, and try not to give in to the urgings of my lovely romantic friends to send a potboiler to HMB. (I did a few chapters as a joke birthday present once & they keep wanting more.)
I love to write, I write every day and when the muse strikes, I will write ALL day.
To reiterate thank you and I will take courage & ms in hand, pay an enormous sum to the post office and brave the “unagented” route.
Toni, your fine country has a very active publishing program. No need to even come to the states until you are selling regularly there. No worries at all. And once you start selling there, wow, will the publishers of this country and other countries in Europe and Asia look seriously at your stuff.
Keep the faith and keep mailing.
Oh dear. I am mortified. All those typing errors. So sorry. I blame my old glasses – lost my good ones.
Thanks for your response. I’ll take your excellent advice and send to some publishers here first – damn the “agents only”!