Passive Guy, an attorney, on his fantastic blog ThePassiveVoice did me a favor and put in one place all the links to the different posts about the conflict of interest with agents being publishers. Both pro and con. If you are confused about how this aspect of agenting is a conflict of interest, read these posts.
http://www.thepassivevoice.com/11/2011/literary-agents-and-conflicts-of-interest-a-compendium/
Thanks, PG.
Bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith published traditionally more than one hundred popular novels and well over two hundred short stories. His novels include the science fiction novel Laying the Music to Rest and the thriller The Hunted as D.W. Smith. With Kristine Kathryn Rusch, he co-wrote The Tenth Planet trilogy and The 10th Kingdom. He writes under many pen names and ghosts for a number of top bestselling writers.
Dean wrote books and comics for all three major comic book companies, Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse, and wrote scripts for Hollywood. One movie actually saw film.
Dean also worked as an editor and publisher, first at Pulphouse Publishing, then for VB Tech Journal, then for Pocket Books. He now plays a role as an executive editor for Fiction River.
WMG Publishing Inc. is now my major publisher of all my coming novels, collections, and short stories.
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Thanks for the kind words, Dean.
Maybe I missed it, but I think there’s a whole separate conflict of interest (or maybe it’s a subdivision of another) which I haven’t seen discussed (or I could have missed it — there’s a lot out there to read)
I am not an experts in contracts, but it seems to me that when the agent inserts the agency clause into a publishing agreement, the agent directly benefits from the contract. However, the agent is supposed to be representing the interest of a party to the contract.
Isn’t this like writing a will for someone AND being beneficiary of the will?
Teri, no, you are correct, the agency clauses are a conflict of interest as well, but have become over the last 15 years standard, as long as the two signing parties of the contract agree. However, the third party (agent) can not come in and enforce the clause if the two parties have both decided to not honor it. A non-signer on a contract has no standing in the contract. The clause, in any reasonable fashion, that I have seen, has never been challenged and thus tossed out in court. It’s just one of the many clauses in publishing contracts that are not valid in any reality of law. Like the bankruptcy clause. Just silly in its very nature.