Jan 19 2010
Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Agent Agreements
Okay, without a doubt, the silliest thing that has ever come along is agents having writers sign an agreement. 
To understand how silly, just put this in real world terms instead of writing terms. Think about walking into a job interview with an employer and handing the employer an agreement that you wrote up that the employer must sign before you will work for him. Employer is going to frown and say, “I don’t think so.”
An employer should be handing an employee an employee agreement. In other words, with agents it should be exactly the other way around than it is now. Duh. Shows how bad in general writers are in business.
Writers should hand agents an employment agreement defining what the terms of the employment of the agent will be and so on. I’m not even sure when this myth of agent agreements started up. Sometime in the last twenty years when a young bunch of agents started thinking they controlled the writer instead of the other way around. More than likely it started because writers are bad at business and agents just needed to protect themselves if things went wrong. Then agents realized that they had an opportunity and have taken advantage of it.
I have never signed an agency agreement and would never do so. I have always considered them the dumbest thing to ever come down the pike. Of course, I did go to law school, so I am fairly clear on the concept.
But that said, since we are pounding on the writer/agent myths in all the comments after the last Killing Sacred Cows of Publishing chapter, (And you should read all the comments if you haven’t before going father) I figured this chapter would be a fine time to develop the bones of an agreement that writers should hand agents. Or at least a checklist that writers can give a perspective agent so that both understand the terms of their employee/employer relationship. Or, if nothing else, a checklist of questions to ask an employee you are thinking of hiring.
This is standard in much of business, and, of course, a contract between a publisher and a writer defines the terms of that working relationship between partners in great detail. (Don’t even get me going on the stupidity of an agency clause in a publishing contract. Sigh.)
So, making a large assumption here first. As Laura Resnick pointed out in her great comments after the last agent post, an agent these days is becoming less and less valuable to many writers. And less needed. And many writers are choosing to hire an Intellectual Properties attorney to do contracts. So this checklist is only for those thinking of hiring an agent. I want to be clear on the fact that I agree that an agent is not required.
But if you do decide to try an agent to help negotiate a contract, at least hire the agent under your terms.
And feel free to copy this list and structure it into any form of agreement you would like. You are the boss. Make it work for you.
Also, please note that I will be coming back into this post and adding in suggestions from the comments section after this post, so this will be a developing agreement as the discussion goes onward. (If you see a clause or section in [--] it has been added because of the comments.)
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EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENT (or checklist for hiring a literary agent)
I, _______(agent name)_________ agree to the following terms in relationship to my employment as the literary agent for __________(writer name)______.
Part One: MAIN DUTIES
1) Negotiate Book Contracts. The agent will keep the writer completely informed at every step of any contract negotiation. Agent will make no decisions for the writer. Negotiations will be done at the best speed possible.
2) Sub-rights (or subrights). Agent will send the book or project to all appropriate sub-right agents depending on what is allowed under the contract with the first publisher. Agent will make best efforts to sell available sub-rights to any project of the writers. Agent will keep the writer informed as to where any project has been sent, and any and all responses.
3) Money and Accounting. Agent will pass the writer’s share of money from any project through to the writer within two days of arrival. Agent will do a monthly accounting for the writer of all money received under the writer’s name from all sources. A full year-end accounting will be sent to the author within two weeks of the end of the year along with any appropriate tax forms.
4) Offers. Agent will pass any offer from any source to the writer for approval, no matter the size or source. Under this agreement, agent has no right to speak for the writer in any fashion in decisions on offers without first consulting with the writer.
5) Marketing of Work. If writer so requests, agent will market a new work to appropriate publishers. All cover letters to editors will be approved by the writer, all extra material sent along, including bio material and pitches or proposals will be approved by the writer before being sent. Markets will be agreed upon between the agent and the writer. If so requested, agent will keep the product on the market until the writer decides it is no longer appropriate for the agent to market said work. All rejections and letters from editors about the project will be forwarded to the writer at once.
Part Two: AGREEMENTS: WRITER AND AGENT AGREE on the following terms of this employment of agent by the writer.
1) 15% Fee. Agent will receive 15% of money paid to writer for any project the agent sold or negotiated. 20% Fee for all sub-rights sold, to be divided 10% to sub-agent and 10% to agent in this agreement if a sub-agent is involved. If no sub-agent, the 15% fee applies. [Writer has no duty to pay the agent any commission on any book or project not worked on by the agent.]
2) Continuation after Employment Termination. Said fees stated in #1 will continue for the life of the underlying contract of each project.
3) Termination of this Agreement. This agreement may be canceled by either party without cause at any time on written notice to the other party.
4) Privacy. All dealings on sales and contracts and financial of the writer shall remain private between the agent and the author. Any breach will lead to immediate termination and the cancellation of all money owed to the agent under both clause #1 and #2.
5) Transfer of Agreement. This agreement can not be transfered in any way. The agreement is terminated upon the death of either party or the agent leaving the business. This agreement does not transfer to an agency in general.
Part Three: UNDERSTANDINGS
1) Timely Reading. It is understood that the agent will make a best effort to read the author’s manuscript to be marketed in a timely manner.
2) Timely Marketing. It is understood that the marketing of a manuscript will occur within one month of the agent’s receiving a new manuscript from the writer unless otherwise agreed upon by both parties.
3) Refusal to Market. It is understood by both parties that for one reason or another, the agent will not want to market a certain project. The agent has the right to refuse for any reason to market a project and the writer is then free to market it in any way the writer deems fit. [It is understood that the writer has no obligation to pay the agent any fee for any project not worked on in some fashion by the agent.]
[4) Speed of Production. It is understood that the writer is under no obligation to produce any certain amount of work for the agent. However, in reverse, if the amount of workload the writer is producing becomes too much for the agent, the agent under #3 in this section has the right to refuse to market or work on certain projects.]
5) Feedback. It is understood that no comments about the manuscript are needed or wanted from the agent unless asked for by the writer.
6) Career Planning. It is understood that no career planning is needed or wanted from the agent unless requested by the writer.
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Okay, how would a writer go about using the above agreement? A number of ways, actually.
First off, you could just type it up into a legal agreement (contract) and hand it to an agent you are interested in. To be honest, that might get some interesting results. Not sure what the results would be, but it would be interesting to say the least. It would show you as a firm business person, that’s for sure. That might be good for some, not so good for others. Remember, all legal contracts are negotiable before signing.
Second, and a more of a logical way to present this would be to talk to the agent on the phone and back and forth on e-mail, then when you have the parts of the above agreement you want, write a letter to the agent as a summary or deal memo as they are called. Your letter would start, “I want to make sure I have down in writing everything we talked about and agreed to.” Then have the agent agree and you have a working agreement without the formality of the above contract.
Third, use this as a guideline to search for the right agent who does most of these things anyway. Develop a question sheet from the above terms and ask the agents you are interviewing.
What I basically laid out is how an agent functioned before this current wave of slush-reading, myth-riddled agents came into the mix. Many, many, many agents still function just like this, and would just shrug at the terms of this agreement. In fact, with one of those type of agents, you would never need to present this agreement. You would just know almost everything would work in the conversations and the following deal memo you sent them.
So, one last time, the agreements agents send writers are bogus at best. If you decide to hire an agent and they send you their agreement, just send them the one above, modified to the way you like it. If nothing else, you will get a conversation going with your future employee. And that might just save you years of pain and keep your relationship with your employee much happier.
RE Item 3, refusal to market– I think this needs a subclause about what the commission will be, if any, in such an event.
On one occasion, for example, during an email exchange, I mentioned to an agent that I was that day finishing something I was writing for Tekno Books. The agent immediately fired back a message saying that if I had sold a book to Tekno, I had to pay her 15% of the deal.
So here was an agent thinking I had a done deal and a book already underway, something she’d known nothing about, now demanding a full commission.
As it happens, her assumption was erroneous. I wrote back that I was finishing a =short story= for Tekno, and she didn’t handle my short fiction or articles AT ALL. But since she had opened the subject, I asked for clarification. When she refused to handle a book, as had happened recently, and I began marketing it myself… did that mean that when -I- sold a book that she had REFUSED to handle, I still had to pay her a commission? Even if she wasn’t in any way involved in negotiations, let alone the sale?
She didn’t respond. At all.
And about a week later, for a long list of reasons, I decided to leave the agency. So I didn’t follow up on that question. But it’s an important one.
From my perspective, if an agent doesn’t want to market the work, then I don’t want to pay the commission. I consider 15% of my income WAY too much money JUST for negotiating a contract. I can, after all, get it negotiated by a literary lawyer for a fraction of that.
If an agent isn’t involved in a deal at ALL, then I don’t think they should get a penny of the earnings JUST BECAUSE the writer is a client. And if the agent isn’t involved in doing the legwork of researching the market and finding a buyer, but only in negotiating the contract, then I think 15% is too high a portion of the deal to pay to the agent.
BTW, meant to say at some point earlier, I don’t view the agents as an employee of the writer. I view agents as consultants.
Since it’s a freelance relationship in which I am free to seek, use, or dismiss advice and services offered in exchange for earnings, I viewed my agents’ business relationship to me as a consulting relationship.
(An area of friction, however, always wound up being that they didn’t view it that way. They treated me as an employee who was NOT free to seek or to dismiss advice and services according to my own will, but rather as someone who should do as told, when told, and not do anything else.)
I like what you’ve got here. Based on what I’ve been learning, I wonder how many agents would agree to such an agreement.
One thing I’m curious about, though: It’s been mentioned earlier that agents’ fees used to be 10% and now are 15%. When and why did this change?
Also, I’ve read that 20% is the fee for sub-rights (foreign language rights). Is what you have in the agreement you’ve outlined standard (10% for the agent, 10% for the sub-agent, or 15% if no sub-agent is involved)? I’m curious, because I’ve never seen it broken down this way. I’ve just heard/read that it’s 20%.
Great info.
Ahh, good point, Laura. I have put the correction in brackets. Thanks, you are dead right.
I don’t consider an agent a consultant, just an employee, and with any of my employees over the years, I’m free to take their advice or ignore it, and I am free to seek their advice or not seek it. So same as you, just different term.
But, wow, great spot on missing the point that if they aren’t involved in a deal in any way, they do not get the fee. I often sell books in settings such as work-for-hire, ghost writing, or hired-gun for a packager, and I would never think of using an agent in those situations or paying one for that matter, and I would just laugh at an agent who tried to get me to pay them when they had nothing to do with it. But I have heard of such things happening, and I have heard more often of writers wondering if they have to pay their agent who wasn’t involved in a book deal. The writers are AFRAID they will make their employee angry. I just shake my head at the silliness of that.
So thanks once again. Great spot there. It is fixed and in the brackets.
Cheers
Dean
Speaking of things that writers are indeed AFRAID of, maybe there should be some language in the contract about the writer being allowed to take a hiatus?
I’ve heard many writers–and I’m sure you’ve heard it, too–fret guiltily about taking time away from writing BECAUSE THEY WEREN’T THEN EARNING MONEY FOR THEIR AGENTS.
Even more depressingly, I’ve heard many writers fret about not earning money for their agents because they weren’t getting any contracts or new book sales. Or because they wrote slowly, rather than delivering 2-3 books/year.
Given that what you’re presenting here is indeed, IMO, a useful tool for the writer to think about what services and commitments she wants from the agent, I wonder if this is one to add to the list, simply because it’s something I SO OFTEN hear writers fretting about: I’m currently not making money for my agent.
P.S. Which is why, although I’ve never thought of my relationships with agents this way, the image of pimps has occasionally come into my head when other writers talk about agents….
Yes, 10% for your basic agent, 10% for the sub-agent on any sub-rights deal, including Hollywood.
Agents changed from 10% to 15% back in the high inflation period of the 1970’s, so by the time I hired my first agent in 1987, it was already standard and has remained that way.
As for your first statement, my reply is “Who cares if an agent won’t sign this?” Duh, if they don’t agree to these terms and you want them, who is in charge???? Ahh, the writer is, that’s who. If you have a perspective employee and they won’t agree to your working terms, you don’t hire that employee. That simple. Ever sat across a desk and interviewed employees? Once you have done that, you will understand exactly what I mean.
And on that same point, if an unpublished writer with no offer from a New York publisher gave an agent this agreement as a legal agreement, they might just laugh and walk away. They have that right as an employee to not work for someone. But if you have a book offer, do an interview and then a deal memo, you’ll get most of this from a percentage of agents, the good ones who understand their job.
Hmmmm, now that you mention it, I have heard that money worry as well. I have always dismissed it with my hardcore attitude of agents as employees, since the worry really boils down to “If I don’t make them anything, they will drop me from their list.” And since I could care less if an agent drops me or not, I’ve never thought about it much.
But you make a very valid point. And I agree it needs to be mentioned in there somewhere about production speed of the writer. Let me see if I can work it in with a bracket somewhere.
I got your first point fixed in two different spots so that it’s clear.
I understand what you’re saying about my first statement. My statement was really more rhetorical than anything, just my wondering how many would look at it then walk away because they’re not used to a writer approaching the business relationship in that fashion.
I agree, though: Who cares if they don’t sign it? And they’re also free to turn down such an agreement, too. Definitely.
The scenario you described involving an unpublished writer approaching an agent with such an agreement makes sense, too.
Can I just say that this entire setup — publishers dumping slush on agents, agents becoming gatekeepers and filters for publishing, agents behaving badly, egotistically, against the best interests of clients, etc. — makes me fantastically angry?
Out there in Aspirant Land, almost nobody is talking about the problem!! Everyone just keeps mouthing the same mantra, “Gotta get an agent, gotta get an agent, gotta get an agent,” and few people challenge any of the root assumptions behind the current ’system’ in fiction publishing. The Agent Myth is clearly the largest one going, and it’s got a mountain of people supporting it.
Laura’s point about using IP lawyers versus agents seems like some of the best advice possible, but NOBODY beyond Dean’s blog has ever said any such thing before. At least that I have read. The mantra just keeps on keeping on, “Gotta get an agent, gotta get and agent, gotta get an agent.”
We have newbies like me actually celebrating when they get an agent. “Look everyone, I got an agent!!” That always struck me as a bit odd, as no money has actually been inked or passed on to the writers, but the agent-as-boss-and-gatekeeper mentality runs so deep… People believe they’ve gotten some kind of awesome leg up when they’ve secured an agent — any agent — and the inverted power structure perpetuates. Because clearly the agents — as the slush surfers — very much like their adopted role, whether it makes business sense for writers, agents, and publishers, or not.
Anyway, back to angry, I am angry that had I never read any of these Myth posts — nor Laura’s comments and Kris’s comments and Dean’s comments — I’d still be off in La La Land about this whole thing. I’d be quietly and uncomfortably going along with the mantra, feeling odd about the whole thing and probably eventually getting into some bad situations, until ten years down the road from here I’d had enough, and learned my own hard lessons, etc. Or maybe by then I’d have been so snowed, there would have been no hope? I can see myself “working” for some agent, feeling guilt, feeling like I’d let the agent down, etc. I’m enough of a people pleaser I could see myself getting duped into that dynamic…
(insert huge stream of cussing)
At the risk of sounding corny, someone needs to do something. Somehow, this has got to stop. Writers need to stand up!
Very interesting — it certainly outlines points on which it is good to get clarification up front in hopes of avoiding horror stories later on. Thanks.
BTW, I think there’s a typo in the bracketed lines for part two item 1 and part three item 3: use of “now” instead of “not”
[...] the original post: Dean Wesley Smith » Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Agent … Categories: Accounting Tags: Accounting, agent, employment, enter, Finance, money, myth, [...]
Great points as always, Dean (and Laura!).
Minor typo, though. Part 2 item 1, you have added “[Writer has no duty to pay the agent any commission on any book or project now worked on by the agent.]“, I’m sure you meant “NOT worked on by the agent”.
Given some of my experiences in my non-writing career (as a software engineer, changing employers every few years goes with the territory) I’m bemused by the parallels (and antiparallels) between literary agents and technical talent recruiters. The latter get a higher percentage but it’s (usually) capped and it doesn’t come out of my pay*. The recruiters are clearly working for the prospective employer in that case (and if publishers want agents to do their slush screening for them, maybe they should be paying more) and I’m free to work with multiple recruiters simultaneously (so long as they’re not presenting me to the same place, of course).
I am surprised at the apparent lack of imagination some writers exhibit toward getting around the “no unagented submissions” wall. Maybe I’ll set up one my cats as my agent — I wouldn’t be the first.
(*All money being fungible, that’s arguable. It depends on how the hiring company does their internal accounting.)
Hi, Dean:
This list is very useful. We’ve talked about such a list many times. Thanks for taking the time to put it in writing.
Also, Laura thanks for sharing your expereinces. We look forward to meeting you at the Write on Vancouver conference in May.
Best,
Russ
[Writer has no duty to pay the agent any commission on any book or project now worked on by the agent.]
Don’t you mean “Writer has no duty to pay the agent any commission on any book or project NOT worked on by the agent”? If so, then I see that typo twice in the bracketed additions you’ve added. It also appears in item #3.
Or am I misunderstanding?
Got the two typos. That’s one of my normal typos, as we all have. I write now instead of not more than I want to think about. Good catch, fixed it in both places, since it’s an important change.
Great list, Dean, and a helluva guideline for making the business relationship between an author and agent very clear. I plan to use this when communicating with my agent about new projects.
Thanks for all your valuable input – as always – Laura!
Thanks, Dean. I thought that list was incredibly helpful. Since you’re still on the whole ‘gatekeeper’ issue to an extent, this touches on something that jumped out at me from comments to your 1/13 post.
In one of your replies you said just in passing that you saw something else (soon?) replacing agents as new gatekeepers to editors, but you didn’t specify what that was.
Would you please (either here or later if you feel like it) elaborate on that some? Thanks.
D.
I once heard publisher Jim Baen say of a particular agent (anyone in SFWA should recognize the name) something like “she scares the hell out of me”. That always struck me as a good quality in an agent, from a writer’s perspective. I have to admit that I’d probably act like Brad Torgersen’s excited newbie if she agreed to represent me — but that’s highly improbable especially while I am a newbie.
More than anything else, these posts make me realize how much homework I need to do. Not so much to get a book across the transom, but beyond that. I don’t think my cat would do well trying to negotiate foreign language rights, for example.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
A point I wanted to make. If you look at every point I made in the agreement, Laura and I have talked about horror stories connected with most of those points in the agreement. For example, under Main Duties, I have had an agent do all the negotiations on a contract without ever telling me, then when presented to me, I wanted some things changed and one of them was what the agent had worked to get. And it was against me. The agent just didn’t realize it. So sadly, something so logical as being informed in negotiations is a major point and why I put it first.
As for section #2 subrights (spelled that way in contracts often), more often than not these days, agents don’t know how to sell anything but US editions. Worst case is that they have a dedicated “agency” that they farm the subright sales out to. So instead of getting any personal attention from your employee, they just toss a large part of your possible income to some other agency that takes clients from a dozen agencies. So instead of just you and thirty other clients, you are now in a pool of four hundred other writers with one agent. Don’t ever allow your agent to do this. If your agent’s agency doesn’t have a dedicated subrights agent in house, do NOT allow your agent to farm out the sales of those rights. It will doom you to no sales.
#3 under Main Duties is full of land mines as well. I once had an agency that had a policy to hold my money for at least a week before sending it on. I screamed and yelled about that for years. Those of you who understand interest on the float will understand how this agency was making a ton of money, not only off the float of my hundred plus thousand per year, but a dozen or more NYT bestsellers whose money ranged into the multi-millions. That week is a ton of float. And not acceptable. No employee of mine is allowed to make money off of my money because they hold it. Not allowed in my world. Period.
How about #4 on the main list. Offers. Seems logical, doesn’t it? But alas, the horror stories on this one are stunning. Just stunning, when agents start thinking that your career is their career and thus they can act without consulting you.
Each point in this agreement has major issues involved, issues that could cost a writer a ton of money or an entire career. Look it over and ask questions if you have them.
Dean, (or Laura or anyone else far wiser than myself in these matters!)
In the event that an author first secures an offer with a publisher and then approaches an agent, does it hurt said author’s chances of securing their help with contract negotiations if he (or she) makes it clear upfront that they are interested in the agent’s service for the contract and not necessarily for a long term basis?
It seems to me that if an agent wasn’t willing to make money off of a guaranteed contract I probably don;t want that agent helping me anyway, but I was wondering if the author should just get that out of the way upfront
Thanks for everything…
Another point to remember, and one that goes back to the writer being responsible for their own career is this:
Never assume that your agent is following up on things (potential offers, potential Hollywood interest, etc.) that YOU HAVE ASKED THEM TO FOLLOW UP ON. Make *sure* that they are. Ask for regular progress reports. And follow up on your own as well.
Joemontana,
My suggestion is go at the hiring of the agent with exactly what you want very clear. If you are interested in only taking them on for one book, with the idea that they might handle others later if things worked out, then be clear about that. As you said, if they are more interested in being one of those “I’m in control and got to help you build your career by letting me tell you what to do” agents, then you are better off finding that out from the start.
What I find funny is that these “career-building” agents wouldn’t know a writer’s career if it bit them. Not kidding. They have ideas how they think it should work, but if they were writers and really knew, they wouldn’t be agents. No successful writer ever moves to being an agent. The pay cut from 85% to 15% is just too much. So therefore, if an agent knew anything about career building, and how writers work, they would be a writer and not an agent.
So, taking on an agent for one book, to help with a contract, is a good idea. But make sure you go to an agent that knows contracts, which means they have been around a long, long time. Or an agent who is also an attorney. There are a number of them as well, good ones, actually. Or just go directly to an IP attorney if all you are looking for is negotiation. As Laura and a few others have pointed out, it’s simple, cheaper, and less problems.
Great point, Adrian. Great point. Far too many horror stories around that alone.
And it comes back to writer being the boss and acting like the boss with an employee. It’s your career, you have to make sure your employee is doing what you asked them to do. Logical in every business but writing for some reason.
Great point! Thanks.
Brad,
The thing to keep in mind about why you haven’t heard some of this stuff before is that we’re expressing and discussing MINORITY views here about the subject of agents and agenting.
MOST professional writers whom I know still work with an agent, still believe in working with an agent, would never consider working WITHOUT an agent, think it’s a bad idea to work without an agent, and–if they happen, due to circumstances, to be working without an agent right now–are uncomfortable without an agent and would prefer to get another agent if/when they can. Many writers who started out without an agent, because they couldn’t get one back then, and who now do have an agent, prefer it this way, consider their situation better than it was, and don’t want to go back to NOT having an agent.
Many writers who know me or who know my story agree with me that -I- shouldn’t have an agent again; but most of them otherwise think that most writers should have an agent.
And, overall, throughout the business, most professional writers think that any writer chooses not to have an agent is an utter fool who’s making a huge, career-damaging mistake with that choice. THAT is the conventional wisdom. And it’s SO prevalent and SO pervasive that, though I’m fairly independent-minded, it was a VERY long, very hard, and pretty frightening decision for me to abandon the agent-author business model. It’s a decision I now realize I definitely should have made several years earlier, but it was THAT hard even for me, an experienced professional who’s reasonably intelligent and self-directed, to make this choice and gain this perspective on the subject.
So the reason there’s quite a bit of stuff being discussed here that you haven’t heard before is simply that we’re discussing a number of UNcommon opinions and positions here.
And the main reason that I am so passionate about this subject and invest time in talking about it (I write about it in my NINK column, I blog about it here and there, I talk about it at conferences, and I’d like to write articles about it–but, since getting agents out of my life, I am so heavily contracted in fiction that I don’t have time to pursue more work at the moment ), is precisely because of that. I felt so smothered by the pro-agent arguments and didn’t encounter any arguments or examples supporting a different perspective.
I don’t want others to feel as trapped and isolated as I felt. I want others to know there are reasonable alternatives to the conventional views on this subject, and I want others to learn what the array of sound arguments and productive options are, and to realize there are a VARIETY OF CHOICES that WORK WELL for managing a writing career.
First off I want to second what Brad said. There are so many newbies out there that see getting an agent as getting over the biggest hurdle when they haven’t even mailed one manuscript to an editor.
Also, I have two quick questions:
1) Regarding the agency that floated your money to earn interest, can’t you have the publsiher send you the money first and then you cut the agency a check? I thought I heard this somewhere.
2) With the subrights thing, it seems like the these days the internet would greatly facilitate that for a writer but I’m not sure how you’d actually go about that. Would it be similar to approaching editors over here or completely different? Again, I have no clue so I make no assumptions.
Thanks for the list Dean and the great comments from everyone, you’re really opening the eyes of this rookie.
Steve
Thank you, Laura, for that last post. Perfectly said and I agree completely. Especially your last paragraph about a VARIETY OF CHOICES. And my goal is to get writers thinking like business people a little more, to make better business decisions.
I also have had a hard time tossing this agent/author business model, but for 75% of my novel projects now, I never use an agent. I have a hunch as time goes on, that percentage will get bigger.
Steve,
Yes, you can have the publisher send the money directly to you, and when I was with this “floating” agency, I was too new in the business to realize it. You can also have the publisher just split the money with each check, which is even easier. I tend to do that now.
Yes, the internet is greatly helping subrights sales. Doug Smith has a great feature on his web site that lists overseas short fiction markets, and overseas agents and publishers are coming more and more to the authors directly. In fact, Kris just sold two books overseas, both came directly to her, and she’s in the process of selling a third that she approached. One of our students hasn’t sold to the New York markets, but has a number of novel sales in Europe markets, all great sales. So yes, the internet is taking the mystery away and shrinking down the world so that writers can make even more money on their fiction.
Thanks for mentioning Doug Smith’s foreign markets page! I didn’t know about this.
Steve, “split payments” is one of the more common phrases for what you’re asking about, and it’s an arrangement whereby the publisher habitually cuts two checks for every payment, one for 15% sent to the agent, and one for 85% sent to the writer. Publishers usually aren’t crazy about this, since it’s double the paperwork for them; but they do it if writer-and-agent both want it.
There are agencies that will agree to work on a slit payments basis, and agencies that won’t. It’s entirely arbitrary and individual, there is no perceived industry “standard.” (There are also agents that say in public that they have no problem whatsoever with split payments, but who then balk and throw tantrums in private when asked to consent to it.) Some writers want a split payments arrangement, many don’t. (As far as I know, MOST don’t.)
The reasons for a writer NOT wanting such an arrangement are that it can add a layer of complication that doesn’t benefit either party. For example, an agent is supposed to review the royalty statements and make sure the calculations are correct and that the correct sum is being paid. If an error is found and a payment from the publisher has to be corrected, it can be more complicated if you’ve both been sent checks. Another reason is that publishers are not (brace yourself for a shock) the absolute best record keepers, and if you move house (or spend part of the year in a vacation home, or are away for two months, etc.), most people feel their agent will be more flexible and accurate about where to send money than their publisher will be. Even when it comes to direct deposits (which one of my publishers now does), many people feel that a mistake in this system (ex. the publisher WITHDRAWS the sum of your advance, rather than depositing it!) will be easier to correct with their agency than with their publisher. And so on.
Another reason I’ve often heard given–and it dovetails well with what Dean’s been saying about writers not managing the agent paradigm well–is that a fair few writers fear that, in a split payment arrangement, if the agent gets his 15% check but you don’t get your check, then the agent will be much less energetic about following up on that problem than he would if his money was still tied up in the same check as yours and THAT was missing. Similarly, some writers express a fear that the agent won’t actually go over the royalty statements as assiduously if he’s not also receiving the client’s money when he receives his.
(However, further to agent myths, with two of my former agents, I tried to discuss questions I had about a royalty statement, and on each occasion, the agent had no idea WHATSOEVER what the books had earned (I mean, they were surprised to learn from -me- whether or not the statement even showed that the books in question had earned out) and was unwilling to go to the oh-so-immense trouble of pulling out the statement and reading it so we could discuss my question.)
Many agencies will agree to split payments after the writer is no LONGER a client, since the agent is usually not interested in (and also usually no longer authorized to) take any action on behalf of the client if there’s a problem. So, for the most part, they just keep collecting their 15%, but if there are any new problems or business with that existing deal, the writer, or the next agent, or the writer’s lawyer, etc. handle it thereafter.
Some writers do NOT request split payments, for a variety of reasons. One is not wanting to make the agent mad. A number of agents do indeed get mad, feeling that a request for split payments is an implied accusation against their integrity… rather than, oh, merely a rational business decision that says, “Since we no longer work together or have a relationship, I’d rather my earnings not be sent to you anymore.”
Another reason, probably more common, is that a writer doesn’t want to take over any of the paperwork, and doesn’t have a problem with the way the agency has handled her paperwork to date, so figures that in exchange for the 15% they’re going to continue to collect, the agents can keep doing that. This is often the case if the writer did a lot of business with that agency and so arranging split payments, etc., would entail changing existing payment arrangements for 6-10-20 books with 2, 3, or 4 houses, as well as with multiple foreign publishers, and so on. Logistically, in such cases, unless the agency can’t be trusted, it’s a less headache for the writer to just let payments (and paperwork) continuing going from many sources to that one source, and then to her.
Unfortunately, there are also a small number of agencies that REFUSE to consent to split payments with former clients. One of my former agents is one of those, and it winds up being like having a kid with a former spouse. This agent is still in my working life, years after I left the agency, and will be in my working life for years to come. And since we’re on acrimonious terms, this is exceedingly uncomfortable and inconvenient for me.
The agency’s MISHANDLING of my paperwork since I left has led to volatile disputes between us, during which time I have filed complaints against the agent with SFWA, RWA, NINC, and the AAR. The agent took considerable time writing LONG responses to my complaints to those organizations rather than consent to the alternative…. which was to spent 3 seconds signing the “split payment consent agreement” that I sent over and over to the agency with cover letters asking for cooperation in this matter.
There is no legitimate business reason for this agent to continue refusing to consent to split payments. It’s just a way to stick it to a former client. In ALL matters, I have clearly stated in writing, to the agent and to the publisher, that as my FORMER agent, this individual is not authorized to speak or act on my behalf in any whatsoever, under any circumstances whatsoever. The SOLE “power” this agency still has is that my checks and my royalty statements for the deals this agent made still go this the agency first, and THEN get FWD’d to me. That’s it. And it’s a “power” to which the agent has clung ferociously. (I made my request because, on three occasions since I left, I’ve had trouble collecting my royalty statements from this agency, and it’s a big nuisance.)
Unfortunately, the publisher won’t consent to split payments without the agent’s consent. This is clearly absurd, since I and the publisher are the only two signatories to the contract, so the agent’s consent is legally irrelevant. However, since the publisher IS a signatory, I’m stuck unless they consent, and it’s their choice to refuse to consent WITHOUT the agent’s consent, as a courtesy to the agent.
The publisher in question does a lot of deals with the agent, so that relationship is more important to them than their relationship with me; therefore, they won’t risk angering the agent by splitting my payments without his consent. There is no legal reason for it; but it’s a VERY common custom. If an agent won’t consent to split payments, most publishers WILL NOT agree to do it at the writer’s request. (Occasionally they will, but that’s unusual.)
I’ve consulted two literary lawyers about the situation (as well as SFWA’s Grievance Committee, which also consulted a lawyer and then advised me). The bottom line is that my position is helpless and hopeless on this matter, UNLESS the agent does something so outrageous that it gives me legal leverage to force the publisher to split payments without the agent’s consent. This would include being able to prove that the agent has held onto monies of mine for more than 30 days (and, alas, 2 lawyers have warned me that, even then, I STILL might not have the legal leverage needed to force the split if the publisher was reluctant to anger the agent), or that the agent had embezzled, etc.
Solving such a problem is also incredibly =arbitrary=. Another former client of this same agent who was having the exact same problem finally got her payments split with the agent’s consent… because the agent one day stapled her royalty check to a different client’s royalty statement and sent it to her; the other client also happened to be writing for the same house. This happened to be where the agent did NOT have a strong relationship. It also happens to be a house which actively discourages its writers (without success, obviously) from discussing their contract terms and earnings with each other. So upon being informed of this incident, that house immediately split payments thereafter, WITHOUT the agent’s consent. But this was totally arbitrary decision–the agent had made a paperwork error that just HAPPENED to be one destined to shock and appall THAT particular publisher, and it also just happened to be a publisher where the agent didn’t have a strong enough relationship to smooth over that gaff. If the -exact- thing happened to me, it would make no difference, because in my case, the agent has a very strong relationship with the publisher in question, and that gaff isn’t one that THIS particular publisher is likely to get up in arms about.
Anyhow, what I learned from that experience was that I wanted my next agency agreement, with my next agent (who also turned out to be my FINAL agent), to specify that the agency hereby consented to split payments, in advance, in the event that I left the agency.
Speaking of which…. should a clause like that be added to this proposed agency contract?
Laura, yes, actually I should add a clause like that to the contract. I will do so later tonight.
One thing to be clear on so everyone knows is that the reason your publisher wouldn’t split the payments was because you had already signed a contract with the agency clause in the contract. Publishers ahead of signing have little reason to balk at such a request as part of the negotiations in the contract. Never had a problem with it done before, but you are right, afterwards, after there is an agency clause in a contract, it takes both parties to agree, even though the agent is not a signer on the contract at all. Just publishers being afraid of being sued is all. Just legally stupid.
And writers who make decisions because they are going to anger an agent have other issues. I know I got into that for a time at Pulphouse, walking around afraid I was going to anger my employees, and to this day I feel that attitude on my part was one of the largest factors in the company failure. If I had stood my ground and done it my way, the way that built the company, Pulphouse would still be around. But I had a bunch of touchy-feelie employees telling me I needed to be nicer. Flatly, I am not a nice boss, and I see no reason to be. Do it my way or don’t work for me. And I have that attitude now about agents. Do it my way or don’t make any money from my work. It’s their choice.
And one more thing I haven’t gotten into yet much. Value. One of the things that goes on with long term writers (like we are, like Koontz and King and others) is that we get to a point where we see the business clearly. And we step back from agents and ask “What value are you bringing to the table?” And then the follow-up question. “For what costs?” And 15% is often not a factor in those “costs.”
After this many novels and years editing and publishing, there just isn’t a great deal an agent can bring to the table that I can’t do. So when I do hire an agent as a negotiator, they have to be almost painless for me and bring real contract and negotiating value. If not, why put up with them, why deal with them, and why pay them? And if they actively slow you down, stop you, or hurt you in any way, why would you keep that employee. It’s the startling thing about this myth I don’t understand, how so many agents just flat hurt writers. And writers let them. Head shaking.
In Section 3 Number 3 you’ve made the addition “… It is understood that the writer has no obligation to pay the agent any fee for any project not worked on in some fashion by the agent.”
Could an agent construe reading the manuscript as “worked on in some fashion by the agent”? Because if so, technically they could demand payment if all they did was read the manuscript, decide it wasn’t viable and did nothing else with it.
Or is that splitting hairs too much?
This is a really interesting thread, and I appreciate the opportunity to see this viewpoint. Thanks!
Dean, you’ve hit the nail on the head with your value discussion.
One of the companies that I am a direct employee of is a manufacturer of industrial products which we distribute throughout the U.S. and Mexico. As part of that sales structure, we use a number of local distributors, who are essentially brokers.
Some are better than others, of course, but the majority of those distributors expects us, as the manufacturer, to design, manufacture, import from Europe, inventory, and market the products, then hand any and all sales leads we receive in their territories to them.
They then expect to travel to those customers and find out if they are using any similar items, then hand the project to us to specify solutions, negotiate pricing, and close the deal. Then they expect us to hold inventory at all times to meet that customer’s need.
The kicker is that these distributors receive 25 to 40% of the sale price on all sales in their territories.
What I’ve been saying for years – so vehemently that I eventually lost my job in marketing and sales and am now the IT Manager for the company – is that these distributors add no value, and yet they actually receive a bigger cut of the sale than we do as the manufacturer. It’s crazy.
I’m like Dean. Do it my way or get the hell out of my way. Many people don’t like that attitude, but I don’t care.
It’s one of the reasons that I want to be my own employee. While I’ll still have to deal with others (this is always true), I can choose who I deal with. Many agents believe they are distributors of a writer’s work. The fact is that the publisher is the customer, and the manufacturer (the writer) should control transactions with customers directly to avoid being taken advantage of.
There are cases when a liaison is advantageous to both the writer and the publisher, but as Laura pointed out, a bad liaison is often far worse than none at all.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but…
Part Three: UNDERSTANDINGS
1) Timely Reading. It is understood that the agent will make a best effort to read the author’s manuscript to be marketed in a timely manner.
[It is understood that the writer has no obligation to pay the agent any fee for any project not worked on in some fashion by the agent.]
I would be uncomfortable with this precise language in an agent/writer agreement. In the event an acrimonious relationship later developed, I would hate to end up trying to defend that the mere reading of the manuscript was not “worked on in some fashion.” I would like what constitutes “worked on” clarified more precisely. Perhaps substituting “marketed” for “worked on” would suffice.
Regarding subrights, thanks for mentioning Doug’s foreign market list for short fiction. Is there any equivalent source of information for novels?
It’s great that Kris has foreign publishers coming to her, but for those of us who aren’t at her level, is there a way to go to the foreign publishers? I guess it’s not likely that Hollywood would pay any attention to a novelist looking to sell subrights, but then Hollywood is always a long shot.
SFWA, bless its little pea-pickin’ heart, used to offer an idea sample contract for writers/publishers. Probably some of the other writing organizations did or do so, but I’m too lazy to go check.
As far as I know, no publisher ever signed it. The terms were too favorable to the writer from their viewpoint.
Fred Pohl used to say that everything on a publishing contract up to and including the date is negotiable, and once upon a time, if you had the clout, that might have been true. Not anymore. There is boilerplate that will kill the deal if you refuse to sign it — leastways if you are on the midlist — notably the if-we-get-sued-it’s-your-problem liability clause.
Made roman-a-clef and Tuckerizing harder, though both are still done among friends.
I think the basic agreement of you-rep-me-and-get-15% is the core, and when you are dealing with somebody whose primary job it is to negotiate contracts for you, you have to expect that will start at home. And if they aren’t good enough to out-talk you, why would you trust them to out-talk publishers … ?
And as soon as I pressed submit comment, it occurred to me a better substitution might be “actively marketed.”
I think the reason, at least for myself and for the people in my writer’s group, that we aspirant writers (to use Brad’s phrase) believe the Myth is because the Myth seems to be sanctioned by the publishers.
Now maybe if we’d all opened our eyes a bit more we’d read between the fine print and realize all the things that you’ve explained and started questioning things, but so many books and conferances reinforce this system that its hard to reason yourself out of it.
Now that all the details have been explained, I completely get it. That the agent is the employee makes absolute sense, and so does sending direct to the publisher and many of the other things. My eyes are open 100%.
I wonder then why there hasn’t been a writer’s advocacy group that’s helps writer’s learn from each other and sets these things straight? There are a number of professional organizations like SFWA that help the professional, but are there looser organizations that help the aspiring writer?
Or is it that the organizations that are out there are so into the Myth that they too are part of the problem?
As an aside, I found that during my search for suitable publishers, a number of them actually suggested that I NOT have an agent and send directly to them. And also that they didn’t require a query letter. Both of these things made me giggle with glee (I’m typically not much of a gigglier, but sometimes events call for untypical behaviors.)
I’m only post-Myth about thirty days, but boy do I feel much better. And thanks to Brad who linked the discussion on the WOTF boards and, of course, Dean and Laura and everyone else who’ve created and contribuited to the dialogue.
Thomas, as Laura said, the writer/agent working model is pretty standard, and thus over the last 15 years, when publishers got tight and needed a new type of door to slow down the flood, it seemed like a logical idea to toss it to agents. After all, the publisher’s weren’t paying them. Win/win for the publishers, or so it seemed. Turns out, now years later, it’s not such a win for the publishers. They never expected this myth to become such a solid wall. And honestly, neither did a bunch of us working along in publishing.
So no writers group is going to form to help this, simply because, as Laura and I have both said, there’s no uniform correct way to work. We are just trying to show that there is more than only one way, get writers to open their eyes and try different methods and see what works. And writer with an agent employee might be the way it ends up working for you. Just be open to all methods and use what works for you. That’s the key.
Pati,
I know of no list like Doug’s for novel markets. And I must have said something wrong. The overseas publishers didn’t come to Kris, she chased down the deals and talked with them and submitted books to them. They didn’t come to her. She did it just the same way all of us do, no different.
Steve P., good point on making sure we have the core of the agreement. And I agree, if you, as a writer, can really badger around an agent, you should worry about what a publisher would do to that agent. But the difference is, of course, that you are the boss to an agent, thus an agent who understands this working relationship tends to let the boss be right, where with a publisher, they are not the boss and can be fought with for the sake of the boss and their job. So the arrangement isn’t completely that simple.
Mary, since you and I are both trained in legal stuff, I know that the wording is general and I kept it that way purposefully, since I wanted this agreement to not be so much as an agreement, legal-type, but a checklist writers use to ask good questions of agents and work out expectations. Besides, we both know that “timely manner” can mean one thing in one situation and another completely with different circumstance. Thus the clause that either party can terminate without cause. Keeps problems like arguing over that out of the picture. If the author doesn’t think the agent is being timely and has told the agent that and the agent doesn’t change, the writer fires the employee. Very simply, unless a myth is mixed into the equation. A myth like “Oh, I am successful, I have an agent.” If that myth is in the mix, agents can and often do get away with horrid behavior.
Shawn, splitting hairs too much. Again, I set this up as a contract of basic terms, sure, but more to be used as a checklist of things to ask an agent in an interview about their working practices. And then only if you agree. If there is something that bothers you or you don’t care about, just take it out of your checklist of questions for your future employee.
Again, no right way to do this, just your way. Laura and I and all the rest with experience here are just trying to show all sides of this equation between writer and agent. The agent-as-god thinking is far, far too heavy out there in conferences, so a small little blog off in the corner of the universe shouting “Hey, there are other ways!” is what this is about.
Every employer on the planet has a unique working arrangement with their employees. None are the same. Same with writers and their employee agents. What works for one writer wouldn’t work for the writer sitting beside them. What works for my wife Kris with her agent would not work with me at times. She’s happy with her current agent, I’ve been happy so far when I have used an agent on a project.
But to be honest, I have had a huge advantage. 1st, I went through law school. 2nd, I’ve had a ton of businesses and employees outside of writing. 3rd, I have a ton of writing friends who had massive trouble with agents along the way and I got to listen into the problems without being emotionally involved. 4th, I have made it a point to remember my early days so that I can help other writers coming in, thus I remember clearly how I felt back in those early days.
Those four things give me a pretty clear image of the problems going on now. And the massive problems beginning writers are facing right now.
Here, in summary, is my opinion.
1) It is fantastically easier for writers to break into publishing now than any point in history. Ever. More books published, more slots, more instant information. Stunningly easier if you get your craft up to selling levels and can tell a decent story.
2) It is fantastically harder for writers who have sold novels to continue to sell. One huge reason for this is this agent myth. Agents block sales so often it scares me. Second reason is ordering to net. Third reason is writer’s egos these days and the desire to be famous instead of just write, so they won’t change names, and with accounting attached to names, one slip and the writer is gone.
Of course, all that is very, very general, but boiled down, those are my observed opinions. Kris and I spend a lot of time with the second group. It’s that group that so many of our workshops are pointed at. It’s the quality writers who have sold but can’t get past the roadblocks to create a long term career that we like to help, because no one else does. And that’s what all this agent stuff here is about. Before you have any hope of survival, you have to come to an agreement with those helping you. If it’s an agent, the relationship has to work for you, if it’s an attorney, you have to know where to find the right ones, if you are doing it on your own, you have to have another set of skills to learn.
Somehow I stumbled down this road, kept coming back after some major crashes, and kept writing. It’s a great job. But like any international profession, there’s a lot of learning along the way.
Something that keeps ringing like a bell as I read through these comments is the fact that the cementing of the Myth in people’s minds is not only dependent on talk at conferences and such, but it seems to me heavily reliant on three words: “no unagented submissions.”
Each time I see that phrase now, I see the semantics of it. On the surface, it seems to simply state, “We will accept no submissions from an author directly. We only accept submissions from an agent.”
However, it doesn’t say far more than it does. For example, it does not say, “No unagented queries.”
It also doesn’t say what is frequently pointed out by the published among us, that if an editor requests your work, that opens the door.
It will be a lot of work, but I can see how to do things now.
[Not sure if this will post. I cleared my browser's cache last night, and now it's acting strange because apparently I killed a cookie. Or something.]
Just reiterating something Dean said above, viz Thomas’ questions, which is that the agent-author business model is actively sanctioned by most -writers-, too. And, while it doesn’t work for -me- and so I abandoned it, it does work well for a number of writers, for a variety of reasons–including lots of writers disliking business so much and/or being so bad at it that self-representation would be too stressful or too ineffectual to be a good choice for them. It’s similar to, for example, car mechanics. I have a neighbor who thinks I’m a nudnik because I pay a mechanic to do even the most simple, basic tasks on my car; he does a lot of maintenance himself. He’s good at it, and he ENJOYS it, too. But I HATE mechanics, I HATE tools, and I know NOTHING about cars. I can pump the gas, add oil, and top up the windshield-washer fluid. That is IT. And not only do I have no other skills for maintaining my car, I am NOT INTERESTED in learning or acquiring other skills–I’m content to pay a mechanic rather than spend time and energy on things I don’t like and don’t want to do, in order to keep the car running.
Then again… my longtime mechanic is the son-in-law of one of my closest friends, treats me like family, and takes great care of my car, as well as being flexible about my payment plans (since he knows I’m a writer and get paid irregularly).
If, by contrast, I’d been cheated by mechanics, overcharged, abused, let down, etc., etc… I might well be taking car maintenance courses right now!
This is how agenting is. There are a lot of varied stories, varied experiences, and varied preferences or feelings about this among writers.
My beef is just that the most conventional view (“a writer MUST have an agent, and any writer who does NOT have one is at a huge disadvantage and is making a big mistake”) is the ONLY view most people hear (indeed, speaking from experience, it’s the only view that even most -professional- writers here, never mind aspiring writers), and it is NOT the only legitimate or proven version of reality. So in this discussion, we’re just saying there are MULTIPLE viable ways to manage a career, and ONE of those multiple viable ways is to work without an agent–and there are examples of writers for whom this not only works well, but works BETTER than their experiences of having been agented.
Laura
Jeremy,
A history lesson. Back in the pulp days, the standard way to get a manuscript to an editor was walk it into their office. So young new pulp writer “A” takes the subway to the editor’s office, goes up the ten flights of stairs in the 90 degree weather, and finds the door closed. Young writer knocks, no answer, to takes manuscript and turns away, goes home, never makes the trip again.
Young writer “B” makes the same subway trip with his manuscript, walks up the same ten flights of stairs, finds the same door closed. But instead of walking away, the young writer glances up, sees the window over the transom open, tosses the manuscript through the window and then goes home. Gets call later from editor that he wants to buy the story.
“No Unagented Submissions” is just the current in a long line of closed doors. Nothing more. When you know the history of publishing, so much of this stuff makes so much more sense.
That happened to me, Shawn. I sent a new book proposal to my second agent shortly before I fired her. She subsequently claimed that if I sold that book, I “owed” her commission on it, because she was “worked on it.”
This was sheer nonsense, of course. She -may- have read it (I’ve no idea) in the week or two that it was sitting in her office before I terminated the association, but we never even DISCUSSED it, never mind her doing anything resembling WORK with regard to that proposal. I blew her off–as well I should. She was full of crap about this, legally, practically, and ethically. And that’s often the case with such claims–it’s a cheap scare tactic, rather than a legitimate professional or legal claim.
My feeling about this is that the only time an agent has a claim to a commission after the client has fired him is if there’s a book in submission at that time which results in a sale. Apart from that, such claims are unreasonable.
However, I also think it’s a question worth posing to agents in blogs, columns, and at convention workshops and panels. What do AGENTS think about this? There doesn’t seem to be an industry standard (certainly not in my own experience, anyhow), but you can certainly develop ideas of what -you- think is fair and also what reasonable and UNreasonable agents are likely to expect, by posing the question to a number of them.
Laura, I again agree completely. Well said.
Back when I first started researching novels and how to get a publishing deal, I truly believed the BS. I started talking to my aunt who is an independent contractor and has worked legal deals for many companies and explained the writer — agent — publisher relationship. She thought it sounded wrong. “Shouldn’t” she asked, “the writer send the story to the publisher then have the agent negotiate once an offer was made?” I laughed. “Of course not,” I said, “that’s not how it works.”
Oh how wrong I was. How is it that my aunt, who has nary a creative bone in her body gets it, and so many of us fail to see the simple truth? After reading your posts, Dean, I feel a great well of sadness when my colleagues announce proudly that they have an agent before a publisher has even seen their work.
Amanda, clearly your aunt had a very good head about basic business.
I did this a while back, but might be good to remind people here. Take a piece of paper and write the word “writer” at the top.
Then draw a line straight down under “writer” a few inches and write the word “publisher.” Then draw the line straight down under “publisher” to “distribution” then a line under that to “reader.” Writer to Publisher to Distribution(bookstores) to Reader.
Agents are no where in that mix. They work for the writers, just as editors work for the publisher, just as truck drivers work for a distributor or a clerk works for a bookstore, and the final resting place of the book, in all its forms, is the reader. Starts with the writer, ends with the reader. Two steps between, even if you self publish and self distribute, the two center steps are there.
That has always been the economic model of publishing. Always. Never was a step in the middle where a writer went to an agent before going to a publisher. When an employee of any business gets in the way of the business, they need to be fired.
Imagine a self-employed truck driver with his own truck who decided to take a job working for a distributor of books, but said that before he would carry any book in his truck, he had to read it and approve it and if he didn’t like it, he could leave it beside the shipping dock. Uhh, no. Yet that is exactly how silly things with some agents have gotten.
Always keep the basic economic model of publishing in mind and it solves a ton of problems.
Steve Perry wrote: Made roman-a-clef and Tuckerizing harder, though both are still done among friends.
Roman-a-clef and tuckerizing? I’m not familiar with these terms. What do they mean?
Nevermind regarding roman à clef, as I was just able to figure that one out, but I definitely still need help with ‘Tuckerizing.’
A writer by the name of Tucker was famous for putting his friends and other writers into his work as characters usually as a joke of some sort. So Tuckerizing is a term that describes putting your friends into a work of fiction.
Always do it with permission, and never, ever put an editor’s name into a work of fiction. It will get your manuscript tossed into the nutcase files very quickly. I often named Captains of Star Fleet ships after friends.
Part of the disconnect in how the agent-author relationship ought to work is, of course, the agent’s perspective on all this.
Even if (with great difficulty and a large bulldozer) we remove the agent’s ego, arrogance, and narcissism from the equation, from his/her own perspective, he (or she) is nonetheless someone who, for example (there are many variations on this, but this is a pretty middle-of-the-road example): learned the business inside-out at an established agency; is based in New York, which is [even now] the epicenter of the US publishing industry; has sold dozens (possibly hundreds) of books and has negotiated dozens (possibly hundreds) of publishing deals; has working relationships with editors at major houses; knows quite a bit about how the business works.
Meanwhile, by contrast, this agent’s experience–or, at least, his perception–of writers is: A huge number of the writers he encounters (some of whom become his clients) have never sold a book and know almost nothing AT ALL about the publishing business; many of the other writers he deals with have sold, let’s say, 1-4 books for very modest advances before hiring him, have few if any contacts, and know very little about the business; of his very experienced writer clients, a significant percentage of them don’t know much about the business–and DON’T WANT to know; few if any of his clients are based in New York (and thus their business acumen is necessarily limited to answering questions along the lines of “how is this playing in flyover country?” since they live there); many of his clients have never met the editors to whom he sells their work, and/or they are uncomfortable with those editors or have conflicts with them which he’s always being asked to sort out; most of his clients know nothing about the internal procedures, problems, personalities, and politics of the houses where he’s placing most of their books, whereas he does. Writers are, in his experience, approval-seeking, bad judges of their own work, and naive about the market.
And so on.
This being the agent’s perspective on writers and on himself is, of course, NOT the perspective that -I- have on agents or on myself. As anyone reading this blog this week knows!
It is, however, a typical example of why agents tend to behave like writers’ bosses rather than like their employees, and why a significant percentage of them are not amenable to anything other sort of dynamic with a writer. And my perspective being SO incompatible with it was always a key factor in my agents and I experiencing so much discord and mutual irritation.
Typical example of this: I couldn’t stand, for example, not being told where my work was being submitted, and not having the reasons behind those choices discussed with me or open to my input; and the agents I worked with didn’t like me expecting to be informed of this, let alone involved in making these decisions. This was a source (just one, among many) of friction between me and THREE of my four agents.
And the above description I’ve given of a fairly standard agent-perspective explains why the agent so often thinks I don’t need to know–just as it explains why the agent thinks that if he refuses to send out a MS, a client should just accept this decision as gospel that the book is unsaleable. From the agent’s perspective, in many cases, the agent is a deep well of knowledge and experience in the publishing business, and the writer is some ignorant flake in flyover country who shouldn’t mess with things that she doesn’t understand.
Case in point: I know a writer who realized it was time to leave when the agent said, “I wish you didn’t know so much about the business.”
Laura
Thanks, Dean. There are many terms in connection with writing that I’ve learned over the years, but Tuckerize was not one of them.
Wow, Laura, that was spot on. And clearly explains why these newer agents act the way they do.
It would never occur to me or Kris to have an agent who didn’t work with us on where a manuscript was submitted, and if the agent tried to keep that secret, they would be so gone. Yet I also have had an agent try that on me. I sat him straight very, very quickly. I have heard hundreds of stories like that. In fact, more times than not, when I ask a writer where their manuscript is under submission, the writer’s answer is often “I don’t know, my agent sent it out.” And every time I just shudder, because I know I am facing a walking corpse of a writing career.
My goal in teaching younger professionals in our workshops has always been to help them learn how to be long-term professionals. And every long-term professional I know who is still around and making money, knows a ton about the business, has walked the halls of New York publishers, has had many dinners with editors and even met their kids. And we all grip tightly the control of our business in every detail. EVERY DETAIL. I may not know it all, I may make mistakes, but by heavens, it will be MY MISTAKE and not some employee’s mistake.
Why are we like this? One reason is that we have all been burned and had bad years because we didn’t keep a firm control, because we trusted an agent when we should not have, because we let cash and book sales slip away because we didn’t act fast enough. In other words, Laura, you are the long term professional that you are because you had four agents and made mistakes, I’ve hired three (maybe four, depending on how you count one) and made my mistakes with agents as well.
I remember one night at a convention sitting around in a suite with five other young professional writers, all of us only a few books into our careers. Three of them were complaining about their agent, the same agent. For an hour I listened to the complaints and then finally, not being able to take it any more, said, “Why don’t you guys just fire him?” It was as if I had said something horrible. Flash forward 18 months, same group of writers, different suite, same conversation, same agent. Complaints were worse, but not a one of the writers had fired the agent. I was so sick of it, I refused to have the agent’s name mentioned in my presence because I just couldn’t understand why they didn’t fire him. Eventually, after spending a year or two of their careers getting beat up by this idiot agent, they all did fire him, and all have moved into long-term careers. And maybe, because of that agent and the lessons they learned in all those conversations, they survived and are still twenty years later now.
If all these posts here do nothing but help a few writers avoid or get out of mistakes, then maybe in thirty years a few of those writers will still be around. If you want to be more than a five book writer, if you want to write and sell for the rest of your life, my advice, and all this advice here, is to GET CONTROL of your career in all aspects. As Laura and I have been saying, you won’t be able to at first, and mistakes will happen. But for heaven’s sake, don’t make a mistake simply because you are blindly following the herd (myth). Do it your way, make your mistakes, and then keep going. Nothing wrong with having an agent employee. These posts as horror stories are to help you learn how to stop some of the mistakes and keep the control of your writing in your own office where it belongs.
I know those conversations in that suite all those years ago, listening to complaints about an agent, set me on a clear path to understanding the relationship between a writer and his employee. Just consider this blog a suite filled with professional writers talking.
And one more thing. Notice that almost every point in my contract/checklist in this original blog post is about writers retaining control of their relationship with their employee? Keep control. That’s the key. Keep control.
Indeed! And I still remember the very FIRST mistake I ever made with an agent, because it was so costly.
The first agent I ever hired was a bigshot. He had recently negotiated a $10,000,000 deal. He has since then negotiated more of them. He had more bestsellers on his list than non-bestsellers. It seemed like quite a coup for me to get on this agent’s list.
When preparing to send out my new proposal to publishers, he told me he was going to get me about $225,000 for it, and I needed to be prepared to give all my attention to it when that happened. So he didn’t want me signing any more multi-book deals with my regular publisher, Silhouette Books (a division of Harlequin). One new one-book deal there to tide me over was okay, but I mustn’t commit to more than that, because he was about to take my career to a whole new level, and I shouldn’t tie up my time with the modest deals I was getting at Silhouette.
I followed his advice and, when Silhouette suggested I sign for three books, I said, no, just one. So we signed, and I wrote and delivered the book while waiting for my first big deal to come through.
The agent collected five rejections for the proposal. Then he called me and said, “I don’t have any more time for this,” and dumped me.
And because I had followed his advice, now I had NOTHING on my plate, no more income coming in, instead of the two additional Silhouette books/advances that I could have had under contract at that moment.
Stunned, I tried to regroup. I went to Silhouette and said I was ready to go to contract with them again, and this time I’d be delighted to sign for three books. But Silhouette said their corporate masters at Harlequin had just had a belt-tightening meeting. The upshot was that they weren’t doing any more multi-book contracts for a while, and they didn’t offer me a new one-book contract for about 5 months.
And that wasn’t the last time I heard this sort of “never mind the birds in hand, concentrate on the ones in the bush” advice from an agent. But I’ve always remembered the lesson learned on the occasion that I LISTENED to such advice.
Laura
I love this line. This line sings.
He he he. Tangent: a former boss of mine had that happen to him last year. Nice guy, really, but his leadership ’style’ and ‘method’ was so derelict and detrimental to the success of the organization, they quietly put him out of the loop and, eventually, off the payroll. It was a firing in all ways, except nobody actually said ‘fired’ out of respect for the man’s long stint with the company.
Seems to me that writers as a whole need to regain their balls — sorry, I know, a crude way to think about it — and define some basic business standards for themselves. No more letting the agents define the standards, especially when the agents are derelict in their duties. Seems as if writers have just kind of bent over — I know, more rude imagery — and said, “Please sirs, may we have another!”
Writer…. Publisher…. Distributor… Reader….
Dean, I am gonna tape that up at my writing desk next to my Heinlein’s Rules that I printed up on a broadsheet.
Brad,
Seems as if writers have just kind of bent over — I know, more rude imagery — and said, “Please sirs, may we have another!”
LMAO. So true!
I have to say guys and gals, this has certainly been an eye opening (popping more like it) few weeks since I discovered this site.
Funny things is, I found it running various google searches relating to author agent relationships. I had read an interview with a big shot agent who said something along the lines of ‘I hate it when writers argue with me. They should never argue with me because I know I’m right.”
Now not knowing much about the whole publishing industry compared to most of you, that still struck me as pretty damn insane. I remember thinking to myself ‘If anyone in ANY field said to me ‘I’ll work for you, but I am always right, you just shut up and do as I say’ I’d be out of there faster than the Roadrunner ditching the Coyote…
(I had read an interview with a big shot agent who said something along the lines of ‘I hate it when writers argue with me. They should never argue with me because I know I’m right.”)
That sounds so much like at least two of my four former agents, I’d almost wonder if it was indeed one of them… except that I can easily think of so many OTHER agents whom this also might be, I’m not even curious.
I sat through a talk by a bishot agent a year or two ago (well, actually, I only sat through half of it; then I felt bored and disgusted, so I went to the bar) who said that if a writer has got even one failure on her track record–one book that had bad sales–it’s impossible to reinvent her career and keep getting work. It’s OVER at that point.
This was an audience of mostly pros rather than mostly aspiring writers, so people kept pointing out possible solutions in response to such a dilemma… and he kept insisting those solutions didn’t work. This included things that HAD worked–people who HAD resurrected their careers (and after worse problems than one book with bad sales)… and the bigshot agent, completely unmoved by this, just sat there denying that it was possible, and even getting impatient with the audacity of mere writers to argue with him about this–even when their arguments were based on actual experience and results.
I have a friend who had a weak sales record and was out of work for several years who is now a New York Times bestseller, in pretty much the same genre she always wrote in, and under the same name. I have a friend who was dumped by TWO publishers for weak sales, and, again, under the same name and in the same genre, she’s delivering steadily at another major house that has been building her numbers and is trying to get her on the paperback NYT list. I have another friend who was a bestseller, who then experienced several years of spiraling numbers; the author switched houses, accepting a much lower advance, and successfuly climbed the steep latter back ON to the bestseller lists–and in a relatively short time, too.
And so on and so forth.
No, the biz is not a steady stream of endless success stories. What it IS, though, is a steady stream of endless real-world anecdotes showing that NOT GIVING UP is the single most important quality that separates successful writers from UNsuccessful ones, just as it separates working pros from aspirants.
“Dean, I am gonna tape that up at my writing desk next to my Heinlein’s Rules that I printed up on a broadsheet.”
I am with you there, Brad. Via the link below you can view a snapshot of my new Windows desktop.
http://i158.photobucket.com/albums/t103/OnabFarell/Desktop.jpg
Laura, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have repeated exactly that. The only true key to success in this business in never giving up, never letting anyone get in your way, never let a closed door stop you, and when you realize someone is getting in your way, get rid of them.
Right now, on Kris’s web site, she’s done a chapter on professional jealousy that talks about friends and others getting in your way and how to deal with that.
But the key is to never give up. In fact, I have turned down many people over the years for our workshops because of attitude and accepted people who didn’t have many sales yet because they had the right attitude of never say die. That attitude is what makes a long term professional vs. a writer who sells a few novels and vanishes.
Thank you for saying that. Now, on the other hand, is it hard to not give up? LOL, oh yeah, can’t begin to say how many times I swore at this business, said I was quitting, and turned away, only to turn back and go at it again.
For those of you who love challenges, being a long time pro in this business is a great one.
It is indeed hard! I’ve made at least three genuine attempts to quit the biz, because I was so tired, or so demoralized, or so sick of having that same old crap dumped on me again and again.
But I couldn’t quit writing. And if I’m going to write, then I really want to be read and to be paid. And fate has proved over and over that I am indeed going to write. I can’t seem to control myself.
As it happens, I’m in a happy place in my career at the moment, so I’m not struggling with my loathing of this business. But that’s cyclical. It’ll happen again.
In my case, perseverance always come down to a much simpler formula (as I wrote a few days ago on the Ninc blog, in a blog post entitled–hey, look at this!–PERSEVERANCE) than people suppose. Even my fellow pros often attribute to me a level of self-confidence, or belief in my work, or guts, or whatever, which simply isn’t accurate. NONE of that applies.
Rather, it’s a simple formula that goes like this: If I try again, I don’t know what will happen; but if I DON’T try again, I know EXACTLY what will happen: NOTHING.
And there is another great sign for over your computers folks!!
If I try again, I don’t know what will happen; but if I DON’T try again, I know EXACTLY what will happen: NOTHING.
Great advice, Laura. I got to remember that one for myself at times.
BTW, on another point that’s been discussed here, about how many younger agents are quitting the profession in this tough market… just heard about another one today. It’s a friend’s agent.
We’ve seen a fair bit of this in 2009, and I believe we’ll see more of it in 2010.
I don’t see it as a shrinking of the agent market so much as a re-sizing. I think the agent market (though it sure doesn’t seem like it to all the writers who can’t get one!) had become too big. I think there were more mediocre start-up or newish agents out there (many of whom got laid off as newbie editors in the last market downturn and turned to agenting at that time) than the market can support.
The effect will be that their clients will be agentless or looking for new agents. This is a serious inconvenience for those writers, but I don’t think their numbers will be big enough to make a noticeable difference in the size of query piles that are already sky-high at other agencies, anyhow. And I don’t think other writers or aspiring writers lose anything by the disappearance of agents who couldn’t survive a tough market.
Speaking as one of those baby authors who did try again, I can really get behind your revelations here, Dean and Laura. I had two agents who did absolutely nothing but sit on manuscripts and intimate they were taking charge of my career. Only when I told myself I had a choice, to take control of my own career rather than moan about nothing happening did I realize I actually had one. IMHO having an agent market your work is confidence deflating.
For those of us with only a few deals in the works, the fog ahead in this business is often thick, but we need to break through the fear and the naiivety or fail as career writers. Thanks for helping me through the fog, Dean and Laura and showing me the career from the pro viewpoint.
Dean you said: “I may make mistakes, but by heavens, it will be MY MISTAKE and not some employee’s mistake.” Oh, I so hear you. I have “I am responsible for my own career” framed on the wall by my computer and boy does it help.
Laura, I agree, the agent market is too full, and a shrinking will be a good thing overall. And I also agree that a survival of the fittest is a good way to have the agents weeded out.
But it is the lack of economic sense that will really clean them out. The agents today, who believe in all the myths that are pushed, are working far, far too many tasks that make them zero money. An agent who understands their job only works tasks that will make money for them and also their clients.
Rewriting and editing a manuscript makes no money for anyone. The task is time-consuming and brings in no direct funds. The same amount of time could be spent mailing the manuscript and seven others to editors. That task has a chance of bringing in money. Sending out client’s books to subright agents also has a chance of bringing in money. Working contracts helps both the agent and the writer make more money.
But when an agent is focused on reading slush, rewriting client’s work, and blogging, the economics of the situation will soon catch up to them, unless they are on a salary with a big agency. And even those agencies after a time, if the agent is not producing, will cut them lose.
Brenda, I feel the way you do. Once I cut the roadblock of funneling manuscripts through an agent, it freed me up completely. Even I fell into the trap of thinking, for a short time, that an agent needed to sell a book for me, even though I had sold all 80 some books at that point. And I ground to a halt with my own writing, working only hired-gun projects. But the moment I woke up, slapped myself on the forehead and said, “What am I thinking?” my own original work started to flow like crazy, like a damn had broke. And it was fun again.
One thing not talked about here much, or anywhere much, is the Game of Submissions. I had a blast when I started out, making it a game to keep a short story in the mail, and getting as many stories as I could out there. It was in my control, it was fun, and after a while, the sales started and it got even more fun. And it was the same way with my early novels. Great fun chasing the projects, keeping the stuff in the mail.
I lost that fun aspect of submissions along the way, then a year or so ago started to get it back, started to feel like being in control of my own work under submission was fun again. Now it is great fun. I have a white board tracking novel projects, I have another white board tracking short story submissions, and yet a third white board tracking stories I have self-published up on Kindle and Scribd and other places. It is fun again, it’s all in my control, and I’m loving it. Will I still use agents when I need one, or an attorney when I need one? Sure, but I’m never again lose the fun of chasing the projects, sending out my work, and having fun with my writing.
A good friend of mine says I am lucky. When he goes to work, he gets paid so much per hour and then goes home. When he gets up in the morning, he has no chance of suddenly having great things happen to him, suddenly getting rich, suddenly getting well known. But when I get up in the morning and write something new, I have that chance of making money on that project for a lot of decades, I have the chance of making a big sale, of getting rich. Every day I have a chance of hitting a home run, as he calls it. And that feeling of possibilities is just wonderful and powers the fun of submissions. Every time I mail something, it might be the one that hits big, or just sells and starts something with a new house, a new editor, even a new name for me. When you look at writing in the correct way, it really is the best job on the planet if you can keep the control and the fun.
Back to my earlier point. If something or someone is in your way, get rid of the blockage. If your agent is slowing you down or holding projects or wanting you to rewrite, the fun is gone, the excitement of a possible new future is on hold. Get rid of the blockage and move on, regain the fun and the great possibilities of simply sending a manuscript to an editor.
Dean talking about the fun of submissions reminds me of another point, which is that agents seem to view submission and, in particular, REJECTION in a light that doesn’t work from my perspective as a writer.
Many agents (perhaps most) see their credibility, their reputations in-house at publishers, and the productivity of their editorial contacts as being based on having a high hit-to-miss ratio with submissions–a high ratio of submissions that the editor likes and makes an offer on.
From Slick Agent’s perspective, for example, if he sends 10 submissions to Lucky Editor at Major Publisher, and Lucky makes an offer on 9 of them, then Slick can count on being treated as an IMPORTANT agent at that house with a ratio like that. In particular, he can count on anything he sends to Lucky getting a fast read because, from Lucky’s perspective, Slick knows what Lucky likes and wants to acquire. That’s how Slick and Lucky become professional buddies, and thus also how Lucky becomes one of the small handful of editors to whom Slick sends most of his clients’ work. In this same vein, Slick will also be most interested in acquiring new clients if he thinks their work will appeal to Lucky. He may well also encourage existing clients to write the sorts of things that he knows Lucky is looking for.
HOWEVER… if Slick’s hit-to-miss ratio decreases enough (or, alternately, if he simply never achieves a good enough ratio with Lucky), then he goes back to being “just another agent” instead of being Lucky’s special buddy. His submissions can sit on her desk for months. So Slick is VERY protective of that hit-to-miss ratio (or, alternately, VERY eager to try to achieve a good ratio) and VERY reluctant to send anything to Lucky that he isn’t positive she’s going to love and want to buy.
As we’ve already discussed, from the writer’s perspective, one of the big problems with this scenario is that Slick, erring on the side of caution, is often WRONG, and therefore refuses to send MSs to Lucky that should indeed be sent to her. And thus Slick, instead of facilitating a career, gets IN THE WAY of his clients doing business and having careers.
Another big problem is that, to the writer, a rejection from Lucky usually just means that Lucky didn’t like -that- book; but to Slick, by contrast, when Lucky rejects a book, the WHOLE HIT-TO-MISS ratio is now in jeopardy–thus putting Slick’s credibility, reputation, and importance with Lucky, and perhaps with that house, on the line. Or, alternately, if Slick’s whole relationship with Lucky consists of 3 rejections and no buys, she may well become an editor to whom Lucky refuses to send anything–even if YOU know Lucky and Lucky has said to YOU that she’d really like to get you under contract.
I have no idea what the viable hit-or-miss ratio is for an agent with an editor (4 out of 10? 6 out of 10? 9 out of 10?). And, actually, I really don’t think AGENTS have a firm idea of what it is, either. I think it’s about individual instinct, individual insecurity, how volatile or narcissistic a particular agent is, etc… But quite a few agents seem to have a point where they feel their hit-or-miss ratio is in jeopardy… and they blame the writer for it: “YOUR manuscript made ME look bad. YOUR manuscript is jeopardizing MY credibility.” Etc.
To too many agents, in too many instances, the rejection is NOT about the editor not liking that book, but rather, the rejection is all about THEM: THEIR judgment, THEIR reputation, THEIR standing, THEIR profile, THEIR importance in-house, THEIR importance to a given editor, etc.
This is, from my perspective, a totally unproductive and skewed way to look at rejection, one that focuses on all the wrong things… but then again, -I- am a writer with manuscript after manuscript to offer, whereas THEY are agents who have nothing to offer an editor but their judgment. So whereas I’m confident that if Lucky doesn’t like my manuscript, another editor may nonetheless like it; and whereas I’m confident that if Lucky doesn’t like -that- manuscript of mine, she may nonetheless like another MS of mine… by contrast, the ONLY thing that a lot of agents can see in a rejection is that their judgment, which is what THEIR careers rely on, has just gotten a pie in the face and jeopardized their hit-to-miss ratio.
This plays a big role in agents being so bizarrely reluctant to send out manuscripts… even though, as Dean has just pointed out, er, sending out manuscripts is the ONLY way to sell them, and selling manuscripts is the ONLY way agents make any money. From the writer’s perspective, NOT sending out MSs makes about as much sense as being a shopkeeper who won’t open the shop; if we won’t even let customers SEE our wares, then we can’t POSSIBLY sell them, for goodness sake! But from Slick Agent’s perspective, every submission puts HIS credibility on the line, and therefore every submission in Slick’s eyes has a risk factor that it does NOT have for the writer.
Which means the writer’s agenda (to keep sending out a MS until someone buys it) is often at odds with the agent’s agenda (to avoid rejection).
(In my experience, a number of agents don’t only get discouraged after a small number of rejections and give up, they also get NASTY–to the writer. And this, too, has to do with their conviction that rejection is about THEM and DAMAGING to them.)
This also has a lot to do with agents getting clients to rewrite and rewrite (and then often not sending out the book anyhow). I think that what agents are trying to achieve with that unproductive process is to wind up with a MS that they’re not afraid will be rejected. And, well, there simply is no guarantee of that sort in this biz. Rejection is always one of the possibilities when you submit a book.
What I have found over and over is that, just as Dean has said on this blog, all it takes is ONE editor who loves the book, and you’ve got a sale. But you’ve got to FIND that editor–and, unfortunately, agents seem to be the biggest impediments to doing that at LEAST as often as (and quite possibly MORE than) they are a shortcut to that. I have also found, as many other writers have, that if an editor really likes your writing, then she’s interested in seeing more from you even if she rejected THAT particular project. So, overall, this fear of rejection gettingin the way of sending out MSs, while it actually does have some validity for the agent, since the agent is marketing his judgment to the editor, is absolutely counter-productive for the writer.
And a writer’s experience with this has a lot to do with attitudes about agents. Which is another example of why there’s no right way or universal answer. For some writers, after all, Slick works out very well as an agent in this common scenario: He thinks Lucky will love the writer’s MS and sends it to Lucky, who does indeed love it and buys it, and keeps buying the writer for years to come.
I like your last comment Dean. And that’s partially the feeling I got when I realized I didn’t have to use an agent to get to a publisher (though I do expect to use one when I find one to negotiate, or use an IP.)
Even though I haven’t made any big sales yet, I have a better idea of what my course of action is going to be. I get excited about getting a new story in the mail. Especially since I feel like I’m getting better and better at writing them.
Ten years ago, I finished a 120,000 word novel over four years and barely sent anything to agents.
Frustrated, I spent the time between not writing and being a working stiff.
With my wife’s encouragement, I got back to the computer and started writing again a few years ago.
In 2008, I wrote 80,000 words and finished a novel and miserably, sent it to agents.
In 2009, I wrote 140,000 words, finished four short stories and a novel. They’re all in the mail to publishers as of a few weeks ago.
In 2010, my goal is 200,000 words. I’m already 20,000 words in with 3 chapters on my next novel and 2 short stories written. One sent and one to be sent in a few weeks.
I haven’t had real success yet (like Brad getting a sale to Analog or winning WOTF), but I know the road to get there. I’m excited and can’t wait to get to the computer to write more.
And for the quotes that I have on my writing wall. These are my three:
To make a resolution and act accordingly is to live with hope
— S. Suzuki
All courses of action are risky, so prudence is no in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
— Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
IT IS NOT THE CRITIC WHO COUNTS: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again…who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.
— Teddy Roosevelt
Cheers!
Tom
Laura, that was fantastic, and really, really made things clear. Back later with a few things to add, but wow, thanks for that!
[QUOTE=Laura]I sat through a talk by a bishot agent a year or two ago (well, actually, I only sat through half of it; then I felt bored and disgusted, so I went to the bar)[/QUOTE]
Laura, you I like.
Not just because I find myself also working for an imprint of Harlequin.
But rather because anyone who has such a handle on blue collar, street level common sense that they know when the hell to get up out of a BS situation and go to the bar has GOT to be alright.
Wow. I’m reading this from the newbie trenches (while chanting the “must get an agent” mantra) and between this post and the one from the 13th, my eyes are being pried open.
Thanks Dean, Laura and other commenters for sharing your experience and stories.
Today is the day I become proactive instead of crying over my stack of agent rejections.
Thanks.
I’ve learned a lot. Thank you, Dean and Laura and everyone else who’d commented.
I read this by Laura:
“Many agents (perhaps most) see their credibility, their reputations in-house at publishers, and the productivity of their editorial contacts as being based on having a high hit-to-miss ratio with submissions–a high ratio of submissions that the editor likes and makes an offer on.”
This reminded me of medical school. A general surgeon said that when they operated for appendicitis, when they actually lifted out the appendix, 7 out of 10 of them were infected. They liked that ratio because they figured they needed to take out that many to ensure they got them all. Now everyone’s so excited about scanning them first that a) many surgeons don’t want to operate without a scan first, b) the radiologists feel overworked and don’t want to do the scans, while c) the emergency doctor (me) is left arguing with both of them. I recently pushed through a scan on the weekend and the radiologist called me back and said, “I nearly fell off my chair, but it’s appendicitis.”
Similarly, in writing, I think all of us would benefit from letting go of this hit-to-miss ratio. As a writer, I’ve blogged about having fun instead of having to “hit” with everything I write (http://melissayuaninnes.wordpress.com/2010/01/11/waste-not-fun-naught/). I’d like the agents to let go of their Next Big Thing Myth. And I’d like publishers to take more risks with their lists.
In the meantime, thanks again for clarifying the business and making us aware of our options.
–Melissa
Melissa, again in the “there is no RIGHT answer” vein, the high hit-to-miss ratio scenario works well for an editor. If an editor has got a strong relationship with, say, 6 different agents who each have a high hit-to-miss ratio, so that a high percentage of what they show her is stuff that she buys, this increases her productivity enormously by cutting down on the amount of material she essentially WASTES HER TIME reading–i.e. stuff she’s not going to buy.
Particularly since an editor really isn’t someone who gets paid to read. MOST of an editor’s job now is administrative. Then there’s editing. So reading material in search of something to buy comes low down on the list. And from the editor’s perspective, any time spent reading something she DOESN’T ACQUIRE is just another hour of her life she can never get back.
So an editor tends to really value an agent who shows her a high percentage of stuff she buys, this turning it into money-making product for her company.
Meanwhile, publishers are HIGHLY risk-averse; therefore their employees (editors) are, too.
Writers are in this business for love of writing. Publishers in this business to make money; and so a publisher won’t acquire a book it doesn’t think can make money–or that it doesn’t think can make ENOUGH money.
As a friend of mine once put it, every publisher wants to be the SECOND house to discover the next trend, to hop on the next bandwagon. No one wants to be the FIRST, because being the first implies RISK, and publishers are HIGHLY risk-averse. All they care about is making money, and for that, they are happiest and most comfortable with a Sure Thing. This most commonly includes an author or a type of book that some OTHER house has already proven can make money.
Falling like poisoned birds out there. Just heard tonight of another agent quitting, another of the new breed of rewriters.
I’m working on yet another myth blog about agents, this one on the topic Laura is talking about. Agent focus. It’s a fine line to walk, but should have it done in a day or so. As Laura has been pointing out, agents have an odd and very split focus that isn’t sometimes on the correct side for a writer’s employee. For example, if an agent is more concerned about keeping an editor working relationship happy by not sending out many client’s books to keep the sell-through with that editor high, then the next question is how much will that agent really fight that editor for you in a contract negotiation??? What will that agent give the editor in your contract to keep the editor happy? And secondly, if your employee has a tight relationship with a certain editor, how likely is the agent to send out the manuscript to five or ten other editors who are not so tight to get an auction going?? And then run the auction fairly. Lots and lots of questions when you really start looking at agents who are in tight with just a few editors. That’s the subject of my next Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing blog. Titled The Myth is that your agent is always on your side. That’s an ugly myth and seldom talked about. Stay tuned.
Dropping like poisoned birds, indeed!
Kind of makes one feel rather like Fortinbras, wandering into the final scene of HAMLET to find the stage littered with bodies.
Laura
Laura, that makes sense. We all want to get rich with little risk and little time wasted. I know publishers have small margins.
I’m just musing aloud that in order to capitalize on the next big thing, you (the writer, agent, or publisher) might want to take a little more risk, if you can afford it.
Dean, looking forward to your next cow-killing!
Melissa
One thing I actually love about writing is that there is no material cost to generating product. Sure, there are workshops, printed paper, mailings, a workstation of some sort, and so on, but it’s just not the same as developing a product for sale for several thousand or million dollars that could fail in the long run. Of course, one can spend considerable money developing one’s craft.
That said, the one cost of a writing project, and a very serious one, is time. It’s been said often that the phrase “Time is money” is an insult to time. More money can always be generated, though it might be difficult. But time is a precious commodity that once spent is lost forever.
So we lose time when generating a new project that could fail, but we also gain experience, and our “failed” project might ultimately be picked up. Furthermore, if we didn’t write, we would spend that time doing things possibly far less productive.
At the end of the day, if I don’t write, I read, watch television, or play video games. Sure, those things might entertain me (some less than others), but there is an extremely low likelihood that I will ever earn any money doing that, and even less likelihood that I will entertain someone else, which is ultimately the goal.
So I write, and I am thankful that I can develop my craft at relatively low out-of-pocket expense.
For the last 14 months I have been thinking about the agent myth. The first time I heard of it (at master class), it rang true as a dropping stone. I understood it intellectually. I believed it wholeheartedly. I was even excited by the possibilities the truth opened up for my career. But I’ve never had the nerve to buck against the accepted ways of doing things and see what happens when the rubber hits the road. Not so coincidentally, I haven’t sent a query yet. This series of posts and comments have finally gotten me there. I will feel nervous, second guess my choices, but I WILL be sending queries to editors not agents. My tipping point has finally been found. Thanks for the good info, especially the personal experience stories.
Jeremy et al:
I hear the myth spouted off all the time even from established pros, who then tell me privately they don’t actually believe what they’re saying. And at conferences I’ve heard many editors on panels say they only accept agented submissions just as their published guidelines state.
Now in complete disconnect with these public statements I’ve had pitch meetings with the same editor. After my pitch the editor told me to send the manuscript to them directly not through an agent. What’s with that?
Also, as a relative newbie I mail direct to editors all the time and only one wrote back we don’t accept unagented submissions, which I infer to mean they didn’t like the manuscript. BTW This one out of dozens.
When you think about this in simple terms why would I send my work to someone who can’t pay me? I think of Laura’s example of the big agent with big, and ultimately empty, promises is a perfect example why you would sell the manuscript first then get the agent (or IP lawyer) to negociate the details under your direction and with your approval. And if you don’t know anything about publishing contracts you better find out about them.
As many have said here the myths around agents are deeply ingrained and more of us need to challenge the myth and finally crack this egg.
Since we’re, to some degree, fantasizing here … and I apologize if anyone else has brought up the same point, but …
The root of the problem seems to stem from the fact that the publisher pays THE AGENT first. Maybe the the publishers should be paying THE WRITER first. Then the writer cuts a check to the agent.
Wow. Big duh.
Helen, all you have to do is ask for that in the contract and it can happen. The hard part is breaking the mold with how some agents think. But many, many writers do that now, and I would never think of doing it any other way at this point. Pay the writer first or split payments. Both work great and solve a lot of issues.
Helen,
That is a REALLY interesting suggestion. And what’s equally interesting to me: This NEVER ONCE OCCURRED TO ME.
The idea that money flows to the agent FIRST– or, at most, that it flows simultaneously to the writer and the agent, in a split-payments arrangement–is so established and ingrained… that the idea that the money could flow FIRST to the writer, who would then pay the agent… has never once occurred to me. Even though that is EXACTLY how I pay my lawyer! (She works, she bills me, and then I write her a check.)
I would be SO interested to see writers start introducing this concept in their interviews and negotiations with prospective agents.
I also think that the vast majority of writers will NEVER introduce this concept. The vast majority of writers want to hire an agent, not to overturn the way the agenting business model has (at least within living memory) always worked.
I also think that, from a practical perspective that I mentioned earlier, a lot of writers wouldn’t actually WANT the money coming to them first. If a writer’s income comes, over the course of 10 years, from 3 different US publishers and 20 different foreign publishers, then most writers just want to deal with ONE business (their agent) rather than logging mail and payments twice a year from 23 different businesses, all of whom pay on different schedules (and sometimes in different currencies). Keeping track of collecting, logging, and dividing all those payments is a good example of a task that almost all writers would prefer their agent simply do for them. Similarly, most writers don’t want to have to notify ALL those different businesses if they change addresses, or if they’re at a summer home for part of every year, or if they’re traveling, or in hospital for 4 weeks, etc. They find it less headache to let an agent deal with all that, so that they, in turn, just have to deal with an agent.
Meanwhile, I don’t think there are enough hours in the day for me to list all the ways I imagine that agents would object to the writer being paid first and then paying the agent… but the mind boggles! (g)
I suppose if the writer were being paid by twenty-three different sources, and therefore is generating enough income to afford it, he could hire a financial management firm to handle all of that.
The firm could receive payments, deposit into appropriate accounts (do publishers ever pay by direct deposit?), and inform of address changes. If I think about it, I can come up with many other tasks to be performed by that firm.
Then all those things would be managed by someone who’s actually set up to manage them, rather than an agent, who shouldn’t be.
I’m sure there are authors who do such a thing, just like there are athletes and actors that do the same thing (of course, many of those hire bad ones).
And given that agents want to read the slush, demand rewrites, give career advice, assign writing projects, and handle financial management, I’m surprised that none of them want to prepare tax returns as well. Though I wouldn’t put it past them.
But I think that might be where all (I hope) writers would draw the line. “Why in the hell would I pay an agent to do my taxes when I can hire an accountant?”
“Bingo, Writer boy. Bingo. So why in the hell would you hire one to manage your money and distribute funds to you?”
Actually, now that I’m on this, it brings me to a great point. Having the agent be paid first and then having them distribute the writer’s funds to him has a direct, ridiculous equivalent.
A business opens its doors and begins to manufacture products. It also hires some employees to handle certain tasks within the company. The business then sells the manufactured products to the market, but it does not demand or accept payment directly from its customers. Rather, it has the customers pay its EMPLOYEES all the reƿenues first. Then the employees deduct their salary and pay the remainder to the company.
I think we can all agree that’s the most ridiculous business proposal ever created. And yet it’s how the bulk of the publishing industry is designed. That’s just asinine.
Jeremy, again, as Laura has pointed out, in a large number of cases, this system works fine for many writers and I would never try to rock those writers out of a system working for them.
But it does get kind of head-shaking when you come at the writer/agent relationship from any kind of logical real-world business perspective. In a number of places that are discussing this, people are saying I have an advantage because of my three years of law school. I find that kind of funny because in essence they are saying “Dean has an advantage because he knows good business practice and I don’t have to know that.” All I am saying is that writers need to know business. I have no desire to change the agent system, I just want writers to take responsibility for their decisions. And make informed decisions when it comes to hiring someone to deal with money and careers.
Informed decisions. If writers would just do that when hiring agents, most of these problems would just vanish. And so would a lot of the scam and slush-reading agents, and publishers would be forced to find another door to hold out the slush. But it is the writers that have to say to a perspective agent, “Tell me something about yourself and your business.” Before they hire them.
In other words, use that list of questions and just interview your future employee.
Heh. Economics of employment, so to speak.
I have conversations all the time about tipping of restaurant workers. I am in the “good tip for good service” camp.
My wife, having spent many years in the restaurant business, feels guilty if she doesn’t leave a substantial tip, unless the server commits some egregious offense. She feels that if people don’t tip well, then the servers can’t afford to live. That’s true, but I don’t feel bad about that at all because it’s a natural and intended consequence of the tip system.
I tell her that if everyone who felt they got bad service from a particular server left a bad tip, over time that server would see the writing on the wall and either improve his service or find another job in another field.
Kind of the same as the writer-agent model. As long as writers keep feeding the bad agents, not only will they keep working in the same way, but more and more people will flock to that group because it is easier work. If writers insist on hiring agents for what they are intended and expecting them to perform that work and nothing more or less, the bad agents would either have to improve or go by the wayside.
But most people aren’t aware of this simple dynamic, and choose to ignore it or assert that it isn’t true when presented with that logical argument.
I have to agree with Jeremy on the whole tipping analogy. I’ve worked in pretty much every position in the restaurant field except General Manager and Kitchen Manager ( and sadly that’s not an exaggeration, I truly have done it all) and I wish people would leave bad tips when the server does a crappy job. I hate the sense of entitlement and arrogance that a lot of servers, and a lot of other workers including agents, have these days.
I know that makes me sound like an old man spouting stories of ” Back in my day…” but I think it’s true. I think a lot of the problems that we have with agents and, even a lot of the professional courtesy problems that Kris mentions on her blog, come from this type of mindset. I can’t tell you how many servers I’ve worked with have that have been rude to tables and been shocked that they got a bad tip. Seriously? And I think there is a definite corallary with agents. Also, I think that this relates to what Michael Stackpole is saying on his blog. I think too many people want to have things handed to them and don’t want to work. They see writing like winning the lottery. I used to work in a music club where we booked national acts and you’d see the same mentally with a lot of the local bands. They think that it’s the freakin’ lottery not hard work.
I speak for anyone else but I like it when I’ve worked my arse off and I accomplish something. I feel like Tom Hanks in that scene from Castaway, “Look at me, I’ve made fire!” It could be a fairly simple thing but when it’s something important to me, I feel like the smartest man alive when I accomplish a goal.
Anyway, I know this is a bit of a heavy rant from the guy who usually makes jokes about angry cows but what Jeremy said touched a nerve.
Cheers,
Steve
A perseverance toy. Years ago, from Levenger I think, I picked up a pewter paperweight ring that’s fun to play with. I use it to keep my hands busy when I’m proofing or pondering. Engraving reads: “The secret to success is constancy to purpose.” -Benjamin Disraeli
Something I didn’t see in here. When an agent is terminated, they remain the agent-of-record for the works they have successfully sold. How about for the rights that haven’t been sold to that work? Agent sells hard, paper, e-book and is then terminated. Author goes on to sell play, movie, audio. Are those commissions still typically tied back to the original agent-of-record?
Matt, nope, if those rights are not in the original contract, then they are not considered part of the agreement with the original agent and the author is free to get other help with those. Just the rights sold in the original contract are all that stick with the original agent.
Just realized I never closed the loop on this one. The reason I asked (5/25) is I had a chance to review an agency agreement for an agent interested in representing and marketing my varied works. After all, I was pinging 1 agent for every 5 editors so I’d be “ready.” And this one got excited by my several genres, an unlikely, but possibly good fit. The agency agreement was short, simple, concise. In part 6 of 6 “Termination Clause” however…
“Agent shall continue to act on behalf of Author in connection with any literary work sold prior to termination of this Agreement. Agent shall receive full commission for the disposition of any rights to the literary work sold after such termination takes effect.”
The first sentence appears harmless, until I noticed “literary work” not “literary right.” And the second line made no sense.
I asked outright to be clear, “So, if you sold paper and e-rights, then 2 years after termination I sell movie rights, you’d expect 15% of the movie rights?” “Well, yes, that’s an industry standard.” (nope!)
I still couldn’t believe so I asked the scenario that happened to a friend: “If you sold the Polish translation rights, and nothing else. Then two years after termination I sold the paper-English rights?”
The exact response: “No, I’m afraid that if we sold English print rights, and we parted ways, we would still be responsible for selling the unsold rights to the literary work.”
FOREVER! Doesn’t even expire with the underlying publishing contract! So, if I left them, I’d owe them 15% of every right on any book they’d sold any right to and I’d owe my new agent 15%… Forever! YOIKS! (and people sign this!) This is not a small agency. They have a good reputation, I didn’t find any bad buzz on over a dozen blogs that I checked. And if an experienced agent at a reputable agency thinks that’s an industry standard… would I really want them negotiating my publishing contract? What else would they think was industry standard? And once I realized that, I asked the next question, why would I ever risk a lesser agent who would know even less?!?
When “the deal” comes, I heading for a lawyer.
Very sharp, Matt. Great catch. And an ugly clause that’s for sure, yet writers sign them all the time because of that “it’s standard” line, which of course it is not. What a scam artist. Wow! Luckily you avoided that trap. Nice job.