Mar 09 2010
Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Agents Take Care Of Your Money
Would you e-mail a perfect stranger and offer to give them control over your money? Sound like an internet scam? Sure it does, yet this is what fiction writers do all the time.
I have touched on this in a number of different ways in the other agent chapters in this book, and had no intention of coming back to it in a stand-alone chapter. Then I started getting private e-mails about how I was wrong about agents, about how they were partners to writers, about how this agent or that agent had taken great care of the writer. Fine, except for one issue. With attitudes like those writers had, they are setting themselves up for a great financial fall.
Now, to be clear, I have no problem with the standard model of writers hiring agents when they need one, usually early on in a career, and usually to handle contracts and other details like that after the writer has gotten an offer from a publisher. All that is fine and dandy as long as the writer knows what they are doing, walks into the relationship with eyes open, and keeps the employer/employee relationship clear. Agent is the employee of the writer, not the other way around. (I give eight suggestions on how to hire and keep an agent at the end of this chapter.)
As I got the letters from published writers taking me to task for not being balanced, I wrote back and asked each writer if they had met their agent. And if the writer had done a financial check on their agent. And if the writer had even been in the agent’s office or in the agent’s home.
Most had met their agent only once, usually at a convention. None had done a financial check, and none had been in their agent’s home. But all backed their agent completely and believed in them completely.
In other words, they were trusting their entire income, which could add up to millions over a number of years if they started to hit, to a complete stranger, a person they really didn’t know, had spent little or no time with, and had done not one lick of checking out.
So I ask the question again: Would you e-mail a complete stranger and offer to let them handle all your money?
Again, of course you wouldn’t, yet by sending out query letters to agents you picked out of a market guide or heard about from a friend, you are doing EXACTLY the same thing.
Back to a few basics I have mentioned before, but want to stress once more to be clear about this money topic.
Basic #1: Agents are not trained or regulated in any way.
Now, in the real world, lawyers are often hired to handle money in one fashion or another for a client. Lawyers have seven years of college which includes three years of law school and State Bar Associations that watch them and handle complaints. They also must pass one nasty test to become a lawyer after finishing law school. Even then, any sane person would check out a lawyer first to handle money matters.
I got one young professional writer comparing their agent to a real estate agent. Now real estate agents are trained and take licensing tests and have organizations in each state to kill their licenses if problems arise. (Book agents, none of that.)
And nowhere in the sales process of a home does the buyer hand all the money to a real estate agent and say, “When you get around to it, send the seller his share.”
Nope, money goes directly through to the seller, with the real estate agent getting a check at closing for only their percentage fee. So not sure at all where book agents and real estate agents are alike. That comparison has always puzzled me, and just doesn’t fit at all on the money side.
Basic #2: Normally, all money is sent to the agent first under the agent’s name.
For those who do not have an agent yet, let me be clear here. In the standard agent/writer model, a publisher sends the agent ALL the money, and then when the agent gets around to it, the agent sends the writer the 85% share.
Why do I say when the agent gets around to it? Because, that’s how it works.
I had one agent who had this “policy” that I fought for seventeen years. If a check came in on Wednesday, I would have a check cut on the following FRIDAY and mailed to me. The agent sat on my money, and all the other writer’s money in that agency, for upwards of two weeks before I could cash a check.
Those of you who understand money just went “Wow!” That’s right, imagine millions running through that agency office every month because they have many NYT Bestsellers in their house. Now imagine earning interest on that money while it sat there. It’s called “the float” and it’s a normal business practice in many agency offices.
You can change this policy by asking in the contract negotiations that the checks be split. The publisher sends you directly the 85% and the agent her 15%. If all writers did this in all future contracts, a vast amount of the money issues with agents would just vanish completely. But agents will tell new writers that can’t be done. Why? Because they like the control and the float. But of course it can be done. Just put it in the contract with the publisher.
There are many, many agents out there folks, who live off of the float, who hold a writer’s royalty check to help with their rent. Writers who have trusted an agent like this won’t know when a royalty check comes in because, guess what, the royalty statement is sent to the agent with the check. Or overseas money. Or audio or electronic money. Or movie money. Agents will send you the money “when they get around to it” and can afford it.
Are there rules against co-mingling funds? Nope. Again, back to no rules, no training, nothing. Often an agent or small agency will just have one checking account, won’t even keep a separate author funds account. They will pay the writer out of that account right along with their rent and power bill and their own paycheck. And we all know what happens when things get slow on income in that situation. What gets paid first, the rent or the author’s British royalty payment?
Basic #3: Agents will sometimes ask for power of attorney.
Yeah, I said that. Agents will often ask writers for various reasons to give them power of attorney. That means without the writer knowing anything about it or even reading a contract, the agent can sign it for you and transfer your copyrights.
I had no idea that this happened until about ten years ago a friend of mine told me he had signed over power of attorney to his agent to make it easier to handle overseas sales. I started laughing, thinking at first he was joking, and when I discovered he wasn’t joking, I wanted to slap him to wake him up.
Then I started asking around and discovered this is common practice in many agencies.
Back to basics #1. Agents are not regulated or trained in any way.
So now my question is this: Would you give someone you don’t know control over all your money and also power of attorney to sign contracts for you to sell all your stuff?
Is there any wonder that writer’s organizations warn writers against the worst of the scams against beginning writers? When it comes to business and writing, normally sane people just flat lose any business sense they have. As a group, fiction writers are the dumbest business people on the face of the planet. Period.
I was no exception to this problem. Now understand, I have owned many, many businesses over the years, went to almost three years of law school, and know how to handle money for the most part. Yet I hired an agent without knowing her, without checking out the fairly new agency she worked for, and gave her control over my entire income for a very long time.
And then when I switched to another agent, I DID THE SAME THING YET AGAIN.
As I say, writers, me included, when it comes to our writing, are the dumbest business people in the world. Period.
Solutions? There are many, actually. I have a good friend who is a private detective who has a fairly large firm (again licensed by the state) whose main job it is to research possible employees for corporations and small businesses. I’m going to ask him what it would take, what he might charge, to do the same for writers when they are hiring an agent. I think this needs to be a part of the future landscape of agents.
How do you know if the agent you are about to hire and put in control of your money doesn’t have two hundred past fraud cases against him in New York? (I know of one major agent in New York that has been sued for taking clients funds over a dozen times that I know about, yet he still has major clients and a ton of writers on his list. Why? He always settles the suits with a gag order on the writers.)
One more time: I am not against the standard writer/agent business model in publishing. I feel writers need good agents to help them through much of the early years. But for heaven’s sake, think like a business person when hiring an agent.
Basic BUSINESS rules for hiring and working with an agent:
1… Never hire an agent before you have an offer on a book. Old cliche that has been around for a long, long time. The agent you can hire before you have sold a book is not the agent you are going to want after you have sold a book.
2… Research, research, research the agent and agency. Talk to their other clients, both past and present, check into their finances, ask about how their firm handles money. (This is not counting all the questions about rewriting and such covered in other chapters.)
3… Talk to the agent on the phone a couple of times before hiring them. Never hire someone through an e-mail or the internet. Yikes, you do that, I know a bank in Russia who would like to send you an e-mail.
4… Always split all money in contracts. Never allow any agent to handle your money. Period.
5… If you are having an agent submit books for you (see other chapters for reasons to do and not do this), have the agent copy you on ALL letters to editors and ALL rejections.
6… Never let the agent make a decision or accept or turn down a deal without talking to you first. Of course, if they ask for a power of attorney, either laugh and ask them if they are kidding or fire them.
7… Remain in control of your speed, the subject matter of your books, and all other creative aspects of your career. Never let an agent tell you to slow down or write to order.
8… Never think of the agent as anything but an employee. They are not your partner and you do not work for them. They work for you. Period.
Now, under all that above, it is very possible to have a wonderful working relationship with an agent. You and a good agent can go places and both can make a lot of money and I promise that if you follow the above eight pieces of advice, you will have far, far fewer problems with your employee than you would otherwise.
Just keep repeating over and over the topic question of this chapter.
Would you offer a perfect stranger control over all your money and your future as a writer?
If the answer is no, then you and I are on the same page.
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Copyright 2010 Dean Wesley Smith
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This is part of my inventory in my bakery now. (Confused on that, read the Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing post about making money with writing.) I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie. If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.
And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated. Once this book is done, I will send you a copy. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!
If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it. Every week or so I will be adding a new chapter on the myths and sacred cows of publishing. Stay tuned. Upcoming are chapters on bestsellers, research, rejections, and so much more. This business has a lot of myths. An entire book full.
Thanks, Dean
Fiscal mismanagement is a problem that pops up surprisingly often in reality, and yet in the theory of agenting, it’s dismissed as a rare and minor occurrence that we’re not supposed to take seriously or worry about.
Just off the top of my head, before I’ve even finished my first full cup of coffee, here are some examples. None of these were/are scam agencies or con artists; they were/are all reputable, well-known, professional agents with only published writers (and, in several cases, many recognizable names) on their clients lists.
An agent who represented a friend of mine, as well as a number of other professional writers, was arrested for embezzlement. The agent would lie to clients about the offers being made and change the sums of the advances in the copies of the contracts that the clients saw. In this way, the agent embezzled thousands from the agency clients, including $12,000 from my friend, who worked with the police and gave a deposition against the agent. The best part of this story? This was all more than a decade ago, and today… the agent is back in business, trawling for clients, and was even recently a guest speaker at a prominent conference featuring, er, reputable agents whom attendees should supposedly feel safe querying.
An sf/f agent, one who was always threatening to sue former clients, eventually become so well known by reputation that no sf/f writers wanted to work with this agent anymore, so the agent moved over to romance and built a large agency of romance writers who DID NOT WANT TO HEAR from the sf/f writers trying to warn them. (This quality is not unique to romance writers. Had the agent switched genres in reverse, I doubt the sf/f writers would have behaved differently than the romance writers did.) Until finally, one day, I got a call from one of the agent’s formerly loyal new clients, now telling me that a class action suit was being prepared against the agent, because a lot of the new clients were missing a lot of money.
Well, the agency dissolved (though whether this was as a result of the lawsuit or to avoid the consequences of the lawsuit, I can’t remember now). And what happened to the agent? Drummed out of the biz? Er, no. The agent got taken on as a full partner at a major New York agency with many high profile clients. And (you can see it coming, can’t you?) a few years later that entire agency fell completely apart and was sued by multiple clients trying to get their money. So now you’re thinking, okay, SURELY the agent disappeared from the biz forever after THAT, right? Well, er, no. Within a few years, the agent was applying at agencies, and –my- then-agent was on of the ones considering hiring the agent, because this was (wait for it!) a “big name agent.” I don’t know what happened after my then-agent passed (after I explained about the massive, high-profile, in-all-the-idustry-headlines lawsuit that had somehow completely escaped the agency’s attention), but I do at least know that =you= won’t run into this agent, who is now deceased.
I filed formal complaints with AAR, NINC, SFWA, and RWA against a former agent of mine who was refusing to consent to split payments while meanwhile repeatedly failing to send me my royalty statements. (I have also consulted three different literary lawyers. But my problems with this former-agent persist, because there are so few laws or standards governing agents—or preventing them from screwing a client or ex-client. So, quite against my will, my 85% on the deals negotiated while I was a client still passes through the hands of someone whom I fired, with whom I am on acrimonious terms, and about whom I have filed multiple formal complaints for mishandling my paperwork since I left.) I contacted other former clients of the same agent to see if anyone was having similar problems, and I made an aggravating discovery: NONE of the –male- former clients whom I found were having ANY problems, while ALL of the –female- former clients were having problems similar to (no—actually, WORSE than) mine. This included one former writer who spent months trying to get an overdue check from this (hullo!) reputable, respected, high profile agent. The agent kept saying the money had never come. The editor kept saying the check had indeed been issued. After MONTHS of this, the writer got verifications from the publisher of what day the check in question had cleared, months earlier, and went to the agency with that information–and the agent (without apologizing) FINALLY paid the writer. Unfortunately, though, neither this writer nor any of the others whom I contacted wanted to join me in filing complaints. (The various former clients whom I contacted were afraid of retaliation if they talked about or DID anything about the problems they were having with this agent, who is seen (accurately, in my experience) as volatile and vindictive.) And–like several of the previous examples–this is a successful agent quoted often in publishing articles (and one whom many writers thought I was very lucky to hire and a fool to fire).
These are all real examples, and I personally know writers fiscally affected in every one of these instances. There are many more such examples available, but you get the idea.
So fiscal irregularities in the agenting business aren’t regulated strictly to the charlatans and scam artists who actually have nothing to do with legitimate publishing. Fiscal irregularities with agents occur at every level of the business, including reputable, successful, and high-profile agencies. And yet it continues to be treated and discussed as if it never happens. So I’m glad to see Dean raising these subjects.
Which is just one more reason that, the further I get from the agent-author business model, the less reason I can see for ever going back to it.
Laura Resnick
I was talking lately with a much-published unagented writer (whose former agents made =none= of this writer’s numerous sales, who refused to send out MSs, who retired MSs as “unsaleable” after 3 rejections, and who got angry at the writer for leaving the agency and selling books rather than remaining in unpublished poverty in exchange for the privilege of saying “I have a literary agent,” etc. etc.). And I said what I’d really like to see is a new business model (or, actually, a VARIETY of new business models!) for author representation.
For example, how about a fee-based business model?
Based on an hourly fee, for example, the writer could hire this new-model of agent for any ONE, two, three, four, etc. of the following services: researching the market for your project and making a list of recommended editors/publishers for submissions; writing the pitch/submission letter, or reviewing the one that the author writers; making the submissions and doing the follow-ups; researching a recommended advance level for the project (I find that a lot of writers cite “the agent knows how much money to ask for” as one of their primary reasons for feeling they have to have one); providing a list of recommended literary agents to negotiate the contract (at a fee arranged by the agency for its clients) in the event of an offer.
Clients would pay an initial retainer (as one does with a literary lawyer) equivalent to one or two hour’s of billable time, and applicable to the agency’s initial billable work. After that, clients would be billed for work on a monthly basis (or when a certain sum of billable hours had been reached). Each agency bill to the client would list what work was done in exchange for the payment expected (Ex. Weds, 4/19: 30 minutes following-up on submissions at DAW, Pocket, Pyr, and Bantam — $$.)
If the writer is unhappy with the services, she simply ceases contacting the agency to do work for her, and voila!, the association is over (unless the writer has an outstanding bill and isn’t paying it).
The agency would not be in charge of evaluating the client’s MS or deciding whether it’s saleable, and certainly not in charge of advising the writer how to write or revise MSs. The agency can certainly refuse to work with a prospective client, or to stop working with a current one (and anyone who doesn’t pay their bill should certainly be denied additional services); but the agency’s brief would not include judging whether or not a project is saleable, marketable, or should be submitted. In this business model, what’s saleable is in the eye of editors (who can pay for and publish a book), not agents (who can’t).
Obviously, this model is subject to potential abuse. But as we’ve already seen, the existing model is subject to (PLENTY OF) abuse. I would embrace and celebrate the prospect of an author-representation model that is NOT subject to abuse… but it seems I must continue hoping for someone else to think of it, since my little blonde brain is blank on that score.
However, in truth, I don’t think there’s any hope of a fee-based system being implemented or catching on. It contains none of the things that everyone in the industry currently LIKES about the existing literary-agent business model. (1) Editors probably wouldn’t like it because MSs are not vetted by the agent in this model; and although we’ve discussed here many real-world, experience-based examples of what goes wrong when agents vet MSs for editors, the size of submissions piles are nonetheless so overwhelming that editors at major houses still tend to favor pre-vetting by agents. (2) Most writers probably wouldn’t like it, because the theory of the existing agent model is so very seductive. In the existing theory, you find an agent who LOVES your work, who BELIEVES in it, and who is your dedicated professional partner, through thick and through thin. This is a VERY seductive ideal, compared to the “pay someone on an hourly basis to the do legwork” model that I have proposed above. Finally, (3) This model isn’t NEARLY as prifitable for agents, so I don’t envision anyone who wants to represent authors embracing it. In the current model, an agent who places your work with an editor who buys, say, 6 books from you over a period of 6 years earns, let’s say, $25,000 in US commissions from that one relationship for doing very little more than making a phone call once a year. (And, in too many cases, will simply stop returning your phone calls if that publisher then dumps you after 6 books.) This is in direct contract to how hard an agent would have to work to earn $25,000 from a client in a fee-based system.
“providing a list of recommended literary agents to negotiate the contract ”
OOOPS. I mean a list of recommended literary LAWYERS, of course
This was a critical post on money. Critical! I’m so glad you did this one, Dean.
Here’s recent public example of “Don’t give power of attorney to your agent or financial manager.” There was an article a few months back about Patricia Cornwell dealing with a loss of about $40 million due to embezzlement and mismanagement.
Here’s a link to the article written by Lloyd Grove:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-19/patricia-cornwells-latest-mystery/
And a few fascinating snippets (it’s definitely worth reading the entire article). I love the quote Cornwell makes about Oprah’s advice to her:
“The 53-year-old Cornwell claims that until she severed her relationship with Anchin in July, the firm had power of attorney to write checks on her bank accounts and even file tax returns without her specific approval—apparently an arrangement that is not all that unusual among wealthy celebrities.”…
“Cornwell’s lawyer told me she ruefully recalls a conversation she had several years ago with Oprah Winfrey, when both found themselves sitting together on a dais. “They were chatting about various things, and Patricia was inquiring about Oprah’s business practices. And Oprah said to Patricia, ‘I have one guiding principle: Always sign your own checks.’ Patricia says she wished she had lived by that advice. She will from now on.””
I like Laura’s suggested (several) models. Heck, why even call them agents anymore? We could call them facilitators, since this is basically what they would be doing. Of course, the problem would seem to crop up again unless (somehow) the new model was relentlessly regulated and policed — to try to keep out all the jerks who would want to jump over from agenting.
Alas, as Laura notes, there would be too many things pushing against the facilitator model. Not enough authors sticking together to demand change, and too many editors who still want agents to be vetters and slush surfers.
Thanks, Laura, for the great comments. I also think the model you suggested would be better, but I also agree it won’t happen. You are correct in saying the industry “likes” the current system. It allows publishers to write one check instead of a dozen or more. It allows publishers for the moment to push off their slush reading. But a fee-based system would certainly save a ton of money for writers.
What I find laughable is how writers are fighting hard against publishers for cents in the electronic royalty fight (which is a great fight and important, granted) but at the same time the same writers will turn over all their money and 15% of everything they make to a stranger. Head-shaking. Writers could save a ton of money by going to a fee-based system with agents. But good luck suggesting that to any current agent.
L.M., in our master class, we do a financial role-playing game where a writer will get hit with what we call an “Uncle Marty” role. There are a number of them, illustrating how a scam can take a writer’s money. And everything we do to writers in the game is based on what happened to a writer in the real world. We would never put in the Patricia Cornwell role in the game because one, it’s too stupid for words, and second, it would kill any role-playing career going in the game. What’s funny is that when we hit the writers with an “Uncle Marty” role (a lot less extreme), most of then complain that they would never do that, never allow that to happen “to them.” Of course, same writers hire an agent they have never met or researched at the drop of a nice note. Yup, never happen “to them.”
Thanks for sharing that Patricia Cornwell horror story. She brought it on herself, sadly. Too bad most writers won’t take the lesson from her mistakes.
Another great post, Dean, thanks! I’m glad too for the suggestions at the end. I have a friend who is doing IP law now, I’ve already talked to her about possibly doing contracts for me if/when I sell a book if I can’t find the right agent for me.
And of course the comments are/will be great too. I pretty much sit back and make popcorn while hitting refresh whenever you post new Sacred Cow stuff *grin*
I would love to have someone who would nudge my pubs and make them pay up in a timely manner when they don’t. And I need a new way to track royalty payments. My two pubs have expanded markets, and they’ve been really good about passing me royalties as soon as they receive them, but now they’re coming all the time and I don’t know when to expect what and how to make sure what comes when.
Spreadsheet time, I guess.
I have heard so many embezzlement stories, it’s criminal.
Have you blogged about this? I’m curious about this one, because doesn’t it usually help to have an agent to get that first contract?
1… Never hire an agent before you have an offer on a book. Old cliche that has been around for a long, long time. The agent you can hire before you have sold a book is not the agent you are going to want after you have sold a book.
@izanobu: I too find the Sacred Cow comments section great fun to read.
Laura’s stuff wasn’t on here earlier when I was reading, so thanks to Laura for more insightful comments. And it’s always a pleasure to see what Brad has to say too.
You know, Dean, if you keep talking about past Master Classes (which is fascinating to read about–wish I’d been a fly on the wall to watch those role-playing games), we’ll start nagging you in a year or so to do another.
Natasha, yup, talked about needing an agent to sell a book. Go up to the tab at the top labeled Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing and look for the chapter about agents selling books. Not needed at all. We spend an entire week teaching writers in marketing class how to market their novels and put packages together that get editor’s attentions.
Cheers
Dean
L.M., nope, no more master classes for a while. But we’ve had almost 80 writers go through them in the last eight years and many are names you would recognize with a ton of books out on the stands now. It’s a good class, if I could figure out a way to not have it kill the instructors teaching it and lose me a ton of money in the process, we might do it again at some point.
Hi Dean,
Thanks again for another very enlightening post.
I suppose I should simply quit being surprised by now, but without fail so much in these posts is stuff I’ve never thought about but as soon as you mention it, my reaction is always “Of course! That makes SO MUCH sense!!!”
Thanks Dean and Laura. Just wow. I love you both.
Who the heck came up with the notion of royalty payments going 100% to agents first (let me guess …), so that authors could wait for members of an unregulated profession to send them their 85% for all their labor to produce a book? That really is asinine, and I always thought it’s something I’d never want to agree to. I’m really glad to hear that you can arrange for publishers to send you your money directly. I would have no hesitation to reject an agent or publisher who wouldn’t agree to having the publisher send me my royalties directly.
I’m not bashing agents, because there are many good ones out there (and I want one of the many good ones), but that sort of arrangement is horrid. I mean, hey, what could possibly go wrong? Here Agent Bob, here’s $100K in cash. Now make sure you send Author John his $85K, okay? Scout’s honor? We’ll just trust you to handle that, Agent Bob.
Are you kidding me?
Moses, I wish I was kidding, but alas, it ain’t so. That is exactly how it works, just as you described.
More frightening, even the major bestsellers often still work this way. Head-shaking to anyone with a lick of business sense, but I am no exception to the stupidity. I had trouble with this, but yet signed up for it just like that with two different agents. Not happening again to me, at least not in this lifetime.
Agents will flat tell you the splitting of payments can’t be done. They will be wrong, of course, but they love the float and control of your money. If you become an agent, you would as well.
I can definitely see why many agents would want to be sent the full royalty payment. However, if I was an agent, I don’t think I’d want it to be that way. If the publisher sent the author their money directly, t would just be one less issue for me to have to deal with, and one less thing for me to have to worry about a worst-case scenario for. Your taxes would have to be a little simpler without having so much money moving through your bank accounts, also.
Thanks again, Dean.
We discussed in one or two of the earlier Killing Cows posts about agents =why= many (most?) writers prefer their 85% to go through the agent first, and it’s not a bad idea to review some of those reasons. (This is not to say that I am speaking in FAVOR of that common system. Rather, it’s to say that, like everything else about the agent-author business model, the subject is complicated and has multiple facets.)
Ex. If there’s a problem or mistake in a payment from a publisher, it’s simpler to get fixed if one check has been issued to the agent than if two checks have been issued to you both. Ex. Various writers think that an agent is more likely to act with alacrity and attention in the event of say, a missing check, if the -agent’s- portion of the money is missing, too, by virtue of their commission being bundled in the same check with the writer’s earnings. Ex. Special instructions from the writer (“send payment to my new address; or to my summer home; or hold onto payment until I’ve returned from my six week trip,” etc.) are more likely (not GUARANTEED, but more likely) to be followed by an agent than by the large impersonal accounting machinery of most publishing houses. Ex. If 100% of all monies goes to the agent, then the writer deals with payments (and 1099s) from only one source (the agent) rather than multiple sources (such as, say, 3 US publishers and 12 foreign publishers over the course of 10 years).
And so on.
Keep in mind that mega-success Patricia Cornwell is a novelist who, we gather from the article linked here above, didn’t even want to write her own checks or know where her own money was. Most writers don’t have enough money to be =that= careless with it, but the loathing of paperwork that her behavior suggests certainly isn’t unknown among writers, many of whom do indeed want to whittle down their fiscal paperwork to -just- dealing with the literary agent.
Additionally–and this was a view that I once held, too, so I understand it even if I don’t share it anymore–the agent-author relationship is regularly described as one of “trust” and “mutual goals” and “partnership,” and letting the money flow through the agent is part of that, whereas insisting the money NOT flow through the agent is widely seen as VIOLATING that. My thoughts about it, through four agents, were that if I didn’t trust them to FWD my money to me, then I certainly couldn’t trust them to handle my business and be my professional representative and advisor in my full-time professional career; since I trusted them with the latter, I therefore trusted them with the former.
My eventual decision that I did NOT, in fact, trust literary agents to handle my business and represent me professionally has made the handling of my money a moot point in terms of new decisions, since I haven’t hired a fifth agent and do not foresee hiring one. It’s also given me considerable aggravation, since one of my former agents has consistently rejected my split-payment applications and thus my money now flows through someone with whom I am on acrimonious terms and consier untrustworthy. So, if nothing else, one thing I strongly DO advise is that every author ALWAYS have a written agreement, either with an agency or in the agency-clause of all their book contracts, saying that, if the author indicates a preference for it (not everyone does prefer it), then payments will become split-payments in the event that the author leaves the agency. Do NOT make -my- mistake of assuming that your agent will behave reasonably and professionally in the event of becoming your FORMER agent.
Honestly, the lessons here, as someone pointed out with the Oprah quote, are good for any financial situation. Unfortunately, I fell victim to a well-meaning builder who got behind on his expanding business about six years ago. The root of the problem was that we let him sign all the checks for anything that was purchased to “save time”. Even the bank told us it was normal practice. Normal does not mean that its the best practice for you.
When the builder got behind on other payments, he started shuffling money around to save himself and unfortunately, when the music stopped, we were left without a chair. The end result is a house that costs way more than it should have.
So I appreciate this post. It’s a good reminder no matter what business you’re in.
Moses, you wouldn’t because you clearly understand business and money issues. Most agents don’t, sadly.
Laura, I agree that your examples are what is normal. And that’s part of the problem as we both have discovered.
(Remember, folks, I have never had an issue with an agent. All three of the agents I had were fine with me. And I have nothing against a writer/agent relationship, just trying to help people think this through.)
As Thomas said, what is normal might not be good. When I hire an employee, do I trust them? Yes, to a degree, or I wouldn’t have hired them. But when I hire an employee, should I just hand them my check-book and say, “Here, take care of the money for me” just because they will have their trust feelings hurt if I don’t? Of course not. And why writers do this with people they don’t even know because of the word “agent” in front of their name is beyond me, especially since there is no requirement to be an agent besides a business card. Writers hand over this control to perfect strangers and think THAT is normal. Yow.
I can trust an agent with dealing with negotiating contracts, with talking me up with publishers, maybe even with mailing books if I want them to do that as well, while watching them like a hawk and checking everything they do. Doesn’t mean I have to trust them with my money.
And Laura, your point about have ten or twenty money sources and writers not wanting to deal with it all is EXACTLY why writers should deal with it. How easy is it for an agent to just “miss” including that French payment into the total. What happens? Nothing, money stays in the agent’s account and writer never even knows it came in. If a writer “doesn’t want to be bothered” with so many payments, then writer is just asking to be stolen from.
And to be flat honest, I doubt there is one long term writer who has been in an agent relationship and not cared about the money that the agent hasn’t “by accident or oversight” not passed some money through. Every year. The bigger the name, the more money flows, the more money “just gets missed” in the accounting. Especially for those writers who don’t care or trust their agent.
And I’m not saying everything is malfeasance, just often human error. When you put a major step in the middle of something, it ALWAYS adds errors. And often a larger agency will have “employees” as well dealing with your money, someone you have never ever met. So instead of a check coming directly from a publisher, it’s shuttled through two or three other steps to get to you. Error is not only possible, it becomes likely.
Do you folks really, really understand that when a check, your check, is sent to an agency, it isn’t just your check? Especially royalty payments are all bundled together and one check is sent to one agency per royalty period. Every wonder why your royalty statements are page numbered 62-67, 105-108, 211-214? That’s because a publisher, when allowed, will gang group the check into one and it’s the agent’s job to split it all out correctly. Yeah, no errors there.
I stand by what I said. Never ever let an agent handle your money.
I just had a wacky thought.
Try this:
Tell your agent that you agree 100% that the relationship bewteen you should be based on trust.
As such, YOU, the author, will receive all checks from the publisher and forward Mr. Agent his 15% as soon as you get it.
If you can get an agent to sign that contract, send me a picture of yourself in your blue tights and red cape.
Since NO agent would go for that, I can see why Dean would warn against the reverse.
Joemontana, LOL! Of course you are right, no agent would ever go for such a thing. Nor should they. You are as much a stranger to them as they are to you. Why should they trust their share of the money to you any more than you trust your share of the money to them?
And note: Author share 85%. Agent share 15%. Yet in this “normal” world of frightening Sacred Cows, who handles the money? The person only getting 15%. Yeah, that makes sense. (grin)
Don’t like handling your money? Hire an accountant or bookkeeper. Even then, though, you’re risking trusting your money to a stranger. I like money, I like handling it. I wish I had more of it. These posts about agents make me nervous. Yes, I know there are some really good ones. What I find most disturbing is that there are no licensure programs for these people. Hell, there’s not even a union. There are no college degree programs, tests, background check processes, nothing. Is it totally outside the realm of possibility for an as yet unproven author to hire a lawyer for her first contracts?
LOL…In case some of you don’t know, Sydney T. Cat is J. Steven York and Chris York’s cat who has her own agent blog and works for tuna. She posts and tweets and they are always a blast, jabbing at the agent situation in all kinds of ways. Thanks Steve….uhhh, I mean Sydney.
Amanda, it should bother you. It’s a horrid situation that has developed in a business that does billions of dollars in business around the world. And yes, anyone can hire a lawyer. Just caution on what type of lawyer. Your local friend attorney won’t have a clue and could hurt you badly. Only hire a publishing attorney, often called an IP attorney who has a focus on publishing and copyright issues.
An accountant at least has schooling and organizations and they don’t expect to be sent all your money before you see it or even know about it. Bookkeepers are dangerous and need to be watched because they have no organizations, they are just strangers off the street for the most part that you hire.
And, hullo!, I consulted a lawyer AGAIN today (this is now the fourth time) about the former agent who mishandles my paperwork and who has repeatedly refused to consent to split payments so that I can be RID of this problem.
The problem reared its head AGAIN a couple of months ago, and I am SO SICK TO DEATH of dealing with the antics of this agent (whom I fired years ago and have STILL not been able to get OUT of my life ) that I stuck my head in the sand and just prayed the problem would go away somehow. That I wouldn’t have to think about this person AGAIN. (For “person,” read: “many crude expletives.”) That I wouldn’t have to follow-up on this problem AGAIN. That it would just GO AWAY.
But after reviewing this discussion this morning, I realized it was time to suck it up and tough it out. AGAIN. (I am SO sick of this. So TIRED of this bullshit.)
Really. Seriously. Let my experience be an example to you. Make SURE you get it IN WRITING that you’ll get split payments if you leave the agency. Do NOT let yourself get into my situation, where someone you fired years ago has the power to keep intruding on your professional life (and, indeed, your personal time) by screwing with your fiscal business.
Syndey,
Your self-description as the world’s worst literary agent is an empty boast, a fraud, a lie.
Come back after you’ve embezzled from some writers and irreversibly damaged some writing careers. THEN we’ll talk.
I read that post, and pretty much agreed with it. But I think saying “You don’t need an agent to sell a book,” as you did in that post, is vastly different from saying “never hire an agent to sell your first book,” as your statement implies here.
I understand where you’re coming from with the first one, but not the second one.
Laura, I agree completely. And it’s point on this topic about agents handling your money. For those of you who don’t understand this, here is what it would be in the real world, outside of this crazy publishing business.
A business hires a person in accounting to approve payments and sign checks. Then this person is found wanting and fired, shown the door. In the real world, this person would never touch another check or dime of the business money. In publishing, the fired employee still gets the money for the business sometimes for decades to come. Kris fired an agent 18 years ago, but still gets checks from that agent all the time for books that are still in print, and we are constantly staying on top of the sales of those books to know what SHOULD be coming. Takes a ton of time and energy.
Again, the myth of agents is just so wrong in so many ways, it’s hard to look at for me at times because I have worked in so many real world businesses, I can’t believe I fell for this crap for decades. Again, I am not against hiring an agent to help you. Just hire them “correctly” without all the stupidity and myth in the picture.
You ever wonder what an agent would think of this chapter? My sense is that smart agents who actually know business and know they work for writers would shrug and say, “Sure, whatever the writer wants.” Agents who depend on the float to keep their business alive will shout “No, never! I must be in control of my client’s money.” Might be a really good test of the strength of an agency and how smart an agent really is about money and business.
And don’t let anyone give you the old saw “It’s just a standard publishing practice.” So is scamming writers, since we as a group are the dumbest business people on the planet. But that doesn’t make it right. Only writers starting to wake up to standard business practices will change some of this.
I wonder where the Author’s Guild or MWA or RWA or SFFWA is on this topic? Their job is to represent and help writers. This practice alone causes writers more problems than anything else in the business.
Natasha, I’m not sure on the confusion, to be honest. An agent that would actually take you on with a first book is likely an agent with no power, who is reading slush, who has no clout at all with publishers, wouldn’t know negotiations if it bit them, and who can’t get your book read any faster than you can.
But if you have a book offer from a major house, you can pick up the phone and talk to powerful agents, those who don’t read slush, those who have clout with publishers, those who know how to negotiate a contract for you. That is the person you want to hire to help with the deal. But you can’t get to them as an unpublished author. You have to have the offer in hand first before you can call a top level agent who can make a difference.
Remember, not all agents are equal. Most of the slush readers are just lower-level agents who have no clout or skills. The top agents would never read slush, ever.
Niiice. I especially appreciate the list of business rules. I have no idea when, if ever, I might need but they will come in handy and are now in my memory banks.
Of course I will be needing to go back over them every so often to keep them there.
And the other notes from Laura etc.. supporting your points are very good also.
Thanks to all who post.
Great post, Dean. In my own RWA chapter I know of at least three authors who have been in one of the situations you and Laura have described. The difficulty is writers don’t like to talk about this stuff. The reasons are many: 1)They feel really stupid for having gotten themselves in the situation and don’t want to share that outside of a few close friends. 2) They are afraid that in talking honestly about agents they will get blacklisted and never find another agent. 3) Their number one need is a paid mother–someone who will “love” them, reinforce them when they’re down, take care of them, not make them deal with all the stuff of life. For those in category 3 I often recommend paying a counselor for that instead (they are licensed).
The smart ones who feel comfortable with their career and their ability to sell their own books now use literary or IP attorneys exclusively. A few found a good agent, but have many of the things in their agent contract you’ve suggested. One actually quit writing because the whole business side without an agent was too overwhelming.
I’m fortunate in that I entered the publishing world with non-fiction books, didn’t know about agents, and so negotiated my own contracts. I got better royalty rates than most of my peers because I learned from them and asked for more up front. Consequently, I feel really comfortable in that arena.
However, fiction is a different game for me–in many ways a scary game. And even though I’m a very good business woman, I must say that when it comes to my novels (much closer to my creative heart than any non-fiction book I’ve written) no matter how much my intellect tells me I need to be careful, I still really, really want to believe the fantasy. When I started hearing the myths about novelists and agents, in so many ways it was this wonderful relief–that I could concentrate on the creative endeavor and keep it completely separate from the hard nosed business side of my brain. It was a relief that this was one thing I finally wouldn’t have to handle for myself. It would be so much easier.
But alas, as evidenced by so many friends now who have published many novels and still got stung, the bubble has been burst. It’s very painful to take away a fantasy when you wanted it so badly. I completely empathize with all the writers refuse to put on the reality glasses. As for me, I don’t like being taken so I’ll just have to “cowboy up” and wait for my angel to take care of me in some other life.
Thanks, Maggie, for the great comments.
You are right, so many writers don’t want to talk about this stuff, or even worse, the shattering of the myths cause them to leave their writing and dreams behind. It is very possible to have the dream of writing and selling fiction as a life. Being smart, as you pointed out, does not make that impossible. In fact, chances are your career will last a lot longer if you are smart at the business side.
This is a very timely post for this author, whose British royalty payment WAS just held up for months by a foreign rights subagent. That’s something to consider too: you may have a very trustworthy agent, but if they are hiring subagents on your behalf and not adequately supervising them, that’s one more layer of complication and murkiness to deal with.
Maggie, great post. And here’s an additional reason writers don’t talk about this: They’re afraid of retaliation by their former agents.
The publishing world is a small one, and each individual genre is such a small world it’s genuinely claustrophobic. And although many agents are fine people, some of them are vindictive people who lash out resentfully at writers who’ve fired them.
TWO of my four former agents have been such types, i.e. 50% of the agents of whom I was a client. That stat may be higher than the profession overall, but it’s still pretty sobering, since my own experience suggests the odds -could- be as high as 50/50 that when you decide to leave an agent, the agent will respond vindictively. So it’s not just imagination; writers who are afraid of having serious problems with their former agents have a genuine REASON for their anxiety.
RE this former agent of mine who has repeatedly refused to consent to split payments and repeatedly mishandled my fiscal paperwork, I never had ANY administrative problems with the agency… until I fired the agent. When I consulted with an advocacy org about my problem, it was their belief, due to remarkably similar stories from some other ex-clients of the agent, that this is the agent’s M.O. for retaliating against writers who choose to leave the agency. In hopes of strenghtening my case, I hunted up and conferred with seven other writers who had fired the agent. Five of them were having problems similar to mine–or much worse. But here’s the kicker: Three of them refused to go on record about their problems, let alone file complaints or consult a lawyer, because they were too afraid of =additional= retaliation by the agent. Two of them were so afraid of this, they forbade me ever even to reveal that I’d contacted them; they never even wanted the agent to hear via gossip or the grapevine that I (a person openly filing formal complaints against the agent) had spoken to them.
Another agent whom I fired sent me hate mail, threatened me (absurdly) with legal action, and spent the next two years gossiping about me so noisily and viciously (and untruthfully) that I heard about it often from people in the biz.
There was another agent (not one of mine, and since deceased) who often threatened to sue any departing client if they ever talked to anyone else about her. And so on.
So another big reason writers don’t talk is because when they fire an agent, what they usually want MOST (and it’s certainly what I’ve always wanted) it just to get OFF that agent’s radar, have NOTHING more to do with that agent, NO nasty confrontations or stressful contact, and, above all, not experience retaliation–which they may experience anyhow, JUST for having decided to leave. So a lot of writers are afraid of what ELSE the agent will do if the writer TALKS about what’s happened.
Most writers talk about what’s happened in private to people whom they trust, obviously. But fear of retaliation is why so many don’t talk about it in public–not even in general terms that (as we do here) keep the individual agent’s identity out of the discussion, using real-world experiences to illustrate the general problems within the existing system that new writers should be aware of in order to make the best professional decisions for themselves. Writers who don’t talk about it aren’t consciously condemning you to remain unaware or to repeat their mistakes; they’re just trying to protect themselves from retaliation.
Moreover, a percentage of unhappy clients remain with an agent on the basis of that fear! Two of my four former agents were vindictive after my departure… and, interestingly, in BOTH cases, I was privately contacted by more than one client who said, in effect, “I’m not happy here, but I won’t leave, because I don’t want this agent to do to me what s/he’s doing to you now.”
The thing for writers to keep in mind, though, whether they’re afraid to leave an agency or afraid of retaliation after they’ve left, is that agents’ whose actions toward -me- have genuinely disturbed other writers… have been annoying, headache-producing, or even embarrassing… but powerless and pointless in any real-world terms.
Single most important point: Neither of those agents affected my career in any way at all after I left. I kept getting work after firing them. Indeed, in both cases, my career and my income IMPROVED after firing them.
Surely, =that’s= the salient point. If the writer keeps selling books after leaving, then the agent’s retaliation, while certainly stressful, inconvenient, and time-consuming, is just fireless smoke. It’s noise without meaning. And that point is well worth remembering.
An agent who insists on keeping his hands on your money is a big nuisance for years to come (hence my fervent advice not to let this happen to you, as it has happened to me)… but as long as you monitor the situation and keep a paper trail, you can sic a lawyer, a writers’ advocacy org, AAR, or even (sometimes) your publisher on that agent if your money is withheld/late or some of it’s missing. Mishandling of actual =money= is the one area where you’ve got some leverage with a badly-behaved agent, the one area that EVERYONE (including New York state law) takes very seriously…. Yet it’s surprising how many writers STILL keep silent, afraid of relatiation–even though, er, once an agent is keeping your money out of your hands, what MORE retaliation can you seriously be worried about?
And in terms of a vindictive former agent blackballing you, etc… I’ve heard of specific instances from a few writers who believe they were victims of it, but I’m nonetheless skeptical about it. I think it only works for a badly-behaved agent in VERY specific circumstances: If you are unknown (or if you have already gotten yourself a negative reputation with some bad behavior) -and- if the agent is blackballing you to one of his/her very close editor-buddies. For the most part, though (and, remember, I speak as someone who was viciously badmouthed all over the place by a vindictive agent for two years after I left), agents who do that just make THEMSELVES look silly. (Whenever I heard about what this agent was going around saying about me, a few people were upset and felt bad for me, but most people were laughing when they told me about it, because the agent seemed absurdly demented when talking about me, rather than like someone who should be taken seriously. Apparently I had everything but hooves, horns, and a pitchfork in this agent’s accounts of me.) Obviously, it helped that by the time this happened, I was not a newcomer in the community, I was fairly well known. A complete newcomer would’ve been more vulnerable to such an attack. However, an agent who goes around badmouthing ex-clients, even IF taken seriously the first time… uses up all his/her Get Out Of Jail Free cards pretty quickly on that score. Tell all your editor chums ONCE that a former client is the scum of the earth, etc., and maybe they believe you, and it’s hard luck for that writer (but only with those few chums)… but do it TWICE, and I seriously doubt any but the most gullible and dysfunctional editor ever listens to that agent about such things again (and what writer wants to work with that guillible and dysfunctional an editor, anyhow?).
I also think that most vindictive agents are smart enough to think this through and come to the same conclusions, and therefore that very, very few of them attempt to gossip about or blackball ex-clients as part of their antics. (My former agent was, er, a tad volatile and not necessarily well-hinged.)
So, overall, the prospect of being “blackballed” by a vindictive former agent, which is a fear I’ve heard about many times, just isn’t one that I take seriously or think is worth worrying about. Bad sales figures on a book, for example, are a LOT more damaging–and a lot more RELIABLY, PREDICTABLY damaging–to a writer’s career than any nasty comments by her former agent are. So why worry about what an agent might say about you if/when you leave the agency?
IOW, overall, I think the reasons for speaking up about these things (because the more educated we all are about the system, the less chance that this stuff can KEEP happening to us) outweigh the potential disadvantages, since retaliation occurs WHETHER OR NOT a writer speaks up, and an agent’s power to retaliate is, in any case, mostly just annoying and petty, anyhow. (But, speaking from experience, yes, the annoyances can gey very, very VERY tiresome.)
Maggie wrote: “no matter how much my intellect tells me I need to be careful, I still really, really want to believe the fantasy. ”
I completely understand. I feel that way, too. Even now. The fantasy or the ideal-theory of agenting is VERY seductive: I will find a business-savvy, dedicated professional partner who LOVES my work, who BELIEVES in my talent, who will stick with me through thick and thin, and who will take care of making me successful so that I can just be taken care of and focus exclusively on my writing, without having to think about things like packaging, sales figures, distrubution, option clauses, reversion clauses, electronic royalty rates, and how to sell the next MS.
It is SUCH an appealing fantasy, that I was seduced by it multiple times (with resultant problems, disappointments, expense, and stress), and that I still feel its pull and allure, even now.
Only my own long and consistently negative experiences in pursuit of that fantasy (and in my repetaedly mistaken belief that I’d finally found that sort of an agent) has affected my belief in that fantasy. Maybe it comes true for some writers; but I tried very hard to make it come true for -me-, I tried multiple times, it was a disaster each time, and so now I am permanently off the pipe. Although I still appreciate the dreamy smell of the smoke on occasion, it’s an opiate that just doesn’t work for me anymore. I done got bit by the dragon too many times when I was chasing it.
But, yep, it sure is a seductive ideal. No denying that.
Is Sydney T. Cat open for queries?
Laura, fantastic comments. Thanks!!
And I clearly agree completely with your post that worry about a vindictive agent is annoying at worst, and means nothing at all when it comes to the real business. Otherwise, would I be here, trying to tilt at this system, trying to teach young writers to be aware? I wouldn’t be if I was the slightest bit worried about agents being angry at me.
As Maggie said, it’s fantastically easy to believe in the fantasy of hiring an employee that will take care of you. I bought into it myself and it wasn’t until many years down the road, in a workshop many years ago, when I heard myself say “I’ve sold seventy novels and my agent hasn’t sold a one of them” that I started to wake up, come out of the fantasy, and really look at the “business” of fiction writing and agents. And the closer I have looked, the more disgusted I have become at the system, at myself for falling down that rabbit hole. And then suddenly, all the stories I had been hearing for decades about agents, all the horror stories, started to fit into place.
In short, this writer/agent system is so flawed, so business-stupid, that it can do nothing else but generate horror stories constantly.
And the reason we employers, we writers, have let this system become so flawed over time is because of the very thing Maggie notes.
Agents are employees of writers. Of course when you fire one, some of them will be vindictive. Normal in the real world as well. But if you remember one thing and one thing only about publishing, it will help. The quality of the story and the book and how it fits in a line and how much money a publisher can make is all that matters in sales. Agents can say bad things about you all they want, but you write a quality story that fits in their line and that they think they can make money on, they will buy it. And that really is the bottom line.
Thanks, again, Laura. Great posts.
I can understand the real-world fact that some agents will be vindictive when they’re fired, but some of these descriptions strike me as adults acting like children, to be quite honest. I can tell you that in my profession (telecom), when someone gets fired, they are ESCORTED out of the building, because of the risk of retaliation. It’s probably similar in other professions, too, I’ve no doubt. And then there are also laws against employers retaliating against employees when certain circumstances go the other way. It makes me think it so odd that there isn’t any licensing of agents, given the number of problems that seem to be so common.
In a strange way, these ‘horror stories’ remind me of when I went through my divorce. I’d attended a class (I believe it was required, as I recall), and the things people would say in that class just blew me away. Perhaps it was because my divorce wasn’t as acrimonious as theirs, but, then again, there was no way that I was going to air any of my problems with my ex in a room full of strangers. (All my venting was done with trusted friends and family.) Too many people were letting their emotions get the better of them, and I fully understood why, too. They wanted someone to listen to them, to agree with them, to commiserate with them, but that wasn’t at all the purpose of the class, and the instructors were very professional and careful in how they handled the folk who were so upset.
It was a great class, though, and I got out of it the same sorts of things I’m getting out of these series of posts: they said the best way to treat your relationship with your ex (you can substitute ‘agent’ here for ex) is to treat it like it is a business relationship. I had to deal with a phone call just yesterday, in fact, about one of my ex’s recent financial woes, and her question of whether or not I had deposited my child support (my attitude on that is the money’s for the kids, not for her, although my lawyer told me what the reality was: it’s for her and I have no control over what she does with it). I listened to her rant over the phone, assured her the child support had been deposited (I’m faithful with my deposits, so I’ve never had to deal with going through the state), and then our conversation was over. Business done. That’s not to say that I still don’t feel any angst about some of the things I have to deal with; I do. But the passage of time and the continual practice of dealing with it as if it were a business relationship has helped to quell those feelings and it has led me to believe very much in the practice: strictly business.
Weird, I know, but this recent post has honestly put me in the mindset of: if I ever get an agent, then I’ll treat them like they’re my ex. Strictly business, and you deal with me on my terms, or you don’t deal with me at all, ’cause I’m the boss. However, these ‘horror stories’ and pitfalls make me think I’d rather hire an IP lawyer, instead of an agent. I may not be published yet, but all a lawyer wants from me is a retainer and that I pay them for their services; whether I’m published or not is beside the point when it comes to retaining an IP lawyer, as opposed to hiring an agent. Strictly business and I deal with someone whose profession is licensed.
I wrote: Strictly business, and you deal with me on my terms, or you don’t deal with me at all, ’cause I’m the boss.
A minor point here, above is my attitude towards my ex modified to fit the relationship with an agent. (If I dealt with my ex that way, it would be a lot worse than it currently is. I ain’t that stupid.
LOL!)
Joemontana wrote: “Tell your agent that you agree 100% that the relationship bewteen you should be based on trust.
As such, YOU, the author, will receive all checks from the publisher and forward Mr. Agent his 15% as soon as you get it.”
Joemontana, my first reaction was to laugh. And then to shake my head, certain that no agent would ever agree to this, because it’s the tradition of the biz that writers can’t be trusted with the money….
And then I thought: Hang on. Uh, why NOT?
Because, er, that is =EXACTLY= how I work with my literary lawyer. She bills me for her work, and I pay the bill. No one sends -my- money to -her-, for goodness sake. In my association with my literary lawyer, I am expected to be a responsible adult who pays my consultant/lawyer what I owe her when she bills me; and I do so.
So, er, hang on, why IS it that a writer-pays-employee fiscal model that works perfectly well for a LAWYER–someone with formal professional training and licensing–is considered unacceptable to literary agents, who do NOT even have licensing or formal training? Why does a LAWYER respect me, professionally, as a responsible adult who manages my money and fiscal obligations, but the agent-author business is set up on the assumption that I cannot be trusted with the money?
So I’m sitting there in my kitchen this morning, thinking, planning, and cogitating about my next attempt (my lawyer will start it rolling next week) to get this former agent’s hands OFF -my- money and -my- paperwork, grinding my teeth over this monkey that’s been on my back for years, thinking about how MUCH I want to finally get it OFF my back this time, thinking about what steps I’ll take next if (as has happened at least six previous times) the agent AGAIN refuses to consent to split payments, etc… And at exactly the moment I’m sitting there thiking about this and planning steps to take, I open a fortune cookie from last night’s carry-out dinner… and it says:
“Your present plans are doing to succeed.”
Here’s hoping!
This is the last remaining problem from the long era of my attempts to make the author-agent business model work for me, and the last agent who’s messing with my professional life. EVER.
And, BOY, am I tired of it and eager to end it. SO I really hope the cookie is right!
Laura said…”So, er, hang on, why IS it that a writer-pays-employee fiscal model that works perfectly well for a LAWYER–someone with formal professional training and licensing–is considered unacceptable to literary agents, who do NOT even have licensing or formal training?”
The reason? As I have said before, as a group, writers are the dumbest business people on the planet. And what has become normal in publishing is just head-shaking stupid in any other area of business, including Hollywood, which is just scary when book publishing becomes more stupid-filled than Hollywood.
And our writer’s organizations won’t lift a finger or even do guidelines on any of this, instead just standing by and letting writer after writer get taken and robbed and career destroyed, instead seeming to care more about a few percentages of a tiny part of publishing. Head-shaking.
So, each of us are on our own. We can hire the employee and give them the set-up to take and keep our money, or we can hire an employee to do certain tasks to help us and keep hands off our money. It really does boil down to that simple, and if more and more writers simply said “split payments” after a time that would become the industry standard and a ton of these problems would go away.
Also, a ton of agents who are living on writer’s money and float would go away as well, which would be a good thing.
Cheers
Dean
GD Townshende wrote: “I can tell you that in my profession (telecom), when someone gets fired, they are ESCORTED out of the building, because of the risk of retaliation.”
That’s also a “wake-up call” point. That occurs in publishing, too. An editor of mine got laid off, for example, and although it was very amicable, she had known it was probably coming, and she remained on good terms with the employer… even so, she was (she later reported to me with wry amusement) accompanied back to her desk, immediately after being given the news, by two security guards who stood over her as she packed up her things and who then escorted her out of the building.
I don’t know wher that happens at EVERY publishing house, but clearly it happens at some of them.
And yet, while they won’t even let the employee remain in the BUILDING after being fired, nor leave the building without an ESCORT after being fired… publishers nonetheless continue sending the writer’s money to a FIRED EMPLOYEE for years to come. (I have asked the publisher in question THREE TIMES to split my payments from my former agent, who has refused -his- consent at least six times. They have consistently refused.) It’s a sobering view of how much more seriously they take their paper clips and staplers than they take =my money=.
Similarly, whether or not a publisher will split payments without an agent’s consent is absurdly arbitrary. Here’s a good example of just HOW arbitrary. Two other ex-clients were having this identical problem with my former agent. Their publisher refused their request to split their payments without his consent (since he had refused to give it). But a few months later… the agent did something that made the publisher mad… and so they changed their minds and agreed with the writers’ shrewd follow-up request to reconsider, and they split the payments.
So, basically, whether a publisher (one that has its own fired employees immediately escorted off the premises by security guards) will agree to cease sending your money to -your- fired employee…. all depends on whether the publisher happens to be feeling annoyed at the agent on the day your request is processed.
Just one more good reason to take control of this UP FRONT, if you’re going to hire an agent, and either get split payments from the start, or at least get an agreement at the very start that payments will be split in the event that you leave the agency.
Question, on “float” and how it works.
I guess I am a bit mystified as to how an agent is making money when he or she holds a check, unless it’s simply that while that money is in the agent’s bank account, it’s accruing interest. I can’t imagine any agent in this economy skimming much on “float” unless he or she literally has millions in author money sitting around for months in the bank at any given time.
Brad, the float comes in from two ways. First off, an agent has cash flow, business expense needs. Smaller agents and new agents just mix the payment from an author with their own money and guess what? Rent needs to be paid, that author check is no where to be seen yet. Or as the agent says to the writer, “I’ll check with the publisher to find out what’s going on.”
You know the drill, we all do in these times. Borrow from Peter to pay Paul. Or in this case, just think Ponzi (sp?) scheme. Money comes in from one writer that gets paid to an overdue check to another writer until things get caught up. Many, many examples of things not catching up and agent shutting down owing a ton of money to writers. It takes a ton of consistent sales to make overhead and salary expenses at 15%. And are their law suits on this stuff? All the time. So often, they aren’t even news and rarely get reported in any fashion.
Second form of “float” an agent uses, and this is for the big agencies who don’t do the above and have a ton of cash coming in.
First off, you have to understand how many millions and millions can be made in writing. You know, Nora Roberts and Stephanie Meyer are both represented by the same agency. So millions and millions flow through their author accounts every month.
On average, an author account in a large agency like Trident or Writer’s House or William Morris or ICM can be upward of 5 plus million regularly. Now with that kind of money, decent interest can be made on the account even in these times. For easy sake, say the average over the year is 5 million, and the account is generating 2%. That’s a smooth 100 grand a year just on the float and that pays a bunch of expenses. I was with one of those agencies and their standard policy was to hold checks for up to two weeks, so that float could be even higher.
So between small agents using your money to float bills and large agencies using your money to make money, writers get screwed going and coming.
Split your payments, folks. In your contract with the publisher.
Laura,
I assume you are having your attorney go after the publisher, right? The agent is not a signer on your contract and has no say if you want to change a term in the contract. The agreement is between you and your publisher, so I’m assuming it’s the publisher causing the issue. Weird.
I have to say, I find it amazing that a publisher won’t split payments without the agent’s consent, and despite the writer’s request. Aside from the fact that the agent negotiated the contract with — and might have sold the book to — the publisher, what other possible legal and binding reason could there be to require their consent? Especially if the writer has fired that agent? Call me nuts, but whose book is it, anyway? Between the writer and the agent, who earns the larger paycheck on that particular book? Therefore, who should have the greater say? (Forget any other authors/books the agent has represented with that publisher, as they’re all completely irrelevant to the book in question.) Neither the publisher nor the agent would be making any money without the author’s book, so (perhaps I’m crazy) but I would think — HOPE! (obviously against hope, since this is not currently happening) — that since the agent is (you might like this metaphor) the leech/parasite (take your pick) in this scenario and the author the host, that the author’s opinion would trump the agent’s. (Obviously not, but, equally obvious, I’ve not been in the business to see what’s going on, let alone understand why it’s going on.)
The following goes to my question above: “Who should have the greater say?” — Is there no sense of hierarchy? Probably not the best way to put it, but it expresses what I mean well enough. Then again, perhaps a better way to put it is this: Is there no sense of priority? (Nevermind a sense of propriety.) What I mean is, in a situation like this someone is likely to be offended and if that’s problem then the question is, who do you want to offend the least? Or maybe that’s the problem. No one wants to offend anyone, which, if that’s the case, is jaw-droppingly out of touch with reality, if you ask me.
While I know that every contract could be (and probably is) miles different from the next, depending on how things are negotiated, is there anything in the boilerplate for a standard contract (from which any publishing contract must start, even if only in-house) that requires the consent of both the author and the agent for payments to be split? I mean, if it’s not stipulated in the contract that both parties’ consent is required, then why can’t it be safe to assume that it is not required? After all, as the old saying goes, if it’s not in writing….
Given what I’ve learned here, this problem isn’t going to happen to me (I’ll make sure it won’t), but I’m curious to learn if there is something that I’m missing. If there’s not, then this is sounding too much like a freakin’ Regency/Victorian social gathering where people are far too disgustingly concerned about the feelings of others. What the hell do ‘feelings’ have to do with business!? (I’ve done a little stock trading, like many, I’m sure, and if there’s one thing you want to eliminate from the equation when trading stocks it’s your emotion, because that’s the surest way to lose your shirt, regardless what you’re invested in.) Sure, we’re all human. We all have feelings and everyone’s feelings get fed through the meat-grinder any time a disagreement crops up, especially when money is involved, but this sounds ludicrous. It’s business, not a social gathering.
I’d say that there’s definitely a need for a paradigm change if these sorts of problems (Laura’s and the others mentioned) are so commonplace that a conversation like this one is taking place. Paradigm change, revolution, whatever you want to call it, some change in the present model is obviously needed. Perhaps that’s what this is: the beginning of the revolution.
“I assume you are having your attorney go after the publisher, right? The agent is not a signer on your contract and has no say if you want to change a term in the contract. The agreement is between you and your publisher, so I’m assuming it’s the publisher causing the issue. Weird.”
The publisher could certainly solve this by simply agreeing. However, until/unless the agent breaks the law =with specific regard to= handling my money from this publishing house, I have no legal leverage to -make- the publisher agee to amend the terms of the contract. In much the way that they have no legal leverage to make -me- agree to changes in the existing contract if I don’t like the proposed changes.
(I’m not guessing or surmising. I have consulted three literary lawyers and four advocacy orgs in the course of trying to get this agent out of my life. I’ve learned a lot. Above all, I’ve learned that there is a stunning absence of oversight, governance, or management of agents and their practices, even though–yep, like you said–MILLIONS of dollars of other people’s money passes through their hands.)
The publisher has declined my request to split payments three different times. They have consistentely said that they will split payments IF the agent consents, and they won’t if the agent does not consent. The agent has thus far refused consent at least six different times. And, until/unless the agent breaks the law, with specific regard to handling my money from this publisher, AND I can legally prove it–I have no legal leverage to get the publisher to act against its own preferences. And it’s preferences are to do with -my- money what the -agent- wants done with it, rather than what -I- want done with it. (All the literary lawyers whom I’ve consulted have told me that’s quite typical. Publishers don’t want trouble with agents, so their own lives are made easier by not crossing an agent by splitting payments when the agent doesn’t want the payments split.)
My former agent’s behavior is very unusual. Most former agents, when asked, consent to split payments. I’ve been advised by an advocacy org familiar with the agent’s reputation that the refusal is probably based on malice, and I think that’s probably accurate. Sure, “float” is a possibility but, based on my own experiences with the agent, I’d actually say that malice is more likely. Especially since, as the advocacy org pointed out, the agent has repeatedly burdened me with various irritating problems for which I have NO recourse, but has been careful NOT to do anything which WOULD give me leverage to get out of this situation.
“Given what I’ve learned here, this problem isn’t going to happen to me (I’ll make sure it won’t), but I’m curious to learn if there is something that I’m missing.”
GD, it’s about what the publisher perceives as being in its own best interest.
If I were a million-dollar writer -and- the agent in question was someone the publisher scarcely even knew, my chances of getting the publisher’s consent would be significantly increased. In precisely the way that my chances of getting the publisher’s consent would be significantly increased if they got mad at the agent about something (as happened with two other former clients of this agent, at another house; that house, having previously rejected the writers’ requests, granted them and getting mad at the agent, and split the payments without the agent’s consent).
However, I’m a midlist writer and the agent in question does a LOT of business with that publishing house, including representing some of the house’s biggest writers.
As a writer, I bring ONE writer’s work to the agent’s table, and the profits of ONE writer’s work into their coffers. Whereas an agent with whom the publisher has a close and fruitful relationship (as is the case here) brings the profits of MULTIPLE writers into the publisher’s coffers.
Given that, in the absence of the agent’s consent to split payments, one of us–either me, or the agent–is going to be vexed with the publisher for not doing what we want, whose vexation does the house find less problematic? Mine, of course.
If I were worth millions to the house, that balance would shift. And if I were worth millions to the house while the agent in question was simultaneously worth NOTHING to them, the scale would tip heavily in my favor.
It’s about what the publisher perceives as being in its own best interest.
This is an interesting dynamic that exists in this industry. The writers are afraid of upsetting agents, because they’ve been taught to be.
As a result, the publishers are afraid of upsetting the agents, because most writers will do whatever the agent says, so a writer who is very successful for a publishing house might just allow the production of their next series through a competitor, sinking the house.
And all the while, I’m sure the agent will blame the move on the writer when speaking to the publisher and vice-versa.
So that is a situation in which one’s employee is telling them, “This manufacturing facility is no good for your products any more. They’re not big enough to handle a star of your greatness. Let’s move to manufacturing facility number 3 for your next series.”
And the writer says, “Oh, that’s too bad. But you’re right!”
That’s, at best, dishonest behavior, and at worst, tyrannical.
Of course, another reason the publishers don’t want to upset agents, at least smaller ones, is because if they did, they’d have no one to read the slush for them. Actually, it seems to me as I write this that there is a tiered approach to the publisher-agent relationship.
The publisher likes agents to be involved in the contract negotiation process, because the experts really do bring positives to the table for all parties. So they want to keep that going. Given their downsizing, they can’t read slush. So they say “no unagented submissions,” and all kinds of new, smaller agents open up to read slush to submit to publishers.
So the new, downsized publishers no longer must read slush and can focus on their solicited manuscripts and previously-signed writers and agents.
Meanwhile, once in a while one of the smaller agents gets a bite; it’s only a matter of time if they’re reading all that slush before they find something good enough to print. But basically that whole second tier has been created as a diversion and a cost-reduction strategy for the publishers, and the real publishing industry kept going as usual.
At least, that’s what it looks like to me. I could be wrong.
Speaking of “float” and “Trident”: I used to work on fishing boats in Alaska for Trident (Seafood, of course ).
Each trip put a million dollars in the ship hold. We made anywhere from 6-12 trips a season. We, the fishermen, made a % based on the catch in that season.
Without fail our checks were held for a month after the season end so they could milk the intrest. I could have used that extra money by having my money in my account for that month.
But if I didn’t like it there were 300 guys standing behind me waiting for that slot. Even if I were the best employee in th world there was no way the company was changing that policy.
Considering what it costs to run a factory/trawler on the Bering Sea, in winter, I *almost* didn’t mind. Considering how much it costs to send emails, make a phone call and transfer digital money—it seems like an agent has pretty much found a way to legalize theft.
Dean’s correct: It’d take a union mentality to get this practice changed. It’d take Patterson and King and Meyers and Roberts going on Oprah or before Congress to change this.
As Kris is fond of pointing out getting a group of writers to do anything is like herding cats. As Laura pointed out with the hurt writers she contacted the old addage “all it takes for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing” is alive and well.
So all you can do is read DWS and try to prevent the pain before it happens, it seems.
So can you have it written up in the contract that not only does your 85% go directly to you, your royalty cheques do also?
I’ve just started to try to get an agent, but I’m rethinking that goal now, thanks to you. Everything you say makes total sense. You _are_ scary though.
Almost all of your advice flies in the face of conference presenters’ words . . .
Thank you so much for the work you’re doing here. You’re hugely encouraging and helpful!
~Ev
“So can you have it written up in the contract that not only does your 85% go directly to you, your royalty cheques do also? ”
Yes. This is precisely what’s meant by “split payments.” ALL of the writer’s 85% (advances and royalties) would go directly to the writer, not to the agent. (I’ve never heard of any arrangement where the split would apply to advances by NOT to royalties. An arrangement to split payments covers =all= the earnings in the contract.)
And, yes, you make arrangements for this with an agent and with a publisher from the start. At least, in theory. Publishers aren’t keen on it, since it’s more paperwork for them, but they’ll do it. The real stumbling block is agents. Some of them will do it while you’re a current client, but many won’t agree to it… and would consider it an insult, or at least treat it as an inappropriate request. See a previous post of mine about some of the reasons that agents will tell you that it’s better for your money to go through them when you’re a client. Additionally, viz the whole “this is a relatinoship of trust” thing, a percentage of agents will see it at impuning their integrity: “If you don’t trust me to handle your money, then I won’t be your agent.”
What I would recommend, to get the lay of the land, is going around (right now! today!) to every agent-blog on the internet and asking if they’re willing to agree to split payments with a new or current client. I also recommend asking this question of every agent whom you see speaking at conferences. It’s a perfectly reasonable question, you’ll learn things from the answers (some of which you’ll need to take with a grain of salt), and I also think that it’s a good subject to get on the table, in general–in hopes that spltting payments with new/current clients will become a more standard practice. Currently, it’s an unusual one–one reason being that so few writers ask for it, and thus a writer who DOES ask for it is often treated as making an eccentric and outlandish request, rather than a sensible business request.
Ev, yes you can put it in your book contract. No publisher will do anything more than mumble, maybe not even that, if you add that clause to a book contract. Fair to you, fair to your employee/agent.
Some of my words here would fly in the face of what I would say at a writer’s conference as well. For example, talking to beginning writers, I would say I’m a three draft writer at a writer’s conference, because doing otherwise would slam into a myth and make people question everything I said as having no value. That’s what slamming into a myth does in public. I would never tell anyone at a writer’s conference how fast I write or how many books I can write in a year. Same reason, slams into the myth.
I would never say some of the things I’ve said about agents here at a writer’s conference. I just wouldn’t say much at all. I would say something like I’ve had three good agents. I might say I’ve sold all my own books, because that wouldn’t go in and make any sense to someone lost in the myth of needing an agent to even sneeze in this business. They would just ignore it as if they hadn’t heard it. Or think I did all that in the dark ages of publishing.
Does that mean you can’t get good stuff out of writer’s conferences? Of course not. You just have to know what to listen to, who to listen to, and what questions to ask. Kris pinned down Stewart Woods at a writer’s conference in front of a large room of people to get him to tell the group how he really wrote. And on the question of rewriting, he responded with a shocked look. “Why would I.” He never, ever would have said that if he hadn’t been responding to a series of questions from another major speaker at the conference.
In other words, long term professional writers have smashed into these issues in public and all of us have come to the conclusion it’s just not worth the effort to make people angry who are paying our way to a writer’s conference to teach. So we are all very, very careful. But if you understand how this process really works, you can hear the truth behind the non-spoken or half-spoken words.
I learned this truth real hard one year when in disgust at a top agent sending beginning writers to his wife as a book doctor and charging the beginning writers, I tore into book doctors as scams at a writer’s conference I had been a regular guest at. For years I wasn’t invited back. The truth just doesn’t make people happy at writer’s conferences.
And sadly, 99.999% of all writers don’t want to hear anything that shakes them up, makes them question. They are into the “myth” of being a fiction writer and don’t want to know that it takes a lot of practice, that it takes thousands of rejections, that it takes years and millions of words, that it takes a lot of money to travel to learn (just like going to school takes money), that it takes never giving up day after day after day. Most people who attend writer’s conferences are folks who have written a couple stories, maybe are halfway through a novel, and hope to be told how easy it is. Those of us long term professional writers go to writer’s conferences for two reasons. One, we hope to help the few there who really are on the right road. We can see them in the audience, we seek them out often in the halls, we offer to talk privately with them if they would like. Second reason, it gets us out of the house and we can hang around with other professional speakers and meet editors we haven’t met yet.
How can we see the few on the road in the audience? Best way to describe it is a light in their eyes, a hunger radiating from every pore, an edge of the chair excitement. They are frighteningly easy to spot and in a room of a hundred, there might be five at most at any writer’s conference. But those five are worth the effort. The other 95 just take what they want to hear and go home happy I’m afraid.
So the long answer to your questions is when at a writer’s conference, just listen between the lines, listen to what the answer really means from a long term pro, then decide if it makes sense to you or not. But often with fiction writers, the truth is between the words at a writer’s conference.
P.S. Splitting payments with a FORMER client is a more standard practice. As I’ve said, my former agent’s repeated refusal to do it is peculiar. (Indeed, I find it more than peculiar, I find it highly suspect.) My other agents all consented to split payments after I left. And most agents consent to it after a client leaves, if requested.
However, it’s entirely possible that, like me, you’ll get stuck with a former agent who’s determined to be a monkey on your back. Which is why this is an important subject to address when hiring an agent, and to get in writing. Even if you don’t want your payments split WHILE you’re a client, you want to ensure that an agent can’t hold your business hostage, as one of MY former agents is doing, after you fire the agent.
On a separate but related subject, there’s also a new practice whereby some agents get clients to sign agency agreements or publishing clauses that entitle the agent to represent a project for the LIFE OF COPYRIGHT (author’s life + 70 years) rather than just for the length of the specific licensing deals the agent negotiated on your behalf while you were a client. Not only should no writer sign such a clause, I can’t understand why any writer would work with an agent who tries to get them to sign such a clause. How can someone trying to take advantage of you THAT egregiously be trusted to be acting on YOUR behalf in any respect, matter, or situation, for goodness sake?
Laura, great idea. I’d love to have that simple question asked of a bunch of the blogging slush-reader agents. What interesting answers should come from that. (grin)
Further to what Dean said, yes, it’s worth keeping in mind that when people are speaking in public, they’re saying what they’re willing to say IN PUBLIC. It isn’t necessarily the whole story, or what they really think, or accurate. One always needs to sift and consider whan one hears.
Good example: At a conference years ago, I was meeting a couple of editors for lunch, so I arranged to attend the final 15-20 minutes of a discusson panel they were on, and we went to lunch from there. In those 15-20 minutes, I heard them talk to the audience about how what they were really looking for were new, different, fresh, not-done-to-death story ideas, etc. Then at lunch… they specifically asked me if I’d send them book proposal for a tried-and-true done-a-million-times type of story. I pointed out the discrepancy between what they were asking me for, compared to what they’d just told a large roomful of people they wanted. And they said, “Oh, that’s just what we have to say in public. But, no, what we ACTUALLY want is more of the same stuff that we already know sells.”
If we can request split payments from the publishers, can we not also just request that we be paid the whole amount and then pay the agent ourselves separately? Just as if we were paying another employee (such as a lawyer, accountant, etcetera).
Or is that too far out there?
Sam, oh, sure, but the half step is going against “industry norm” so an agent agreeing to this payment situation is not likely. But one thing to remember. The contract is between you and the publisher. Agents are not signers on any agreement.
Cheers
Dean
Sam, the challenge in that scenario would be to get the agent to agree.
A publisher, after all, is perfectly willing to send 100% of the money to the writer; after all, they -already- do it OFTEN. They do it, for example, when issuing split payments, and they do it in EVERY single scenario where a writer is not represented by an agent: nearly all short stories, essays, columns, and articles are handled strictly by the writer, not by an agent; a substantial percentage of small presses work directly with writers and not with agents, for a variety of reasons; and some writers are, whether by choice or by circumstance, unagented and therefore dealing directly with all their publishers, including the major houses.
So, really, the publisher’s policies are NOT the problem. (Even in my current circumstances, with a former agent whose hands are still in my business and my money against my will. I wish the publisher would issue split payments without the agent’s consent… but the publisher is simply saying, “No, we’ll stick to the terms of the contract we negotiated and signed, unless the person who’ll be affected by this clause that you want to change =agrees= to the change that you want to make.” I find that inconvenient, but I can’t say that it’s unfair or unreasonable of them.)
So, sure, a publisher would agree to a contractual clause that would require them to send you 100% of the money. Absolutely.
The problematic question is, would the =agent= negotiating that contract agree to all monies being sent to you, and then you’d pay the agent his/her 15%?
As we’ve been discussing here, since that is EXACTLY how I pay my lawyer, I’m suddenly flabbergasted that your suggestion would (I have no doubt) be treated as eccentric, impractical, unreasonable, even ridiculous by most people in the industry (writers as well as agents). But I see nothing wrong with it (after all, we have plenty of proof that agents embezzle from writers but, as yet, we have NO proof that writers embezzle from agents), and I would encourage writers to propose that clause to agents.
I would also LOVE to hear if anyone gets a literary agent to agree to that. I would be VERY interested in hearing that. But, in truth, I’ll also be incredibly surprised. So surprised that, if I were betting woman, I’d bet a large sum of money that you wouldn’t find even ONE agent willing to agree to it. The idea that this is a relatinoship of “trust” has so far never extended to the agent trusting the writer with the agent’s money, it has ONLY involved the writer trusting the agent with the writer’s money… and I think it will be a long uphill battle (but certainly a worthwile and sensible one) to change the perception that ONLY the agent can handle money in an agent-author business model.
And, really, what we’re still talking about is the theme of Dean’s blog, of course: Don’t be stupid enough (as I was, four times in a row) to blindly follow the traditional agent-author business model whereby all of YOUR earnings are put into the power of an unlicensed person without any formal training or official standards or reliable supervisions, and against whom your ONLY leverage for misconduct (and your only means of getting contol back of your own money unless they GIVE control back to your voluntarily) would be if they BREAK STATE LAW with regard to handling your money (and, in many instances, once they’ve gone that far, it’s nonetheless going to be expensive and bureaucratic to regain your control of your money, and there’s fair chance you’ll simply see the money that’s gone missing).
And, as Dean keeps pointing out to us, that scenario (give control of your income to someone with no formal training, no licensing, and virtually no oversight) is the NORM for professional writers! How INSANE is THAT? So MUCH the accepted norm for the entire industry, so MUCH the way things ARE and “have always been” that you should, alas, be prepared for being treating as unreasonable, unrealistic, foolish, odd, ridiculous, ignorant, etc. if/when you say, “Er, sorry, no, I’m not willing to give control of my money to someone else, least of all on that basis. I will handle my own money, and I will not agree to anyone else handling it.”
Actually, here’s another way to negotiate this (the possibilities are probably infinite–but the industry has been stuck on ONE SOLE MODEL (all monies go to the agent, and the writer has no recourse) for so long that this, too, is not something I’ve heard of being done. So far. It’s certainly reasonable, though.
I made a deal recently with the North American scout (who happens to be someone I know professionally, rather than a total stranger) of a European company, for some of my e-rights to be licensed, translated, and distributed internationally across a variety of e-platforms. Monthly royalty payments will be paid to the North American scout, who will then FWD them to us.
Since this is international money, and there’s paperwork and conversions involved, etc., I’m just as happy for it to go first to a scout who deals with that, and then I get my payment in US dollars and my royalty statement (against which I can check my payment).
However, having learned my lesson with this money-on-my-back former literary agent, what I wrote into this contract for electronic rights is that if a payment to me is ever missing funds or if it ever sits in the scout’s account for more than 15 days, then thereafter, all my earnings will be sent directly to me, never again to the scout.
As already discussed, there are reasons that many writers prefer to have their monies go to their agents. Foreign sales is a fairly common reason. Most writers don’t want to have to nag Russians and Poles for payments, and to deal with the paperwork and math of converting multiple payments from yen, Euros, and shekels. (Depositing checks in foreign currency can be a nuisance for many writers, too. I was once banking at a small-town bank in rural Ohio, during grad school, and they had no idea what to do with a foreign payment that I received.)
So another thing to consider, certainly, is that if you would rather your funds flow through your literary agent, at least set down the terms in an agency agreement for what is acceptable handling of your money, and what unacceptable handling of it will eliminate the agent’s right to receive it. And set down those terms in your publishing agreements, too, so that if/when the agent violates those terms, you don’t have to get the publisher to agree to stop sending your money to the agent–it’s ALREADY been agree to, and you then just have to convince the publisher that the terms of that existing subclause in your contract with them have now been activated.
Dear Dean,
Thank you so much for the meaty reply. I find writing conferences very worthwhile, for the reasons you mention, for the craft workshops, and for the fun and motivation being surrounded by like minds provides. Sometime last year I was starting to suspect some of the issue you bring up about agents, but it was (is!) so hard to find confirmation or pointers (enter you, thanks–and also Bob Mayer; he’s faced a lot of heat from other authors and agents, because of his willingness to talk out against the system).
And I hear you on why you might say different things at a conference from what you’re saying here . . . It’s good business sense.
I think picking up on “between the lines” unsaid things from presenters, plus hearing tidbits of the unfocused on truth–most “big” names didn’t get where they are by following the conference prescribed rule–are parts of what cued me to reconsider my then-held “must get an agent first to sell books” philosophy . . .
I have other things I want to ask, but I’m _thinking_.
Dear Laura,
Thank you for all your comments and advice (to me and to this post in general). VERY HELPFUL. Your personal story, though I’m so sorry you’re going through it, is such a good warning.
I wish you could print names!
Hope your most recent contact with lawyers, etc., works this time,
Ev
As Laura has pointed out, the ways of approaching this are many and varied, and all of Laura’s suggestions make a ton more sense than the “industry norm” we all face at the moment. Again, I had almost three years of law school, ran many businesses, including a large publishing house, and I STILL went with industry norm as well, not giving it a second thought because it was “standard.”
I just hope this discussion has at least given you reading this a “second thought” about this. Awareness is the key. If you are aware these problems exist, aware of problems that others have had, you can at least protect yourself or if nothing else, stop problems quickly before they kill your career for years.
Thanks, Laura, for the different options. Many, many ways of doing this in a better fashion than just blinding handing all your money to a stranger.
Laura, thank you for providing cases of where it might be worth having money go through the agent–with that very important clause for recourse in case of failure!
I find it astonishing that in every other business, the company gets paid, and then would pay vendors/employees, but that in publishing, the employee controls the flow of the money to the employer with almost carte blanche. Just mind-boggling.
Obviously it would be great to see if we could get the 100% of the monies to author for book and other deals, rather than for small press or novella/short story deals, but with your and Dean’s experiences in mind, having the split payments codified in the contract (and/or with a clause, like the one you put in for the international scout) may be the most likely outcome with agents who are used to having this godlike power of the purse.
I would love to see the next hot young author put that clause on their contract, though, and see if that helps change the backwards way this industry runs.
Okay, I think I am done trying to change any other writer’s mind about agents. I was just labeled a “psychotic evangelist” by a relatively new novelist — for suggesting to someone else that she not let agents tell her to trunk a book she’d written.
If other writers love and adore the agent wall so much, they’re welcome to it. I consider it a nuisance and an impediment and I am rapidly growing tired of people acting like I have worms and snakes coming out of my mouth for simply suggesting that there is another way to do this, beyond simply waiting around for an agent’s approval.
“I wish you could print names!”
Well, the ironic thing Ev is that, in practical terms, using the agent’s name wouldn’t make a practical difference to most readers of this blog, since this is (wait for it!) a top agent whose already-full client list is very unlikely to be open to new or aspiring writers.
I was talking recently with another writer who, like me, now works agentless by choice. And we were both saying that one of the ironic things about our experiences is that, whereas based on our anecdotes, it SOUNDS like we worked with obscure charlatans, our formers agents are actually people at the very top of the field, interviewed and quoted in trade journals, sought after by steadily earning writers, and invariably appearing on any list of “top” or “best” agents.
LOL, Brad. Yup, welcome to the world of hard-held myths. And see why many of the common sense things Laura and I talk about here are never going to happen?
Here’s a suggestion, folks. Don’t try to convince anyone of anything. Just send them here with a comment like “You might want to look at another side of agents before you jump.” And say nothing more. Just safer.
“I was just labeled a “psychotic evangelist” by a relatively new novelist — for suggesting to someone else that she not let agents tell her to trunk a book she’d written.”
DON’T post something like without warning! I’ve just ingested hot decaf through my sinuses and may need medical attention now! I blame YOU.
Yup, I’m with Laura, all of my agents were top line agents that would be impossible for anyone new to find. And even they didn’t sell a book for me, I sold them all myself. So I agree, don’t think that Laura and I and others who have these issues are dealing with low-level agents. Nope, we have been “lucky” enough to have top agents.
And again, I had no issues at all with my agents. None. Doesn’t mean I would ever put myself back into a position like I did again that makes no business sense and asks for a stranger to screw me and take my money. Nope, just because I didn’t have issues with my agents who are still friends doesn’t mean I’m silly enough to do it again.
Actually, what I hope makes my voice even stronger is that I had no issues with any agents. But I can simply say that every writer I know around me has had issues with agents, and I got a front row seat to many of the problems. I saw how destructive an agent can be to a writer. I got lucky, so I’m trying to shout out to writers to not put yourself into a position to need to “get lucky” to survive.
Be business smart. Step outside the myths and just look around and figure out what works for you.
Brad, I have, btw, sold 9 books that agents (including agents who were representing me at the time) told me were unsaleable. Mostly to major markets–and on most occasions, markets in which the various agents who had so advised me were supposedly experts. And, on several of those occasions, the negative advice of those experts was offered rudely, insultingly, even angrily.
The books were VAMPARAZZI (under contract), UNSYMPATHETIC MAGIC (due out this August), DOPPELGANGSTER (released 2 months ago, starred review in Library Journal), REJECTION, ROMANCE, AND ROYALTIES (2007), DISAPPEARING NIGHTLY (2005), FALLEN FROM GRACE (Rita finalist, DeraAuthor.com list of top 100 novels in the genre), FEVER DREAMS (Romantic Times “Top Pick”), A WILDER NAME and ONE SULTRY SUMMER (my first two books–for which, along with my third, I was named Best New Writer in my genre by Romantic Times).
There was a tenth, A BLONDE IN AFRICA, but I don’t count it. After my then-agent refused to handle it, and before I had time to start researching markets from myself, I got an offer from my dad, who was at the time scouting for nonfiction books about Africa for a small press.
(And another 10 of my book sales were projects that I never bothered to show to an agent.)
And although I’m no longer agented and no longer query agents, I fully hope to add three more books to the list of projects that agents told me were unsaleable before I sold them. There’s a three-book proposal in my trunk which multiple agents responded to negatively on my last/final go-round with their profession. As it happens, since then, I’ve been too heavily contracted to =try= to sell it. I don’t have any time to write it. But I will market it when there is time, and I hope to sell it. My past experience suggests that, given how many agents didn’t like, the odds are good that I’ll get a nice deal for it.
Laura, apologies about the hot decaf. Feel free to forward any medical bills. (grin)
That’s a very impressive list of successes — especially since your agents all told you that they couldn’t sell any of those books. Indeed, that the books wouldn’t sell, period and/or exclamation point.
Laura & Dean,
That’s the part that has me fired up right now. Agents telling writers that a thing won’t sell, and writers just kind of hanging their heads and considering putting the book into the trunk — without ever sending it to an editor. Like it’s a failed project just because some agent said so. I am seeing that in several places at once right now, with several different writers at different levels, and it’s driving up my blood pressure.
More than that, it’s driving up my blood pressure trying to suggest that maybe agents are wrong, and having people either look at me like I just loudly passed gas, or coming back at me with open hostility, like I am committing some sort of serious sin.
I think I need to do several things.
1) I need to get the hell off writers’ forums, or at least go into mega lurk mode. These conversations I am having– at this stage — don’t seem to be doing me much good. In fact, if the subject is one like agents, I am pretty sure they’re just making me mad, and I am making other people mad, and it’s a colossal waste of time for all involved.
2) Time spent on writers’ forums can be funneled into actual writing. My wife would like this, since she’s insisted for years that I need to cut down on or cut out the whole on-line-as-social-cafe thing. After 20 years if bulletin-board dorkitude, I suspect probably now is the right time to pull the plug.
3) I need to strongly resist the urge to pass along any writing information, tips, how-to, etc, that is not specifically solicited. This too will be tough because I’m like a lot of “noob” writers who have sold a little: I like to blab about everything I am learning. Well, too much blabbery appears to be the wrong answer, and I don’t need the grief it’s getting me.
I know how you feel, Brad. I was pretty much labeled the same on a blog just this past week for daring to suggest that the idea wasn’t to get an agent, it was to SELL. And only an editor buys.
What, we’re supposed to eat off of the wonderful feeling of validity of getting an agent gives us? That the simple act of getting an agent means you have what it takes? That you are then of a professional caliber?
Puleeese.
Yet, that was the mantra. Go get an agent. It’s the only way. It might take years to get one, and then years for the agent to sell your book (once the agent has told you how to rewrite your book to be sell-able or told you to trunk it and write another one under their guidance), but that’s the way things work.
And this by a person who has a blog about writers taking control and making money on their own. You would think he would know better.
Very depressing.
Here’s a question: Where can one find a good IP lawyer? I’ll admit to not having done a lot of research on this, but the only one I know of is in San Francisco and shares the original spelling of my surname: Townsend and Townsend and Crew.
Another question (probably borderline stupid, but I’m gonna ask it anyway): Does it make any difference where the IP lawyer is located?
Laura, your experience with declined manuscripts is a testimony to another one of Dean’s myths, that “Agents Know Markets.”
A writer’s creating a novel and trying to get agents to submit it, only to have them decline, and allowing that to deter them sounds to me like a company’s designing a product and, rather than taking it to a focus group or straight to the market, taking it to a consultant who tells the company “That’ll never hit. Trash it,” and doing so.
Fortunately for you, you had the foresight and determination to pursue those sales directly. That’s inspirational and instructional.
“I would love to see the next hot young author put that clause on their contract, though, and see if that helps change the backwards way this industry runs.”
And to give a separate but related example of how creative contracts and agreements can become, at the author’s behest (at least if the author is profitable enough that editors and agents want to cooperate with her), I know one author who decided stage-by-stage incentive-rewards would be helpful in getting through book-after-book (this is someone who’s been writing a long time)… and negotiated a contract with a publisher that for years has provided for the author’s advance to be paid out in multiple parts, every time another “x” number of pages of the book are completed and delivered.
I was -really- intrigued by this, since at the time I heard about it, I had just BARELY survived a miserable period of writing books of 250,000 that each took me about 18 months to write, after which I was waiting about half a year after delivery to get paid D&A (the delivery-and-acceptance money, which usually somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 of the overall advance sum).
Publishers can refuse to accept a delivered book; or refuse to accept it without revisions–and the revisions requested might be extensive. So waiting for response after delivery can be fraught time for a writer, and there is at least one major house well known for taking OVER A YEAR to response to many of its writers’ delivered MSs. And the waiting for D&A comes, for most writers, after having spent 6-12 months writing the bookin question, so you’ve invested a lot of time and effort -and- you usually really need the money by then. (No one has ever refused to accept a delivered MS of mine but, as above, I’ve waited 6+ months on some occasions for the D&A check. And I know a number of writers whose publishers DID refuse to accept a book–AT ALL. Leaving the writer with a completed MS that took 4-6-12-18 months to complete… and for which the income agreement has suddenly been reneged.)
So, all things considered, I was VERY intrigued by the idea of getting it written into the contract that an advance might be broken into, say, 8-10 portions, and I’d still get some on signing, some on delivery, and (as has become fairly standard these days) some on publication, but I could ALSO get some for (for example) each 100 pages that I completed and delivered.
The drawback for me is that I don’t work that way (I don’t finish book in chunks, I finish it as a whole piece, so I may be rewriting chapter three while in the middle of drafting chapter 19). But learning about that contract structure from this author was a very eye-opening insight into how individually tailored you can make your contracts with your publisher (at least, if they’ll agree to it)–and I see no reason NOT to translate that into agency agreements and clauses, too, and arrange an agent-author relationship, if you choose to have one, on YOUR terms, based on what YOU want (since you’re the client and the one generating the earnings) and on what works for YOU.
Brad, yes, welcome to that learning curve. Your wife is correct. Limit your time on boards and stay in lurk mode most of the time and don’t pass on tips unless asked. That will save you stress and give you a lot more time to write. I lurk on many boards.
“I find it astonishing that in every other business, the company gets paid, and then would pay vendors/employees, but that in publishing, the employee controls the flow of the money to the employer with almost carte blanche. Just mind-boggling. ”
Sam, well, keep in mind, as Dean has pointed out multiple times in this series, a lot of writers are really bad at business. That helps.
In fact, I was talking with someone recently who runs a small business that deals with some writers, peripheral to the industry, and this person was expressing frustration and astonishment at how unbusinesslike many of them are–and what problems that has created for this particular business. So I talked about one of my early wake-up calls on this score, which was that one day many years ago, shortly after I moderated a writers roundtable discussion about strategies for improving some standard contractual clauses that affect all writers (ex. option clauses, reversion clauses), at least two attendees privately asked me afterwards what a reversion or option clause -was-. They’d never heard of it. One of these people had sold about 30 books, the other had sold more than a dozen; and these clauses would have been in every contract they signed. But they’d never heard of these clauses and, when I explained what they were, there was no dawning light of recognition. They’d never known that they were under option to their publishers; and they had no idea when, how, or whether any of their books were eligible for reversion. It was as if I was speaking in Sanskrit to these two experienced professionals when talking to them about standard, well-known contractual clauses that they had, in fact, signed many times. Since that early experience, I have had a LOT of experiences like that.
Mind you, I do know a lot of REALLY smart, REALLY shrewd, really businesslike, publishing-savvy writers whose intelligence as professionals has been a major factor in their own success.
But one does also meet a fair number of writers whose business acumen would be overwhelmed by managing a child’s lemonade stand for an afternoon. Whence comes much of the vocal (even hostile) conviction one encounters in -writers- that NO business model other than the current, existing, traditional, and self-evidently problematic agent-author business model should even be proposed or discussed, never mind ENACTED.
Agents, of course, have an obvious stake in the current status quo of that business model. Editors do, too, since the current form of the model includes a key function for them–helping reduce the size of their slushpiles (which, it should be acknowledged, is a genuine problem in their understaffed industry); but, actually, although I’ve certainly heard different experiences about this by now, I have never (yet) myself encountered an editor who had any problem at all with my not being agented.
But the surprising part is how vehemently (even angrily) many writers oppose the very -idea- of opening up the currently rigid and narrow agent-author business model to a wider variety of possibilities, variations, and alternatives. This, I guess, evinces how cherished certain myths are, and how threatened people feel about questioning them.
I’ve said over and over (for several years now) that I’m not saying anyone who’s happy with their agent should fire the agent, and I’m not saying anyone who wants an agent should stop looking for one; I’m saying that I want ADDITIONAL alternatives become accepted and acknowledged as reasonable business models for authors. And in so saying, I’m regularly dismissed as a crank, an idiot, an “out there” fanatic, a fool, etc. (Albeit one who is heavily contracted since shedding agents from my own business model.)
GD, I found my lawyer (Elaine English) by asking professional writers for recommendations, and I’d say that’s the way to go. (And since I’ve worked with Elaine on a number of things by now, yes, I’m happy to recommend her.)
However, I also researched the existing list of approved literary lawyers for the Ninc Legal Fund 3 years ago, and I’m happy to provide that info here. These aren’t by any means the only good literary lawyers out there, but I can verify that I have previously researched and interviewed all of these lawyers and felt they all met the standards of what I was willing to recommend to Ninc as appropriate lawyers for Ninc to refer its members to.
Robert Clarida
Cowan, Liebowitz & Latman P.C.
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036-6799
212-790-9266
rwc@cll.com
http://www.cll.com
Elaine P. English
Elaine P. English, PLLC
4710 41st Street, NW, Suite D
Washington DC 20016
202-362-5190
ElaineEngl@aol.com
http://www.elaineenglish.com
Thomas P. Higgins
Higgins & Trippett, LLP
The Bar Building
36 West 44th Street
New York, New York 10036
212-840-8334
tphiggins@h-tlaw.com
http://www.h-tlaw.com
Alan Kaufman
1212 Avenue of the Americas
18th Floor
New York, NY 10036
212-391-2800
alan@kaufmanpublaw.com
http://www.kaufmanpublaw.com
F. Robert Stein
Pryor Cashman LLP
410 Park Ave.
New York, N.Y. 10022
212-326-0830
rstein@pryorcashman.com
http://www.pryorcashman.com
David Bruce Wolf
Cowan, DeBaets, Abrahams & Sheppard LLP
41 Madison Avenue, 34th Floor
New York, New York 10010
212-974-7474
dwolf@cdas.com
http://www.cdas.com
“More than that, it’s driving up my blood pressure trying to suggest that maybe agents are wrong, and having people either look at me like I just loudly passed gas, or coming back at me with open hostility, like I am committing some sort of serious sin.”
Brad, shooting the messenger is a common reaction to just about any myth-busting discourse. So it’s best to conserve your time and energy as wisely as you can.
I think it’s great that Dean posts these blogs and that there are people reading this blog who want to discuss unconventional views of the agent-author business model in a curious and civil manner. That’s why I participate here. I also know that it’s UNUSUAL that this subject is being discussed here in a curious and civil manner. And if this discussion consisted of the usual dismissive derision and misinterpretation and defensive nonsense that more commonly characterize such discussions (as well as the usual implication that I must be an idiot to work without an agent, and that you’d be an idiot to consider following my idiotic example, yada yada)… I would NOT bother participating here.
I say, use what you learn to benefit yourself, and share it with others who want to benefit from it… and let everyone else find their own way (or perhaps fail to find it), rather wasting your energy on people who don’t want the message and/or will just shoot the messenger.
“That’s the part that has me fired up right now. Agents telling writers that a thing won’t sell, and writers just kind of hanging their heads and considering putting the book into the trunk — without ever sending it to an editor. ”
Well, obviously, this is a subject that fires me up, too. Had I ever listened to any agents about this, I’d never had had a writing career AT ALL. Had I listened to any agent about this at any point along the way, my writing career would have ended then. So I HATE seeing writers retire books or not send out books because of an agent’s opinion. And, yes, I do speak up about that….
But here’s the thing. I’ve learned to say it once and leave it there–even with people whom I know, and even with seasoned pros. Because just as you’re seeing that it’s a common thing for people to flat-out reject your suggestion that an agent’s negative opinion isn’t a good enough reason to put a book in the trunk and fugghedaboud it… Something I’ve learned is that a percentage of writers get encouraged and fired up when I cite my experiences and urge them not to retire a book just because an agent (or ten) don’t like it…. and then the very next thing I know (maybe within the next 2 minutes, while we’re still discussing it; or maybe the next time I see that writer a year later)… the writer has gone RIGHT back to the initial position of (a) deciding to discard and abandon the book because an agent says so, or (b) deciding that what it will take to get him/her to believe in the book is to query another agent in hope that THIS one will believe in the book (and this, again, placing all validity for that MS in the hands of an agent).
And I’ve learned that, fine, okay, there’s really nothing I can (or SHOULD) do about that, and it’s time for me to change the subject. I’ve imparted my information/opinion once, and if once wasn’t enough, the talking until I’m blue in the face won’t do EITHER of us any good. If what THAT writer needs to feel that a MS should be submitted is an agent who wants to submit it (or to keep submitting), fine, whatever. After all, what -I- need to sit through almost any sports even is a really good book or podcast. We all have different needs, and just as a football fan can’t understand me burying my nose in a good book if I’m put in a seat on the 50-yard-line at a Superbowl game, so be it, I can’t understand a writer who needs an agent’s validation of her work in order to want to submit/sell it… but there are indeed writers who need that, just as I need something to keep me amused at the sporting event of the year.
“Here’s a suggestion, folks. Don’t try to convince anyone of anything. Just send them here with a comment like “You might want to look at another side of agents before you jump.” And say nothing more. Just safer.”
That’s what I’ve been doing, Dean. I’ve learned so much from your series here and want to share, but know I could be setting myself up. I just post here and there with a direct link to you saying that they might want to check out this really interesting conversation going on. People either seem to love the info or hate it. LOL.
For what it’s worth, I just, today, got finished reaching an agreement with my ex-agent about seperating out payments and royalty statements from the publisher.
I wrote a short letter praising the agent profusely and saying I needed this done for accounting issues seperate from our relationship.
It went well.
Obviously, Laura’s situation didn’t–which goes to show it comes down to the agent personality involved. It usually comes down to personalities when there’s no codified system in place.
Which proves the over all point.
The prevailing attitude among writers is depressing. While I am blessed to be in an area where there are a number of -talented- writers, I’m astonished at their outlook. I’ve been told a number of times to get an agent before I submit a book and only a handful of the ones telling me that have anything noteworthy on the shelves. It’s depressing, really. I am routinely shocked by what I hear some of these writers say. Out of respect for their privacy, I’ll not repeat it hear, but it’s definitely a sharp realization.
Brad- I’m with you on the whole wishing to blab all over about whatever I’m learning. That’s why I have a blog. So far anyway, no one has popped up and told me I’m doing it wrong. And I figure the only way anyone will notice my blog is if I’m selling stuff and getting known, in which case I’ve already made my rebuttal. It lets me talk about whatever I think is cool that I’m trying without the flame war chance of a forum thread (also, I have delete power! mwhahahaha).
The good part of the whole agent/not agent/what to do about agents issue(s) is that this info is getting out there and people are seeing it. I know I’m pretty grateful for the multiple perspectives, and I bet I’m hardly alone among n00b writers. We’re just often quieter than people who disagree or get angry about this stuff.
Laura, thank you! Much appreciated for the list.
And great comments! Thanks a bunch!!!!
Laura, thanks for providing that list! I really appreciate it.
I’ve never had to deal with an agent, and this whole discussion has been incredibly enlightening. I was one more interested in the traditional way of doing things simply because that’s what I’ve learned over years of reading tons of books on writing. Not once has anything ever been mentioned about IP lawyers. While I don’t doubt that many have happy and successful relationships with their agents, everything I’ve learned thus far, along with what I know about myself, tells me that I’d probably work best with an IP lawyer vs. an agent, thus my question.
Further, this discussion has also thrown light on the idea that an agent, while they can be helpful, may not even be necessary when selling other rights to one’s work.
Dean, I’m certainly looking forward to your future posts. Love all things I’ve learned thus far.
Gary
Also, Laura, it looks like your IP lawyer is in my neck of the woods, too. I live between DC and Baltimore.
It’s said that if one wants to be successful at anything, however that is defined for that person, the one must identify successful people in that field, identify what makes them successful, and emulate it. I’m therefore very careful to avoid the advice of people who have not published dozens of books, or several bestsellers, or both. I figure they are the right people to listen to. Others can listen to whom they wish.
I’ve also heard, very often, that if you find a really successful person and ask them how they got successful, they will nearly always tell you exactly what they’ve done if they have the time. That runs contrary to the popular myth that the rich want to keep the poor down. The reason they’ll tell you is because they know there’s about a 1% likelihood that you’ll be the person that will do what they say, because no matter what field that person is in, invariably he is successful because he worked very hard for a number of years, and continues to work hard.
You’re welcome!
Oh, btw, there’s also an attorney named Ellen M. Kozak I’d suggest taking a look at. She has not (like the others) been recommended to me by a writer, but I’ve followed some of her work. She specializes in publishing and media law, she wrote a handy book called EVERY WRITER’S GUIDE TO COPYRIGHT LAW (currently either o.o.p. or between editions; I’m not sure which), and she’s got a good common-sense article on the Wisconsin Bar Association’s website about avoiding publishing scams:
http://www.wisbar.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Wisconsin_Lawyer&template=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&contentid=68934#bio
Also, folks, keep in mind viz legal fees something we discussed a month or so ago on this blog:
Sometimes a literary attorney’s fee will seem too steep in comparison to your advance. If you’re signing for $2000 with a small press, and the lawyer’s estimated fee to negotiate the contract is $600, that may well be a bigger chunk of your advance (or your overall bank account) than you want to part with. In which case, consider having the attorney look over your contract (with a small press, it’s probably only two pages) and make recommendations to YOU about what YOU should ask for in negtotiations. That brief service will cost you maybe $100, by contrast, which is a very reasonable sum to take out of a small advance to get knowledgeable suggestions for improving your contract terms.
Also, you might be dealing with a major house for a small two-book advance, especially early in your career, that’s going to be broken into multiples. (Ex. $3K/book for 2 books, advance split into third; ergo, on signing, you’d get $2K.) And contracts at major houses can be LONG and the negotiations can drag on. I think I wound up paying for 9 billable hours on my first negotiation with DAW/Penguin USA. That legal bill was a small fraction of what an agency commission would have cost me; but that same legal fee would have eaten most of the signing money if the advance had been entry-level. In which case, it might have been worth thinking about how to most effectivly use my lawyer’s services to keep my legal fee down to, say, 2 billable hours.
OTOH, also consider this: If you expect (or at least hope) to have a longterm relationship with a house, then spending the money on a first negtotiation with the house can be well worthwhile because once that MUCH work is done on your boilerplate with the publisher… on the next deal, your lawyer will just be reviewing and maybe fine-tuning a few points, because the deal will start from the previously-negotiated contract, not from the original basic publisher boilerplate. There WILL still be negotiations (you may want to improve certain terms that you didn’t have leverage to improve on the previous contract; the publisher may be implementing new “standard” terms that you don’t like, such as wanting to be your e-royalties on “net”), but the bulk of the contract will have been fine-tuned to your needs in the first negotiation with that house, so your legal bill for negotiations should never again be as high as it was the first time.
And, as previouly discussed, with a literary lawyer, you negotiations will be conducted with far more expertise about publishing contracts than most agents have.
GD- thanks so much for asking Laura about literary lawyers. I was getting ready to ask.
Laura- Thank you so much for sharing the NINC legal fund list of literary lawyers!!! I’ve copied them into my research file to investigate further. Getting this list from you made my morning.
Brad, take comfort in that you converted at least one. I wouldn’t have found Dean’s site if it weren’t for your “psychotic evangelizing” on the WOTF forums. So, cheers!
And I agree with the wife. Maximize that time in front of the computer for actual writing. I stick only to the boards or blogs that are teaching me something, like this one. Keeps me from getting sucked into the “forum death spiral.”
Also worth keeping in mind the paradox of agenting, in my experience and in the experience of, alas, too many writers.
The agent gets 15% of your entire deal (advance and royalties). Which, if the agent’s work involved finding a marketing for the material and getting the best price for it, may be worth the expense to you. But I think that finding a market for the work yourself and THEN bringing in an agent to negotiate is too expensive. The single most expensive mistake I ever made was to hire an agent to negotiate a contract after I’d already got an offer on the table. That cost me approximately $9,000 =more= than a lawyer would have cost me; the contract negotiations were neither as prompt nor as thorough as I later experienced when working with a lawyer; and I essentially got no other services.
Additionally, if you stay at that house for multiple contracts or years… For each new deal in the relationship, the agent is earning 15% of your income for, in most cases, doing little more than picking up the phone every year or two to say to the editor, “Send over a contract with the usual terms.” Which strikes me as very -expensive- compared to paying for an hour of a lawyer’s time. (To reiterate, money isn’t NOT why I decided to stop working with agents. But since I’ve stopped working with them, I’ve subsequently realized how incredibly expensive it was. When I was working with agents, I regarded this as “normal” and didn’t think about it.)
Agents (and writers who favor working with an agent) will tell you the agent does a lot more than that. And in cases where the agent does indeed do a lot more than that, paying 15% of your income may well be worthwhile. But there is simply no denying (experience is overwhelming on this score) that a lot of agents DON’T actually do more than that… and so the writer winds up spending, say, $12,000 for an agent to accept an option offer and look over an option contract before FWDing to you, rather than paying a contracts lawyer, say, $200 to look it over and FWD it to you.
Additionally, it all too often happens (and it certainly happened to me) that when that option offer isn’t forthcoming, and it merits 15% of your income for your agent to place you at a new house… very often, instead, the agent just stops taking your calls.
So it’s worth considering what services you WANT from an agent that make the agent worth so much more money out of your pocket, and whether you are GETTING those services from an agent.
My god. I have to be honest with you. I’ve started parroting some of the things I’ve read here on a website I frequent: AbsoluteWrite.com.
I’ve gotten my ass kicked. Its amazing how much hatred and vitriol people have when I so much as suggest that people shouldn’t rely upon agents so heavily.
You wouldn’t believe how many people were literally screaming: “My agent is my collaborator! SHE IS NOT AN EMPLOYEE. I WOULD NEVER EVER TREAT HER LIKE AN EMPLOYEE! SHE TELLS ME THINGS TO WRITE BECAUSE SHE KNOWS THE INDUSTRY!”
Its just amazing, and honestly pretty disheartening to me, as I’m a fairly active member of that forum and have come under a lot of personal attacks.. However, my brother always said “You’re no one important until someone hates you.” To analogize that adage, If it stirs up the hornets nest that bad, and gets people that fired up, there must be some truth to it…”
That said, I’m not sure what to do with the first book I plan to sub… I have 5 publication houses I’m very interested in. I’m thinking of sending my MS to those 5 houses while I work on other stuff. And then after a few months look into agents.
This may sound bizarre, but I’m a business professional right now. I’m currently writing my 6th novel. My goal is to complete 10 novels before I ever submit anywhere. The reason is both for the experience, and to have a stable of available material, should the agent/editor have interest in my other works.
I’m also the kid who fought the rock lizards and low level video game mobs for hours on end so by the time I got to the boss fight, I kicked their ass
So many good comments, I have to agree with so much of what’s been said. Especially regarding perspectives and viewpoints and people simply getting an alternative opinion on something. Somehow, having an alternative opinion on agents really, really sets some writers off. Like, bad.
Here’s the thing. Over the last year I’ve been spending a lot of time researching submissions at several different sources: how it works with publishers, the usual conventional wisdom(s) regarding same, and agents — getting first-hand accounts from other writers about their agent experiences.
Some writers love their agents and don’t understand why everyone doesn’t love their agent.
Other writers, usually quietly, relate disturbing stories about agents who are doing everything but helping these writers.
In both cases I feel like people are being honest, and I feel like their honesty helps me form my own plan for how I want to approach publishers. I thank them for sharing. It’s not about forming or espousing a “right doctrine,” hate agents, love agents, whatever. it’s about going into the whole submission and agent tornado with eyes open.
Now, I also have to admit that what I’d look for in an agent seems to be very different from what many other writers look for in an agent.
My ideal agent is someone very much like an IP lawyer: someone who can explain how a contract works, with no B.S. involved, making suggestions about how to change the contract so that it’s more favorable to me and I retain more rights for more money. It would also be helpful if this person had overseas capability for foreign sales. And of course I’d demand split payments, nor would I go near an agent who expected me to sign with that agent beyond a single contract. Each sale, I’d come back to the agent and we’d work that deal as its own, separate transaction. And when the transaction was over, we’d be done. A clean deal.
Lots of other writers, I’ve discovered, want their agent to be all kinds of things. A first reader. A career counselor. A friend. Someone who will stroke them. Help them “fix” all their books. Have all the instant connections to the editors so that the writer never has to worry about competing with slush again. For a whole lifetime. Etc.
Now, some of that, I think, is unrealistic. And some of it just doesn’t suit me at all. Even if an agent was offering to be a first reader, I don’t want an agent telling me to “fix” anything unless that advice comes directly from an editor and there is a contract on the line. I am also not looking for a stroker, nor a buddy, nor someone to cheer me up. Because we’re discussing business when we discuss agents, I expect and desire a business-like transaction. Professional. No mickey mouse. I have a product, help me swing the deal using your expertise at swinging deals. We split the payment, you get your 15% and I get my 85% and thank you very much.
Above almost everything, I don’t want an agent telling me my product will or won’t sell, based strictly on his or her opinion. That’s a taste and value judgment. Let an editor make that call. I don’t understand why so many writers are so flatly hostile to the idea that it should be an editor — the man or woman with his or her fingers on the money levers — who is authorized to make that call. An agent? Pure opinion, and it’s likely to be wrong as often as it is right, and the real world sales back that up all the time. How often does a bestselling book or series of books make the rounds of both agents and markets, getting bounced until someone picks it up and runs with it? How come all those agents and editors got it “wrong” and one agent and/or editor got it right?
So no, I don’t need or want a second layer of opinion in my transaction. The editor is enough. If my agent will simply get my book in front of the editor, that’s all I am looking for. Let the editor make the call.
But in our current state of things, agents have become the kings of first readership and the majority of new novelists fawn and grovel for agent approval. I’ve never, never, never, never felt comfortable with that and as I’ve approached putting my own books to market I’ve been ever so thankful for the alternative viewpoint that is offered here, and elsewhere. Because I just felt too weird about letting someone who couldn’t pay me a dime, reject or accept my book — as if that person was qualified to say my book was sellable.
If I want an opinion like that, I’ll go to a real first reader or maybe some guy on the street.
No, for an agent, I want someone who is good at working deals and knows contracts and knows how to help me get the most out of a contract, without a lot of nonsense or counterproductive playing around.
But it seems to me that this is precisely what is expected of us writers in the standard model: agents are the filter, agents decide if a book is “good” or “bad” or will sell or not sell, and so everyone runs around chasing agents like agents are the key — the ONLY key — to the kingdom.
I kept saying to myself, this is nuts. Why is it like this? There’s got to be a better way. I understand all the reasons why the system evolved to its current state, but I still thought deep down that there had to be a better way. But I felt isolated and alone in this conviction.
Until these posts came up, and people like Laura began to chime in, and I heard about still other writers — usually on the down low — making plans to go “renegade” and work their own deals and sell their own stuff and just basically bypass agents and go back to hitting publishers over the transom. And the great thing is, people are succeeding. Oh, not instantly, but it’s happening, and with publishing shifting gears due to the e-market it seems like now is a great time for alternative processes when it comes to submitting.
Maybe my ideal agent doesn’t exist. Okay, I guess that means I am condemning myself to an agentless existence. Unless I lower my standards. But if I can find ways to market my own work and sell — as Laura has done, and as more and more writers are doing, I am learning — why should I lower my standards? No agent makes money without writers, so I should keep my standards and expectations high and not stoop or let my desire for publication compromise my values.
Okay, whoa, there is a word nobody ever talks about when it comes to agents. Values. It’s funny, I am here TDY for Army career course advancement, and as usual with this kind of thing, values are central to the training. It’s no joke. The Army takes this kind of thing very seriously. Why don’t writers? I wonder what would happen if every writer sat down at the beginning of their career and posted a set of core values at their writing desk. Personal rules for themselves that would allow them to retain control, dignity, and sanity.
Such as:
– I will not re-write unless an editor asks me to.
– I will always demand split payments in any agented contract.
– I will never let an agent refuse to send my book to market.
– I will never sign with any person beyond a single contract.
– I will not tolerate tardy royalty payments or statements.
And so on, and so forth. Basically, personal rules of engagement (ROE) for protecting the writer — from themselves, if nothing else. From the temptation to enter into a bad or possibly shaky deal they know they shouldn’t enter into, but they do anyway because rejections suck and the markets are hard and dammit, maybe just this once, it’ll be okay and the writer will get lucky and won’t get burned.
I think when I get back home I am going to write up a values list like that above, maybe add a few more things, and tape it up right next to Heinlein’s Rules and my personal goal list for 2010.
Laura, can’t do much more than say THANK YOU for that list, and for all the info you are putting out!!
One more item, for values. And it’s probably the biggest of them all.
– If ever I am told to compromise my values, I will walk away.
Without that, the value system collapses. No writer will be able to stand up for themselves or have any leverage if they can be convinced to abandon their core values, whatever those values happen to be. I’d love to see all new writers drilled with the idea that they must — each of them — be prepared to walk away. From agents, from editors, from a lot of money, if it means by signing the deal they’ll be compromising on something as important as their values, as writers. Their values are what will ultimately protect them in the industry.
Brad, good stuff, and especially that last one about compromising your values. I learned that one the hard way early on, I’m afraid, taking a book project I didn’t like and didn’t feel was right for me. Turned out, as you might imagine, to be one of the worst projects I’ve ever been a part of. Over the years, Kris and I have turned down a lot of projects for a lot of reasons, but it always comes back to being true to who you are as a writer. So great posts.
Brad, I’m intrigued by the idea of Rules Of Engagement For Writers, and also the idea of each writer codifying a personal values system.
I know many very smart writers who I’m sure carry these things inside them, but I don’t know how many write it down or codify these things formally. And writing it down seems like a good a way for anyone to start thinking about (or further think about) all this stuff in a clear-headed way.
(On a separate but related subject, I’ve had similar thoughts lately about ethics. Journalists get some ethics training, but novelists get none. There ought to be a class we could take, like “Ethics for Fiction Writers.” Not because we’re wicked and need rules imposed, but because most of us are decent and would probably like to have the benefit of informed analysis and structured discussion of the ethical dilemmas we have faced, will face, or might face in our work.)
Maybe I’m bent a little differently, but I personally find it -very- appealing to run my own business and take control of my life and my career. I’m tired of being stepped on and looked over and sitting at the bottom of the totem pole I understand I’ll be at the bottom for several years, but I can work my way up. And I can do it without compromising my values and working for a company I do not believe in. If that means hiring a lawyer to negotiate my contracts and going back to school to get a business degree (which I’m seriously considering), then I will.
I want to be successful. I don’t think I can express fully how meaningful these posts are, Dean. This has been a great eye-opener for me. I can’t wait for the next post and I definitely can’t wait until the career workshop in September. Look for my e-mail!
“”I kept saying to myself, this is nuts. Why is it like this? There’s got to be a better way.”
Brad, which is exactly why I participate here, and why I am vocal about this subject. (I don’t go around the Web evangelically, but I talk about this subject in my writings, on my website, in my columns, as a guest blogger, in my speeches, etc.) Because when I consciously decided to quit the author-agent business model, it felt like stepping off a cliff. And that’s CRAZY.
Moreover, I had -wanted- to quit it sooner. But I didn’t precisely because the conventional wisdom of the business and of everyone I knew in it was EMPHATIC that I =MUST= have an agent, that a career novelist who works without an agent is like a murder defendant who decides to be his own trial lawyer–i.e. a doomed idiot. And, of course, that’s CRAZY.
I’m an experienced professional using a lot of tools at hand (such as networking, contacts, attorneys, industry news and publications, advocacy orgs, etc.) in a business that is, hullo!, =just= a business. So until literary agents have to go to grad school for 3 years of specialized education and then pass a state exam before they can market and sell a novel, I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that this really ISN’T as specialized as defending someone on trial for murder.
I felt trapped, boxed in, locked in, and frustrated because of the overwhelming, emphatic, inflexible conviciton throughout this industry that there is only ONE way for a career writer to do business; via a traditional agent-author paradigm. And when I decided to abandon it anyhow… it really did feel like stepping off a cliff. Like I was indeed doing something CRAZY…
And within weeks, I realized it was one of the VERY best professional decisions I’d ever made and, more to the point–it had been CRAZY to fret about it, be afraid of it, etc. My only regret is that I didn’t make the decision sooner.
It would have made SUCH a different to me if I could’ve encountered someone then like I am now (enjoying a productive writing career after abandoning the author-agent business model), saying the things that I say now (working without an agent is a perfectly feasible, reasonable business model for a career writer). It would have helped ME so MUCH back then.
But I never heard it, because no one ever said it. Indeed, everyone always said the exact opposite. And most people still do. So I speak up out of retrograde self-pity. I say to you what I dearly WISH someone like me had said to me back then. I also speak up because there’s no reason for ANY other writer who wants to abandon the agent-author business model (or who wants to contemplate the possibility of a variety of alternative business models) to feel the way =I= felt: trapped, frustrated, and cliff-stepping-off.
I come from a small business background, so it is mind-boggling to hear of the industry standards. What’s even more amazing is how, before I ran across Dean and Kris and Laura and others like you who de-mythify the industry and profession and drive home the practical aspect of things (like Heinlein’s rules), I thought that writers couldn’t make a living writing fiction unless they were bestsellers, I thought agents were the voice of experience and would take care of you as a writer (as long as you didn’t get one of the scam artists in P&E or something), and so forth.
I was so, so wrong.
I love that now, I am able to be as clear-eyed and practical in writing as I am in other businesses, thanks to the mythbusting you guys are doing here. I can’t thank you enough for that–especially since I’m not able to go to cons and so forth to meet experienced writers and ask them for the real picture…yet. I hope I won’t be too socially tongue-tied to talk shop and thank people in person when I AM able to!
Laura, I want to echo that about going without an agent feels freeing in so many ways. Again, I had no issues with any agent, but I found myself not wanting to mail out books to an agent, or even to an editor because I would have to go through all the stuff involved with dealing with the agent. Agent had done nothing BUT I had let the idea of having the person in the middle stop me cold.
Moment I left my last agent, I felt free, and writing became fun again. Now my agent had done nothing at all to stop me from writing or even made any suggestions. It was all in my head, but with writing, that’s where the important feelings are.
I just laugh at the idea of an agent doing what I have done in the last six months with a number of pen names. For example, my pen name Dee W. Schofield now has four different novel projects on many editor’s desks. Would any agent out there have done that for me? Nope. And I’m having a blast writing the Dee W. Schofield humor. And if one of them sells, so much the better, but to be honest, I’m having so much fun with the writing, that’s only secondary again.
As Sam pointed out, for those of us with business minds and control issues, not having an agent is just a wonderful, freeing thing for our writing.
And SPEAKING of myth-busting, fantasy writer Jim Hines recently collected data from 240+ writers about first-novel sales, and he has started positing the results on his blog. (He’ll also eventually post a summary report on his website.)
The first installment is at:
http://jimhines.livejournal.com/496760.html
Two things immediately caught my eye.
One, despite erroneous whining all over the internet that publishing is now a “closed shop” and it’s “impossible to break in,” etc., far and away the biggest number of respondents were people reporting a first-novel sale in 2008-2009.
Two, lots of people make a first sale without an agent. (Yes, more make one -with- an agent. A key question was not asked in the survey: Did anyone who made a first sale with an agent previously try to make a sale without one? Unless a large portion of them did, then this stat shows us that more of the respondents chose to work through an agent, rather than showing that an agent is the more effective way to make a first sale.) Jim also broke this figure down on a past-five-year basis to compare to the overall stat, and it shows no real change between trends now and trends covering 30 years.
Of another stat in the survey, Jim writes: “To those proclaiming queries and the slush pile are for suckers, and self-publishing is the way to land a major novel deal, I have bad news: only 1 author out of 246 self-published their book and went on to sell that book to a professional publisher.”
Dean, it wasn’t all in my head (it was in exhausting arguments trying to convince agents to send out my work), but, yeah, that’s certainly one of the many freeing factors of working without an agent: My writing is no longer mentally hampered by trying to figure out how to convince an agent to send out my work. Looking back, I remember laboriously learning (and this is again CRAZY) to try to tailor whatever I wrote in order to get it PAST THE AGENT, because just getting an agent to SEND OUT my work was such a major hurdle to clear. Due to the reluctance of agents to submit my work, I learned–before even writing a single page!–to start marshalling arguments and lining up ducks and developing strategies… all in an attempt to convince, er, my sales rep to make at least -some- effort to sell my work.
(For years, I thought it was just =me=. First I thought that I had somehow bizarrely become a worse writer upon hiring agents, because suddenly I was (according to these “experts”) writing so much stuff that wasn’t even worth of submission. And then I later I thought I just had some bizarre, unique facility for repeatedly managing to pick the only literary agents in the business who don’t actually want to TRY TO SELL a client’s work. And so, in a way, I still thought it was just =me=. It was only later, after I gave up on agents and also started talking publicly about this sunject, that I learned how amazingly common it is for agents to refuse to send out material. FAR more common than I’d ever suspected. Indeed, so common, it now seems a little amazing to me that any agent anywhere ever sells a book.)
I do think about editors and the market, etc., when I develop projects. (In particular, I think about editors whom I’d like to work with or KEEP working with, and therefore how can I massage a story idea so that it’s suitable for their program. For example, I’ve long had a suspense idea that I now think about trying to make into some sort of contemp fantasy, because I would so much like to do it with my current fantasy editor, with whom I love working.) But, BOY, it is SO FREEING not to weigh every project down with the immovable hurdle of literary agents who just don’t want to SEND OUT submissions.
Laura, yeah, I read Jim’s data earlier today and just started laughing. He has put together some real facts and figures from a couple hundred writers (Kris and I are not included in those numbers by the way.) And I love how he broke out the data for the last five years and there was no real changes. Great myth busting there, that’s for sure. Fantastic.
The one guy who self-published, then went on to get a deal with a major publisher, is Larry Correia.
The other guy who published to his web site, then got an offer from a major publisher, is obviously John Scalzi.
Both outliers.
I like Larry a ton, great guy at the Utah cons. He’s forever telling new authors to *NOT* follow in his footsteps, because there is no way anybody could try to set out and directly replicate what he did with Monster Hunter International. No way, and he knows that. And he knows how lucky he was to move over from self-pub to regular publishing with Baen.
As Laura notes, it would be fascinating to know if any of the agented first novelists tried non-agented, with no success, then moved to agented. I am going to wager almost all of them never even tried non-agented because that’s simply not done by serious professionals. (snicker)
And hooray for the significant number of non-agented first novel sales! On one graph, it’s about half of the total of agented first sales, and on the more recent graph, it’s a third of the agented first sales.
Clearly, all this business about publishers not taking unagented and unsolicited manuscripts under any circumstances is… incorrect.
Brad wrote: “I like Larry a ton, great guy at the Utah cons. He’s forever telling new authors to *NOT* follow in his footsteps, because there is no way anybody could try to set out and directly replicate what he did”
And, as it happens, I was sitting next to the other person you mention above, John Scalzi, on a panel discussion last year where he said essentially the same thing. (I think Jim Hines was on the panel with us, too. But it all blurs together after a while, so I’m not sure.) It was a panel on breaking into the biz, and Scalzi sensibly pointed out that while it’s obviously not impossible to break in the way he did (he’s living proof of that), 99.99% of the people who broke in the year that he did it by submitting books to publishers, compared to the 0.01% who broke in that year the way he did; so do the math on which method offers you better odds of selling your first book.
Whereas Jim’s stats/graphs from the questionnaire show that selling a first novel without an agent isn’t a longshot, it’s a pretty common route.
And the thing to keep in mind about those agented/unagented first sale stats Jim is listing is that a fair few people are going to see that graph and claim it’s evidence that an agented first novel is almost twice as likely to sell. And, actually, without further data, it’s =possible= that’s what that stat is telling us. But without further data, it is =equally= possible that what that stat is telling us is that a new novelist with a saleable MS is almost twice as likely to submit via an agent rather than directly.
A required surveys course in grad school, followed by running a survey of NINC’s members in 2008, burned me out forever on writing and running surveys. But as a follow up to the work that Jim has done, i’d be fascinated to see a survey about agentes and unagented book sales, for first-time -and- for established novelists, with additional questions about agents.
For example, since a LOT of writers, including new writers, only submit on their own after trying and failing to get an agent, I would be really interested in seeing a stat showing how many of those unagented first-sale MSs had been rejected by agents (and how many times) before selling to publishers without an agent.
(My first book sale, for example, was a MS that had been recently rejected by 11 agents when I sold it unagented.)
Laura wrote: “To reiterate, money isn’t NOT why I decided to stop working with agents.”
I know you’ve not implied this, Laura, but I’m certainly not interested in IP lawyers because they’d cost me less. My interest is because I don’t want to deal with the mess you’ve had to deal with, and because I know how I get in certain situations and I simply don’t want to be bothered with the potential nightmares I’ve been learning about. It’s certainly nothing personal against agents; it’s all about knowing how I am, how I like to work, and what I think will work best for me.
I’m also not too crazy about the the potential of having to deal with multiple agents with whom I no longer work simply because they were connected with previously negotiated contracts.
The idea of an IP lawyer just sounds wonderfully simple and delightfully clean by comparison, because even if I decide to change lawyers I won’t be paying past lawyers for previous projects because, well, they’ll be past and I’m no longer working with that lawyer; my present lawyer, whoever that might be, would be the person I’d deal with. For years now, I’ve always thought about using the traditional model, but only because it was the only one I knew about.
At the moment, I’m not needing one, but for all I know that could change much faster than I think or realize, or it could take me years before I might ever need the services of one.
In addition, (setting aside the great additional advice you offered) to me paying a lawyer $600 out of $2000 is a small price to pay when considered over the long run for the very reasons you enumerated. I can see a strange parallel between this and buying toner cartridges for a laser printer versus buying an ink cartridges for an inkjet printer. The toner cartridge (~ $70) might cost me three-times as much as the ink cartridge (~ $25), but it’ll last me ten-times as long (3000 pages vs 300) so that, in the long run, laser printers and toner cartridges are cheaper by far. Thus, the initial layout for a lawyer (retainer and negotiation of the first contract with a publisher) might be expensive, but, in the long run, compared with using an agent, I’ll get better terms in the contract because I’m dealing with someone knowledgeable in contract and copyright law. That it’s also cheaper than having an agent is but a by-product.
_____
Brad wrote: “It’s funny, I am here TDY for Army career course advancement, and as usual with this kind of thing, values are central to the training. It’s no joke. The Army takes this kind of thing very seriously. Why don’t writers?”
I hear you! I’m ex Air Force (as well as an Air Force brat — 21 years of Air Force if you combine my brathood with my enlistment) and although it’s been many years since I was in the military, it was the same for me.
I’m in the process of completing my first novel. Reading the Sacred Cows series has instilled in me the determination to attempt to sell my book myself. It’s my first novel, so who knows how that will pan out, but I want to avoid the world of agents completely, if that turns out to be possible/feasible.
The idea of an agent never sat right with me, but I’d just accepted it as part of the craft, what with the exuberant “I got an agent!” posts found on the internet, and the common advice that goes along the lines of “get an agent, of course! ”
I wouldn’t label myself a control-freak, but the idea of someone else sitting on my money, who may or may not be concerned with promptness or my well-being, makes me angry.
I work for a bank, and while I’m not law-trained, I’m well-versed in finances, and I’m not afraid of getting my hands dirty. I just don’t want to have to spend too much time on the financial side. I’d rather be writing.
Is it insane to say I’d rather make less money but have full control over it, than make more money but be at someone else’s mercy?
If I’m not able to earn enough money to quit my day job, the lure of more money would be hard to resist, so if an agent could really get that much more, the money part of my brain would be working overtime to get me to hire the agent.
“Is it insane to say I’d rather make less money but have full control over it, than make more money but be at someone else’s mercy?”
No, Russ, it’s not, and you bring to mind Kris’s latest Freelancer’s Survival Guide post, wherein she cites that successful entrepreneurs, more often than not, would rather engage in a low-risk business that yields a lower amount of profit in the first year rather than a high-risk one that COULD yield far more money.
I think it’s interesting that some writers like the agent model simply because it offers them the prospect that someone will control all the messy aspects of business for them. I like to create and tell stories. It’s fun. But another reason to be a writer (a freelance worker) is because I remove myself from the boss system, wherein people tell me what to do. The last thing I’d want to do is then give control over my work to another boss, which is how some agents treat their clients.
Agents are definitely good for some things, but definitely not for others. Managing my business is one of the latter.
This is all great stuff, thanks everyone.
A couple of observations:
The suggestion about selling your book first then getting an agent to negotiate the details is generally good, but be aware that at least one publisher (Baen) has been reported to sometimes kill the deal if you do that. I don’t know all the details, and in general Baen is a good house and they’re willing to deal through agents from the start, they just don’t like surprises. (Disclaimers: I used to know Jim Baen pretty well, but I’ve never (yet) tried to do a book deal with Baen Books.) Most other pubs don’t care, and some will (so I hear) even suggest you get an agent.
I like the idea of getting an IP lawyer, especially for that first contract. I brought a lawyer in to look at the paperwork the first time I bought a house. Beyond that it depends on your comfort level. If you’re willing to sign a quarter-million dollar or more real-estate deal without a lawyer, how paranoid should you be about a five- (or four-) figure book deal? (But since there are some consumer-protection laws in place for home buyers that don’t exist for other contracts, maybe the answer is “very”.)
One question for those doing fine without an agent, how do you handle foreign sales? Do you deal directly with agents or publishers in other countries, or engage a US agent just for the overseas contacts and contracts? (And if the former, how do you market those foreign sales in the first place? That’s a bit off-topic, sorry.)
“Is it insane to say I’d rather make less money but have full control over it, than make more money but be at someone else’s mercy?”
Actually, that represents another myth: the common conviction that a writer will make less money without an agent. And in my own experience, this has NOT proved to be the case.
One of the most basic assumptions about why a writer needs an agent is that we don’t know how much money to ask for our work, and we will therefore be cheated by publishers or, at least, get lower advances without an agent that we would get with one and thus be less successful than we could potentially otherwise be.
But this has not been my experience AT ALL. I wrote a whole article about this last year for NINK, but the gist of it is: What books are selling for, what writers are earning, how the market is doing, etc., is all stuff you can research. It is certainly an agent’s business to be well famimliar with this information (though that doesn’t mean an agent necessarily IS familiar with it, or that an agent’s judgment about it is necessarily good), but it’s not mysterious, arcane, hidden knowledge that ONLY agents have access to, for goodness sake.
I’ve been educating myself about advance levels ever since I was an aspiring writer. When I got my first-ever book offer, I knew whether it was within standard first-book range for that market (and it was) because I had =researched= the subject. I’ve maintained that habit ever since. I keep studying, reading, networking, and learning. I don’t need three years of specialized higher education and a state licensing exam to do this; all I need is common sense and self-education. And, frankly, I find writing a book a LOT harder than figuring out what I should be paid for it.
So keep in mind that it’s not a given that an agent will get more money than you can get without one. Or that an agent is congenitally better able than you to figure out what sort of advance you should expect for your book. This is business, and LOTs of people who are not lotierary agents do business, and set prices for their services, their work, their skills, and their goods.
Moreover, agents don’t really have =more= access to money information than a writer does. this is an individual thing, not a quality or quantity of knowledge based on job title. Agents primarily tend to know what offers THEY get for THEIR clients, and what deals are publicized in the trade journals (if they read them). Writers, OTOH, tend to know what offers their own agents’ clients get (remember what we discussed earlier about agent-blabbermouths?), what deals are being publicized in the trade journals, -and- what offers a lot of their friends and acquaintances are getting, which info agents tend NOT to access or know.
One good place for you to -start- getting the lay of the land is my Writers Resource Page, which links to at least four informative money posts or surveys about writing advances in sf/f and in romance (including one writer who made good to post all facts and figures about the first time she made the NYT list, which happened last year).
Also, I think one reason my income improved when I returned to self-representation after years with agents is that I’m willing to ASK for more money for my work than agents would, since I am much more enthusiastic about it than agents have been.
(A corollary to the improvement in my income, of course, is that I’m no longer spending 15% of it on agents. As stated before, my legal fees are a tiny fraction of what my commission payments were.)
That is a good point you make about agents not necessarily earning you more than going agent-less. The contract clauses and advance amounts (and royalty rates) are all things we can find out from other writers, and cobble standards for ourselves.
I remember reading the guys over at Writing Excuses exclaim that their agents got them far more money than the 15% commision, but I wonder how much the writers would have gotten if they had negotiated on their own.
I just got a second rejection on my first novel. I submitted to five publishers (sans agent), as Dean has advised us so many times. The first sentence reads: “Thank you for your submission to [Publisher]. Though your material sounds quite interesting, at the present time it does not meet our current editorial needs.”
The second paragraph suggests that I might want to acquire an agent. But note that they did not refuse to look at it. They looked at my query, and rejected it. But they LOOKED. (Which is exactly what Dean said they would do, “no unagented manuscripts” rule or no.)
That’s a big part of the myth, no question. That in addition to it being impossible for writers to break in without agents — Jim Hines’ graphs sink that notion to the ocean floor — that writers without agents will never make the same kind of money writers with agents make. Never. So there is this attitude among some agented writers, upon encountering an unagented writer who has sold, that goes, “Oh you poor idiot, if only you realized how much money you cost yourself by not having an agent!”
I’ve seen some data — collected in a fashion similar to Hines’ data — suggesting that, yes, on average, agented writers get better advances than unagented writers. But the median difference between agented and unagented didn’t seem whoppingly big. Usually it was a few thousand, at best, especially for break-in novels. Factor in the 15% lost to agent cut, plus whatever interest gets skimmed on the float, and the distance between the two figures shrinks quickly.
For me, the advance isn’t as important as the royalties. When I examine the career of someone like L.E. Modesitt, Jr., — a wonderful man at the Utah cons, and someone else I have been happy to meet and am grateful for him having shared information with a young author such as myself — it’s pretty apparent that L.E. isn’t living on advances alone. He’s got a very impressive backlist and a solid core audience collected over many, many years of effort.
And he’s done it all on his own, without an agent, on domestic sales. If you figure L.E. collects royalties a few times a year on a few dozen titles, that’s some serious money. And that’s where I aim to be when I am 20 years down the road. And if I don’t have to share any of that cash with anyone else, or worry about that someone else holding back the money or otherwise being “funny” with statements or transfers, so much the better.
Really, when examined with a business eye — as Dean and Laura and others are trying to get all of us to do — the usual arguments for having an agent, slowly dissolve. The only reasons to have an agent are a) foreign sales, b) because the writer can’t be bothered to handle the business aspect, and c) that’s just “how it’s done” in the industry. I see nothing else beyond these three reasons, to have an agent. And IMHO only the first reason makes any business sense at all. The other two are writer-created because, as has been noted endlessly, writers are piss-poor businesspeople, taken as a whole.
I’m not a ‘genetic’ businessperson — one of those impressively intrapreneurial souls who eat sleep and breath the art of the deal — but I am one of those kinds of people who likes going out and get things for himself if he can.
Penetrating down through the layers of agent myth, I see no reason why I can’t go out and get a novel career for myself, sans agent. Yes, I might want one for foreign sales if that seems like a lucrative path, but for domestic effort, I see no insurmountable obstacles preventing me from getting what I want. Assuming I work hard at it and am persistent. Other people have done it. Other people are doing it. There was no luck involved for them, beyond the rare outlier — like Correia. Just lots of work and being willing to work on learning how contracts work and teaching themselves the “gritty” side of being a writer.
If all writers were driven to teach themselves the “grit,” I have to suspect that most agents would be looking for other work. But because writers are flighty, flakey, and often just plain kerflunky — when it comes to understanding business — the agent industry persists. Because writers want someone else to do that work for them, among lots of other things.
Okay, one more time, I want to be clear here. I am not anti-agent, and I am not suggesting that writers should just drop using agents.
What I AM suggesting and trying to help with is that writers use agents sanely and in a business-like manner.
Agents don’t give a crap about you as a writer, they care about their own business, as you should care about your business. Nothing is wrong with any of that. They job is to keep good relationships with editors and publishers and thus when you hire their business, they can help you.
Agents should NEVER have control over your money any more than any other employee should have control over an employers money. That’s just logical.
Agents are not writers and should never, ever get into your writing process. Not what you hire them for and they suck at it and don’t know markets if the market bit them. They do have relationships with editors and publishers.
Top agents (not bloggers or slush readers) are often with top agencies who have already negotiated boiler plate with a publisher, thus when you arrive with an offer from said publisher, not only will you get more advance, you will get better boiler plate and better reversion clauses and better percentages on other things. If you are so silly as to think the only money you make from a book is your advance, wow do you have a lot to learn about how fiction writers make most of their money. And a top agent can make you a ton more money from those details, not counting what they can do for you with overseas contacts.
Okay? I am not against agents. I’m just against the stupidity that has grown up around the agent myth. Agents reading slush. Stupid. Agents holding all your money. Stupid. Writers thinking they need an agent to sell a book. Really, really Stupid.
Again, just wanted to be clear here. I never had a bad experience with an agent. I like all my former agents. Others around me had horrid experiences with agents. Just be smart, think like a business person, and KEEP CONTROL of your own career. You do that you might end up in a bad agent problem, but you will solve it quickly and move on.
Anyone can be an agent, no rules, no requirements. You keep that in mind and stay with the top agents and they will help you. Hire an agent who blogs, lives in the boondocks, used to be a former editor, and who reads slush, you are guaranteed to be screwed. That’s just common sense. And you won’t be able to blame the agent because you were stupid enough to hire them.
There, now I’ve been clear. Agents are fine if you act like a business person and stay out of the myths and fire them instantly when something goes south. But if you think they will sell your next masterpiece, if you let them keep all your money, if you read them on a blog every day, if you you take their rewriting advice, and if you let them kill your books, you deserve exactly what you get I’m afraid.
Yup, works, doesn’t it, Mark? (grin) But a suggestion: Why not give them part of your book to read as well as a short proposal/synopsis with the query/cover letter? Just a thought. Query letters are so 1990’s. (grin)
Dean, I get you, and for the record, I have never thought you were anti-agent. Nor do I tell anyone you are anti agent. On the contrary, I emphasize that you are simply pro-writer and want writers to be their own best business practitioners, which means paying attention to the reality of agents — not the myth — and getting your mind wrapped around what that reality means for you as your own best business manager.
I’m not anti-agent either. If I can find an agent who is willing to work with me according to my rules and my expectations, I will happily use an agent. But because I am doubting very much that such an agent exists at the present time, until I find that agent in the future, I am pretty much moving forward on my own. I don’t want to wait around until my ideal agent appears. Nor do I want to shoe-horn some existing agent into my model of how that agent should be. It wouldn’t work and we’d both be unhappy with the arrangement. So I am going onward with a more or less agentless agenda, until such time an agent who fits my needs appears or is made known to me. Then — and only then — do I see myself contacting the agent and saying, hey, I think we’d be a good fit, let’s talk.
“I remember reading the guys over at Writing Excuses exclaim that their agents got them far more money than the 15% commision, but I wonder how much the writers would have gotten if they had negotiated on their own.”
This is a claim that has so MANY variables, I think that at MOST, specific claims can perhaps, once in a while, be made about specific situations. But no reliable generalizations can be made.
And here are the specific claims that -I- can make, in direct contrast to the one you’re citing.
I know of at least four specific instances where high-profile agents got LESS money for deals than the editors were willing to offer. (This info comes from the editors.) The agents simply accepted the opening offer and made no attempt to negotiate. So I suspect this happens more often than anyone realizes.
Meanwhile, when I REmarketed a canceled series that no agent wanted to touch (and which my former agent had treated with all the enthusiasm normally reserved for 9-day-old fish when I suggested sending it back out after it was canceled), I negotiated MORE money per book on my own for that project than my former agent had negotiated for it back when it was a shiny new series =without= a bad first-book sales-record weighing it down. Even though that agent had multiple #1 NYT bestsellers on the client list and would be, one would think, an example of an agent with “clout.” But as it turned out, for the exact same project and when in a LESS advantageous position (the first book had done poorly and been canceled) I negotiated a -better- advance on my own than the agent had negotiated for me.
My is NOT, of course, that therefore a writer can necessarily negotiate a better advance than an agent. My point is that this is too individual to be a generalization. Is the writer a good or bad business person? Is the agent a good or bad business person? Is the agent enthusiastic about the project and investing effort in representing it? Or just half-heartedly tossing it to 2-3 of this close chums and accepting a lowball offer without negotiating (and then turning around and claiming to the client that he “fought for” a higher advance but was refused)? Is the agent a skilled negotiator or someone afraid of the word “no”? Does the agent set the editor’s teeth on edge?
I read a fascinating article in NINK a year or two ago where a publisher talked about how one agent had persuaded to them to pay more than they wanted for a book, while the fiscal demands of another agent had ended their relationship with that writer. So, when asking for more money, is your agent persuasive? Or career-breaking? And if your only source on your agent’s behavior when negotiating on your behalf without your seeing/hearing the exchanges is your agent himself… then how do you know?
Whether or not an agent can get a writer more money than a writer can get on his own is highly individual. It is not an inherent skill that comes automatically with having the job title “literary agent.” Just as “helpless unbusinesslike nudnik” isn’t necessarily an accurate description of everyone whose job title is “novelist.”
“”That in addition to it being impossible for writers to break in without agents — Jim Hines’ graphs sink that notion to the ocean floor — that writers without agents will never make the same kind of money writers with agents make. Never. ”
One of the three highest-earning romance writers of the late 1980s and early 1990s, with multiple hardcover NYT bestsellers and an annual seven figure income, was someone who had quit the agent-author business model some years earlier. And yet that example hasn’t made any impact on the conventional wisdom of the business.
Oh, I have no problems with the concept of agents per se. Just like any other business, I will hire professional help if I think I need it (eg lawyer, accountant, broker, real estate agent, other employees). I haven’t done my own taxes in years–are you kidding? But I know what goes on around it and keep informed about deductions and so forth. As with anything, I like knowing what I’m getting (or should/shoult not be getting, lol) for my money.
Oh, I did. I sent a cover letter, the first fifteen pages (the first chapter) and the synopsis. So they saw part of the book too.
Now I have to print it all out again so get that fifth query back into the mail…
RE foreign sales (someone here just asked?), we talked about this in the comments section of one of Dean’s earlier Killing Cows blogs on agents. Maybe the first one.
Short version is that there are a variety of possibilities, and I think foreign subrights have become (and will continue to become) a more accessible area for the unagented US writer, thanks to email, electronic files, and websites. I know an unagented writer who actually sells MORE of his novels to overseas markets so far than to the US, making his contacts via the internet.
I think the simplest way to deal with foreign subrights as an unagented writer is to license those rights to your publisher. (A lot of publisher boilerplates will propose an unreasonable income split. Negotiate that to a much more satisfactory income split, of course. For comparison, the typical literary agent split on foreign subrights via a US agent is 80% author, 20% agent.) However, this is far from the only way, and whether or not you choose to do it hat way depends on your preferences and circumstances.
Mark, call it a submission package. A query is just one page. (grin)
Cheers
Dean
Many, many writers I know, including my wife, are selling overseas rights on their own, without an agent. The internet and e-mail are a wonderful thing, that’s for sure.
I also, btw, know of a situation where I got clauses at a publishing house negotiated more favorably by myself than a couple of other writers whom I knew could get at the same house althought they were agented.
I don’t think this is because I’m so brilliant and forceful that I should be negotiating for others. I think it’s because quite a few agents aren’t as good at their jobs as they keep telling their clients they are.
I don’t believe you’re anti-agent, Dean. You’ve obviously done very well with the assistance of a good employee. However, I don’t personally feel comfortable with the thought of hiring someone that has no guidelines, specific education, or governing body to monitor them and regulate their operations. It just does not seem like “good business.” I’m sure there are many very talented and brilliant agents out there, but until I see a license or diploma qualifying their ability, I think I’ll decline.
Amanda, yup, I agree with you completely and am bothered by that a great deal as well, especially considering how much money is at stake and how many writers who I know personally who have had agents steal from them. I don’t have an agent at the moment and can’t honestly say I would ever go back. So I do agree. I just, as Laura has pointed out, know that this is the standard working arrangement for most writers and many like it.
Of course, the ones that don’t like it often had their careers killed by an agent and how they (the writer) reacted to the agent actions.
I’m with Laura. I’ve seen a number of contracts lately that would have been better off if no agent got near them. You can tell in a contract what an agent added or changed by a different font in the contract to show added clauses or phrases. One contract I saw negotiated by a former editor made the contract much, much worse for the writer because the agent clearly was confused as to which side of the contract they were sitting. Sadly, very true, and nothing I could say to change the writer’s mind about the stupidity of their agent choice. Sigh.
Dean,
I knew “query” wasn’t quite right, but didn’t know what else to call it. “Submission package” it is, then.
I have the impression this discussion might be (or has indeed been?) categorized as “anti-agent” because it is completely dominated by unconventional and iconoclastic views of the agent-author business model; and because anyone who has asked about, proposed, or has expressed a conventional view of that business model here has been responded to with explanations of the ways in which those assumptions are full of holes, omissions, and inaccuracies.
But if this is UNbalanced, then I’m wondering where the “balance” is on the (I conservatively estimate) 2,000 or so websites, blogs, articles, posts, chatboards, discussion groups, essays, lectures, books, workshops, panel discussions, etc. that you can easily find on any given day telling you that ALL career novelists MUST have an agent, that the agent-author paradigm is far-and-away the BEST (and, indeed, the ONLY viable) business model for running a writing career, and that any writer who works without an agent is, at =best=, operating at a severe disadvantage.
Speaking from long, long, LONG (and weary) experience of this subject, the alternative views that are being discussed here are very, very, VERy =RARELY= ever even introduced in that sea of information–and on the rare occasions when objections or rational alternatives are introduced, they’re dismissed, denigrated, and shouted down.
So along comes this VERY unusual and thematically isolated discussions on this blog… and, despite the 2,000 sources that either DON’T mention any of these views at ALL, or else only allow their mention long enough to dismiss them as idiocy–THIS discussion should make sure to five equal time to THOSE views? Views that you can trip over in the dark whever you go in this business?
Okay. Fine. And in our next discussion of Mithraism, we will make sure to give equal time to the subject of Christianity, in case you’re not aware of its existence and haven’t heard the Good News and don’t know the significance of the calendar date December 25th in modern American culture.
Always happy to be fair.
I didn’t realize Modesitt was unagented. Good example! That’s a familiar name precisely because he’s got such a sizeable backlist on the stands, as well as his new releases. A strong career.
Just for the record, Dean, I certainly don’t think you’re anti-agent (nor have I said anything of the sort to anyone), and neither do I think that a writer’s income derives solely from advances. In the beginning of a career, perhaps, but only because the writer has yet to build up an audience/following. Those come later, with the passage of time and as the writer builds their career/reputation as a story teller and as the writer increases their inventory of pies, cookies, breads, croissants, biscuits, cakes, candies, whatever.
I’m not anti-agent either. Rather, after learning more about the business, after learning more about the writer-agent model, after learning more (thanks to Laura) about IP lawyers, I’ve just come to the conclusion that I don’t think the writer-agent model will work for me or my personality/temperament. In terms of Myers-Briggs, I’m an INTJ. INTJs are often characterized as perfectionists (as well as having a boatload of confidence), and that’s me to a ‘T.’ Thankfully, however, my perfectionism is tempered with practicality.
One question I’d had — which had to do with foreign sales for an unagented writer — has been answered by yourself and by Laura, and I greatly appreciate it, too, and I’m sure that there’s more that I can learn about this, as well.
Getting back to a writer’s income for a moment, I’ve delved into things deeply enough in my own research that I’ve learned quite a lot about options with movie houses, and have even found and have read boilerplate contracts to know a little about how those work, both with books turned into movies and with books, like Robert J. Sawyer’s FlashForward (fantastic book), that have been turned into a TV series. With that knowledge, I know that Elmore Leonard has made a nice tidy sum from his short story “Three-Ten to Yuma,” (good story, too; I like Leonard’s stuff) since it’s been reprinted many times and has been made into a movie at least twice. Nevermind Leonard’s many other books, westerns and crime fiction alike, that have been made into movies: For example, Get Shorty, Be Cool, Mr. Majestyk, and The Big Bounce (another good book and a fun movie, too).
If you don’t mind my getting a little tangential: As I’ve said before, I don’t care what genre it is — western, romance, literary, suspense, thriller, mystery, science fiction, fantasy, horror, whatever — if it’s good, or even if it’s bad, I’ll read it, because I figure I can learn from them all and my own fiction, regardless of genre, will benefit. I don’t even give a damn how old the book is, whether it’s Beowulf, or something by Jules Verne, Mary Shelley, Homer, Dante Alighieri (a couple of years ago I visited a house in Florence, Italy, where he is reputed to have lived), Vergil, Sophocles, Ovid, Hesiod, Apollodorus, or Shakespeare (I especially love Shakespeare; lived and went to high school very close to Stratford-upon-Avon, in fact; like I said, I’m an Air Force brat). I’ve read them all, as well as others, and will read even more, because I can’t get enough story and because I want to improve my own writing.
Rules of the road with Hollywood.
—Never write for free. Ever.
—Never believe any hype anyone from Hollywood gives you.
—Never count on any money coming until the check has cleared.
—Never sell them anything more than what they need.
—Never sell all rights to them. Ever, for any amount of money.
—Never go to Hollywood and write for them unless you have decided you no longer want to be a fiction writer.
—You keep all these rules in mind, you can make a TON of free money from Hollywood, and never have a movie produced or even green lighted.
On this topic of agents, do you need an agent in Hollywood? No more and no less than you need one in publishing.
Mithraism! LOL! Too much, Laura!
And too funny, too. Of course, there’s also all the mythology that’s built up over the years around the celebration called Christmas, too, from St. Nick, to Clement’s tale with those eight reindeer, to the introduction of Rudolph, to mistletoe, and all the rest of it.
Once more on the subject of a writer’s income, though, to think that it comes solely from advances is about as nutty as to think that a professional tennis player’s income comes solely from their prize money, especially when the better athletes have corporate sponsorships for their racquets, for their clothing, for their shoes,…. Nevermind the income the top athletes get from doing advertisements. Same idea for writers, but the streams of income are different: royalties (to include advances against royalties), foreign sales, audio book sales, TV series, movies, and more.
Dean wrote: “You keep all these rules in mind, you can make a TON of free money from Hollywood, and never have a movie produced or even green lighted.”
A writer friend of mine in Kansas who knew Roger Zelazny told me that Zelazny, before he died, made many mortgage payments from the payments he received from Hollywood for option rights to make movies from his books, whether they made the movies or not.
Dean wrote: “Never go to Hollywood and write for them unless you have decided you no longer want to be a fiction writer.”
Many years ago, in a moment of temporary insanity, I thought about writing screenplays. And then I took the time to learn more about the business. That was enough to put me back on the straight-and-narrow. LOL!
And there’s no way I’d give any consideration to writing a teleplay. Meh! If I’m going to write any sort of play, I’d rather do a stageplay. I’ve read about that, too, and I quite like the idea, but I don’t think it would come close to providing me with the income that writing novels would. If I did do a stageplay, I’d rather work with a local playhouse (and there are several in my area). I know that Orson Scott Card has written some plays, but even he has focused on novels.
I don’t know anything about Hollywood, but I don’t consider not having a literary agent a problem in this respect, since so few of literary agents know anything about Hollywood, either. It’s mostly a separate world.
Having talked to writers who HAVE dealt with Hollywood, my impression is that what you really need for a deal in Hollywood is an entertainment lawyer to negotiate your contract. Whether or not one should have a Hollywood agent, I’ve no idea. I’ve heard conflicting views about this, and I have absolutely no experience with Hollywood myself, so I have no informed opinion on that matter.
Although a literary agency with strong Hollywood contacts may generate interest out there for a novelist’s work, few literary agencies have strong Hollywood contacts. In most cases that I know of, novelists get Hollywood money because Hollywood gets interested in their work via some means -other- than the writer’s agent bringing the book to Hollywood’s attention. (And the “means” cover a wide range of possibilities: someone reads the book, someone’s girlfriend or kid reads the book, someone sees great reviews, someone sees great sales figures, etc., etc.)
I concur with the others, Dean. You don’t sound anti-agent to me at all. Rather, you sound anti-stupidity. I think if the situation warranted it and the writer were right for it, you’d be very much pro-agent. But as you said, the writer should get an agent for the right reasons at the right time, and not before or after.
I like the “submission package” concept as well. A very good tip.
Like the others, I don’t see these posts by Dean and Laura as anti-agent, but as teaching writers to think and behave in a more professional manner. I’ve come away with the feeling that literary agents can be a great resource and help under the right circumstances. But to stop seeing them as a rescuer who will save me from the big old nasty world.
Thanks to all the information here, I now know what to do if I get an offer from a small press and the money isn’t enough to obtain a GOOD agent. I can at least pay a literary attorney to read over the contract instead of getting a lousy agent. I’ve seen what happens when a writer signs on with a bad agent in order to deal with small press contract issues, and it’s been awful to watch. Awful!
As for the hostility out there, it gives me flashbacks to my youth and the dying days of the era when the attitude for women was, “Better a lousy marriage than no marriage at all.” And the “if you’re not married by twenty-five, there’s something *seriously* wrong with you girl.”
Writer’s Lib, man.
“Better no agent than a bad agent.”
“Stop waiting for Agent Charming to rescue you, and get out there and have your own adventures.”
Rescued by Agent Charming!
Oh, I LOVE that!
I envision spreading my message with a whole set of parody fables.
Once upon a time, in the land of Publicatia, there was a lowly typing wench who longed for the love of the most sought-after hero in the land beyond the transom. His name was Agent Charming, and he dwelt above the Slushpiles of Eternity in a palace built on the Ashes of Bestsellers…
Laura, you MUST keep going with that.
That really is the biggest part of the myth, at the aspirant level: that an agent is going to “rescue” the writer from all manner of problems. Agent Charming will help “fix” all books, open all closed doors, eliminate all slush piles, re-word all contracts so that they’re terrific, and basically relieve the writer of every business-related burden. So that the writer, “Just has to write,” and the money will gush through the mailbox in truckloads. Hence many unpublished, aspirant writers shrieking with delight, “I got an agent, I got an agent!”
For them — in their minds — the hardest part of the battle is over. Or so they believe, because at the aspirant level the Agent Myth is iron-clad 100% true gospel. It’s odd enough seeing Agent Myth circulated among other published writers. It’s positively crazy seeing it at the aspirant level, where it is received as flawless doctrine. Little or no questioning at all.
I myself was imbibing and passing along the doctrine as recently as two years ago, prior to attending my first Lincoln City workshop. I wasn’t comfortable with the doctrine, but because I didn’t know any better — because lots of pros never say anything to contradict that doctrine — I just sort of said, well, this is the way it is, I don’t like it, but I have no choice but to go along with it if I want to have a career as a novelist.
I’m thankful to be learning that agents are not the only path. More than that, I am thankful to have met and spoken with pros who are very much in favor of writers standing up for their own way of doing things — not just letting The Way It’s Always Done dictate their transactions or their business model. And I’m not just talking about Dean or Kris, but other writers — L.E. Modesitt, Jr. — who say, “This is how I’m doing it, it’s not the usual way, but I’m doing it like this anyway and I am being successful too.”
Laura–I agree with Jeremy, you’re going to have to finish that Agent Charming story you’ve started. Let us know when it shows up at the NINC blog or elsewhere.
If anyone else does an Agent Charming story, let me know, since the concept amuses me greatly. The idea is obviously free to all. (Sorta like “The rats were in the souffle again…”.)
Aaagh, now I’ve got “Some Day My Prince Will Come” stuck in my head, and my mind keeps messing with the lyrics replacing “prince” with “agent.”
Some day my agent will come
Some day we’ll meet at a conference again
And away to New York City we’ll go
I’ll be a published NYT-bestseller forever I know…
I’m off to listen to Concrete Blonde to get rid of this mindworm.
When I think of agents these days, I think of the South Park episode titled, “Wing,” now available for free viewing at the South Park web site. I also think of the Russian trololololo singer guy on YouTube, though why that one, I dunno. Must be the cheesy Herb Tarlek tie and suit? Speaking of bad agents, Herb Tarlek is precisely the kind of caricature I picture, when I picture a bad agent. LOL!
I am AN IDIOT.
I am flushed with shame at my unbelievable STUPIDITY.
As previously mentioned here, I’ve got my literary lawyer working on my longstanding problem of a former agent who won’t consent to split payments (and then keeps messing with my business in a way that stays well on the safe side of the “This Is Actionable” fence, but which causes me headaches and is a real nuisance).
Well, among the documents my lawyer has asked to see are copies of the agency clause in each of the contracts in question (which are with just one publisher). Well, I had read the agency clause every time I signed a contract, -and- I read read them all again when looking for some way out of my problem. But the clause simply says the publisher will send all monies and paperwork to the agent, and that I irrevocably assign a 15% share of that money to the agent. Period, full stop. (IOW, the agency clause is silent on the subject of split payments, etc.)
Well, remember how Dean has talked about agens making changes to contracts that aren’t actually in the writer’s best interest? And you know how we’ve also talked about how contracts with the major houses tend to be really long and complicated? (Ex. The contracts in this particular case are each 15-20 pages long, of single-spaced legalese, with crossed-out paragraphs, amended paragraphs, initialed changes, and additional riders.)
Well, I have suddenly realized, in pulling this agency clause out to scan it, something that never penetrated my pathetic little blonde brain before. I have probably FINALLY noticed it as a result of these discussions, and of Dean specifically talking about the changes that agents make that make the deal -less- favorable for the author, rather than more so.
In all the times I read this contract… do you know what? I NEVER READ THE CROSSED-OUT parts!! And do you know why that’s making me beat my head against a brick wall today? Because today, upon finally reading the “agency clause” (Clause 18 in these contracts) that my then-agent crossed out to replace with the agent’s OWN “agency clause”… I see that the publisher’s original boilerplate agency clause called for automatic splitting of the payments (IOW, my 85% would be sent directly to -me-) as soon as I sent written notice to the publisher that I had left the agency and wanted to be paid directly thereafter.
It was IN the original contract. And that [insert enraged and filthy invective here] agent CROSSED IT OUT and replaced it with a clause that ELIMINATED the split payments subclause.
And. I. Never. Even. Noticed.
Because I was too big an idiot to read the CROSSED OUT portions of the contracts that this agent negotiated supposedly on “my behalf.”
ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!
I am an IDIOT. (Or, at least, I -was- an IDIOT.)
AGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Which is by way of saying: Let my bad example be your guide for what NOT to do.
You’ve been warned. Don’t make the same mistakes that I made. Learn from my misery.
(Did I already say: AGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH?)
And can I just ADD (yes, I’m ranting now–I am REALLY upset about this)… I know from long, long, LONG and tedious experience that people here things like this an assume I was working with some charlatan on the fringes of the biz. Er, no. This agent, who specifically changed that contract to be LESS favorable to my interests (and I LET IT HAPPEN!!!) is a high-profile agent, almost always named in the first breath by anyone talking about the top agents in that genre, with multiple #1 hardcover NYT bestsellers and a big, impressive stable of recognizable names on he client list.
My point being–this is what the ADMIRED, RESPECTED agents do to a writer, folks.
I agree with Laura, but Laura, reading the crossed-out parts is something I had to learn about in law school. I have a hunch if you start putting that out there on blogs and to Ninc, you will save a lot of writers a lot of money and grief, because it’s just not a natural thing to read the crossed-out parts. As you say, for one, you assume your agent is working for you, not themselves or the publisher, and second, the focus is on the words IN THE CONTRACT, not the stuff taken out. So this is normal and if I hadn’t been trained on this in law school in a very good contracts class that I got A’s in, I would have never learned this either.
So spread the word on this one to writers. It would seem logical, but alas, it just ain’t logical.
Also, Kris discovered that contracts from book two and book three can change for the worse and the agent won’t notice either. Book 1&2 under one contract agent negotiated, so book #3&4 contract same publisher, same series would have an assumption of having the same terms. Nope. Got to compare the contracts because publishers will change terms back and agents often make the assumption and never look. That’s a stunner when that happens. Luckily, Kris caught that one in her first series contracts.
Back to the myth about agents have your interests at heart. Nope. They work for themselves first, second they are more concerned about what a publisher thinks than one of their writers. Sad, but true.
Okay, I have a question. How come when a contract is editted in this fashion, it isn’t re-typed and/or re-printed totally? It only takes a few moments to deleted praragraphs from a boilerplate word document. I am surprised that during any kind of official transaction like this, either the agent or the publisher aren’t re-issuing a whole new contract — on fresh paper, freshly printed — when major modifications are made.
Inking, scratching, or blotting out stuff — especially insufficiently — seems like an invitation to legal trouble.
Brad, welcome to yet another tradition of stupidity in publishing. Yes, logically, it would be better, but because of agents in the process, the publisher likes to keep their old boiler plate standard contracts (they have a hundred levels of them all saved) and when a change is made, if done in this fashion, it’s not precedent in any fashion, just done for this one contract.
Also, a good side of this, you can see what your agent changed by the time the contract gets to you. That’s the up side. But the reason is just tradition. It’s always been done that way, so it’s still done that way. Welcome to publishing.
Wow, kinda freaky, Dean. My perception of the book deal as a regimented, white-glove transaction just went kerplunky.
I’ve been sort of waiting to put up a new chapter until this discussion slowed down since this has been great. Aiming for Monday now for the new chapter.
Dean, yes, I’ll be writing one of my upcoming NINK columns on that topic: Read the crossed-out parts.
I’m glad to hear that struck out portions of the contract remain in the contract, but just crossed-out, for the very reason that you can see what was negotiated out, or what someone is trying to negotiate out. Perhaps that is why this tradition is in place? So that both parties can see these things before the contract is made binding.
To me, it makes logical sense that only the FINAL copy should have all the deleted portions removed.
This development in the discussion rather reminds me of what I went through when I was negotiating the terms of my divorce. Surprisingly, I had to keep an eye on my own lawyer! I even managed to really piss him off once, too, but the man had done something that I didn’t agree with. He thought I was unprofessional, and my thinking was that I didn’t give a damn what HE thought because the contract being negotiated affected ME (not HIM) until my sons turned 18. He seemed more concerned with supposed lawyer-client protocol, by contrast. Sounds like lessons I should keep in mind whenever I get a book contract in hand (even when using an IP lawyer).
THis experience, btw, highlights how much more transparent negotiations are when handled by a literary lawyer.
With my lawyer, I see the publisher’s boilerplate contract, and we discuss which clauses need to be changed and in what way. I subsequently see EVERY SINGLE email exchange during the negotiations between my lawyer and the publisher; if the publisher forgets to CC me on any discussion, my lawyer (a) FWDs me the email and (b) reminds them in her reply to CC me on everything.
By contrast, in the agent-author business model, the agent discusses only a few aspects of the deal with the writer, the writer is usually not included or CC on -any- aspect of the negotiations, and the FIRST time the writer sees the contract is at the point at which the publisher and agent think it’s done being discussed and is ready for signing.
Now, of course, a lot of writers say that’s fine, they DON’T WANT to see the publisher’s boilerplate, they DON’T WANT to be involved in or CC’d on negotiations, they DON’T WANT to see any version of the contract except the one that the agent sends them and tells them is ready for signing.
For my part though, my experiences with that process have been too negative, and so I DO want to see the contract at every stage and be fully aware of everything that’s being said and done in negotiations.
Apart from my (AGGGH!!!!!) above example of realizing today that my agent CROSSED OUT terms that were more favorable to me and replaced them with terms more favorable to the agency and NEVER DISCUSSED that with me… I also found repeatedly that once the -agent- thinks the contract is ready for signing and sends it to the writer, the agent -balks- at any objections to the terms that the writer makes.
In my experience, for example, this has included my telling the agent at the START of negotiations what sort of terms I want in, say, the option and the reversion clauses (two clauses that are important to the writer, but which many agents are careless about in a variety of ways), or the clauses that define how long the books will be, or the clauses that name the deadlines, etc… and then receiving the contract and discovering that my terms have not been met because the agent DIDN’T MAKE my request during negotiations… and now balks at the prospect of going back to re-open negotiations that both parties (er, the publisher and the agent–not ME) consider closed and finshed, and this REFUSES to go back and fix that problem.
This is additionally a problem for a writer because RE-opening negotiations means there will be more waiting for the final contract, which means there will be more delays in receiving the signing money. And if, for example, the agent has already let negotiations and the arrival of the contract drag on a long time beacuse the agent is reluctant to “irritate” the publisher by asking why the contract still hasn’t arrived 5 weeks after negotitations supposedlt ended… Well, when the writer sees the contract at last, and realizes that her instructions about certain clauses have been completely ignored… she faces a choice between signing a contract with terms she’s not satisfied with… or else fighting with her agent, who doesn’t want to go back to the table (and therefore, even if convinced to do so, can’t necessarily be trusted to do it with vigor and enthusiasm), -and- experiencing further delays in finally getting the first payment. (How long can these delays go on? I once delivered a completed MS before finally receiving the contract for it. And I’m certainly not the only one. And keep in mind that -I- am NOT a fast writer!)
If I had been included in negotiations with my then-agent as I am with my lawyer, I never would have instructed nor agreed to the agent having the original agency clause changed to favor the agent rather than to favor me.
However, given the way the agenting system works, and the fact that I ONLY received the contract after the agent had negotiated to the AGENT’S satisfaction, if I had read the crossed-out bits then… Would I have gone to the matt and had a blazing row with my agent over what would unquestionably have been a refusal, on the agent’s part, to negotiate further, combined with threats of it taking months more for me to get paid (at a publishing house that is notorious for paying v-e-r-y slowly anyhow) if I didn’t sighn the version being handed to me now?
No, realistically, I probably would not.
Which is a good example of why I, for one, prefer the much more transparent process of negotiating via a lawyer.
Laura wrote: “By contrast, in the agent-author business model, the agent discusses only a few aspects of the deal with the writer, the writer is usually not included or CC on -any- aspect of the negotiations, and the FIRST time the writer sees the contract is at the point at which the publisher and agent think it’s done being discussed and is ready for signing.”
Yikes! o.o To me, that’s completely insane and unacceptable!
My ex accused me of trying to delay a divorce I didn’t want in the first place because of how I insisted on handling the negotiation once I realized she wasn’t willing to reconcile. I also had to tell her how state law worked (per my lawyer) and exactly what she needed to do and say to get the divorce she wanted. Then I had to explain that if she wanted the divorce, then she was nuts if she thought I was just going to roll over and let her have everything her way; that’s just unreasonable. I was going to fight for my own best interests. (Last December was the fifth anniversary of the divorce.)
It wasn’t a particularly acrimonious divorce, but I learned a lot from it and it really worked to change me in (what I think was) a positive way. It would appear that it’s also given me some tools that I can use when it comes to negotiating a book contract, based on what I’m learning here. Plus, what I’m learning is confirming for me that my inclination of going with an IP lawyer is probably the best route in my case. I’d probably drive an agent to the edge of insanity because there’s absolutely no way! I’d let them get away with what you’ve just described. My attitude towards them would be the same attitude I had with my divorce lawyer, especially regarding contractual terms that would affect me.
Incredible, Laura. Talk about a serious blow to the agent-will-take-care-of-you/agent-is-in-your-corner myth! (Or, more specifically, the “someone else will take care of my business for me” myth!)
Is there basically no remedy for you until this agent does something horrendously bad or becomes a non-powerhouse agent?
I had a quick question about Alastair’s comment a little ways up the line:
Why exactly would Baen books kill a deal if you brought in an agent? I’m fully willing to admit I might have misread his comment, I’ve been working alot of hours lately and my brain is mush. I’m asking because I have two books that I’m working on and would really like to submit to them because I like a lot of what they publish. So, of course, it would be cool if they published something of mine (preferably lots of somethings of mine )
Oh, heavens, they never would. Most publishers (with only a few small press exceptions) are happy when you hire help to negotiate a contract. They feel better about the deal then.
Cool, thanks Dean. Now I can back to my plans to lay seige to Baen Books. Yippee.
Dean, I’m curious, are you going to include all the great comments in the book that will be coming out? Or at least include the great info in the comments that has supplemented these chapters?
I can’t include the comments without permission of the authors, but what I have been thinking of doing is summarizing the comments after each section, focusing on the extra and new information that was discussed. So in a way, without direct copying, the comment discussion topics will be in the book as well after each chapter. Means a bunch of extra writing for me but I think it will be really worth it in the final book, and actually might make some of the comment discussion topics more understandable to more people.
RE the question about Baen withdrawing an offer when an unagented writer hires an agent to represent him/her at Baen…
Outwardly, there are certainly instances (and they happen at every house) where that may easily APPEAR to be what’s happening, when one doesn’t have the facts. Actually, though, I’d be very, VERY surprised if that’s =ever= REALLY what’s happening.
First all, keep in mind, representation of an author by an agent is still perceived as the NORMAL way of doing business at all major and mid-size legitimate publishing houses, a description which certainly includes Baen (which is, moreover, a house that deals with many literary agents). As you’ve already seen and perhaps experienced, far from shedding a writer who acquires an agent, most editors at major and even at mid-size hourses -encourage- writers to have agents. And none of them could possibly choose NOT to deal with agents, since so many writers (including so many of the writers whom they -already- publish) are represented by agents, that being the most common business model for working novelists.
However, there are many scenarios where a writer might think there’s a deal, hire an agent, and then the deal disappears.
It is not unusual for a junior editor to like a project and major promising noises to the author… then experience the disappointment of someone higher up saying, “No, I don’t like it, and I won’t authorize you to offer a contract for it.” Sometimes, particularly if you have a relationship with the editor, you’ll be told what’s happened. (This occurred in my career a couple of times.) And sometimes the editor, in her enthusiasm, goes further than saying, “I like this book and will consult my superiors” and instead implies (or even flat-out SAYS) that an offer =will= be made. (This also happened to me twice, and then no offer was made.) Sometimes, an editor is allowed to make her own buying decisions… but when push comes to shove and money must be put on the table… decides she doesn’t like the project quite =that= much after all. (This aloso happened to me once.)
In all of these instances, if you’re (a) level-headed and (b) representing yourself, you get a pretty clear indication of what’s happened, of why interest has suddenly evaporated.
And in all of these instances, if you’re (a) NOT level-headed (and plenty of people aren’t) then you tend to assume that “interested” or “will be making an offer” means that you =have an offer=. It doesn’t. But a percentage of people mistakenly this is it does; and they also frame it as “there is/was an offer” when talking about it to others. And there is a BIG difference between an expected offer =not being made= after all, and an offer being MADE and then WITHDRAWN. In a lot of instances, people claim it’s the latter when it was actually the former.
Actual offers do sometimes get withdrawn, but it’s an unusual occurrence. By contrast, offers that seem to be imminent and then do NOT get made are fairly common. (Not nearly as common as rejection, of course; but it’s not unusual. Witness how many times (above) it’s happened to me, and I am just ONE writer.)
And if you’ve (b) hired an agent, and then the -agent- doesn’t make the sale, lots of mistranslation may go on in your own head (possibly encouraged by the agent in some cases) that convince you that what went wrong was that the enthusiasm disappeared because you got an agent. Rather than because someone senior in house refused to authorize the deal when finally asked, or because the seemingly enthusiastic editor is a flibbertygibbet who changed her mind when an agent said reasonably, “Okay, you’ve flattered my new client for a while, but now I want you to put actual money on the table.”
Additionally, one must take into account the possibility (and, as we’ve seen, a lot of writers absolutely REFUSE to consider this possibility) that the reason the deal suddenly went away when you hired an agent is that the agent totally screwed it up.
For example, I know of multiple instances (straight from the editors’ mouths) of a high-profile agent who deliberately tried to sabotage client deals already-on-the-table, because the agent has a lunatic streak of control-freakism. On other occasions, agents may want to shop around your book, despite there being an offer on the table, when they come on board at that point… which can be problematic since, if you don’t get a better offer elsewhere, by the time the agent says to the original house, “Okay, we’ll take the deal,” the publisher knows full well what has happened, that the agent has shopped it around and gotten no offers, and now the publisher has the agent over a barrel and may say, “Well, that was the old offer, when you had potential leverage; now that we know you have NO leverage, we’re lowering the original offer.” And rather than tell YOU how much he’s just screwed up your deal, the agent may well imply to you that the publisher was never serious, or that the publisher wasn’t willing to deal with an agent who was looking out for your best interests.
In a similar vein, when the agent comes on board and hears that you’ve got, say, a 2-book $10K first-time deal on the table, the agent may say to the publisher, “I know for a fact that can do MUCH better elsewhere, so increase that to $40K or my client walks.” And the publisher may say, “Sorry, no, $10K is as high as we can go. Good luck elsewhere, and farewell.” And, again, this agent won’t say to YOU, “I’ve just blown a sure thing for you, based on my own ego,” but rather, probably, something along the lines of, “Well, once you had an AGENT in your corner, that house wasn’t really interested anymore, it turns out.”
To give yet another example, the house in question may hate the agent you’ve hired and consider this person an idiot who’s caused them a lot of headaches. In which case, they may lose interest in the deal not because you hired an agent, but because you hired THAT agent. (Ex.: There was a “big name” agent with a big client list who sold one client’s book to two different houses at the same time. Which, of course, caused a lot of problems. Yet this agent was still working for years after that event. And if THAT was the agent whom you hired after getting an offer from one of those houses, it wouldn’t be too astonishing if the publisher suddenly decided it didn’t want your book that much after all–not enough to risk ANOTHER mess like the previous one that agent had caused. But would the agent SAY, “The offer was withdrawn because I screwed up a previous deal there so royally that the house won’t deal with me again?” Or, gee, is the agent more likely to say, “Hey, once you brought me in to protect your interests and make sure you got a fair deal, they suddenly weren’t that interested in you anymore.”)
And so on and so forth.
So I would take it with a big grain of salt and consider the vast variety of REAL-story possibilities if someone claims that a publishing house “withdrew an offer” or “canceled a deal” because the unagented writer then hired an agent. Especially since there is no such thing as a major or mid-size legitimate publishing house that isn’t ALREADY dealing with a lot of literary agents.
I think there are MANY common circumstances wherein, if you don’t know the business well and/or don’t know the specific circumstances (which, because of the opacity of agent practices, you probably don’t/won’t), it’s easy to mistakenly, incorrectly assume that what you’re experiencing or seeing is a case of a publisher canceling a deal because the writer hired an agent. But in 22 years in the biz, I’ve never even ONCE heard a credible anecdote of that happening; whereas all of the above scenarios I’ve described happen a LOT.
Additionally, btw, this relates to something discussed in an earlier blog in this series, which is that most agents have a handful of buddies with whom they most the majority of their business… And one of the suprisingly things about this practice is how reisistant agents are to expanding that core of pals to include additional houses/editors.
Since I was already multi-published (8 books sales) by the time I hired my first agent, and have seldom been out of work, all of my four agent experiences have involved introducing my new agent to my own publishing relationships. The ONLY time in all those experiences that an agent did NOT act like a teenager being dragged along to bingo night at a senior citizens center was the one instance where the agent already had a relationship with my editor and placed writers with this editor.
In every other instance, where I was already under contract at a house or whether I got an offer on the table on my own, the agents whom I brought into those situations invariably approached dealing with editors who weren’t their buddies with all the enthusiasm that you’d normally reserve for going on a blind date with an ex-con. In one instance, an agent of mine simply refused to have anything to do with a publishing house where I was under contract when I hired the agent. In another instance, an agent didn’t flat out refuse to have anything to do with a house where I was already under contract, but was relcitrant and reluctant, even disdainful. In another instance, the agent belittled the house, the editor, the deal to me, and discouraged me from pursuing it (which only worked, in the end, because my editor got laid off at the same time that I was doing well at a different house). A writer I know has an agent who treats a lucrative publishing relationship which pre-dates their association as a nuisance–rather than as an important source of income to the writer.
So another thing to consider, in the above “deal went away when writer brought in agent” scenario to consider is that the agent treated the offer (or potential offer) carelessly because it wasn’t being made by one of the agent’s buddies at one of the 2-3 houses where the agent makes most of his/her deals.
Some agents, when presented by a client or new client with an offer or potential offer at a house where they don’t have a close pal, don’t treat that as an opportunity to increase the size of their pals list, but instead treat that as a threatening scenario that will take them out of their tiny sphere of influence (i.e. the 2-3 places where they DO have pals)–and therefore don’t handle the business very well.
Oh, and to be fair–another possibility for why a publisher might drop a deal when the writers brings in an agent is that the writer is an unprofessional nudnik who has handled the situation very badly.
A publisher’s not going to want to have anything to do with you if you’ve accepted an offer, and they’re preparing the contract, and there is a deal MADE… and THEN you bring in an agent, and NOW, after the publisher thinks you’ve concluded a deal, the agent (to whom you have neglected to give this key piece of info) -commences- negotiations.
So there are an almost infinite variety of circumstances under which the sequences of events can appear to be (1) author gets offer, (2) author hired agents, (3) publisher kills deal. But supposing that the mere hiring of an agent kills a publishing deal is a lot like my little cousin, years ago, thinking that dust caused rain. (He read the captions under the pictures in a coffee table book I had about Africa. One of them said that after the dust rose on the savannah during the dry season, the rains came. He thought this meant the rising dust CAUSED the rain.)
I heard it first-hand from an author whose prospective deal with Baen was killed when he brought in an agent, and second-hand that it has happened to others.
That said, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know all the details — whether the agent actually did something to queer the deal or if the author brought in the agent midway through the negotiations rather than at the start — and although I’ve asked, answers have not been forthcoming. I haven’t pushed because it isn’t really my business.
The book in question did find a home at another publisher.
(I originally had a couple of paragraphs here that were probably more detail than is relevant. Suffice it to say that Jim was very much a hands-on guy – in that respect Baen Books was (and still is) more like a small press – that he frequently nurtured new writers, did a lot to help out writers that needed it, but was also known to occasionally have a short temper. He might have taken that last-minute agent thing as a personal insult. Toni Weisskopf (who now heads Baen Books) has been at Baen forever (I got my first personal rejection signed by her over 20 years ago), so it wouldn’t surprise me if she continues some of Jim’s policies/attitudes. Or it may be that the agent thought he could find a better deal elsewhere (which he ultimately did) and lied to the author about what happened. I don’t know.)
(Disclaimer: I knew Jim Baen fairly well at one point. I never did business with him as a writer, but we did work on a couple of unrelated projects together.)
In a similar vein to the Jim Hines survey that’s currently being posted on the web, YA novelist Megan Crewe concluded a survey 6 months ago about first sales, in which more than 270 writers participated.
One of the notable results: Only 55% of those sales were made with an agent.
The survey results are on Crewe’s blog at:
http://megancrewe.livejournal.com/251212.html
Laura’s report of her agent changing a contract clause to one less favorable to her sounds darn close to professional misfeasance. Problem is she did (in theory) have the opportunity to see that and ask for the change to be reverted. And, as Dean has been emphasizing, there are no regulations or licensing authority covering agents.
And Jim Hines has posted “Part II” of his survey:
http://jimhines.livejournal.com/497092.html
Laura, thanks for pointing out that Megan Crewe survey. Sure hard to argue with facts, but many writers will still claim an agent must be on board to sell a book. Thanks for the data.
Alastair, whatever policies may or may not exist at Baen Books, now or in the past, and/or whatevber individual quirls founder Jim Baen may or may not have exercised on specific occasions, there is obviously no anti-agent bias in the publisher’s practices, simply by virtue of the demosntrable fact that the house publishes–and has long published–a large number of agented writers.
I’m not at all surprised that a writer told you that bringing in an agent killed a deal. As noted abovel this is indeed what some writers think, because they either don’t know the business (which happens a lot) or don’t know the circumstances (which also happens a lot). Much the way my little cousin thought that dust caused rain.
Laura, THANKS!!! For the fantastic discussion and walk-through of how an agent can screw up an offer, or an author can think there is an offer and there really isn’t. If anyone reading those posts doesn’t already realize what we have been saying about keeping control and paying attention to what your agent is doing, that should be final convincing argument. Great stuff.
I also have had a number of the exact experiences that you described. On the talking about a deal and it not happening, that’s happened more times than I can count or want to remember. As for an agent screwing up a deal, got lucky so far on that one, but Kris has had issues with that. I know one writer who had a good deal in hand, went to hire an agent, and the agent yelled at the writer for sending the book in the first place to that house. Writer did not hire that stupid agent since there was already an offer. Head-shaking.
I know a number of writers who had deals, let their agent convince them to turn down the deal because the agent could get a “better” deal and then the agent couldn’t do as promised. Writer out of a book deal because the agent had grand dreams.
So, Laura, thanks very much for the very clear discussion of that topic. Great stuff.
Cheers
Dean
“Laura’s report of her agent changing a contract clause to one less favorable to her sounds darn close to professional misfeasance. ”
Alastair, I don’t disagree. But we’d have a darned hard time getting the AAR to agree.
“Problem is she did (in theory) have the opportunity to see that and ask for the change to be reverted.”
Yep.
” And, as Dean has been emphasizing, there are no regulations or licensing authority covering agents.”
And, yep.
Alastair, one quite obvious possibility that comes to mind in the scenario you describe, btw, that the agent(s) in question was/were someone whom Baen didn’t like. Given that Baen ran his own house his own way, it would in theory (I can’t speak to specifics, since I didn’t know Baen or his actions) be entirely possible that there were certain agents with whom an author couldn’t get a Baen contract.
I remember once being at a party years ago where I was having a very friendly discussion with the head of a house who was being very friendly and hospitable to me… until I mentioned who my agent was. The temperature in the room suddenly dropped by about 50 degrees and the person made dark comments (whose exact wording I don’t remember anymore) indicating loathing of my agent. The publisher was in a sour mood thereafter, our encounter ended awkwardly, and this individual has treated me, every time we’ve met since then, as if I had leprosy (even though I have long since ceased to be represented by the agent in question).
So certainly one possibility (among many, probably) is that the agent whom your acquaintance brought in was someone who had an antagonistic past with Baen, or who didn’t get along with Baen, or whom Baen despised.
BTw, the above incident reminds me… Another common or popular myth among writers and aspiring writers is that when editors/publishers don’t like an agent, it’s because that agent is a tough negotiator who demands the best deals for his/her clients, and therefore that’s an agent you really want to have. That is, being disliked by editors or publishers is seen as being in the agent’s favor, from the author’s perspective.
But actually, while I suppose it may happen sometimes, I’ve never actually met any editor or publishing executive who expressed a dislike of an agent due to the agent’s shrewd business practices or tough negotiating stances.
The two qualities that people in publishing houses most often describe, when admitting they dislike an agent, are (1) an abrasive, rude, brusque, volatile, or scathing manner of interacting with them, or (2) incompetent and unprofessional behavior.
I agree, Laura. Agents who are tough and fair and honest are often looked at by editors and publishers with respect. Business respect. The agents who are hated are as you said in #1 and #2. But let me add in one other, a #3. Scam agents. There are a large number of agents out there that are just laughing stocks to many editors. Editors can’t tell a writer when they have hired a scam agent, but they certainly can refuse to deal with them. Agents who are known for theft or other scams behind the scenes are often agents who publishers refuse to deal with and will drop a deal with a writer because of the agent. Seen that happen more than once, actually.
And I had no idea how many agents are laughing stocks to editors in New York until Kris and I became editors and started hanging around in New York with editors and I started working for Pocket, having dinners with groups of other editors, that sort of thing. We were treated as other editors, not writers, so we got into those conversations. As a writer, I wanted to run back and tell every writer their agent was considered a joke to editors, but of course, I didn’t. Not my job. Not any editor’s job, actually. Not my problem a writer was too poor in business to hire a good agent instead of a joke for an agent. But I hinted at times, most to no avail, just as others hinted to Kris at times that her agent was stealing from her. All of us in the early years can be dense at times, and I am no exception to that fact.
And one more point: People seem to have a myth that an agent who used to be an editor is a good thing. I know of a couple ex-editors who are good agents, actually. Those were major editors, very successful, with a ton of experience and who even had their own book lines at the house before moving. But many, many of the younger editors were FIRED from their editing jobs (let go in the politically correct term). Let me think, I want an agent who can’t even hold a low level editing job representing me? And I want an agent who is angry at a bunch of publishers because of being fired representing me? Uhhhhh, no. You want to hear laughing stock conversations, listen to a couple editors talk about a fired young editor who decided to be an agent. Yow. Ugly, ugly, ugly stuff. Makes a soap on television look tame.
Laura keeps referring to “making complaints” against this agent and there being nothing regulating agents. I’m a bit mystified by this. To whom is she complaining? Doesn’t simple (I know, it’s never that simple) contract law and agency (in the legal sense) provide avenues of dealing with this agent, i.e. breach of contract and malfeasance in fiscal responsibility? Perhaps a contract or litigation, not a literary attorney is the proper specialist once this point is reached. Let some legal shark get his/her teeth into the agent. Surely the threat of a very public lawsuit should cause the agent at least some concern, perhaps even enough to split payments.
Or did the writer sign such an egregious contract that this is not possible?
Mary
I’m looking forward to Dean’s next “Cows” entry, so I won’t belabor this thread any longer, other than to offer another huge “Thank you!” to Laura for all the anecdotes, and for Dean providing a subject and a forum where such anecdotes can be told. These are the “brass tacks” subjects NOBODY ever talks about at the cons I’ve been to. Nobody! It’s all world-building and character aspects and other crap that never makes the aspirants and the new writers stare at the fact that they’re embarking upon a business enterprise, and should prepare accordingly. Those whole agents meme has been like a giant Consumer Reports article for new writers!
Mary,
I can answer that question to an extent and in general. Writers seldom sue agents. I know of one agent, still working and still major, who has settled a couple dozen suits against him with part of the settlement being that the suit is never spoken of by either party.
Writers don’t sign fiscal or financial contracts with agents. Agents, as I pointed out, try to give a writer a contract, and some of them force the writer to release all chance of suit, but writers never force agents to sign contracts as we should do. (Again, back to writers being really, really stupid about money. We give a stranger control over all our money and don’t even ask for a contract.) So there are no contract law.
State of New York has some criminal law about use and misuse of money, but such a splitting payment thing would be minor as well. If you signed a contract with a publisher, and in that contract, you left the agency clause that says all payments go to your agent, then splitting payments can’t be done legally. The contract holds that together as well.
So the problems come from a combination of events. One: Writers allow stupid agency clauses in their contracts with publishers, two: Writers don’t force their agents to sigh a contract between a writer and agent that will protect the writer, and three: Often the problems aren’t enough to sue over.
There is no board to complain to, no organization that can investigate the agent, no body of humans to set standards for agents. It is us to writers to control our own employees, and sadly, instead we believe in myths and “common knowledge” for such control. And when it comes to often huge amount of money at stake in the hands of a stranger without oversight and standards of any kind and without even a signed contract with your agent, not much a writer can do.
We built this stupid bed. Doesn’t mean all of us have to sleep in it.
Mary, I filed complaints with the Association of Authors Representatives (AAR), which investigated and said the agent was doing nothing wrong in refusing to consent to split payments; Novelists, Inc. (NINC), a national organization of professional novelists that contacted the agent and urged cooperation with my request for split payments (the agent refused); and the Romance Writers of America’s (RWA) Agent Relations Committee, which contacted the agent and urged cooperation with my request for split payments (the agent again declined) and began an investigation into what other means might be available to get this agent out of my life… but then the committee was disbanded and nothing more was done. I also consulted with the Grievance Committee of the Science Fiction Writers of America (which these days has a sub-section of the committee specifically to deal with agent complaints). SFWA’s GriefCom advised me and also provided a lawyer to advise me, but did not contact the agent directly, since that had already been tried and achieved nothing, and there was no additional leverage to make an additional contact at that time worthwhile.
In general, advocacy orgs for writers are where writers go in such situations to seek help. (When that didn’t solve the problem, I subsequently consulted three literary lawyers. Still no solution.)
Sometimes one can complain to AAR, but short of legally proving an agent has embezzled your money, there’s no much you can get AAR to do. It’s run by agents for agents, rather than being an advocacy group for writers.
“Surely the threat of a very public lawsuit should cause the agent at least some concern, perhaps even enough to split payments. ”
Mary, although I’ve got a lawyer working on this, as previously stated here, the agent can cause (and, indeed, HAS caused) me a lot of headaches and problems without actually doing anything that a judge will act on.
In fact, as three literary lawyers in a row have warned me, EVEN mishandling of my money (which has not, to my knowledge, so far happened, though my paperwork has certainly been mishandled) wouldn’t necessarily get a judge to do anything. Generally, prior to be able to legally prove embezzlement i.e. mishandling of my money to the point of actually STEALING it), the writer has no legal leverage against an agent in this situation (and by the time you can prove embezzlement, the money is gone, of course, and you typically never see it again).
All of which is a good example of why a writer should not, as I did, simply go along with the status quo of the agent handles the money until/unless the agent nicely agrees not to handle the money. It is the norm for a writer’s former agent to agree to consent to split payments; but that’s a COURTESY in the biz. Similarly, whether or not the publisher agrees to split payments with an agent’s consent is a COURTESY issue in the biz (and, currently–as is often the case–the publisher has so far chosen to be courteous to the agent rather than to me).
The only LEGAL protect against what’s happening in my case would have been to LEGALLY ensure this situation couldn’t arise in the first place. Which is why I urge people to learn from my bad example and get the proper paperwork signed and in place to protect themselves at the start of an agency relationship, rather than expecting an agent to VOLUNTARILY behave reasonably after you’re no longer a client.
Brad, sure writers talk about this at cons: They tell you you have to get an agent. (g) What we’re discussing here are opinions that most writers don’t voice because they don’t share them.
However, as Dean pointed out elsewhere in this series, romance genre conventions -do- tend to talk a lot more about business matters. (This is because RWA, a writer’s org, holds a lot the romance cons. SFWA, by contrast, does NOT hold cons; cons in sf/f are almost always hosted by fannish groups. So romance and sf/f convention cultures grew up from two totally different positions, which accounts for some of the many noticeable differences between them.)
This weekend, some very smart and successful writers who are friends of Dean’s and mine (Kevin Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, Eric Flint, David Wolverton, and I’ve just forgotten who the final writer is) did a 2-day seminar in California mostly aimed at teaching the business of the biz. (At least one regular follower of this blog attended and sent me an email saying he was Learning Stuff.)
OTOH, conventions are expensive, and I think it’s no real disadvantage to a serious writer not to have the time or the budget to attend conventions. Plenty of pro writers never attended a convention before getting published; plenty, too, don’t attend them after getting published, either. I definitely view con-going as strictly optional, based on personal preference. Especially in the internet era, where =so much= information is available right on the Web.
Of course, rhere is also a staggering amount of BAD info online, so one does need a reliable sifting tool. My Writers Resource page is one such tool. I don’t list everything that’s good (since I haven’t yet come across everything, me being a finite sort of entity); but everything that’s listed there is good–and there is an ENORMOUS amount of information linked-to there.
The link to my Writer’s Resource page, btw:
http://sff.net/people/laresnick/About%20Writing/Writers%20Resource.htm
“Perhaps a contract or litigation, not a literary attorney is the proper specialist once this point is reached. ”
Mary, literary lawyers -are- contract and litigation attorneys. Their field of specialization is publishing/media law. A contract attorney or litigator who does NOT specialize in publishing/media law is useless to a writer, in terms of publishing-related negotiations, disputes, and lawsuits, since publishing is a specialized field.
Laura, I thought I’d made it clear in my original post (intended only as a data point) that Baen has no problem with working with agents who make submissions (and for all I know generally don’t have a problem with authors bringing in an agent after the initial offer is made, except as alleged in a couple of instances). But it doesn’t hurt to reiterate that.
I know Baen works with agents (even one of whom Jim said “scared hell out of” him — and that wasn’t the agent the spurned author brought in (I don’t know the latter’s name, but the gender’s wrong)). I know several authors who’ve done agented deals with Baen with no problem.
Regarding publishers liking or disliking certain agents, let me hasten to add to my above that Jim certainly respected and as far as I know even liked the agent who “scared hell out of” him, and this agent represented several writers who were close friends of Jim’s. (Sorry for the vagueness, not my place to name names.)
BTw, the other day I thought of another variation of a fiscal model for paying agents and getting agent services.
There’s a service (linked to in my Writers Resource Page) called AgentResearch.com. It was founded by a guy whose wife had written a book and wanted to find an agent. This guy was astonished at how little information is available to anyone trying to make a business decision about picking (hullo!) their business representative.
He started researching agents, gradually realized that a lot of writers besides his wife would like to get the results, and started a business. The site’s been around for a number of years now, and it maintains a large and always-expanding database about literary agents. (They also offer a good newsletter, and they cooperate with watchdog groups in identifying scan agents.) And most of their services are priced as packages. (Ex. If you want a complete dossier on a particular agent, that’s a package with a pre-set fee, and the fee is based on how extensive their dossier is (low price for an agent about whom they’ve collected little info, higher price for an agent on whom they’ve collected a thick file). The more complex services charge higher fees. One of the good things are their pricing is that they specify exactly what you’ll get for each fee or package.)
I envision an agency that would charge pre-set fees on that same model. Ex. If you want the agent to re-up you for your option deal and review the contract, modest fee. If you want your agent to read your book, advise you on revisions, research and prepare an 8-editor submission list (with a paragraph for each, explaining to you WHY he has selected that editor as a good target for this MS), draft the submission letter, make the submissions, and do the follow-ups, much steeper pre-set fee. The listing of different services for different fees would give clear explanations of exactly what services you could expect for each fee. If you’re a writer who finds your own markets and makes you own sales, then wants the agent to come in and negotiate at that point, more modest fee. And so on.
Like my previous “alternative fiscal business model” riff, I doubt this one will ever catch on, either. From the writer’s perspective, it again eliminates the romantic (but only occasionally realistic) notion of a true partner, a business soulmate, who’ll love your work and believe in your career potential, stick with you through thick and through thin, share your dreams, etc. Like my previous proposed business model, it again reduces that image to someone doing business tasks for a fee, and that’s just not as seductive a premise.
And agents wouldn’t like it either, since it would require them to be a true client service, accommodating the different needs and requirements of clients, rather than developing a business procedure based on how the agent chooses to work and which clients can either cooperate with or leave. Additionally, this is again a circumstance where a fee-based service would mean more actual work and less money, and what agent would agree to that? (I say “less money” because once it’s there on a well-defined fee-listing, many writers seem likely to reject, for example: “Make phone call to propose option deal; review contract when it arrives: $5,000/book.” Though that sum is actually what many writers are paying for that service.)
“This weekend, some very smart and successful writers who are friends of Dean’s and mine (Kevin Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, Eric Flint, David Wolverton, and I’ve just forgotten who the final writer is) … ”
Brian Sanderson, fantasy author. Tapped to finish the Robert Jordan Wheel of Time series.
Laura, I just had a thought reading about your issues with that agent. Your comments always make me think hard about that problem because it angers me that you’re being treated that way.
I recognize that there is unfortunately no legal grounds for dissolving or altering the contract, and that’s contract law and it makes sense.
But you’ve said something in the past that gave me an idea. This would be a hard path, but maybe you want to consider a discrimination complaint. You’ve said that you polled several writers, and nearly ALL the women have the same sort of issues, but nearly NONE of the men do.
I don’t know how far you’d get, and I know it’d be an ugly path to take. You’d also need the support of other writers somehow. But I wondered if you’ve considered or would consider such an option, because it might just be the thing to get you the split payments you desire, especially when it seems the lesser of two evil for the agent.
There is a lot of really cool information in these comments. Thanks to everyone for sharing their experiences. Great stuff.
With respect to this particular Sacred Cow, there’s a basic issue that I’m not sure we’ve addressed…
Why are we assuming that the agent is paying attention to our incoming money (rather than, say, simply taking their 15% of what happens to come in the door and forwarding the rest)?
I’ve never seen anything to suggest that agents or agencies have better record-keeping systems in place than Fortune 500 insurance companies. Big insurance companies are masters of float, but failures of their cash management procedures drive many of the soon-to-be-liquidated companies into the ground.
(Too many unbelievable liquidation stories for even this forward-thinking board.)
If entire departments of trained accountants can lose track of money, why assume that agents can’t?
Rick
Rick, it’s such a common problem, I can’t begin to tell stories about it. Agents are HORRID at book keeping for the most part. The smaller the agency, the worse the problems of misuse, the larger the agency, the more accounting department problems arise as you mentioned.
And then the fact that writers have this “belief system” that other people should take care of them, most writers don’t track their own money that’s due to them. And when you start selling numbers of book to many outlets, guess what happens? Money gets lost. This very thing is how many agents (whose names you would recognize) just flat steal money from clients. They know they have a new or stupid writer, they know the writer wouldn’t know that this royalty check is due, so they just keep it.
And how can they do such a thing? Easy, actually, since the check is made out to them. And back to the point of this. When you give a stranger all your money with a promise they’ll pass some of it along to you when they get around to it, don’t be angry when accounting can’t “find” a payment, or when they just keep something that you don’t even know is coming because you are not keeping track.
THIS IS NOT THE AGENT’S FAULT, folks. This is the writers fault, writer’s responsibility for setting up this system and for allowing it to continue. You can’t blame an agent for your own stupidity. Sorry.
And trying to get writers to wake up is what this blog is all about. Nothing more.
Thanks, Rick, for pointing out that one area as well. Just flat scary, ain’t it, for those of us who have played out in the “real world?”
“I wondered if you’ve considered or would consider such an option”
Such an option would only be feasible if people whom I spoke with were willing to go on record. Which is most emphatically not the case.
I am exploring various options. None of which I think it’s wise to discuss in public (and some of which are specific to my circumstances). But since I have consulted multiple advocacy orgs and multiple lawyers who specialize in this field, you can be assured that I’ve turned over a lot of rocks in search of a viable solution.
Rick, in fact, a few years ago, a number of writers complained to me about an instance where checks and payments due from their well-known agency got delayed significantly… because it turned out that (wait for it!) the agency’s bookkeeping and check-writing was all being done by the head agent’s spouse, and when the marriage fell apart, the spouse stopped coming to work. And it took this agency (which had a LOT of writers’ money passing through its coffers) more than a month to sort out an alternate arrangement for accounting and payments.
Then again, it’s not as if publishers handle writers’ money better than that. There was a famous incident where a major house simply DIDN’T SEND OUT aumn royalties until AFTER THE NEW YEAR. The reason? They were installing a new accounting system in-house and couldn’t get it done in time to send out fall statements and checks to the hundreds of writers awaiting them. And in public statements, the publisher was distinctly, er, irritable about how many authors protested this treatment.
Alastair, well, if I’ve misunderstand, then this is perhaps a good example of why (apart from causing ill-feeling, getting nasty mail, and possibly hearing from someone’s lawyer) I always think it’s best to avoid specifics and names when talking about this kind of thing in public. The subject in public should be the inherent problems, flaws, and abuses in what is a widely- and unquestioningly-accepted business model, rather than the subject becoming specific personalities and individuals.
Viz what Dean just wrote above, yet another wrinkle in the system is how many writers are reluctant to or afraid to ASK for money that’s owed them or questions accounts/checks that don’t make sense to them.
And while some agents are perfectly reasonable and responsive to being asked where a long overdue check is, or what exactly an unclear itemized agency-deduction on your statment/check is for… some agents are NOT reasonable in their responses (some are even nasty and rude about it; I certainly experienced this a couple of times). And the prospect of being perceived as a nag by the agent, let alone the prospect of getting your head bitten off by the agent, is among the reasons that some writers don’t monitor or follow-up on fiscal concerns, puzzling statements, and overdue checks when they want to or probably should do so.
Whether or not that makes sense, it is a fairly common aspect of human nature (especially for writers, who usually aren’t extroverted, confrontational people eager for interaction on sensitive subjects with business associates), and so it’s yet another problem in the unregulated and extremely casual non-system by which others handle a writer’s money.
Compared to a lot of freelance professions where, for example, you send a monthly bill or invoice to someone who owes you money–and possibly charge a modest interest fee on a debt which has been outstanding for more than 60 (or 30, or 90) days.
Now, add in what Laura said to what I said in the posts above, and then combine that with the silly (but very powerful) myth that a writer must have an agent to sell, you get writer after writer making horrid decisions. Often these bad judgments, when put in real world terms, would never happen. But when you attach the word “agent” to it, writers just go brain dead.
So always, always, always take a situation in this business and then ask yourself clearly, “Would you do that outside of writing?”
Questions like: Would I allow a complete stranger to negotiate a large money contract for me without checking every detail and every step of the way? In the real world, of course not, writer with an agent, it’s common.
Questions like: Would I turn over all my paychecks to a perfect stranger and then allow them to send me part of it when they feel like it? Real world, of course not. Writer with an agent, common practice.
You get it. If you are sane, if you can climb over the myths, if you can think in business terms and keep control of your own work, you will make far, far fewer mistakes. And you just might have a wonderful relationship with your agent employee. But it is up to you because IT IS YOUR BUSINESS. It really is that simple.
Another chapter on agents coming shortly. Thought we were done with this topic? Not hardly. (grin)
Laura, you’re right, of course.
By coincidence (?), apparently someone’s been asking an agent to work on a fee basis. (g)
Literary agent Jessica Faust begins a recent blog post with the words: “No, I will not consider representing you for an up-front payment in lieu of or in addition to a commission.”
Based on her negative comments about a fee structure as compared to a commission structure, it seems safe to guess that the industry won’t be welcoming alternative fiscal models anytime soon.
http://bookendslitagency.blogspot.com/2010/03/to-answer-your-question.html
And speaking, as we were the other day, of bad behavior by agents that pisses off publishers, literary agent Kristin Nelson’s blog brings up a recent example where an unnamed unethical agent dealing with Penguin has just created a headache for EVERYONE else–including her and (hello!) including me (since I also do business with Penguin). Read on:
http://pubrants.blogspot.com/2010/03/we-interrupt-this-q.html
Laura wrote: “Viz what Dean just wrote above, yet another wrinkle in the system is how many writers are reluctant to or afraid to ASK for money that’s owed them or questions accounts/checks that don’t make sense to them.”
Not me, even though I’m very much introverted and non-confrontational in person. Fortunately (or unfortunately — depending on your perspective), my last employer, a MAJOR cellular telecom company, was in the habit of screwing up a lot of my paychecks. Consequently, I was constantly hounding them about the mistakes. Sometimes I found that what I thought was a mistake was simply a misunderstanding on my part, but it was a misunderstanding that was engendered by what I thought was a very wacky way of presenting the numbers on my paystubs.
I might have been reluctant or afraid to do such a thing in the past, but no more, thanks to that employer.
Further, not only did they make a fairly regular habit of screwing up my paychecks, they also made a regular habit of screwing up my state income taxes. One year, when I called their finance department and spoke to a supervisor, and I described the problem, their idiotic response to me was, “We’re not here to offer financial advice.” (Funny. I wasn’t asking for any.) The response even included what sounded like a canned response designed to deflect attention away from them (almost as if they were having a lot of similar complaints from others). This company was having some financial difficulties at the time, thus a major reason for the layoffs that led to my current unemployment. What makes it even sadder, in my view, is that this is the only employer ever with whom I’ve had such problems.
Fortunately, having been laid off, I’ve since received my last check from them and shouldn’t have to deal with that problem any more. Almost makes me want to thank them for laying me off. (Well, I might have to deal with it one more time, depending on how my state income taxes look when I have to file them next year.)
My point in bringing this up, though, is simply that it would appear that this experience, like my divorce, has also given me some tools that will prove useful in a writing career.
When Lynn Viehl showed her royalty statements online after hitting the bestseller list a few months back, I poured over those puppies with an electron microscope, to make sure that I understood everything that was there because I want to understand as much about this business as I can before I get a publishing contract in hand. Dean’s Killing the Sacred Cow blog posts here are certainly adding to that knowledge, too.
Quick question (or maybe this can be postponed until the next chapter goes up).
I’m the volunteer Treasurer for a local non-profit. I handle about $30,000 in income each year. I’m getting ready for the annual audit of the financial records by an independent CPA, since the non-profit’s fiscal year ends this summer.
It’s not a full-blown audit, just a quick one to randomly search for irregularities in the books. Also the CPA often recommends better ways for me to do things.
For those writers who don’t do the 85/15 split with their literary agent until after they go their separate ways, do at least the larger literary agencies have an outside auditor come in to do a check-up of their financial records?
I have the horrible suspicion the answer is “never.” I hope I’m wrong.
You are so right. Never happens, at least in any way that an author can see. Why? Because there are 50-500 other authors in the mix in the accounting. And thus it would take every client of an agency to allow permission for every other client to see their income before any real audit can be done.
And then, of course, the question is, who would care or be able to do anything about a scamming agent? The myth of agents is so deep that young writers just flat go brain dead when faced with “getting an agent” and thus even if it is common knowledge that an agent scams, the agent will still have more than enough new clients to scam. Sad, sad problem with this agent myth stuff. We writers can’t even police ourselves in any fashion at all. Or do audits.
It is allowed to do an audit of your dealings with a publisher and often the language is in your contract. But, of course, writers don’t think to have a contract that they give their employee to check on them.
After following the links above, this really jumped out at me: “…Agents need to be paid on commission to protect the writer.”
Granted, I’m taking the one single line *out of context*. I do understand her point about how a fee system could potentially enable scam artists.
But that line still just really jumped out at me.
Deborah, yes, the fundamental flaw in a fee-based system would be that it’s quite vulnerable to scam artists.
People are SO DESPERATE to be published, and SO DESPERATE to have an agent, and not smart about researching and learning this -highly- competitive profession that they aspire to enter, the upshot is that an alarmingly large percentage of aspiring writers are very vulnerable to scams. This means that our industry attracts quite a LOT of scam artists.
And, of course, to collect your income strictly on commission based on selling books means you have to, oh, SELL BOOKS. Whatever one may say against the traditional agency business model (and we’ve certainly said plenty here), under that system, an agent’s income relies entirely on working with clients whose manuscripts generate income via book sales to legitimate publishers. In that system, there’s no way for someone to access your money until/unless your work is selling to publishers. Which is certainly a big point in its favor, in terms of eliminating scam artists who milk a desperate aspiring writer’s bank account via up front fees.
And thus alternative fiscal structures… probably won’t work. Because the field is plagued with scam artists. And you know who (a) polices this and (b) suffers for it? Writers. NOT agents.
Have all noticed, for example, that the major watchdog orgs and efforts battling scam agents are run by and paid for by writers orgs (ex. Writer Beware, supported by SFWA and MWA) and writer lawsuits and non-agent businesses and orgs (ex. Preditors and Editors, AgentResearch.org), and that education about this subject is primarily pursued by writing orgs (ex. RWA).
For all that they claim that fee-charing is evil because it enables those nasty scammers… Literary agents and agent orgs like AAR do remarkably little to clean up their own profession or patrol their borders. It’s largely left up to writers.
It is SFWA, btw, that has born the heavy weight of legal fees to battle scam agents, via WRiter Beware.
Not AAR, an agent org.
SFWA. A writers org.
And to continue with my theme, it is MWA, a writers org, that is now contributing to to the costs of Writer Beware’s work in battling scam agents, exposing them, helping their victims, shutting them down, and, when necessary, fighting them in court.
Not AAR, an agents org.
MWA, a writers org.
That line jumped out at me, as well, Deborah.
Usually, when people say they are doing something to protect someone else, it’s at best a misrepresentation, and at worst a flat-out lie.
In context, that line is there to simply say that authors would be taken advantage of if agents charged fees instead of commissions. Hidden in the text is the assertion that authors are too stupid to know they’re being taken advantage of (which might just be true), and that the commission system somehow protects them from that stupidity. Also hidden is the assertion that by charging commissions, agents ensure proper care and treatment of their authors, because since they’re only being paid on commission, they will try like hell to sell their work.
That’s several of the myths rolled into one statements right there.
And FURTHER to the subject of agents and money–egad!
My lawyer and I have been quietly dealing with a legal problem with a former publisher of mine. I won’t go into details, since the matter is still open (though now rapidly approaching conclusion). But a key point in the problem was my claim that I have not received any fiscal reporting on this matter. Well, it turns out that the publisher is astonished by this claim… because it can show lots of proof that it has indeed been reporting to me fiscally.
I took a look and, er… now I see that the fiscal reports have been going to a former literary agent of mine. And this isn’t EVEN the agent with whom I’m in an ongoing battle to get my payments split.
This is a DIFFERENT agent. (So, basically, my consistent experience now is that as soon as you stop being a client, you can COUNT on your ex-agent to stop FWDing you fiscal and legla paperwork to you.)
This is someone from whom I DID get payments split when I left… but from whom I didn’t get payments split in =this= particular matter, because I thought -this- particular matter was already old, finished, closed, wrapped up news when I left.
Well, guess what? It now turns out that I only thought that BECAUSE I WASN’T GETTING THE PAPERWORK. The -publisher- was still treating it as open business, new things happened, the publisher reported this development in good faith… to a major literary agency… that has apparently just been THROWING OUT anything that arrives in their offices with -my- name on it ever since I left.
(Frankly, it does make me wonder what ELSE has arrived in that agency for me since I left that I don’t know about and will probably never know about.)
My lawyer and I are sorting it out with the publisher.
But, good grief, I swear, I have reached a point where I would PAY my former agents to stop causing me unnecessary headaches with their irresponsible and unprofessional behavior.