Are agents still necessary in the new e-publishing world? I’m running across a number of people who don’t seem to think so. For example, self-publishing writer Stephen Leather opined in a recent interview with The Bookseller Magazine:
I think agents will be the hardest hit by the eBook revolution. There is almost no negotiation with Amazon over royalty rates so if you are dealing with them it’s pointless to pay an agent fifteen per cent. It used to be agents who acted as the gatekeepers – more trendy jargon – and they pretty much decided who got published and who didn’t but that has changed. Self-published authors who do well are quickly spotted. The market acts as the gatekeeper – if a hundred thousand people buy an eBook you don’t need an agent to give it a stamp of approval. If publishers realise that they will start to do what they used to do and go looking for talent themselves. The biggest mistake publishers made was to do away with their slush piles and only take submissions from agents. That is already changing.
Writer Dean Wesley Smith has a few less complimentary things to say about agents. While pointing out that agents were extremely necessary in the old world of publishing, Smith notes that they have become less so in the present day.
In discussing why he “didn’t bash agents” at a seminar panel he took part in, Smith writes:
Mainly, I didn’t bash agents because it’s not an agent’s fault that writers hire them in this new world. It’s not an agent’s fault that writers give them all their money and all their paperwork and then wonder why they got ripped off. It’s not an agent’s fault that a writer signs an agency agreement giving the agent part of the copyright in a work. It’s not an agent’s fault that a writer lets a non-lawyer agent negotiate a contract with fifty lawyers on the other side.
And it’s not the agent’s fault that a writer didn’t notice the agent stopped working for writers and started working for publishers years ago.
I didn’t bash agents on the panel in Las Vegas because it is not an agent’s fault that writers don’t know business.
Agents are supposed to protect writers against publishers taking advantage of them, Smith writes, but their allegiances have shifted. As proof of that, he points to the open letter the agents’ union AAR released asking all agents and writers to write the Department of Justice in protest of the agency anti-trust lawsuit.
What should the AAR have done? Nothing. Or maybe start helping their writers take back electronic money they helped us give to publishers for electronic sales. Yup, one day the agents and all publishers sort of “got together” and decided electronic couldn’t be 50% of cover anymore (as it was in all contracts before this magical agreement), but had to be 25% of net. It was “better for the business” that way.
Just as setting agency pricing “was better for the business” as the publisher’s said, and now the agents want us to support those publishers.
Excuse me???
Smith is the husband of Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who has also suggested authors no longer need agents.
It’s pretty clear that agents aren’t necessary if all you want to do is self-publish through Amazon. And some of the behavior Smith describes does seem a trifle suspicious for people who are supposed to be representing the best interests of the authors rather than of the publishers. But on the other hand, if you’re going to get involved with a major publisher, it seems that the business is arcane enough that you need someone to help guide you through it—especially since a lot of publishers won’t touch un-agented submissions. And some of the author friends I’ve made do seem satisfied with their agents.
Regardless, this seems to be another case where the best philosophy is caveat emptor. If you’re going to hire an agent, you should research them carefully and not just pick the first name out of the phone book.
Agents depend on making book deals, and in this age of self-publishing, that is increasingly hard to arrange. I think the main function of agents is to pluck successful authors out of the pool of self-publishers and get them signed onto a deal with the majors. (
I often find that as a small ebook publisher doing promoting, I am performing some of the functions of agents. Traditionally, there has been a clear wall between agents and publishers, but I don’t think that’s possible anymore. Personally I would prefer that all Authors be represented by clients; as much as I try to write fair contracts, often I find that the interests of Authors and Publishers are not always aligned.
The problem becomes worse when agents inherit the rights to orphan works, or the right to represent the heirs of dead authors, who have no interest or expertise in selling books. UK agents now control a large proportion of classic detective fiction, for instance, and most of them show no interest in re-releasing it. They seem to regard it as a lottery ticket, to be cashed in if and when someone smarter and more enterprising than they are negotiates a TV series or a movie deal. Meanwhile hundreds of first-rate books are locked away from the public.
Interesting post and lots of food for thought for writers – and agents! Thanks 🙂
“…….If you’re going to hire an agent, you should research them carefully and not just pick the first name out of the phone book…..” —- This is an amazing comment. MOST writers struggle to find an agent. They try and try again, ask friends, send hundreds of submissions, weep and gnash their teeth, and still can’t get an agent to take them on. As for authors who only publish ebooks, I doubt they’d find an agent who would want to represent them. There are so many ebooks now, many really poorly edited, that only a new agent with no clients might consider representing them, though I doubt it. This article reeks of sour grapes.
Rose, it’s better to have no agent than a bad agent. I have a few personal horror stories about agents who have embezzled or who have sat on books, doing nothing, until their contract with the author expired so the author’s career was stalled for years.
A good agent that works well with the individual author is as hard to find as a good spouse.
Rusch and William Dean Smith have some good advice, and Rusch’s most recent blog about royalties includes horror stories of agents who are trading great terms for their bestselling authors for very poor terms for the rest of their authors is sobering, indeed.
I always tell my writing students that writing is a business and no one cares about your career like you do so you have to know the business, read the contracts, etc.
I disagree with Rusch and Smith on the value of agents. It’s well and good for them with their established careers in sf/fantasy to do without agents, and sf/f publishers are fairly open to non-agented authors, but other genres like mystery require an agent if you want to sell to the big publishers.
I’m always open to questions about publishing and writing. Contact me via my writing blog or website to ask one. marilynnbyerly.com or mbyerly.blogspot.com/
Marilynn – I believe you are absolutely right in what you say. What I have learned, I believe, over the last few years of taking an interest in this business is that poor agents have long proliferated because far too many authors took no part on their own promotion and business. They were so totally wrapped up in the mere fact of being accepted by an agent that they then sat back and assumed everything he did was wonderful.