What value do agents deliver to authors or readers?

I've just been reading an article by Peter Cox from the agency Redhammer entitled, Your Agent Should Not be Your Publisher. http://www.redhammer.info/news/agent-...

Interesting. But this article is starting in the wrong place. This isn’t surprising, since the whole publishing industry starts in the wrong place.

I’d like to start with the author, the creator of the product. The writer’s skills and talents are most applicable in the creation of the raw material. At this point, there is just a manuscript. It’s a product with no value. It has given pleasure to no-one but the author. No-one but the author has read it, let alone bought it.

In order for the product to have value to a single reader, certain criteria have to be met. No matter how cheap the book is in money terms - even if it’s free - readers are asked to invest their time, their emotions and their intelligence in reading this book. They will want to know they are going to get a return on their investment.

The author has a product that has poured out of their imagination, based on their personal circumstances - their world view, their educational legacy, their personal history. They need help to make this into something that resonates with a significant number of readers, and still more help to get it in front of those readers in an attractive and saleable form.

When we talk about “the publishing industry” we are talking about the plethora of support services that have grown up to meet this need. The trouble is, all these support services now have a huge and cumbersome legacy of dysfunctional systems and processes that have trapped creative writing in a petrified forest of politics, egoism and business mythology.

Technology gives authors the opportunity to push the fossils out of the driving seat and take charge of this industry. There are more and more people out there writing. There is a whole new world of ebook publishing just getting going. We’re not talking about publishing a few books to a literary elite, we’re not talking about publishing a handful of best sellers a year, we’re talking about publishing lots and lots of books, each one of which will sell a modest number of physical copies and probably hugely more low-cost digital copies. Stories will increasingly become designed for digital publication, with hyperlinks to back-stories and spin-offs, multi-media formats, and all the other exciting possibilities technology makes available to the creative mind.

I believe it is time for authors to start demanding better support services, so that they can concentrate on honing their unique talent for creating raw material. The attitude of many literary agents, publishers and indeed booksellers towards authors is still breath-takingly arrogant. Authors are simply stumbling about trying to get stuff out of their head and onto the page, with varying degrees of skill. They look to the people in the industry for guidance and support. But we are looking for support from a bunch of people who have presided over the near-collapse of the industry. People who have allowed themselves to be duped by business mythology and dazzled by celebrity. The corporate culture consistently bullies and undermines new writers and exploits established writers. Collectively, the publishing industry has failed book-lovers everywhere. The only people who really care about good writing are the writers and the readers.

So it is far more than agents confusing the role of representative and publisher. I feel agents need to take a long hard look at the services they provide, and particularly their attitude towards unpublished and self-published writers, if they are to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The agent’s role is to provide authors with the time, space and income to be creative.

You cannot have books, whether they’re on your Kindle or on your bookshelf, without writers. There is no point in publishing books unless there is a growing population of readers. People discover the joys of reading through good books, and you cannot have good books without good editors. You cannot sell books without good sales and marketing channels.

Agents and publishers must contribute effectively to these essential services. They should be pro-actively nurturing new writers. They should be providing a library of information and feedback to writers about what readers like in a book, and steering them towards good editors. They should be taking a business-like approach to maximising the potential of each and every book, spotting new opportunities, mastering the technology, evaluating the service packages available, getting to grips with the rapidly changing face of marketing. If they’re not doing these things and more, they are redundant. They deliver no value to author or reader.

As an author, I’m still waiting, impatiently, for the support services to recognise that the world has changed. Eventually no doubt the smart people will respond, and take the business of publishing and distributing written stories triumphantly into the brave new world. The others will fall by the wayside. It is beginning to show signs of changing, but my fear is that there will be so many bodies many of us are never going to be able to find our way through the carnage.