Agents: The WD-40 of Publishing
Don’t you just want to start a publishing biz so you can buy a book from her?
More and more people are self publishing these days, and the book printing available to them is so nice that most folks can’t tell a traditionally published book from a self-published one. Recently, a traditionally published author friend was telling me that she can’t wait for one of her titles to go out of print so she can turn around and self publish it. Much of the stigma of what was once known as the “vanity press” has vanished in this century. Because of this, some argue that today’s writer has no need of a literary agent because all they do is sell your book to a traditional publishing house; therefore, the literary agent is a dinosaur in this new day and age. Allow me to disagree. Agents do much more than sell books–they’re pretty much the publishing industry equivalent of WD-40.
First, a moment of full disclosure: I LURVE LURVE LURVE my literary agent, so my perspective may be clouded by that fact. Abi, my agent, is smart, nice, and an all-around peach of a gal. But one doesn’t pay someone else a commission simply because she’s swell. One pays an agent a percentage of his/her earnings because said agent is worth every penny.
What do agents do for writers besides sell their books to a publishing house? Well, for starters, they have connections you probably don’t have and know things you probably don’t know. Living in Alabama, I don’t have the opportunity to hang out with movers and shakers in the publishing industry to find out what’s happening, what they’re looking for, what sells well for them, etc. Agents do. They have relationships with editors that go beyond “attached please find my client’s recent novel for your consideration.” Editors will tell agents what kinds of stories they’re looking for, and if you’ve got a good agent, he/she will pass that along to you. One of my favorite series in the past few years was Ally Carter‘s Gallagher Girls books. Guess how they came to be? Ally was writing for adults, but her agent, knowing that YA was hot and also knowing which publishers would be glad to receive a good one, asked Ally to try her hand at YA. And thus was born the super cool secret spy academy that I so wish I could’ve attended as a teen girl.
Another perk of having an agent is being vetted before you send your manuscript into the wide, wide world. I always send my agent the first 10-15k words of a novel before I continue. That way, if it’s not working and no one will ever want to read it, she’ll tell me and I can move on to something else. Or she can tell me WHY it’s not working and help me make it work.
This vetting process makes editors take your work more seriously even before they start reading your manuscript, especially if they know the agent and think highly of him/her. (“Ooh! This is from Abi!” I like to imagine editors saying when they get an email from her.) Agents are also great at playing bad cop to your good cop. It’s exciting when a publishing house loves your book and wants to buy it; it’s far less exciting when they offer a contract that isn’t really the best deal for you. Here is where your agent comes in and negotiates better terms so that you don’t have to. And honestly, would you understand anything in your publishing contract on your own? I certainly wouldn’t. There’s a reason I write stories instead of legal documents.
This is a short and certainly not exhaustive list of what agents do for writers–there’s more…not the least of which being the occasional pep talk, which is something I think every writer needs once in a while. I know I do. So if you’ve ever wondered if finding an agent is worth it, my answer would be a resounding yes.
