Log in

No account? Create an account

Previous Entry | Next Entry

Agents again

devilwrites said You may have posted something about this long before I started reading, so if so, you can just link me to it or whatever, but how essential in the fantasy/sci-fi writing business, IS IT to have an agent?

I'm not sure if I have or not.

I think I haven't, skimming past, and because in some ways I've attempted to keep information posts as general as possible, I probably haven't addressed this all that much. The question is not personal, in the standard sense of word personal, but I think the answer is personal in the sense that each writer will probably have a slightly different take on it.

When I first started, in the late '80s, I think it was less essential in some ways. I still think that it's possible to get published without an agent, although many houses will only look at agented submissions now. In regards to the terms you get for a first novel, an agent is unlikely to be able to do better than you can do yourself, if you've read up on this and you've done a little contract homework. In most cases, they can't get you more money or better royalties; they can better some terms -- reversion clauses and the like -- but beyond that, it's not clear to me that the effect is concrete.

Agents are almost like publishers when you're first starting out. All the attendant uncertainty, insecurity and hope that one feels when one sends out a novel is the same, regardless of whether it's going to an agent or a publisher. The desperate drive to be published is not unlike the desperate drive to find an agent. I understand both of these things because I've been there.

There are editors in this business it would kill me to work with; they're fine editors, but our personalities would cause small nuclear explosions whenever we connected. That's me. Other authors don't have the same difficulty. It's the same with agents, in a way, but it's worse -- because the agent is, in theory, supposed to work for you, and are therefore paid to get the best deal for you. (The editor works for the publisher, and it's her job to get the best deal for her employer.)

Do they? Well, yes and no. They work for you in the sense that they don't get paid unless you do; they get a cut of exactly nothing if they can't sell your work. Most agents in this day and age charge 15%; some also charge expenses on top of that. Foreign rights are usually at 20%, with 10% going to each agency (yours and the foreign one). Given the number of publishers who no longer consider unagented manuscripts, a lot of writers now feel as if they have to have an agent to break in at all.

This isn't entirely true. Publishers like Tor, DAW, Roc or Baen will look at unagented manuscripts. I believe that Del Rey and Bantam only look at agented submissions; I'm not entirely sure what HarperCollins/Eos does. Small presses don't require agents, for the most part.

However… if you can find the right agent for your novel, the agent can choose the first house that they submit to; they can begin to strategize early; they can offer advice based on what they know about each publishing house. If they're established agents, rather than agents who are just starting out, they'll have a client list and working relationships with editors in the genre.

For me? I don't think an agent, in my early years, was essential. Why?

Because I didn't have as much inherent confidence in my business sense, and because I had a far less certain sense of what I could actually accomplish. I knew I could finish a novel, yes. I knew I could finish novels, yes. But what kind, and in how long? That knowledge came later. Because I didn't realize how important it was to know what I could do, in concrete terms, much of my early output was sort of meandering. I focused on the writing; I ignored the realities, even when I understood them.

I think that working well with an agent requires two things: the ability to communicate well, and the ability to talk about the business on an almost equal footing. Having both of these things requires an author to be assertive. Having a sense of what you can do, versus what you think you can do is also essential -- and it's something gained by trial, error and experience. If I tell my agent, for instance, that I can meet a six month publication schedule (first book, second book, third book, in six month intervals), I should be able to do that (I can't, fwiw). Telling an agent that I can, when I can't, makes strategy harder for both of us. Having learned by trial and error that this is not something I can reliably do means that I know more or less what I can do, and we can plan accordingly. It's not that I'm terribly slow; I'm just not reliably fast, and that has to factor into the discussions.

I really do think that one of the essential things an agent can bring to the table -- the one that exists between author and agent -- is long-term planning. But the desire to plan for the long-term, and the focus to stick to a plan, is not something that every author wants or has at certain points in their career.

Knowing what you want from an agent requires you to have a sense of how the business works, because what you want should be realistic, and in proportion to what you can achieve. You have to be able to communicate this ability to your agent, so he knows what he has to work with before he then goes to the table that exists between an agent and a publisher (or editor) with the project in hand.

If you've written novels, and published novels, you become a known quantity. This isn't always a good thing, if the quantity is bad. But bad sales aren't a death knell; they aren't permanent. If you can learn from your mistakes, separating them from publisher mis-steps, you approach an agent with more experience.

This doesn't really answer the question. I know authors who are published and are doing well who don't have agents. So, no, even now an agent is not essential. If you're writing doorstops, you have a big strike against you in the foreign markets, especially translation markets -- and foreign sales are one thing that are very difficult to do on your own. It's one of the biggest reasons to have an agent, if you need one -- but the foreign markets are all regrouping at the moment, and it's harder than ever to break into them.

If you can read contracts, understand them, and have a reasonable sense for what you can achieve in negotiations on your own, you don't need an agent for a first book sale. You probably don't need an agent for a second book, either, because the numbers for the first book won't be in, and the leverage of numbers won't be in your court in either direction. But if the first couple of books do well enough, an agent then becomes more helpful, because at that point, the agent will probably have a better sense of what he or she can achieve in terms of bettering your contract.

Would I be without one? Not now, no. But there's been a sea change in my attitude over the last several years, and I think that I'm in a position now where an agent is both useful and necessary. For my first four novels? I had an agent, but I'm not certain that having one made any difference.

On the other hand, some houses prefer to deal with agents. Why? Because it means the editor and the agent can play the legal tango out from beginning to end, and you can stand aside. They can say things to each other about you that you don't have to -- and probably don't want to -- hear.

In this case, if you get an offer, you can find an agent who will take you on at that point. The only difficulty with this strategy for finding the agent of your choice is that the agent might not have confidence in your work; he knows it will sell, because it has, but the sale wasn't made by him; it was made by you, and by the book you wrote. If you can get an agent before any offer is made, this is a good thing -- provided that the agent is a good agent. The fact that a good agent will take you on does give you a bit of a leg up, but in the end, the book is what counts.

As for finding agents? I'm not sure what resources I would turn to. I know that the SFWA guide does list authors by their agencies, which is useful if you have some sense of the market; you can take a look at clients that have been successful, and you can, if you think your work is similar to their list, approach that agent, or those agencies. I found my first agent by going to Worldcons and sitting through panels on agents. I found my second agent because I knew enough writers by that point that I could evaluate their careers and see the similarities between those and my own; I approached my current agent on that basis. He has done some things for me that I would have found much harder to do on my own. I've done some things that he would prefer I didn't do. There's a balance and compromise there that I couldn't have achieved in my early years; in some sense, I don't think I was ready for it at that time, because I was much more nervous about what I was doing, and about how it would all turn out.


Sep. 13th, 2004 08:30 am (UTC)
Now that's interesting.