On agents, Part the first

So Julie D. asked: Could I put in a request for a post about finding the right agent as a first time author, and/or whether self-publishing electronically is a bad idea?

It’s actually two questions, but I’m going to start with the question about agents. Actually, let’s start before agents: Do you have a novel-length manuscript to market? If not, don’t bother trying to attract an agent. Skip reading this post and go finish your book.

If you have nothing to sell, an agent can do nothing for you, and they aren’t going to use up a spot on their client list on the off chance that you’ll someday produce something worth their time. Also, if you are writing short stories, you won’t be able to get an agent to handle them. Period, the end. Even when I was starting off back in the early 1980s, the only writers I knew whose agents handled their short stories were people who’d were still with the same agent they’d had since the 1960s or early 70s…and that was only because they were grandfathered in.

So you have a novel-length manuscript to market and you want, not just an agent, but the right agent. What do you do next?

Well, the very first thing you have to do is decide what you want in an agent and why. This means a) finding out a little about what agents normally do and don’t do for their clients, and b) thinking about why you write, what you want out of your writing, and which of the things you found out about under a) are things you want/need.

B) is something you have to do for yourself; nobody’s list is going to be quite like anyone else’s. (More on that in a minute.) So we begin with a) – what agents normally do.

There are three main things that you can expect a legitimate, reliable agent to do: 1) submit novel-length manuscripts to markets, 2) negotiate contracts on your behalf, and 3) collect your payments from your publisher(s) and send them to you, less the agent’s cut. Your primary agent (or their office) will handle these three things him/herself for the domestic market; for subrights (foreign language translations, movies, merchandising, etc.) the primary agent often uses subagents specializing in those areas.

To the best of my knowledge, current rates as of this writing are 15% for first rights, 25+% for subrights (varying depending on why kind of subrights and what the subagent’s percentage is). In other words, the primary agent takes 15% of whatever the publisher pays you, when the publisher pays you. Under no circumstances do legitimate agents charge a reading fee or ask for an up-front payment (though some agents do ask for expense reimbursement for things like overseas postage, phone calls, and photocopying. These expenses should be minimal – even before email and Skype, I don’t recall ever paying more than about $50 for that in any given year – and they should be clearly itemized). This stuff should all be laid out in the agency contract.

In addition to the three basics (submission, negotiation, collection), agents can and do perform a variety of other functions, depending on their temperament and inclination. Some provide various levels of editing for their clients, ranging from a quick wash-and-brush copyedit to agents who act almost as co-authors or packagers starting from the first glimmer of the developing idea. Some provide in-depth career advice. Some are well-known in the business for their foreign contacts, or for their ties in Hollywood. Some are really good at hand-holding nervous writers (and most of us get nervous at some point in the process). There are also different approaches to managing an author’s career: some agents make it a policy to ask publishers for big advances; others, for retaining the maximum number of subrights; still others, for publicity packages or author promotion opportunities.

Everything mentioned above, beyond the three basics, is optional at the discretion of the agent. I’m emphasizing this because a lot of folks go into their agent-hunt with really unrealistic expectations, which can end up with bad feelings on all sides. Know what you must have, what would be nice to have, and what you absolutely don’t want an agent to do for you, ever.

Finally, there’s the question of ethics. I’m not talking here about the problem of scam agents who are out to soak authors for all they are worth; if you do Part II of the agent hunt right, you’ll discard most of the scammers right off. I’m talking here about the author/agent relationship with publishers. This is, in my opinion, an area where it is vital to have a match between author and agent. Whether it’s the agent who’s willing to push the envelope and the author who’s determined to be a goody-two-shoes, or vice versa, the fact remains:  if you aren’t in agreement with your agent about which moves are ethical and which ones aren’t, you’re probably going to be very unhappy, very quickly.

These extra questions are where b), above, comes in. For instance, speaking for myself, I don’t want my agent editing my work. I don’t expect a lot of career advice, either, certainly not of the “XYZ is hot now; you should drop everything and write that” variety. I do welcome input when I’m trying to decide what to write next (of the “which of these six ideas do you think you can sell right now?” sort). I don’t expect financial advice. I do like a certain amount of reassurance when I’m worried, and especially when I’m late on a deadline. I do want to have the occasional in-depth discussion about what the best next move would be – hold the rights for the backlist and try to resell them, or start marketing them as e-books on our own? Concentrate on increasing foreign translation sales, or put more effort into publicity for initial publication and hope the foreign rights sales follow? And I’m not interested in pushing the boundaries of what I consider fair and reasonable in my business dealings.

Other writers have different lists; you likely will, too. The point is to know what, if anything, you need/want, over and above someone to submit, negotiate, and collect for you. Once you have that, you’re finally ready to start agent-hunting.

At which point I realized that this post is WAY too long for one thing, so part the second will come on Wednesday. I had a lot more to say about this than I thought I did.

Late edit: And I just now realized that I’d accidentally turned off comments and pingbacks on this post. Sorry, folks: unintentional. Though at this point, you might just as well wait and comment on tomorrows second-half post.