The hipocrisy of literary agents...

You misunderstand what I'm writing. IF it works like the sports agents do-and I don't know, this argument was to get peeps to look at things from the business aspect-then their money comes from a guaranteed contract-not your profits unless they chose to sign that kind of contract with you. So, as I used for example, I'm Scot Boras, and I'm trying to sign you, Mckk, to a contract. It behooves ME to get you the largest upfront contract I can because my pay comes from getting the writer the most money possible. As said earlier, let's say I get you a 3 million dollar guaranteed contract-then I've netted 300k in guaranteed income for me. Not bad for a days work.

However, if it works like the one's I'm famaliar with, the pay comes from the initial contract-and then done. Anything else would be between the writer and publisher. It also depends on the contract you sign with the agent also. Some will take a flat fee up front, others will, if they're willing to take the risk, want you to sign one that gives them a percentage of total sales.

It depends on the risk an agent's willing to take-but that's how they work.

the website how publishing works, has a short, concise one page answer to how agents operate. They get 15-20% of a commission on sales, and it's typical for the publisher to send the advance through the agent-who subtracts his or her commission (like I was saying above). So, basically, it behooves them to get the largest contract possible, with the best novel they can find, in order to maximize their paycheck.

Not much different from the Sports Agents, I'm afraid.

Hollywood's probably work the same way too.

 

...it's actually pretty far removed from a sports agent, ck...

...no, it doesn't... not at all... payment to the writer may come first as an advance against sales royalties, but for new and unknown writers, this is rarely the case nowadays, so their only payments come from those royalties... and the agent gets paid only their 15% commission on all monies accruing to the writer, taking it off the top, as the payments will normally come from the publisher, through the agent to the writer...

...there is never a 'flat fee' paid to a legit literary agent... all legit agents work on commission only, so if your book/script doesn't sell, they don't make a penny... hollywood agents work the same way in re screenwriters...

 

Thanks, Mom, as I mentioned earlier I had no clue how they worked-but it gave an idea of the business side-which is something people tend to forget a lot. Everything in the world that involves money changing hands between individual and another individual for services rendered becomes a business deal, which, believe it or not, a lot of people don't understand how it works.

I could delve into several forms of events people would never think of as a business but we'd be here all day reading that one.

 

Them = Professional, so they deserve the professional addressing. You = Not yet professional, so you get no professional addressing. It's simple math. If you = not somebody who will make them money, then you are not entitled to be addressed by your name. It's just the way it goes. When you are a name that will sell books and thus give them a profit, then they'll address you by it. Trust me.

 

But as I stated earlier, I did receive some personal, hand-typed responses (though very few) -- so clearly not everyone (yet) is operating under your formula.

But, here's what I think is taking place (as with a lot of other areas in life): common courtesy is becoming a thing of the past, as greed, arrogance, and a "cut-throat" mentality takes its place.

Something tells me that in, say, the 1950's, every person who took the time to submit his or her query received a hand-typed rejection from an agent who, likewise, took the time to reply (by at least a member of his/her staff).

Today, it's either give us what we want (the next best seller) or you don't matter.

 

Well, you have to keep in mind that the 1950s were pretty different from today. There were *far* fewer queries. People had to handwrite and then type their manuscripts. Getting copies of them was a much more involved process than it is now. Today, there are many more writers -- the advent of word processing programs make it much easier to write a m/s and therefore enable many more people to write novels than did in the 1950s. Today we can shoot off dozens of queries or more in a day. We can make as many copies as we want with essentially the push of a button. And if we email the queries, we can send out even more queries. We can look up agents and their contact information with a simple websearch, and with nothing more than a cut and paste create a query. So there were significantly fewer queries back then. And it was possible for an agent or a publisher to give more time to a rejection.

It's not necessarily that they were nicer. It's that they had more time. It's easy for us to put on rose-colored glasses when looking at the past. But getting nostalgic doesn't really help us. The business aspect of any hobby or art can be harsh, and has always been so.

On the flip side, there weren't agents and other professionals giving advice on how to be published on blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

 

Mustang, there comes a time when you really need to consider letting the bad feelings go in order to move on with your life.

I have seen this exact post elsewhere and it seems to crop up every few months.

The variations are:

1. "I can't believe they didnt send me a personalized response"
2. "I can't believe they sent me a personalized response but offered no feedback."
3. "I can't believe they sent me a single line of feedback, how is that supposed to help?"
4. "I think the feedback they gave me is bull."

Agents are not your life coach, your writing tutor or your mommy. They are business people trying to make a nice living for themselves and their families while you complain that they are not treating your hobby with the level of respect you (incorrectly) feel it deserves.

We write, we query and we re-submit.

If you have such disdain for agents for your perceived slights, then stop querying. That will be one less person taking up space in a slush pile. If you finally get that this isn't a love fest and agents are not going to hire a special part-time person to send you personalized little notes sealed with a kiss and a hint of perfume, then go write some more and keep on submitting.

Your manuscript can be your baby up until the moment it goes out to agents or publishers. Then it is your product. Not everyone wants your product and they are not obligated to give you a reason or even a response. Agents wold be totally within their rights to ignore you completely.

Maybe there were more personalized responses in the 1950's. There was also a higher infant mortality rate, segregation and a woman's salary couldn't be counted as income for the purposes of taking out a mortgage. So please spare us the "good ol' days" garbage.

You need to either grow a thicker skin or consider a less competitive hobby (I hear macramé is nice). But if we are talking about right, I don't think it appropriate to call an entire profession of people hypocrites because they fail to function according to your misinformed notions of how things should be.

 

Harsh! But thread closed, well put James.

 

Consider the query a job application. How many times does a prospective employer call you to say you didn't get the job? Email you? Or plain tell you "Don't call us; we'll call you."? The last is typical. Does that mean employers are ill-mannered? No. It means they're a business, have more applicants than they could possibly hope to place, are looking for just the right stuff in each application, and don't have time to respond to each and every applicant just because their feelings might be hurt otherwise.

Once you've completed your ms, writing becomes a business. See JamesOliv's post.

 

Not everyone, yet. Maybe if they have a program that could automatically drop your name into a template letter, they'll address it to you to make it seem like their words about wishing you the best in your endeavors and encouraging you to keep writing actually mean something. But mostly, literary agents only care to even acknowledge you exist if you can make them money. Never said it was a good thing but it's the way it is.

If it makes you feel any better, in my view, the job of literary agent is an endangered species anyway. I am completely sympathetic with your feelings. And I cannot disagree with your analysis. But it's just the way it seems to be for most literary agents. I never even get a response from some of the ones I query. It's an impersonal process. On one hand, you understand it. On the other, you also begin to understand a lot about the state of writing when you observe the comic mind game that is the publication process. It's sort of a give and take that works together to tank an industry.

 

How so? Just curious how you came to this opinion.

 

Ad I really not mean to be rude. But we have gone round and round with this topic. I and many others offered reasonable things to consider from the agent's point of view. When it comes down to it, you don't have to like the system, you don't have to enjoy rejections and you can dream whatever you want to dream.

If you want to self-publish or go through a small press maybe you can bypass an agent altogether. But if you want an agent. If you want to use an agent's connections. If you want to get to a place where only an agent can take you, then the only way is to play the game the way it is.

Maybe one day the tide will turn. Maybe one day the literar agent will go the way of the travel agent. I doubt it, but it could happen. If you want to wait for that day, that is your right. But for now, this is the way it is. It doesn't matter how things worked in the 50's. Heck, in the time of Poe, I'll bet you received handwritten responses! Or, and I think this is much more likely, you probably just got nothing. The lack of any letter was all you needed to know that they were not interested.

 

I actually don't think it's endangered anytime soon. With e-publishing, huge new issues are arising and the settled ways of establishing royalties/payments to authors have been upended and are in a huge state of flux right now. I know a lot of authors are going toward self-publishing, but there will still be larger houses that deal with international rights, film and other derivative rights, etc. I think lit agents will be around for a while.

 

I agree. I think the role of a literary agent may change, but I don't see the role being eliminated.

I knew people who though the creation of legal zoom was a death sentence for lawyers. The role of lawyers may have changed over the las 30 years, but they aren't going anywhere (for better or worse).

 

Probably a good deal of overthinking and observation about where the industry's going. lol It's not a view I expect many to share.

 

Wow. Could you be any more sarcastic and rude?

One of the main points my original post was touching on is the reality that what was once known as "common courtesy" is becoming less and less common.

And your response illustrates this fact perfectly.

I am a firm believer that given a keyboard and the anonymity that comes with being on the internet, a person will reveal his or her true personality. So, you've done a stellar job of introducing yourself to anyone who reads this thread.

 

I'm shutting this down. It's getting too heated all around.

Mustang, you seem to have missed the point. What you consider common courtesy in the form of personal responses to each and every submission is a practical impossibility. It isn't discourtesy, it;s simply far too much volume.

It's true that not all the responses to you were as courteous as they could be, but neither did you show courtesy in not listening to what everyone tried to explain in response to your post.

Courtesy, like communication, flows in both directions.