Well, it has also been my experience that agents can be pretty handy. First of all, a good agent knows how to handle all the finer points of your contract. They can get tough when it comes to contract negotiations while your relationship with your editor can remain on an editorial playing field rather than wallow in the contractual mud. If your agent is worth her salt, she will get you a better deal and more money in the long run.
Of course, there are those horrid “closed doors” in the publishing industry. You know what I’m talking about. Those publishers who will only accept submissions via an agent. Not much you can do about them except to get an agent. (FYI – the only reason those publishers had to close their doors to unsolicited submissions was because they were bombarded with tons of inappropriate, untargeted submissions by the unenlightened masses who thought market research was waaaay too much work.)
And then there are the sub-rights. Maybe I can sell my DOYLE & FOSSEY series to Dutton without an agent, but what do I know about selling the series to a Korean publisher? A Portuguese-language publisher in Brazil? Audio rights to the audio people? Movie rights to the movie gods? Well, I don’t know squat about any of that, nor do I want to invest the energy to find out. I want to write the next D&F book instead. But a good agent knows all this stuff. After I had my DOYLE & FOSSEY contract in hand, I was able to land an agent who then negotiated my contract. (Agents love it when you come to them with contract in hand. That’s a really, really excellent time to snap up an agent.) She later sold the series to a Korean publisher, a Brazilian publisher, and so on. Something I never would have been able to do on my own.
So, to agent or not to agent . . . that is the question. And while the answer may have its pros and cons on both sides of the equation, there’s one thing for certain: you are not the victim in an impossible dilemma; you do have the power to decide.
Leave a Reply