I don't but an agent has approached me and my coauthor to do this program, so I'm looking for info too. Our proposal was rejected by a number of houses, and he presents the white glove program as an end run around trad publishing editors afraid to take risks, but as far as I can see he's taking no risk at all himself. He doesn't even have to work to sell the book.
Here is an account by another author who did it:
https://eviegaughan.wordpress.com/tag/amazon-white-glove/
So...after Amazon takes 30% the author splits the rest with her agent. That being the same agent that told her (, along with the usual "others"):
"My agent, having just returned from the London Book Fair, had observed that the industry was in grim shape. More than any other year, she said, the publishing industry was on its knees. Traditional publishing routes were growing narrower and more problematic. We both knew apparently successful writers now extremely disillusioned–even ones on the fourth book of a five book series–who despite being published by the big houses, suffered nothing but anxiety at the unanswered calls or emails, demand for gratuitous sex and violence to be added to their completed manuscripts, sales of translation rights never materializing, and the ever-hovering threat that they would be dropped. The grass isn’t so green on that side of the fence anymore yet most of us hopeful first-timers still carry the torch that areal publisher will sign us and legitimize our dreams of a writing life."
I also couldn't help noticing:
"After months of trying to get a traditional publisher to consider my debut novel,
Silk for the Feed Dogs, and many lovely rejection notes expressing their fear at taking a chance on an unknown writer, my agent was approached by Amazon. They had just launched a new publishing venture, Amazon White Glove Programme. Its aim, my agent explained, was to raise the level of self-published material out there by focusing only on writers who had already won over an agent with their work.
"
To me this is just a bunch of red flags. I do not see anything here that should require an agent. And I don't see anything the agent has done that justifies taking 50%.
If I look purely at what is happening here, it looks like a joint scam between a bookstore and an agent to get money out of writers. (Unless the agent in the blogpost is lying and is scamming the author all on their own.) I see absolutely no benefits for a writer in this compared to getting a publishing deal. I do see huge benefits to the agent though. (50% instead 15% of the author's income.) And if this becomes a quality "gatekeeper" I could see benefits for Amazon.
