Interesting discussion on agents

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ChaosTitan

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I agree with these points he made:

1) There is no perfect book.

2) Editors can’t buy books they don’t see.

3) Agents work for writers.

But I also wonder about the closing argument of his (rather lengthy) post:

Having them vanish will make no difference to the system in general or readers who buy books.

It's hard to not feel that his opinion on the subject and his ultimate conclusion on the matter (quoted above) is somewhat tainted by his own admission that he's never used an agent to sell a book.
 

YAwriter72

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But I also wonder about the closing argument of his (rather lengthy) post:



It's hard to not feel that his opinion on the subject and his ultimate conclusion on the matter (quoted above) is somewhat tainted by his own admission that he's never used an agent to sell a book.

That was my thought too.
 

Phaeal

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So that's why they stopped making office doors with transoms. Well, that and the alligators that people used to drop through on hapless private detectives.

It was awful hard on the alligators, getting dropped like that.
 

willietheshakes

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Hmm. I dunno -- the whole entry reads as specious and self-serving to me.

Though I must admit, I stopped reading after "Bookstore owners take no responsibility for their own inventory with the return system"...
 

Sage

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I really liked the history aspect of the post.

The section about agents making you do massive rewrites, and making the book be "safe" does actually resonate with what I've been seeing lately. I'm talking personal experience, discussions with other authors about their agents, even things some agents have mentioned in their blogs. And it's really interesting because agents are saying "God, please listen to us or you won't get published. Really. In this economy you really have to be safe and sure." Then you have situations where different agents are telling you you need to do different things, so which one was the safe and sure way to get published?

But, honestly, I'm torn. Because I understand that agents do have a better knowledge of what editors want. They have lunch with them, get better chances to talk to them at conferences, and so on. So they know more personal preferences of editors than we could. But when they take that knowledge and say, "There's no way to sell this book as is. Change everything about it," and you begin to worry about whether the partnership is working the way it should be.

That said, this part:
An employee who works for an employer is telling the employer they can’t sell their product. Imagine that happening in any other business? You work at a production factory (which is what a writer is) and you tell your boss that you won’t sell their product. What would happen? You would be fired, of course.
I think fails as an analogy. Because there's a difference between an employee saying, "No, I won't sell the product" and one saying, "This product could be improved here, here, and here, and if you do that, it will be a far superior product and better received," which is what a good agent can do (and be correct). Some employers even hire people to tell them that kind of stuff <gasps>

Anyway, I think there's a middle ground. Somewhere where the writer has control, takes the agent's knowledge of what is preferred by publishers, and uses it to create a stronger book that is still theirs.
 

ChaosTitan

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The section about agents making you do massive rewrites, and making the book be "safe" does actually resonate with what I've been seeing lately. I'm talking personal experience, discussions with other authors about their agents, even things some agents have mentioned in their blogs. And it's really interesting because agents are saying "God, please listen to us or you won't get published. Really. In this economy you really have to be safe and sure." Then you have situations where different agents are telling you you need to do different things, so which one was the safe and sure way to get published?

I'm curious, Sage, what you mean by making the book safe. Maybe I'm not reading the same blogs/talking to the same authors, because it isn't connecting for me (other than your recent experience).

Sage said:
Anyway, I think there's a middle ground. Somewhere where the writer has control, takes the agent's knowledge of what is preferred by publishers, and uses it to create a stronger book that is still theirs.

Thing is, the writer only loses control if they choose to do so. Every agent/author partnership is inherently different, and I think this middle ground comes from finding the right agent. There are multi-published authors who've had more than two agents in their careers, because the first one (or two, or whatever) were not a good fit.

Again, this is coming from my experience, but I have never had to make a change to my books, via my agent's suggestion, that I didn't want to make. I went into the partnership with a clear understanding of the revisions I'd do, and we've yet to butt heads in a way that makes me think I've lost control of my book. I've just completed massive revisions on another, older book, based on his suggestions, and I agreed with most of them.

I know I'm lucky to have found an agent with whom I work well the first time out.

What's that old saying? Sometimes you have to kiss a few frogs? ;)
 

Sage

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I'm curious, Sage, what you mean by making the book safe. Maybe I'm not reading the same blogs/talking to the same authors, because it isn't connecting for me (other than your recent experience).

Thing is, the writer only loses control if they choose to do so. Every agent/author partnership is inherently different, and I think this middle ground comes from finding the right agent. There are multi-published authors who've had more than two agents in their careers, because the first one (or two, or whatever) were not a good fit.

Again, this is coming from my experience, but I have never had to make a change to my books, via my agent's suggestion, that I didn't want to make. I went into the partnership with a clear understanding of the revisions I'd do, and we've yet to butt heads in a way that makes me think I've lost control of my book. I've just completed massive revisions on another, older book, based on his suggestions, and I agreed with most of them.

I know I'm lucky to have found an agent with whom I work well the first time out.

What's that old saying? Sometimes you have to kiss a few frogs? ;)
Definitely, my sitch, CT. Hopefully, the 2nd frog will be the one, though. Everything she suggested made sense, and I was quite willing to revise based on her suggestions.

The first one, however, did want me to change things I was unwilling to change and wasn't interested in the alternatives I came up with. Although we parted amicably and he said that if I changed my mind, he'd be happy to be my agent again, he also made it clear that the revisions would still be expected at that point.

Safe is along the lines of what the agent sees as a "sure thing." But also from things I've heard recently from other authors, for example, agents worried about a YA having a distinct voice than others, even though teens themselves have different voices. Agents who consistently tell an author how much they love the full of his novel but their reason for rejection is that they have no clue who they'd sell it to. Those kind of things.
 

ChaosTitan

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Thanks for the clarification. :) And it does sound like this new agent is more on your wavelength.

Agents who consistently tell an author how much they love the full of his novel but their reason for rejection is that they have no clue who they'd sell it to.

When I see this comment quoted as reason for rejection, I honestly think it has less of a "I have no idea who I'd sell it to because it's so far out beyond what's being sold and may be a hard sell" as it is a "I have no idea who I'd sell it to because the editors I know don't buy this type of novel." The former is something I'd agree as "safe." The latter is just the agent acknowledging they aren't the best person to know who would buy the book.

And people wonder why they call this stage Query Hell. ;)
 

Sage

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The novel in question is pretty far out there though, lol. I know the writer was focusing on agents who wanted offbeat and quirky, so it's hard to say which it was.
 

bethany

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I actually don't think that agents know better what editors want, because I don't think editors know what they want until it crosses their desks. Agents may know more about certain editors and they have the all important access to those editors.

After three years with my very editorial agent, and some hits and misses with projects (although she sold my first book only months after I signed with her) my feeling is that she sees the flaws in my manuscripts that I and my beta readers miss. Whether I agree with her solutions for fixing these flaws, they are still usually flaws, or manuscript speed bumps that do need to be taken into account.
 

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I agree with Sage. The history of the post was very interesting.

What I took away from the blog was that the gatekeeping function has just switched from the publishers to the agents.
 

Shadow_Ferret

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I read that post and saw much that confused me.

Then I looked at the title bar and saw that it was written by Dean Wesley Smith, and all became clear.

Can you expound upon that or would you prefer not to?

I know nothing of him and until this thread, had never even heard of him. He claims to have 90 published books, if so, he's the most prolific unknown writer I know.
 

K_Woods

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I ran a search in the Books section on Amazon and it looks like he does a lot of work in various licensed series. Quite a bit of co-authored stuff, including several books with Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

I don't usually read licensed series books (and that's probably not the proper term, either), so I'm not surprised I haven't heard of him.
 

Suzan

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I read the whole thing and maybe it's just me, but the guy sounds a little bitter. Perhaps he's in need of a new agent, LOL!
Suzan
 

Cyia

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He left out things like how no writer knows on their own how saturated a market is, or how many books of a certain type have been sold in the time it took him/her to write their novel. Agents know when they've gotten 786 queries and 2/3 have involved mermaids - writers don't. Especially when those writers are scattered around the country in cities that have nothing to do with publication. Not everyone can just pick up and head to NYC for a writers' conference.
 

Nateskate

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Sheer volume changed the publishing game. If publishers didn't have agents as a buffer, they'd invent something like them to sort through the vast amount of submissions.

The word processor/computer changed the world.
 
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