Blogger: Wendy Lawton
Location: Books & Such Central Valley Office
I’ve talked about agent limbo, logjams and brick walls. All part of the frustration of being a literary agent. I’m guessing those failures occur for all agents at one time or another. It doesn’t make us bad agents– just human. But I couldn’t talk about #AgentFail without talking about bad agents.
Yes, Virginia, there are bad literary agents.
So how does a writer know if an agent is bad? It’s a little harder these days than it used to be. We used to tell writers looking for an agent to read the AAR (Association of Author’s Representatives) Canon of Ethics. It basically says that an agent only makes money from the sale of your work–that agents only make money when you make money. But even the AAR unofficially admits that the market is changing. Many agents are having to offer their clients other services like helping them create and publish their own product outside of traditional publishers or helping them create e-books.
But the dangers still exist. Many writers are willing to make huge sacrifices to get published. What a temptation for scam artists. There have been books written about agent/editing scams. One eye-opening one is Ten Percent of Nothing. But those kinds of scams are less likely than the more subtle practices offered today.
Here are some suspect or downright unethical practices:
- An agent who wears more than one hat. If your agent has a financial interest in an editing firm, a marketing firm or a publishing firm and directs you to those services, he is treading on thin ice. For example, take an agent who gives paid seminars across the country on, say, marketing books overseas. He is totally within the bounds of ethics unless he insisted that every one of his clients pay to attend. If an agent takes on clients to feed his other business it is unethical. An agent might suggest an editor or two who could help you shape your book but the decision and financial arrangements have to be up to you. If the agent owned the editing company or were to receive a “gift” or a kick-back for that referral, it’s a problem.
- An agent who herds you into self-publishing. You have an agent in order to sell your work to traditional publishers. That agent only makes a commission when the publisher pays you an advance or royalties. If he is directing you to self-publishing firms, you need to ask, does he own an interest or is he getting a kick-back? Neither would be ethical. Of course, many times an agent will need to help a client create product for his own speaking ministry or web store. Or perhaps the agent helps the client create e-books of out-of-print books. The client actually becomes the publisher and pays the pre-agreed commission for this work to the agent.
- An agent who “poaches” clients. One of the most cringeworthy practices by marginal agents is the wooing of successful clients away from their agents. Good agents simply do not do it. If you’re already represented and another agent approaches you and begins to talk about your career and/or makes a pitch to represent you, run the other way! Industry-wide the practice is considered unethical. No matter how flattering it may be, the agent who engages in the tactic will most likely be comfortable with any number of other unethical practices.
You want an agent who’s primary mission is to grow your career. But you also need to gauge the actual effectiveness of an agent. You should know:
- Publishing houses to which the agent has recently made sales.
- How many sales the agent has made.
- Other writers the agent represents.
You might wonder where you can get this information. Much of it is available at Publisher’s Marketplace.
You would want to ask many of the above questions when an agent offers representation. And you should feel free to talk to some of the agent’s clients. If you are already working with an editor, you can ask him indirectly about the agent. Most editors will be uncomfortable giving you a direct yea or nay about whether they like an agent since they have to work with many different agents, but if you give him a list of three agents and ask whom he likes to work with, you may get a sense of who’s good and who’s omitted.
You might also check the website Preditors and Editors, and you’ll find excellent information on the site Writer Beware.
You’ve probably heard it said, “A bad agent is far worse than no agent.” It’s true. Who wants to be represented by a scam artist or someone who is over-promising and under-performing? And think of the damage it would do if your agent is one that editors avoid at all costs.
So there it is. Good agents sometimes inadvertently fail, but bad agents can cause havoc. Happily many excellent agents out there.
Wendy,
Fantastic job this week. I think you’ve given writers a much deeper understanding of the challenges agents face.
I do think the walls of frustrations writers bump into can try their patience and tempt them into making poor choices. This post provides many reasons why they shouldn’t get ahead of God’s timing.
I remember a few weeks ago when Janet mentioned the practice of poaching in her blog series. It shouldn’t surprise me that this happens, but it does! It sounds so terrible!
Wendy, what an excellent series this week! We all don’t get as much done as we’d like, we all fail, and we all need grace. Thanks for your openness. 🙂
I’ve enjoyed this informative series. It only solidified my opinion that agents do the best they can with the time they have. We can all aspire to the same!
Thanks for taking the time on these posts. They’ve been very insightful. Your willingness to share and educate the writing public is great.
Thank you so much for all of these informative posts this week. Your openness and honesty are highly valued and much appreciated, as is your attention to the humanness of us all and the grace therefore needed!
AWESOME posts!!!!!!!!
Bless you for putting out such informative information for writers that are not familiar with all the ins and outs of the business yet. I found your posts to be very informative.
I’d be very interested to know what you think about the following…
I searched long and hard for an agent, and finally found someone. They seemed eager and capable, with a good history of sales. Great!
They sold my book within a year of taking me on. It was a relatively small deal – 5000 Euros in advance – but big enough to make me happy. The contract was signed, and then the waiting started. This didn’t surprise me; My husband and I had both made money from writing and editing in various forms, and we knew how slow publishers could be to pay up. I did my best to be patient, but after a couple of months I started to prod. I was given various excuses about the delay. At first I believed it was the publisher who was stalling, but then I started to get suspicious. I did a bit of minor detective work, and my fears were confirmed. The publishers claimed they had sent the money to the agent a few weeks previously.
The agent made more excuses. By now they were claiming to have the money, but that various technical and administrative problems were holding it up. Finally I contacted another client and discovered I wasn’t the only one.
At this point my money was only three months’ late, but this other client had waited well over a year for tens of thousands of Euros and had to re-mortgage their house – with full knowledge of the agent, who was still telling lie after lie – as a result. The other client knew that some of the lies were lies, but was still trying to convince themselves that it wasn’t really that bad. The agent had secured a large number of deals and – theoretically at least – a substantial income. They didn’t dare sack the agent and make themselves agentless, despite the fact that all their income was arriving months late, and much of it was still outstanding.
I confronted the agent. They denied it, and the money miraculously appeared in my account. They apologised for the errors and waived their commission on that contract.
I had suspicions about other, smaller, things my agent had told me. I no longer trusted a word they said. I agonised over it, but I couldn’t see how we could have any kind of working relationship when I firmly believed they had told me fraudulent lies in order to hold onto money which wasn’t theirs. I terminated the relationship.
My question is this: Was my reaction over the top? I still have no agent. Nobody was willing to take on the projects which had already been worked on by another agent.
Maybe agents often tell a few white lies and hold onto their clients’ money for slightly longer than necessary? Three months isn’t actually that long, after all, and I did get my money – as well as the unexpected bonus of the waived commission. Although of course the level of deception with the other client was far higher, and that other client has since also left the agent.
This was something that was hard to spot in advance. Indeed, I contacted the other client before I joined with the agent, and got a glowing recommendation.
I think I probably did the right thing, and was just unlucky, but would be interested to get the opinion of another agent on it all.
Disappointed Writer–here at Books & Such we try to turn over the money within a couple days. Once the check from the publishers is in the bank, we mail out payments to the writers as soon as possible.
Very sorry about what happened to you. If anything, I’d say you waited too long. Timeliness of payment should have been spelled out in the contract you signed with the agent.
Disappointed Writer said: “Maybe agents often tell a few white lies and hold onto their clients’ money for slightly longer than necessary?”
No. This is a red flag. A reputable agency turns that money around as soon as the funds are available. You may want to contact an organization like Author’s Guild or AAR to discuss this with them.
Like Michelle commented above, our office immediately processes those checks and sends them out to our clients. (We know it’s one of the most anticipated pieces of mail a writer receives.)
That’s very reassuring to hear! Thankyou.
I am wondering why you haven’t jumped on the story of the Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors attorney, Charles Petit, Esq., who cheated the John Steinbeck estate and was suspended from practicing law in Illinois? Did you cover up the story because you don’t want to be blacklisted by Victoria Strauss and Ann Crispin? This is a really juicy story to ignore, possible collusion with Writer Beware, the supposed scam busters are scamming an American literary icon and no one is reporting it. Tsk Tsk
No cover-up, Priscilla.This is the first I heard this story.
If this is true, the attorney is the culpable person, right? If an attorney on retainer to an organization does wrong it doesn’t mean the organization itself is implicated. An attorney has many clients and just think about your own attorney. If he did something illegal or immoral, would that reflect on you? It would certainly give you pause certainly but it would not implicate you, right?
(Just for the record I know very little about Editors and Preditors except that it is a clearing house, a resource, for information about agents and editors. I do not know either Victoria Strauss or Ann Crispin.)
I’m always cautious jumping on reported legal wrangling until I have all the facts because in our legal justice system anyone can accuse anyone else of something. Then it has to be proven in court. I find too often the media jump on unproven allegations and then neglect to follow the story to the truth.
I have no idea if that could be the case here, but happily enough I’m not called to shine light on other agent’s specific misdeeds. I’m just called to be ethical, a person of integrity myself.