Blogger: Janet Kobobel Grant
Location: Books & Such Main Office, Santa Rosa, Calif.
Unfortunately, the list of involuntary manslaughter murders that agents commit on clients’ careers goes on and on. Continuing from my previous post, I would also add:
- Made an easy choice that left the client temporarily content–but ultimately killed the career.
What am I talking about? An agent has tremendous pressure asserted to get a contract–any contract–for a client. The pressure comes from the client, publishers, and the agent him or herself. The client certainly can’t move forward in his career without a contract; the publisher expects an agent to present publishable material on a regular basis; and the agent needs not only to keep good relationships with clients and publishers, but he also has financial and peer pressure to sell a certain number of projects each year.
Yet those pressures can lead to serious missteps. An agent can decide to present projects only to smaller publishing houses, knowing he can rack up a significant number of sales each year. Those sales keep his clients happily writing, the publishers he works with happily publishing; and with enough clients, the agent making a decent living. Plus, to say you’ve sold 50 projects in one year sounds downright impressive.
And yet…eventually the client realizes the size of his advances are still bargain basement; his sales number are likewise in the dingy bottom. In other words, his career is going nowhere fast. And those low sales figures will follow him, like toilet paper attached to a shoe, through his entire writing career. Pulling a career out of this spot is very difficult to do. Not impossible, but it takes a lot of skill, a sense of timing, and just the right sort of project. Lacking all three of those items, involuntary manslaughter was committed the minute the agent said yes to a contract that took the author nowhere.
That doesn’t mean you should reject a small advance or writing for a smaller house. Sometimes that’s the perfect place to start, but if your agent is just making an easy choice rather than executing a thoughtful plan, it’s still the death of a career.
If you’re writing for a smaller house or targeting smaller publishers, what can you do to help assure a lively writing future? What do you like about working with a smaller house? What do you see as the downside?
Thanks, Janet, for shedding light on this topic. It makes sense. Some small publishing house deals can be good for our career, while others can hurt it. Not all contracts are equal. I’ll be sharing this post with my friends.
The question is… How does a client know if the agent they are working with is doing this?
Say for example, I’m content starting out with smaller publishers: how will I know when it’s time to push for a little something more from my agent?
It’s so easy to assume your agent knows what they’re doing. What are the red flags?
Yep, this I can certainly understand. I imagine a first sale to a smaller house might be a great stepping stone. But if you stay there for too long, it could look as if that’s the pinnacle of your potential.
As the publishing community is shifting agents are becoming more selective because publishers are restricting their new intake. How is it possible to see the career manslaughter coming when it looks like the world has closed its doors?
Natalia, it’s challenging to know whether your agent is making a career-killing decision for you. But, if you sense such might be the case, it wouldn’t hurt to ask what the plan is in going to a smaller publisher. Why does the agent see that as a good move? And how do you move onto a larger house from there?