Agent Free

Today the Femmes Fatales welcome guest blogger Laura Resnick . . . take it away, Laura!

by Laura Resnick

Like many writers, I started my career without a literary agent, because I couldn’t get one.  After I sold eight books on my own, I went agent-hunting again. Now that I had demonstrated that I could sell books steadily, literary agents were finally interested in me.

This, I soon learned, is because most agents don't like heavy lifting.

The person whom I hired then was/is a very successful agent who is still cited often in publishing trade journals. He sent my new book proposal to five publishers. They all rejected it. He immediately dumped me, refusing to look at any other projects from me or discuss the matter. I had been a client for all of four months. (Repeat: Agents don't like heavy lifting. As soon as he realized that he wasn't going to get a quick and easy sale, he lost all interest in me. And this is a much-too-common problem in working with literary agents.)

My next agent, who was very reputable, was also, it soon turned out, very volatile—prone to tantrums, shouting, angry letters, sulking, etc. So I ended the association after about a year—during which time the agent had not furthered my career or increased my income. (In fact, as a direct result of paying this agent 15% from the career I had already established on my own, my income went down that year.)

My next agent (we're on #3 now) was/is very successful and respected. There were ways in which this association was very fruitful for me, which is why this is the only agent whom I don’t simply 100% regret ever having hired; but there were also ways in which it was professionally and fiscally very damaging. The problems increased until I eventually decided to leave. In retrospect, I should have left much sooner.

Still mired in the conventional "wisdom" of the biz that a writer must have a literary agent, I hired my next agent (#4) to negotiate an offer I had already gotten on my own from a major house. This was a senior agent at a well-established agency and someone with an impressive client list.  And... collecting the commission for that on-the-table deal was the most engaged this agent ever got in my career. When things started to go south (that same publisher later dumped me) and I needed the agent to do some work (i.e. submit books to publishers), I found myself treated like a drunken leper with halitosis. (Remember? Agents don't like heavy lifting.) So I left. The agent's response: Good riddance.

For reasons which now elude me, I queried a number of agents after that… but the publishing market was by then depressed and in turmoil, and I was now a writer having career problems (weak sales and a canceled publishing contract). So no one was interested in representing me—it would involve heavy lifting, after all. 

So, agentless yet again, I did what I had done many times before: I researched the market and sent out submissions to editors myself. Within a month, I accepted a good multi-book offer from a major house—for a better advance than I had been making in deals "negotiated" by my former agents.

I also hired a literary lawyer to negotiate the contract on that deal; and thus I got the best contract of my career. Lawyers—who are educated, trained, and licensed in contract law, legal language, and contractual negotiations—are  typically much better at this than literary agents, who have none of the above and who all-too-often don't even understand the contracts they're "negotiating" and advising their clients to sign.

I did some math around that time and realized the following things:

* Overall, I had made most of my book sales myself throughout my career

* Even on the various occasions when I had an agent, I still had to make a number of my sales myself (which got expensive when the agents demanded a 15% commission on those deals, despite not having made the sale)

* At least 1/3 of my book sales over the years have specifically been with projects that my own agents or agents whom I queried  declared unsaleable and declined to send out


My conclusion was that I wouldn't even HAVE a writing career if I had ever followed the advice of literary agents, cooperated with their refusal to market my work, or relied on them to sell my books.

All these various experiences and reflections convinced me that the agent-author paradigm was not a business model that worked well for my career.  I have been working agent-free for about six years now, and my career is currently the busiest, happiest, and most lucrative it's ever been.

Laura Resnick is the author of the popular Esther Diamond urban fantasy series, whose releases include Disappearing Nightly, Doppelgangster, Unsympathetic Magic, Vamparazzi, and the upcoming Polterheist. She has also written traditional fantasy novels such as In Legend Born, The Destroyer Goddess, and The White Dragon, which made multiple "Year's Best" lists. She began her career as the award-winning author of fourteen romance novels, written under the pseudonym Laura Leone. An opinion columnist, frequent public speaker, and the Campbell Award-winning author of many short stories, she is on the Web at LauraResnick.com.

Comments

[Mary]

Wow, Laura, what a story! And what fab book titles. :) This is so inspirational. Forging on with your writing had to be tough considering the "help" you got. I love your Go Forth and Conquer attitude. Thank you for sharing - I feel much better. :)

[Charlaine Harris]

Laura, I've had my agent for over thirty years and never regretted a moment of it. He stuck with me when sales were very bad, and now we share the good fortune of things going well. I'm sorry you had such bad experiences.

[Toni L.P. Kelner]

I know a lot of people have had poor experiences with agents, but I'm delighted to have mine. It's not just the primary book deals he manages, but the subsidiary rights--audio and foreign rights I'd have no idea how to handle.

Like everything else about writing, you have to pick the best path you can. Glad you've found such a profitable one for yourself.

[Laura Resnick]

Charlaine, my father, a science fiction writer, has also been with his agent (not his first) for about thirty years. I respect his agent enormously, and I know from their association that a beneficial longtime partner ship with an agent is sometimes possible for some writers.

What experience has taught me (as well as having become, ever since I went public about my own experiences, the recipient of many private queries and anecodites from writers about their agent problems) is that such a result is all-too-often not how an agent-author association turns out--and that, precisely because of this, it's important to stand up and contradict that conventional "wisdom" of the genre that a writer MUST have an agent--which was the falsehood that kept leading me back to throwing away more time and money on agents even after I knew it was a business model that didn't work well for me.

[Pat Brown]

I had to keep checking who wrote this to make sure I hadn't written it in my sleep.

I had the gotta have an agent' disorder. And I got my first agent right away, with my first book. She sold, but when I sent her book two she just handed it over without even reading it. The publisher rejected it. End of agent one.

Agent two was a big gun, with lots of major clients. When he read the manuscript he came back very excited and wanted to represent me. It was about 4 months, maybe less, when he came back -- well the agent's assistant came back and told me they couldn't sell it and dropped me like I was radioactive.

Agent 3 was even more enthusiastic -- it was a different novel -- and we met a few times. She even suggested a book two and I agreed. We worked on both novels together. Around the beginning of August I lost contact with her. First response I get is 'family' issues. Later I get a disjointed email about not being an agent and having to drop me. I'm not happy and start looking around. Her QueryTracker profile still listed her as looking for novels. Their website was the same. Even her blog said nothing about a new status.

I kept emailing and she finally said she couldn't keep clients who didn't make her money. I'm really pissed now. More emails and I'm getting less polite. I haven't heard back to my last email where I said she was unprofessional. I also sent the email to the head of the agency. I want answers and I want a list of who she queried and the responses.

Meanwhile I've given up on agents. You're right Laura, they only want something they can sell immediately without any real effort

[Laura Resnick]

Pat, and the real problem for writers is that every writer who goes through your experiences (or my experiences) tends to feel as if IT'S JUST THEM. But, in fact, it's EXTREMELY COMMON. It's just that there is so much silence and secrecy around the subject of failed agent relationships and bad agent behavior that writers wind up feeling unique and isolated with these problems--but the problems are extremely common.

[Pat Brown]

If I had heard some horror stories like mine and yours, maybe I would have rethought my strategies.

Just the other day I realized the biggest reason I wanted an agent was to have one of my books in bookstores all over America. It's an ego thing and that's not worth 15% of everything I make.

[Libby Hellmann]

Interesting post, Laura.

I've come to the conclusion that it's best to work with agents on a "project" basis -- that is, to hire them to do things that I can't. That includes foreign rights, TV, and film. Some agents are willing to work on that basis, and I suspect as time goes on, more will. I'm finding that everything else, as you said, can be handled by a good literary/copyright attorney.

[Donna Andrews]

My agent and I have been together for nearly 13 years, and I'm happy with her. BUT . . . I know people who have had really negative agent experiences and been afraid to speak out. Thanks for giving us the reality check!

[Laura Resnick]

Libby, that's a good point--I definitely think widespread changes in the business model would be improvements, including more variety and flexibility in how the overall job of representing writers' available licensing rights works, and more geniune expertise among agents working in key/complex areas.

[Laura Resnick]

Pat wrote: "Just the other day I realized the biggest reason I wanted an agent was to have one of my books in bookstores all over America."

But that's my point: My books (most of which have NOT been represented by a literary agent) ARE in bookstores all over America, and have been since the very start of my career. I never needed a literary agent for that.

I don't go around saying that NO ONE should work with an agent, or that you (generic "you") here should fire an agent you're happy with, or that you (generic) should NOT hire an agent if you want an agent.

But I keep contradicting the widespread assumptions that you need a literary agent to sell to major publishers, to have a successful writing career, to get better money, to get better contracts, etc.

Having a literary agent is one possible choice for how to run a successful writing career dealing with major publishers--but one ONE POSSIBLE choice for a writer to make. It's not The Way, or The Best Way. It's an individual choice--and once which, if it hasn't worked out for you (generic), you should realize, in fact, OFTEN doesn't work out for MANY writers, and that's no reason to shed ANY other plans (such as making the NYT or selling to big houses or whatever).