The New World of Publishing: Traditional Publishers Are Getting What They Deserve

A beginning note: This post came about because lately I’ve been getting the writer-as-center-of-the-universe questions a great deal. Writers believe that when they send in a manuscript to an editor, it is the only manuscript on the desk. Writers believe that when they take on an agent, they are the agent’s only client. Writers believe that their advance is the only money publishers will spend on their book. That sort of silliness, which drove the writing of this post. Keep that in mind when reading this. Thanks!

Traditional Publishers Caused Agents to Become Publishers.

Let me simply say that traditional publishers deserve what they are getting.

And my question is this to traditional publishers:

WHY WOULD YOU DEAL WITH AN AGENT WHO IS YOUR COMPETITOR?

Why not just cut off those agencies and go direct to the writers?

Too simple, right? Too logical. Too much of a logical, good-business solution for publishing, I know. Sigh.

But even with traditional publishers being continually stupid, agents as publishers just won’t work. And today, in Publisher’s Marketplace, we saw that clearly once again.

Let me explain this as best as I can.

The History

Over a decade ago traditional publishers, in a cost-cutting measure, decided that slush piles did not serve them well. So someone, somewhere (more than likely in Pocket Books, since this sort of started in the Star Trek department) decided that publishers could outsource the slush pile to agents.

In other words, give up control of the pipeline to the original product that they depended on. Yeah, that was smart business.

The publishers did this by simply putting in their guidelines that instead of no unsolicited manuscripts, they wouldn’t accept unagented manuscripts. One simple word changed the job of agents.

Laid-off young editors decided to become agents, and young agents started blogging and looking for clients and the young writers instead of just ignoring the guidelines (like young writers had done for decades) started paying attention. And they went to agents.

And because these agents were young, they started thinking they actually were in control of these young writers.

And again, the young writers let them.

And over a decade the industry changed, with a generation of new writers slowly working into the business under this new system.

But the problem was that up until that point, agents worked for writers. But over the decade that started to change as well as agents started working more and more for their small group of editors inside publishing houses. The agents basically became outsourced editors, reading slush, having writers rewrite to try to groom manuscripts to one of the agent’s editors.

A few writers made it through this system, most did not. And we lost a generation of really original writers to this stupidity.

Now, with the extreme cutbacks in traditional publishing, the rise of indie publishing, the shift to electronic publishing, agents started thinking. “We are already editing, why don’t we just become publishers and try to grab some of the money the publishers have let go of.”

Of course, they will do it “for their clients.”  (These clients, for the most part are the same writers from the last decade who were convinced their agent was a god, that their agent would take care of them.)

Today Another Change

So today in Publisher’s Marketplace, there was an announcement of a company starting up that will allow agents to go to that company to put up their client’s work. For a “toll” as they are calling it. That toll is around 30% of GROSS. And all top agencies are thinking about going with them or a company like them and a few have already.

Why? Because as I have said over and over and over, agents can’t do this publishing thing. It just takes half a brain and a calculator to see that.

Here is why agents can’t do this: (Remember the writer-as-only-one thinking.) Agent has 50 clients Maybe more, and by client, I mean 50 WRITERS. Each client has 10 backlist novels and 20 backlist short stories to put up. (An average, some a lot less, some a lot more. Not counting front list and rejected books.)

Remember, these clients want to be “taken care of and don’t want to learn how to do this themselves.” And these writers think they are the agent’s only client.

So 30 stories times 50 clients = 1,500 stories for that one agent to format, do covers for, proof, and put up electronically. (Wait, it gets worse.)

Some of the larger agencies will have twenty or more agents (Some a lot more agents than that). 1,500 stories times 20 agents = 30,000 stories for that agency to deal with and get into electronic and POD format. That would make that agency larger than most major publishers.

And remember, agencies are going this way because they are broke. They don’t have the money to hire staff and cover designers and proofreaders and editors to do the 30,000 stories from their clients WHO ALL WANT TO BE TAKEN CARE OF AND BE GIVEN PERSONAL ATTENTION.

Yeah, and that’s going to happen.

It’s taken over a year for WMG Publishing to get up just over 200 of Kris and my backlist and we haven’t even touched the surface yet. And there are numbers of us working on it. Imagine if Kris and I were with one of the major agencies and asking our publisher/agent when she was going to get all our backlist up?

So anyone with half a brain, which none of these agents seem to have, know that this is a giant disaster just starting.

That’s why I say if you are with an agent and they start to become a publisher, RUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Not only is it a fantastic conflict of interest, but your work will be lost in the mess.

Well, today this company with a full staff, came running in to the rescue of these agents wanting to be publishers. I am going to call these new companies that are riding in to help agents “rescue companies.”

And they will rescue these agents from their own stupidity FOR A TOLL.

The toll will be paid by the writers of course.

The Math Again

So here is how that math will work for the stupid writers who will allow their agent to become their publisher.

— Book sells on Kindle for $4.99.

— Kindle takes 30% leaving $3.50. (This amount is what an indie published writer gets per sale if they did the work themselves.)

— Money is sent to rescue company.  Rescue company takes 30% of gross toll.  So from the $3.50 that they got they take 30% of $4.99 = $1.50.

— So the agent then gets $3.50 – $1.50 = $2.00.

— Agent takes 15% for “taking care” of their writer.  So agent gets $2.00 x 15% = 30 cents.

— Agent (when they get around to it) sends author $1.70.

—$1.70 divided by $4.99 = 34%. Author is getting 34%.

One more note: That $1.70 is AFTER all expenses for cover and layout and time to launch are recouped. So you are paying someone a flat fee after all to get your book up, then only getting 34% after all expenses are paid back. And the expenses get paid back out of your $1.70 only. So you will see no money for a very long time, if ever.

Other Major Problems

Besides the ugliness of the quantity I talked about above, there  are other problems in this.

A Strange Company Doing A Large Number of Books will not Care or Read Your Book. You, as an author, will have no control and no say and yet will be paying for the stock art and the designer for your book. Your book will look like every other book, with no branding and nothing to help it sell. You are so much better served staying with traditional publishers than having your agent do it.

No tracking available. Instead of just having an agent get your money, an agent you don’t know, you now also have another firm with people you don’t know getting your sales records and money. Most writers will be lucky to even see a percentage of the 34% they are actually owed.  And they would have NO WAY of knowing.

Slowness of the money that does arrive. Wow, I can’t even imagine. Your money comes into a “rescue company” mixed with thousands of other authors and who knows how many books, it gets divided out and sent to your agent with hundreds of other authors and maybe a thousand books. Yeah, that’s going to make the money come quickly. Not.

Bookkeeping nightmare: This major “rescue company” could be dealing with income from the major distributors like Kindle from hundreds of thousands of items every month from a hundred agencies and maybe three hundred agents. It is darned near impossible for an agent to keep money straight when a publisher pays an agent for five writers royalties at one time. No chance, zero-point-zero that anyone along the way will be able to keep this straight. And agents have no money to hire the bookkeepers required to even try. It is a nightmare that a lot of great books and stories will be lost into.

Summary

Sorry to pound this drum once again. I will stop soon and just sit back and watch and be sad about all the great writers that will be lost in this mess.

A single agent CAN NOT deal with over a thousand books and stories from their clients. They don’t have the ability to design covers or layout books and they don’t have the money at the moment to hire expert help. And worse yet, they don’t care.

And even if they did have the time, the money, and the ability, if you are a lower-level writer at any agency, you might see your first backlist get published in a couple of years.

Agencies with twenty or thirty agents can’t deal with thirty thousand novels and stories built up in their writer’s backlists. They just can’t. Not even a dozen combined major traditional publishers could deal with that kind of flood in any kind of short order. So the agencies will farm the work to one of these “rescue companies” that will take their “toll” and do nothing for you.

Agents can not be publishers. They can’t do it for you.

The math doesn’t work.

Nothing about the idea works.

Nothing.

Traditional Publishing caused agents to be in the position where they suddenly think they can become publishers. That does not mean you need to let them with your work.

Just say no and run.

Traditional Publishing opened the door for writers to go directly to readers. The traditional publishers lost their control over the distribution system. Now we don’t need agents. We don’t need traditional publishers.

Traditional Publishing is about to fall on its face as paper book sales decline and the smart authors flee the sinking ship. Agents are going to be mostly gone in five years.

Writers, don’t let your books get trapped in the mess.

Take control, start the new learning process now to become an indie publisher. It is not hard.

This Christmas is going to be a stunner for electronic reading devices and electronic book sales. Trust me, your publisher/agent can’t have one of your books ready to sell by December 26th.

But you can.

————————————————

Copyright © 2011 Dean Wesley Smith

Cover art copyright Philcold/Dreamstime
————————————————–

Okay, I admit it, I had issues at first with putting in a tip jar in the Magic Bakery. It was one of the “I have it made, why do I need to support my writing with tips.” A minor myth, sure, but still one that took me a few days and some talk with Kris to get past back when I started this series.

And  speaking of the Magic Bakery, this chapter is now part of my inventory in my bakery.  I’m giving you this small slice as a sample. I’m giving you a taste, but not selling any of the pie.

If you feel this helped you in any way, toss a tip into the tip jar on the way out of the Magic Bakery.

If you can’t afford to donate, please feel free to pass this chapter along to others who might get some help from it.

And I would like to thank all the fine folks who have donated over this last year. Once this book is done, I will send you a copy. The donations and the comments both after the posts and privately are really keeping me going on this. Thanks!

Thanks, Dean

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56 Responses to The New World of Publishing: Traditional Publishers Are Getting What They Deserve

  1. Wayne Borean says:

    Nicely written. Very nicely written. I made some predictions about book stores and publishers. I hadn’t considered what would happen to the agents…

    Wayne

  2. John Walters says:

    Dean,

    Thanks again. You really hit the mark. Thanks so much for the advice and the warnings over the past year and a half or so. I have four books and over fifteen stories in my growing Indie store – and I have begun to get paid for them. And my desire for an agent is so far in the distant past that I can hardly remember even having it. I hope to have several more titles up by Christmas. Can’t wait.

    • dwsmith says:

      Christmas, actually the two or three weeks after Christmas, and then all next spring at a slower rate is going to be stunning for book sales. Just stunning, since there will be so many, many more reading devices flooding the markets that need to have books. It’s going to be great fun for all us indie publishers. Not so much for traditional publishers.

  3. Well said Dean.

    I read about this deal and I was shocked – it’s got to be one of the worst out there. And two big “name” agencies have already signed up.

    What a disaster.

  4. HJ says:

    Kindle takes 30%, not 70%. Just for the record. ;D

  5. Ty Johnston says:

    I generally have nothing against agents, but I don’t feel a need for one and have not for at least a year now, maybe longer. And it shouldn’t have taken me that long, but it was only then that I realized the old dynamics of book publishing were gone.

    But one thing that has always bothered me about agents is this: If they really know what’s going to be the next best seller, if they really know what exactly a particular editor is going to buy or what readers will snag up … why aren’t they writing their own books?

  6. Tori Minard says:

    On a related note, yesterday I walked into my local Safeway and couldn’t find the books and magazines. They’d been moved. Okay, so I went to the next aisle over and found the new section . . . which was maybe 1/3 the size of the old. I was stunned. I mean, I knew this was happening but to see it in Safeway . . . I don’t know why, but it hit me hard. I was sad to see it. Very glad that ebooks are doing so spectacularly well, though. I love indie publishing.

  7. Thanks, Dean! As a graphic artist-turned-web developer, I now know what to do to pay the bills if my day job suddenly disappears – while continuing to release my own work, of course. Only I wouldn’t want that bookkeeping nightmare, so I’d work for a flat fee.

  8. I’ve read several pieces about this today, and I keep coming back to the same reverberation: A conversation I had a few months ago with a scientist whose work focuses on an aggressive bacteria that keeps mutating so rapidly, scientists have so far failed to destroy/eliminate it. (His own research, in effect, is working on trying to get the virus to at least sit still, to prevent it from rapidly spreading its damage, while scientists continue trying to find a way to destroy it.)

    At the moment, we’re seeing rapid mutation in the ways that literary agents are pursuing a parasitic role in clients’ self-publishing income, now that writers with proved -without- agents that it’s a profitable field.

    And I rather doubt we’re anywhere NEAR seeing fresh mutations. I think agents will keep pursuing ways to get a piece of that pie. In the space of a few months, we’ve seen new business models wherein agents set themselves up as epublishers; agents set themselves up as (cough) epublishing facilitators; and now agencies sign deals to funnel their clients into an epublishing facilitator which will take an additional cut. And so on. I think this will go on for a while, and we’ll see additional “gimme gimme gimme a portion of your self-publishing income!” biz models popping up aong literary agents in the coming months.

    Further supporting the advice previously discussed here: Even if you want to hire a literary agent (whether you’re looking for your first agent or interested in changing agents) WAIT A COUPLE OF YEARS. There is simply no way of telling which agencies are going to get into these various “gimme gimme your e-income!” business models. It’s worth noting, for example, that two agencies who’ve publicly committed to the situation that Dean’s explained in this blog are both well-established, high-profile agencies with impressive client lists. (And as we saw only last week, we saw the announcement of an epublishing division being opened by an agency who’s president had said in Publishers Weekly ONLY TWO MONTHS EARLIER that he viewed agents functioning as epublishers or partnering with writers in epublishers as a clear condlict of interest.)

    Even setting aside my inherent aversion to the traditional agent-author business model… I think this is a TERRIBLE time to hire an agent, precisely because you would have NO RELIABLE WAY of knowing what you’re getting into… and as more and more of them jump onto the “gimme gimme a portion of your self-publishing income” bandwagon, it is more and more likely that WHOEVER you hire now or next year will ALSO climb onto that bandwagon… and immediately start pressuring you to pay them a portion of your self-publishing income. So unless you WANT to do that, it’s simple BAD BUSINESS for the next couple of years to hire an agent.

  9. Dean wrote: “Writers believe that when they send in a manuscript to an editor, it is the only manuscript on the desk. Writers believe that when they take on an agent, they are the agent’s only client. ”

    I’ve experienced repercussions from this when writers or aspiring writers ask me to introduce them to my then-editor or my then-agent… and then complain to me because there’s a long wait for a response on whatever they sent the ed/ag after that introduction.

    I point out that the ed/ag is a really busy person with a HUGE STACK of submissions and queries on their desk (in fact, one of my former editors’ slushpile got so big that she could no longer get into her own office–it was too full of mail), which is NOT even their primary job. Their PRIMARY job actually being to represent the 40-50-75 clients already on their list, or to edit the writers that editor already has under contract and to guide 30 books per year through the entire publishing process… So YES, the wait for a response will be long, and, NO, an introduction from me is unlikely to make any difference in that respect…

    And when I say that, lots of people get =mad= at me. Or ask me to go to the ed/ag and nudge them about this person’s MS. (I have always refused; and this, too, has often led to ill-feeling. Or at least to a distinct cooling of the person’s former friendliness to me.)

    And this is all based, IMO, on a complete misconception about the workload of the typical NYC agent or editor. (Ex. I visited a major sf/f house in 2003, and the slushpile was stacked up to the ceiling throughout the entire company, including the hallways, constituting a genuine fire hazard. And that was just the slushpile, which falls well behind the editors’ primary jobs of editing under-contract books and guiding them through the pubishing process. So, no, of COURSE you don’t get a response 3 weeks after sending a MS just because the editor met you briefly via a mutual acquaintance.)

  10. Dean, that math is very sobering. You look at those simple, clear figures and wonder why on EARTH any writer would go along with this?

    And yet, of course, many will, alas.

    There’s also yet another ethical quagmire in this business model: How is an agency signing a deal to funnel their clients into one particular e-pub service ethically any different than an any signing a deal with, say, Penguin, to funnel all of their clients’ books into Penguin imprints… WITHOUT seeking better offers or better contractual terms for their clients from competitors, but instead ONLY dealing with Penguin, by virtue of their own deal with Penguin?

    This strikes me as yet another variation of agents exhibiting an appalling absence of ethics, in their supposed role as representing their clients’ best interests, to further their pursuit of getting a cut of their clients’ self-publishing income.

  11. A smart editor-turned-agent at this point should be saying: “You know what? I hate the agent side of this business, the whole schmooze and hustle side. I’m going to become a publisher. Not an agent-publisher, just a publisher. I’m going to concentrate on a few writers I know and trust and have worked well with in the past. The rest I’m going to regretfully bid farewell.” The ones who make that clean break and make it early will be way ahead of the rest who cling to their old business model until it fails.

    Or maybe a flat-fee broker: line up copyediting, proofing, covers, and POD layout all for a flat fee, with the broker taking a percentage of that.

    Yes, you’re trying to teach us to do all that ourselves, and we can; but those who want to be taken care of will always exist, and I think a flat-fee broker will serve them better than an agent-publisher will.

  12. David says:

    But… but… wha…. I’m almost speechless. If you’re going to surrender such a big chunk of change to the agency and rescue company, why not just deal directly with a small press? You’ll get better, more personal treatment, the small press will be thrilled to have an established writer, your sales figures are more easily audited, and the small press might actually know what it’s doing in regard to things like cover design and book formatting. Then again, the wisest writers would be doing it themselves.

  13. Jasper says:

    15% of 2.00 is .60? Really? Funny how that works.

    Either you meant to say 15% of gross (but that’d be .75), or you mean .30, leaving 1.70, or a bit over 34% rather than 28.

    The argument isn’t materially different, but in a section titled “the math doesn’t work”… :)

  14. Great article, Dean.

    It’s amazing, when you look at the numbers, just how impossible and implausible the whole agent/publisher situation is.

    I have decided to self publish my first novel. I’ve had a couple of trial runs with flash fiction collections and now feel competent enough to try it with my novel.

    The only real problem I find is, with living outside the US, all the hoops I have to jump through in order to get the higher royalty rates at Amazon, Smashwords etc.

    However, I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.

    Thanks for all the great advice.

    Paul

  15. Yeah. I’m looking forward to Christmas. My wife already knows what I want: a new Kindle Touch 3G. I’ve been wanting a touch-screen e-ink ereader (so far I read on my iphone or ipad, but I really want that e-ink screen), but I was a bit underwhelmed by the Nook model. So that’ll be nice.

    Plus, I just pub’d my ninth title, a SciFi novelette. I aim to have at least five or six more titles (another novel, a novella, and a few short stories) up before Christmas, if all goes well. Pretty small time compared with what you have going on, Dean, but I think it’s not too shabby a start considering I just began this writing gig at the end of last year.

    :)

    It’s pretty fun so far. I’m even making some sales. Pretty sweet.

    :)

  16. Dean, help me out. I’m not sure I understood your math.

    To simplify, let’s say the Kindle price is $5.00, not $4.99. I was a liberal arts major. :)

    Kindle takes 70% of the price, which is $3.50. If Kindle takes $3.50, the remainder is $1.50, not $3.50 as you state in your article.

    The rescue company takes a 30% cut, which is $0.45. This leaves $1.05 to be sent to the agent.

    The agent takes another 15%, which for the sake of us liberal arts majors we can round to $0.15. $1.05 less $0.15 is $0.90. That’s the author’s cut: ninety cents.

    $0.90 divided by $5.00 is .18, which means the author is getting 18%, not 28%.

    So the news for writers who go with the agency as publisher model is even WORSE than you state here. Yikes.

    • dwsmith says:

      Sarah, Kindle doesn’t take 70%. You get the 70%. (The indie publisher.) Kindle only takes 30%. Sorry I wasn’t clear on that.

      • dwsmith says:

        Fixed the math problem and the backwards comment about Kindle taking 70% instead of 30%. Works out to the same issues, but now the numbers work right. (grin)

        And I agree with Laura. If you, for some reason have a driving desire to have an agent, just take a deep breath and wait two years. All this is changing so fast, you don’t want to be in the middle of this agent mess.

        • dwsmith says:

          As I said in my opening note, the attitude that beginning writers have toward agent and editors about being “the only one” is stunning. I got hit with it three times this last week, including from a well-published author who thought the advance was the only money a publisher spent on a book. Another writer thought that there would be nothing wrong with their agent “publishing” their books because it would get done quickly that way. I asked this person how many books and stories and collections he wanted his agent to publish by Christmas and the writer said about forty. I damn near rolled off my chair laughing. Yet the writer thought the agent had nothing else to do, and could learn how to do it, and only work on the writer’s work.

          This “I am the only one” problem that writers have is stunning and the moment a writer breaks out of that kind of thinking, the writer starts making smarter decisions.

          Sorry, Joe, but got to mention this as well. Joe Konrath has done some fantastic work helping writers take control of their own career, but he has this one blind spot about thinking because his agent, his “estributor” or something like that, can do a book for him, he won’t have to spend more time. In one breath he talks about how he thinks everything should be up as soon as possible because every month not up is a month of income lost. I agree with that. But sending a book, or a dozen books, to an agent to publish WILL NOT SPEED UP THE PROCESS. Even for someone like Joe Konrath. It just won’t happen.

          When I am putting up one of my stories for WMG Publishing, I am making a hundred decisions along the way. Does this look better or does that? Many of these decisions should be the author decisions. When I am doing this myself, I can make those decisions. But when someone else is doing a cover for WMG Publishing, there are always a number of back-and-forths. And that takes time. Plus imagine if Joe had waited around for his agent to publish all those books he has up.

          And Joe is famous for wanting to change prices. Imagine he had to check and get his agent’s approval to change prices every time he wanted to do one of his experiments with pricing.

          Now that would all be fine if Joe was the agent’s only client. But if that agent has fifty writers, all doing the same thing???? And each client has twenty or thirty or more stories and books???? Get the problem??? Even for a Joe Konrath, the biggest pusher of this myth, it will not be possible. I just wish he would hurry up and try it and see how stupid this idea is and start helping writers move away from it, not into the mess. Joe has done fantastic things for writers. Why he is stuck on this is beyond me. It just can’t work, just by the numbers alone, it can’t work.

  17. “Trust me, your publisher/agent can’t have one of your books ready to sell by December 26th.

    But you can.”

    Holy mackerel. You’re right. I’ve been dawdling over getting a couple of novels up because I was trying to actually finish another one. But yeah, if I’m going to think like a publisher I’d damn well better get those up. And it can’t be done overnight; it takes nearly a month to get a good cover, layout, format, and then to test the ebook version to make sure there are no errors. And then a couple of weeks for the book to make it to Amazon/B&N. So the time to start working on a Christmas book is NOW.

    ‘Scuse me, I hear my computer calling…..

    Thanks again, Dean. Where would we indied be without you?

  18. For some reason, every time I saw the word “toll” I kept reading it as troll. In essence, that’s pretty much what’s happening here. I’m not surprised that a “rescue company” would set up shop to fill their pockets, seeing as agents are doing the same when they decide to set up their own publishing company. There are going to be many more companies like this–and worse–as long as writers don’t take control of their careers. The strange thing is I’m not upset with the rescue company at all. I’m more upset that writers would let anyone snatch pieces of the pie when they’re the ones who baked the thing in the first place.

  19. Nancy Beck says:

    And my desire for an agent is so far in the distant past that I can hardly remember even having it.

    @John Walters – That’s what I wanted at one time, too.

    Now it’s a distant memory, and I’m actually glad I don’t have an agent.

    Thanks, Dean, for telling us about this “rescue company.” This is a good follow up to the ranting post I had on my blog about agents as publishers.

    Wish the rescue company thing weren’t true, though. ::sigh::

  20. Antonio Angelo says:

    I think it is probably more about marketing than anything and that is something the traditional publishers and good agents understand.

    an indie author who wants to become a master marketer may have a chance, but if you prefer to spend your time writing you need to find a partner you trust otherwise your great novel will simply be one of the millions of stories left unread.

    • dwsmith says:

      Antonio, that is such a myth. Wow have you bought into the scam I’m afraid. So I wish you luck with how your traditional publishers and agents market your book. Trust me, you are going to need it. (grin) And if you really, really believe that by selling to an agent/publisher or through an agent to a traditional publisher will give you more time to write than being an indie publisher, wow do I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you. You are clearly a beginner who clearly hasn’t been through this yet.
      Traditional publishers and agents take MORE of your time, not less. I know that makes no sense from the outside, but alas, after 100 novels with agents and traditional publishers, things sped up when I got rid of my agent. And wow have things sped up when I went into indie publishing. So good luck to you. Just remember my words ten years down the road when once again your agent has slowed you down or your publisher has screwed you up. It won’t just happen once. It will happen with most books I’m afraid.

  21. Anne Kinsey says:

    Some insight on why a writer at the beginning of her career would let an agent and rescue company publish her work: Having an agent makes them feel legitimized, like a “real” writer.

    An unpublished children’s book writer I know realized her agent lied to her about a submission. He gave her a list of editors her book had gone to, but then never heard anything. At a conference, she met one of the editors who had never heard of her or the book.

    And yet, she didn’t want to fire her agent.

    I found her blog and figured out why. She has a very successful blog reviwing children’s boosk. They didn’t review self-published authors. The criteria was to be traditionally published “or agented.” (that wast he word.)

    If she fired her agent, she would no longer be “agented” and would no longer meet the criteria she established for determining who was a “real” writer and who wasn’t.

    I know it sounds silly and you’re all laughing, but it is the desire of beginners to feel legitimized that will lead them to a scam because they want to be able to say, “Yes, I’m self published, but my literary agent takes care of everything.” Their neighbors may be more impressed.

  22. Thanks for continuing to cry (and rage) in the wilderness. You really are helping a lot of people.

  23. Lee Allred says:

    The first thing I thought of when I heard the term “toll” was that scene in Blazing Saddles with all the writers — I mean cowboys — lined up at the tollbooth in the middle of nowhere. All they had to do was just gallop around…

    • dwsmith says:

      Lee. Great image. (grin) Writers lining up in a desert to pay to go through a door they don’t have to go through anymore. Wow, spot on.

  24. Antonio, what on earth makes you think an agent understands marketing??? Agents have absolutely no experience in marketing.

    Nor do they have any experience in publishing.

    What agents have experience in is submitting books to publishers, negotiating deals, and managing the paperwork that follows. That has nothing to do with marketing. When one speaks of an agent “marketing” a book, one means the agent is seeking a publisher for it; NOT that the agent is working on packaging a novel, working on getting good placement for it with chains and distributors, setting up online promo, making co-op deals, or drawing readers’ attention to the book. Agents’ experience is strictly in being a liaison between the author and the publisher, NOT in marketing books to readers.

    And, as has been discussed many, many times on this blog, with many, many, many specific real-world examples, quite a lot of agents aren’t even good at being the business liaison between writers and publishers. In fact, a stunning number of them do a really poor job at that.

    So how good does anyone really think they’ll be at PUBLISHING, now that they’re getting into it? It’s something in which agents have no experience, and it’s something they’re =adding= it to the existing businesses/workloads/duties that so many of them already can’t manage well.

    The releases of the various agent-as-publisher eventures we’ve seen so far have been predictably… sad.

  25. Writers, there IS a way to be the center of your agent’s universe: be your own agent.

    There IS a way to be the center of your publisher’s universe: be your own publisher.

    Other than that… Are you writing and selling enough stories BY YOURSELF to keep food on your agent’s table? Enough to keep your publisher’s New York offices open?

    No? Then stop and think how many stories it takes to feed your agent and pay your publisher’s New York rent. That’s how many stories are competing for their attention.

  26. Lassal says:

    Just saw this:
    http://www.ebookcards.de/

    it is a very, VERY basic site, no English, which shows that they really hurried to get it going in time for the book fair.

    I will be going there to have a look and get some tests-ebook-cards. Interestingly enough, at least one bigger publisher is in the game. Most seem rather smallish.

    Apparently you need the code inside the card (hidden?? One time use? Different code on each card?) and your email, to download a PDF and ePUB. But I will find out the details and come back with more information after their presentation on October 13th.

    I was pestering the company I work with here in Germany (website&webshop&iBooks), because I wanted to offer cards for christmas, too. But they have not figured out how to solve the code issue to satisfaction.

    …..

    Lee, love the image you painted with the tollbooth in the middle of nowhere! Perfect!

  27. Anne Kinsey says:

    Dean, so do you think people are listening to your message?

    I had a very sad thought. In the past, the victim of scammers were beginners who were desperate to get publish and be “agented.”

    Now, I’m thinking about the illustrous client list at a place like Curtis Brown, and how many elderly writers may not be internet savvy and who simply may not question their agents after all these years or understand how quickly the world is changing.

    In an odd turnaround, the writers to fall victim may be those who are oldest and well-established.

    I know own father, like a lot of people past 70, really doesn’t have clue about the Internet, unlike most people who just google any questions they have.

    I don’t know what your readership is, but I’m hoping it’s in the thousands.

    • dwsmith says:

      Anne, yes, the readership here is around 15,000 unique visitors. So people are reading this. Are they listening? Not so much.

      And you hit on my biggest worry as well, and something we saw in tragic cases with the fall of a major agency due to the agent’s death a few months back. And also, I’ve been involved or watched from the sidelines as two agents tried to take estates from widows and electronic publish them for 50%. Stunning ugliness as you said. The older writers and older estates are in great danger. Young writers coming in being stupid are one things. Agents acting like vultures on estates is another. Criminal if it wasn’t so lowlife. It’s below criminal in my opinion. Sadly.

  28. JR Tomlin says:

    Hopefully, a lot are listening, Dean, because if there were sharks in the water before (which there were), the sharks are now very hungry.

    Too funny, though, that on a post about the math not working you got the math wrong. *grin*

  29. Lassal says:

    I was wondering, Dean, with the information about the company producing ebook-cards (or any other off-topic). Would you rather have me post this in an old post, which deals with the subject, or in the newest post – whatever it might be about?

    • dwsmith says:

      Always better in the newer posts. Very few people go back to the old posts. Nature of how we all read these days. (grin)

  30. When I saw that you can now buy a kindle for $79, I immediately thought this will open wide the market for middle grade and young adult ebooks. So exciting. I’m now trying to get my stuff out before Christmas. I’ve been holding back thinking that ebooks for those age groups wasn’t going to happen for a little while. I think I was wrong.

    Antonio, marketing is the big nasty M word for anyone wanting to sell stuff. While it is true that some publishers do a good job of marketing, what I fear is that my book won’t make it to the list of “one we will market.”

    I have writer friends who paid their dues to the agent and publisher, yet practically nothing was done to market their book (especially if beginning sales were slow.) Other friends got a good seat in the marketing game. Why? I have no idea. I’ve read their books and honestly, those that got more marketing dollars were not better.

    I’ve seen authors published by big publishers who literally had to spend most of their advance (which wasn’t big to begin with) to market their own book. I guess the nice thing with that was they didn’t have to come up with that money out of their own pockets. However, the bad news is the money they made after the book was published was next to nothing. Indie Publishing is the opposite. There is always risk.

    If there was an easy solution to marketing, we would all be rich. Feel free to correct me Dean if I’m wrong–which I’m sure you wouldn’t hesitate to do even without me saying so. :)

    • dwsmith says:

      Lois, do you even know what kind of marketing traditional publishers do? And what they do that you or any other writer can’t do easily and cheaply? It’s not a matter of some imaginary lottery of who gets marketing and who doesn’t. Not in the slightest.

      Marketing or promotions budget is a factor of where your book fits on a monthly book “list” put out by publishers. If you are a low list or mid-list writer, you will get ZERO promotion at all. If you book happens to hit the top of the list for a month, which is based on what the sales force thinks it will sell which is based on the pitch the editors give them and how close it is to another book that sold well, then you might get some review copies sent out, you might get included in an ad in a genre magazine if it’s a genre list.

      But that’s it. What really happens is that your book gets placement in the companies own book catalog and sent out to bookstores and so on.

      All of that any author can do. Simply and sometimes very cheaply.

      You never hear long-term professionals do anything but laugh at traditional publishing “marketing” because we know how silly that concept is. It’s only new writers who have this magic thinking about traditional publishers who talk or even think about marketing their own books. Best way to sell more books is to write more books and one way or another get them in front of readers. Everything else is just damn silly.

  31. Nancy Beck says:

    And then a couple of weeks for the book to make it to Amazon

    @Sarah – It takes you a couple of weeks to get it up on Amazon? ::scratches head:: When I upload to Amazon it usually takes 24 hours.

    Am I missing something?

    @Laura – I love when you comment here! I’ve learned so, so much from you about the publishing world. (And from Dean, too, of course. :-) )

    @Dean – I think I know the Konrath post you’re talking about (well, the most recent one), because I think that’s what set me off on my agent-publisher rant on my blog.

  32. *listening hard*

    Parted ways with my prior agent in March.
    Spent too much time after that trying to get a new agent (I know, I know!). Got very close twice, but luckily, escaped unscathed.
    Self-pubbed a couple short stories (starting in May) and have seen results – especially results on backlist when a new title hits.
    Am taking the plunge and going indie with my new YA title. Hired a fabulous cover designer (Kim Killion at HotDamn), have an in-house editor, CPs, beta, and copy-edit readers. Release date will be Dec. 16 (which means I am busy with the POD learning curve!)
    Holding on, listening a lot, but loving the ride~

  33. Susan Shepherd says:

    Re: Do you think people are listening to [Dean's] message?

    Some definitely are. I can’t describe how great an impact this blog (among a few others) has had on my understanding of how publishing works. And it isn’t as though I hadn’t looked into this topic before; I’ve been writing for so long that my parents got Gerrold’s “Worlds of Wonder: How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy” for me as a Christmas present when I was in sixth grade, and I’ve kept learning over the years. But Dean and Kris have explained quite a bit that didn’t make sense before, and they’ve always emphasized the need to keep writing.

    My first story was published last fall. I’ve gotten only rejections since, but I’ve kept writing; now I have a couple short stories up on Smashwords and Amazon, and making progress on more stories and a longer work.

    Have I taken every lesson to heart? Not yet, or at least I haven’t implemented everything yet — in particular, I still suck at carving out time for my writing, but there is definite progress. I don’t make excuses anymore: I acknowledge that I let something else get in the way, and then I try to make up for it by getting back to work.

    I’m 22 now. My guess is that if I hadn’t run into Dean’s and Kris’s blogs, I would not have been published at all until at least age 25. (The short story that was accepted was one I wrote after reading one of Kris’s posts on making time for important things.) That may not seem like a long time to older and wiser folks, but that’s ten percent of my (current) lifespan that’s been given back to me as a gift of writing time.

    Dean, thank you for these posts! It may feel like you and Kris are shouting into the wind, but here and there someone like me, someone you can’t see and haven’t heard of yet, is perking up their ears and listening.

  34. Thanks for another great post! I’m one of the many new authors who finally went Indie this year and I haven’t looked back since. I had been reading Joe’s blog for a while and when I saw his post on this subject, I found the whole thing a little perplexing. Especially the part about giving away a percentage, forever, to someone who just slapped together an e-book. It seemed contrary to everything else I’ve learned about e-pubbing.

    Granted, it’s not easy to publish a book. There’s a lot of time involved, and expense for art/editing/etc., and a lot of working and waiting (especially for those paper proofs that take 7-10 days to arrive by mail). You have to do all of this in several different formats if you’re making your book available everywhere. But, all that being said, it’s doable. It’s not something you should pay for forever, in my opinion.

  35. Dean,
    Not only have the publishers outsourced their slush piles to agents, but now agents outsource them to “unpaid interns”. Saw a posting for 3 such openings for one agency. Your precious query or manuscript will go to some volunteer whom the agency has not even met face-to-face. How would an agency hold such a person accountable? Afterall, they are remote, unpaid, and unsupervised. (See the agent’s blog post yourself: http://jennybent.blogspot.com/2011/09/wow-we-need-three-more-interns.html )
    In my other job I write Employee Handbooks, so I have seen my share of stupid company policies but the idea of handing work to unpaid interns… I shake my head. Even NPOs, like churches and charities, show more caution when handing work over to volunteers than this for-profit company.
    Why would anyone trust their hard work to such an unprofessional business that hands your stuff to some fool who is willing to work for free just to claim the title “agency intern”. I just shake my head over it. It just screams contempt towards writers.
    Eric

  36. J Smith says:

    Ah, so they’ve moved to unpaid interns now? That doesn’t surprise me. Seems like the natural progression.

    About a dozen years back, a relative of mine, right out of college, got a job as an assistant to a literary agent. The salary seemed low to live on in New York. But since research showed that was indeed the standard entry level salary for publishing industry jobs, it meant there were clearly a lot of people living on that, and she thought she just needed to figure out what they did.

    It turns out that “what they did”, in most cases, was to have wealthy families who were willing to pay their rent and give them an allowance their fist few years in the industry. There were enough youngsters with wealthy families who wanted to break into the publishing industry that it depressed salaries beyond what was realistically possible to live on in New York.

    Without a wealthy family to support her — she was really struggling. She stayed in that job two years before moving away, and was paying for groceries she bought during that period for *years* afterwards.

    When she came home at Christmas and said she had been made the signer on an escrow account worth millions of dollars, she was joking about writing a check for three million and vanishing.

    But when I read things here about agents and embezzlement, it occurred to me how easy it would have been for someone less honest than my relative: struggling to live paycheck to paycheck, surrounded by super-wealthy people who lived on the Upper East Side with a lifestyle she could never hope to achieve, millions of dollars just sitting right there, who’s going to miss just a little bit of it?

    With someone else there easily could have been less joking and fewer ramen-noodle dinners.

    She initially thought the worst part of the job was sending out form rejection letters to people who had clearly put a lot of effort into sending a manuscript around. She later realized that no, the WORST part of the job was calling an author to say that a book was being remaindered — especially since the authors’ initial response to getting a call from the agent’s office was one of hopeful expectation. Ouch. This was a dozen years ago, so no Kindle option. (Turns out that “amateur therapist”, while not in the job description, was an important part of her job).

  37. While I was off the field with an eye injury Aug & Sep (healing fast now and almost back to normal!), I listened to a lot of audiobooks. One of them was David Rakoff’s HALF EMPTY (also available in print and as an ebook, of course), another collection of his essays and articles. One chapter of it is a fascinating and very depressing, demoralizing account of his experiences as a low-level editorial staffer at a major publishing house some years ago.

    As a promo idea for the next book by a bestseller author (he never names her, but it’s obvious who it was and what the book was–but that’s also not important), which was a novel about publishing and breaking into publishing, the house decided to sponsor a national competition–send in your completed MS, we’ll read them all, pick a winner, and make the winner a star.

    Rakoff, then a young staffer, got assigned to read the slush that came in for this contest–about a thousand MSs. (It was so few because this was back in the 1980s, when most people still used typewriters. The advent of word processors makes it physically and logistically MUCH easier to write a book, which has quadrupled the size of slushpiles.)

    He found four excellent novels in that slushpile. The house refused to buy all four, even though they were all four, in his opinion, excellent novels. THis was a contest for ONE book, they were only buying ONE, so pick ONE. Ergo, three books he wanted to publish went back to the writers, unbought, with an “honoable mention” for the contest. (Of those 3 good rejected MSs, I think he said one was later published elsewhere.)

    The one he chose was, in his opinion, a brilliant novel. He absolutely loved it. However, by then… the bestselling-author’s novel on which this whole contest was based… had been released to tepid reviews and flat sales. It was already yesterday’s news. The promo contest for which Rakoff had spent months reading MSs was now perceived in-house as a waste of time and unimportant. They followed through and bought the book (probably to avoid a lawsuit)… but they just perceived this novel (which Rakoff, the acquiring editor, considered fabulous)… NOT as the start of a new writer’s career with them, but rather as an albatross from a bad promo idea. So they just dumped it on the stands with no support and turned their backs on it. With predictable results.

    I’ve never worked with the house where this happened… but this sort of story is prett reminiscient of the behavior and business acumen of most of the houses where I =have= worked. I’m at a very good house right now where I am very happy, and I intend to stay there as long as it remains a very good house and I remain happy (I hope this will be a long, long, long time). But a story like the above makes you realize there is something SO disatrously, self-destructively wrong with an industry where that kind of gaff after gaff after gaff, and the waste of good writers who get caught in those idiotic dogs, is an all-too-common story.

    Because what depressed me MOST about Rakoff’s account was that, in truth, I heard sh*t like All The Time in my profession.

    I do not believe publishers will disappear. But I do think the waste and ineptitude that so many of them have so often exercised will cease to be professionally and fiscally feasible for them to survive, let alone thrive.

    To give another, more personal example–about 10 years ago, I was at a writers conference wherein the program chair at done a fantastic job of lining up panel after panel after panel of senior people from the major houses. For two days, I sat in the audience through panel after panel in which the participants were senior editors, executive editors, editorial directors, associate publishers, VPs in charge of marketing, CEOs of publishing houses, Editors-in-Chief, etc. And the panels each lasted for 90-minutes or 2-hours and had good moderators who dug into meaty topics about the industry.

    It should have been a fascinating and educational 2 days. Instead… I became extremely depressed. So depressed, it took me days to recover after I got home.

    Because panel and panel, for two days, of these high-level publishing personnel… were full of people who were jaded, burned out, mediocre, flaccid, tepid, defeatist, disengaged. Not all of them, admittedly. But so many of them that it was clear this was a malaise widely afflicting the industry… and THESE were the people responsible for acquiring, producing, and distributing the books of people in MY profession. Ergo, my severe depression afterwards. It seemed to me that I and others in my profession were in a whole lot of trouble because of the entrenched mediocrity (or worse) of the people fulling a wide array of senior positions in the publishing industry. I found the whole thing very upsetting.

    I think the rise and growth of so many different avenues for getting a book into a readers hands since them, PARTICUARLY with the advent and rapid spread of epublishing and self-publishing, is a great solution to that widespread industry problem–and will also force that problem to be addressed. Now that there is more competition and competition from other business models, publishers will have to lean-down and up-their-game to stay solvent and to thrive. I think most will, but not all. (I also think the house I currently write for has stayed smart all along, and will therefore continue to thrive, as it has been doing. It is the anti-thesis of what I have described above.)

  38. It turns out that “what they did”, in most cases, was to have wealthy families who were willing to pay their rent and give them an allowance their fist few years in the industry.

    The situation was similar when I worked on movies in the UK. Anyone who wanted to get into the business as a full-time job pretty much had to get lucky, go through one of the few university programs which provided easy access to TV station jobs, or work for free or on very low wages until they got a break. The rest had a day job and worked on indie movies in their spare time and maybe got paid occasionally for the work they did.

    Obviously working for free in London wasn’t something that many people could afford to do, which is probably why the production companies seemed to be stuffed full of rich peoples’ kids and/or those who had friends in the government funding bodies who’d shovel money their way.

    Still, I guess the agencies could sink lower: why not just put all the slush up on a web site and let people vote for the ones they should represent? They could even charge people to read them.

    Oh, hang on…

  39. Bob Mayer says:

    What bothers me about Argo Navis is that in all the press releases they make it sound like they’re offering the same terms and competing with Amazon and B&N. I was like– huh? Then how are you distributing your eBooks? Well, they’re distributing their eBooks through Amazon and B&N. Huh?

    Regardless of the numbers, the math sucks.

    The real problem though is, once you start outsourcing digital, you’ve got problems. An eBook is NOT a print book. I’ve really been focusing on this lately after the Neal Stephenson fiasco and the Pottermore debacle. No one cares more about a book than the author. Not some techno-geek sitting in an office, formatting a long line of books, he’s getting paid a salary to do. How the hell does he know that the author really meant to have a scene break on page 342 that the OCR didn’t pick up? Looks good from here, as we used to say after the howitzer fired a shell at the enemy. We’re pretty sure it will hit where we kind of aimed it at.

    The more I hear out of NY, the more I realize they just don’t get it.

    Let me say it one time:

    eBooks are not the same as print books.

    And that goes for more than just formatting and uploading.

    They’re READ differently. I’m working on a blog post about this for next week, but I recommend starting with Lev Grossman’s article in the NY Times on 2 September: From Scroll to Screen.

  40. Dean –

    Off topic, but I ran across a video clip that sums up very nicely both why traditional publishing will persist in some for and why people who’ve been dealing with them for a long time think (as you say) they’re getting what they deserve.

    From the “Music Industry” arc of the 80s cop show “Wiseguy,” but it applies equally well to film studios and publishing houses.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSrKlxHgFi4

    Thought you might get a chuckle out of it.
    -Dan

  41. Russ says:

    Dean, as usual you did the math. This is going to be one BIG mess, but some writers will fall into these black holes. Why? Fear. Fear of losing their agent. Fear of technology. Fear of being called one of those self published authors.

    But in the end for us fearless writers we’ll be seeing cash flow while those folks will be seeing zip, zero, nada.

    BTW Lee is still the funniest guy on the planet. Blazing Saddles is one of my all time favourite comedies. The toll booth is the perfect image. LOL

    Oh, and, Laura so glad to hear the eye is healing well. Thanks for adding to the discussion. You always add something useful to the topic.

  42. Edward wrote: “I guess the agencies could sink lower: why not just put all the slush up on a web site and let people vote for the ones they should represent? They could even charge people to read them. Oh, hang on…”

    LOL!

    Bob wrote: “What bothers me about Argo Navis is that in all the press releases they make it sound like they’re offering the same terms and competing with Amazon and B&N. I was like– huh? Then how are you distributing your eBooks? Well, they’re distributing their eBooks through Amazon and B&N. Huh?”

    Yes, I noticed that, too. Then again, the selectively-phrased self-portrait is similar to the way literary agents are framing their own e-ventures. I’ve yet to see any of them say, “We see this as a way to bring money into the agency.” They’re all claiming, “We’re just doing this to help our clients. That’s what this is all about–benefitting our clients.”

    I have this nice bridge in the desert that I’m selling at a bargain price…

    Russ: Thanks! I’ve turned the corner and am feeling better every day. :)

  43. allynh says:

    Bob Mayer on 07 Oct 2011 at 2:56 pm

    They’re READ differently. I’m working on a blog post about this for next week, but I recommend starting with Lev Grossman’s article in the NY Times on 2 September: From Scroll to Screen.

    I read the article, and Grossman missed the fact that e-screens today are using the single window mode. In a little bit they will have the option of splitting the screen so you can have the same document open in two different parts, and in multiple tabs. You will be able to have multiple pages open at once and switch between them, with split screen. That is the only way to make text books and science books work. That will also solve the problem with footnotes that was mentioned in the NYTimes essay:

    ESSAY
    Will the E-Book Kill the Footnote?
    By ALEXANDRA HOROWITZ
    Published: October 7, 2011

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/books/review/will-the-e-book-kill-the-footnote.html

    In paper books footnotes drive me nuts because you have to flip to the back of the book each time you see a subscript number. With a split screen you can have the footnotes in the bottom split screen, while you read the main document in the top split screen.

    - All it takes is for people to ask for that option and it will be added.

    Everything is still so new that no one has thought to ask. HA!

  44. Someone says:

    “In paper books footnotes drive me nuts because you have to flip to the back of the book each time you see a subscript number.”

    Technically, those are endnotes. Footnotes appear at the bottom of the same page on which they are referenced.

    Other than that, I agree — I hate constantly flipping to the back with endnotes in paper books, with current e-readers it’s even worse, but I look forward to split screen mode (which will render my nit-pick about endnotes vs footnotes moot)

  45. Lee Allred says:

    A note on footnotes/endnotes:

    Ebook readers need not only to mimic the ability to have fingers stuck in pages so as to have two (or more) pages essentially open at the same time, but the also ability to have two or three or four books open at the same time on your desk (how I study and write).

    Split screens might suffice for either of these functions but that would most likely drive up the amount of real estate a reader screen needs (and thus push the price point up).

    A clunkier option would be to have several cheap readers strewn about my desk, each open to their single book/bookmark.

    – Lee

    (P.S. Speaking of footnotes, Russ failed to mention that the planet he’s talking about in conjunction with me is a medicine ball-sized one atop which I stand, Little Prince-like, complete with a miniature volcano and infant balboa tree. The requirement, therefore, of being the funniest on the planet is not taxing; volcanos hate jokes and balboas have at best only a weak sense of humus.)

  46. someone says:

    Lee — good point. (I mean about the multiple books, not about the planet *grin*).

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