Okay, I am going to be very careful with this post. I get a ton of questions about agents, and Kris and I spend a week in the marketing workshop dealing on this topic and other submissions of novels topics. (Check out the workshop list if you are interested. The workshop is called Marketing and there is one in November.)

In the current world of publishing, agents hold a very strange place. First off, they are an employee of the writer. Yet at the same time, publishers require in their guidelines that the writer hire this employee before they will consider work from that writer.

Now by all business thinking, this is a very strange practice. How can someone come into my business and tell me to hire an employee? Yet, because of events over the last fifty years, this has become the norm in fiction publishing. And to understand all the events that lead to this takes time, but is critical to understanding how to deal with this as a new writer. So for now, just take it as a strange practice. I don’t have the week of typing here to try to explain it all.

Agents are in a bad way with these new guidelines by publishers. They are forced to look at all the crap, the total garbage that this rule stops writers from sending to publishers. They, in essence, have become the slush readers for publishing, a job that used to be done by low employees in the publishing houses.

Now trust me, as a person who has read slush for years, this is not something you ever want to do. Yet publishers, without consent from the agents, have forced this onto them. And every agent is dealing with it differently.

Most top agents have full lists of writers and thus pay almost no attention to the stuff coming at them. If they look at all, they search for something really catching and hot for the current market. Many try their best to read the query letters they get. But remember, they work for their authors and reading query letters is something that makes their other writers no money at all.

Newer agents who open up to this wave soon become overwhelmed and have to cut back. This often means they take on writers who end up getting shorted in one way or another as certain writers sell and go to the top of the agent’s list. But these new agents also try to look at every query they get.

Scam agents who couldn’t sell an ice cream cone in a heat wave make a ton of money off the hungry newer writers in more scams than anyone can imagine.

And, of course, this pounding causes the agents to be so busy, they encourage their writers to slow down, to take their time with books because the agents are just too busy, for the most part, to handle an old-style writer who does three or four books a year. Not all agents, but I have been hearing it more and more, especially from newer agents who have been slammed by this.

But for the publishers this is a two-edged sword. They don’t have to pay for slush readers, their already fantastically busy editors and assistant editors don’t have to deal with this either, and thus the tide of garbage is pushed aside. But, of course, there is one problem with this slowing of the flow and jamming of the agents. Good product is also slowed down or often blocked completely. They (the editors and publishers) don’t even know what they are not seeing. What they do see has already been preselected, pre-edited for them. Fine and dandy if book lists didn’t have to be filled every month. Somehow, editors need to see good books, yet agents have only so much time, can send out only so many books. At the moment, the balance seems to be holding, but there might come a time when the demand goes past what the agents can supply.

So, how is this new twist in the business of fiction publishing going to iron out? How is this massive road block between writer and publisher going to be solved? Not a clue. Right now it is doing what the publishers need, sort of. And more agents are pouring into the business to help take up some of the shortfall. But publishing is a growing business, with lists expanding and more and more books being published every year. And those new authors somehow have to get through this mess, get their good work in front of editors in some way or another.

And I have a hunch that editors will start worrying about what they are missing. New trends, new books, the strange, the different, do not get through this system as it stands at the moment. And that’s a bad thing for readers, for publishers, and for writers.

Okay, now that all the newer writers reading this want to slash their wrists, let me add this. In my opinion, this is the best time in my memory to come in as a new writer. And actually the easiest. You think this system is bad, you should have seen some of the earlier ones in the history of this business. This system allows a writer to help agents sell books. This system allows you to go around agents at certain times. This system does allow good books to be read by editors. But the writer has to take a ton of responsibility for having this happen.

Let me repeat that in a slightly different way. It is the responsibility of the writer to get his or her book read by either a good agent or a good editor. No one can do it for you.

Again, Kris and I spend a full week teaching writers how to market their novels (and surprisingly, there is still room in both November and May marketing workshop.) We teach how to get around this problem.

How? It sounds impossible. (I could hear the shouts <g>.)

Lots and lots of ways. To start off with, learn how to write a really good query that uses your voice, the voice of the novel, and is standard enough to fit, yet different enough to draw attention from either an agent or an editor. (Starting to see why learning this takes at least a week? <g>) You must sell your novel from word one, and I have read a ton of great novels in novel workshops that never got sold because the writer sucked at query letters, proposals, cover letters, and simple marketing.

First, to come into this business now, you have to write a good book, just as it always was. But secondly, you now must also learn how to write great query letters, great proposals, and great cover letters. And thirdly, you must understand how to market your work, how to find the right agent, the right editor. And how to even know when an agent is a good agent or a bad agent for you. A good agent for me might be horrible for you. Or the reverse. You have to understand that.

And so, so much more. After all, this is an international business you are trying to write for. If you can be stopped early in this business, you should be. It never gets easier. If you don’t know how to find the information in this information age, then maybe another business is a good idea for you as well. If you are unwilling to go out to workshops, to conferences, to find professional writers and talk to them, then just stop now. You don’t stand a chance.

But for the writers who know how to learn and have the drive to go the distance, this is the best time to come into this business and make a living with your fiction.

Agents are employees of the writers. Publishers require agents to be hired by the writer. I have a hunch that given time, this very strange practice will change. I just have no idea to what. As a former slush reader, I know that something has to be done to stop the waves of garbage while at the same time finding the new, dangerous, fresh voices in fiction. But will this current system work or will something else take its place? It will be interesting to see what the next step is, that’s for sure.

Cheers

Dean

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