Challenge,  publishing

Literary Agent Stupidity…

Or Better Put… Don’t Look At Your Agent… They Didn’t Take Your Money… They Have a Cannon of Ethics…

That’r right, the organization that pretends to govern literary agents has put out Cannons of Ethics for literary agents.

Yeah, right… Only way you can make sure that a literary agent will not screw you is to never hire one. Even then, be careful if you are in the same room with one.

And, of course, the writers stupid enough to hire a literary agent in 2026 are also too stupid to do a basic background check on the person or a criminal record check on the person or their business name. They just say because this “agent” had a business card, “Here, you get all my money and you get all the paperwork for that money and I sure hope, pretty please, that you will send me some.”

Not kidding. Sadly.

So this week because some bunch of idiots tried to make sane people believe that literary agents actually have ethics, I got a bunch of letters wanting to know what it meant or discussing it.

My answer… Literary agents are the buggy whips in a world where there are no more horses or buggies. And are not worth my time to even think about past the 220 words of this blog…

2 Comments

  • Vincent Zandri

    Like ive said before, 90 percent of all my trad book deals were acquired by me which I then stupidly handed over to my agent. Agents are far more interested in pleasing pubs than they are their clients. You simply dont need one in 2026.

    • dwsmith

      Yup, I sold all 106 books myself and then did the same thing, handed them over to my agent to deal with. I did all the work, they did all the theft. Yup, I really was that stupid.

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