Agents Bust False Publishing Trends, Part II

Today we continue busting false notions about trends in traditional publishing, with information gleaned from agents at the 2012 Write Stuff conference in Allentown, PA. Our panelists were Rachel Stout of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, Carrie Pestritto of Prospect Agency, Marie Lamba of Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency, Lauren Ruth of BookEnds LLC, and Katie Shea of Donald Maass Literary Agency.

Agents are no longer taking on new clients. I can speak from my own experience on this one, as I signed with one of these agents in December—Katie Shea, pictured with me at right—and since then she’s taken on three additional clients. If you seek traditional publication, try submitting to newer agents at established agencies. Since they are still building their client lists they have the time to work with you, they are hungry for a sale, and are backed by the collective wisdom and power of their agencies. Chuck Sambuchino regularly posts “New Agent Alerts” at his Guide to Literary Agents blog.

No one gets discovered in the slush pile anymore. Lauren Ruth said that like most agents, she interned by reading slush (unsolicited submissions). Her written critiques of the submissions were critiqued in turn by more experienced agents, so that she learned to spot the projects with the potential to fit the agency’s business model. It is true that the slush pile may not be the way to reach agents who represent bestselling clients. Because they already have a dependable income stream from producing authors, their motivation to read slush is pretty low. This seems to anger many aspiring authors, but really, this person is going to be working on your behalf—how thin do you want him to stretch?

Here my own experience can provide another case in point. While I tried all the “leg-up” techniques I could find, including ten years of face-to-face agent pitches at conferences as well as recommendations from well-published authors to their agents, I ultimately gained representation through the slush pile. Why did it work? My project had matured, my query reflected this, and I submitted widely enough that my story found its way to its perfect advocate.

No one gets advances anymore. If no one got advances, there would be no agents, since their income is dependent upon 15% of your royalties. For this reason, an agent will advocate for an author's worth even more than many of today's authors advocate for themselves. While it used to be an author's hope that a decent advance would pay off lean years of dues-paying work, many authors have adopted a model in which they follow up those lean years by paying out their own money to self publish, or give away e-books for free.

Perhaps because of this, the way an author's work is valued has never been more diverse. While one self e-published author gives away books in the hopes that someone will notice her, Carrie Pestritto cited the recent example of an agented debut novelist who nabbed a one million dollar advance. Are these common? No, but that’s not a trend shift—such extreme examples have always been newsworthy because they are uncommon. Katie Shea noted the extraordinary subjectivity of the industry with this example: one of her agency's YA projects received two offers from publishers. One was $7,500, and the other was $75,000!

In this time of great change in the publishing industry, one trend persists. Whether through the Big Six, small independent houses, or self publishing, and whether the product is digital or print, this industry has always attracted editors, agents, and authors who are willing to act on the strength of their convictions. Today’s economic realities may make such gambles more nerve-wracking than ever, but there are still people willing to make them.

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Kathryn Craft is a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, an independent manuscript evaluation and line editing service. Her women's fiction and memoir are represented by Katie Shea at the Donald Maass Literary Agency. The first chapter of her memoir, Standoff at Ronnie's Place, modified as a stand-alone essay, was published online by Mason's Road, the online journal of Fairfield University's MFA program. She blogs about Healing through Writing.