Seldom a week goes by without an announcement that a literary agency has launched an e-book venture. The schemes vary from agency to agency but in essence these firms have undertaken to publish or distribute e-book editions of their clients’ original works and reprints.

This development has created some tensions among their clients and unease in the author community in general.  How should authors regard it?

Seller vs. Buyer

The traditional role of literary agents is that of advocates for the authors they represent. Their clients are the sellers engaged in arms length – and sometimes adversarial – relationships with publishers – the buyers.  Agents have a legal, ethical, and fiduciary obligation to promote, protect and manage their clients’ interests, and authors rely on their agents’ unalloyed partisanship.

At least that is the theory. In actuality agents’ allegiance is rarely unalloyed, and they often find it strained or even conflicted. Friendships with editors, for instance, may compromise an agent’s impartiality. Or an agent may have to favor one client over another when awarding a coveted project.

These tensions are unavoidable, and though they may occasionally tax an agent’s relationship with an author they are rarely so flagrant as to violate the Association of Authors’ Representatives’ Canon of Ethics, whose first principle states: “The members pledge themselves to loyal service to their clients’ business and artistic needs, and will allow no conflicts of interest that would interfere with such service.”

It was owing to this injunction – which I helped to forge as a member and then president of the AAR – that I felt it best to leave the organization ten years ago when I founded E-Reads, the e-book publishing company that hosts this essay. I ask you to keep that fact in mind as you read these observations, and to discount them to whatever degree you may judge appropriate.

The AAR’s stern precept prevailed until the arrival of the digital age. As in so many other fields of endeavor, the digitization of books has had a profoundly destabilizing effect on relationships that had remained fixed for more than a century. The new technology has disintermediated all agencies – not just literary – that once stood staunchly between sellers and buyers. Now authors can – and increasingly do – sell to publishers without the intervention of an agent.

Squeezed out of their customary role, literary agents have been forced to reinvent themselves and seek new ways to be relevant to authors – and make a living at it. As I mentioned in a recent series of articles, many have developed management services such as creation of websites for clients, assistance with social networking, and marketing and public relations. (See Middlemen in Search of a Middle Part 1, Part 2)

These offices sit well within the ethical boundary defined by the AAR, the principal guild for literary agencies in the United States.

Assuming the role of publisher, however, pushes agents much closer to that boundary. And some authors believe the line has been crossed. For that reason the AAR recently reaffirmed, in no uncertain terms, its commitment to the fundamental principle that in all cases, member agents “may receive compensation only from the client for the member’s services; the member may not separately engage in any business from which the member receives separate profit/compensation with respect to the exploitation of the client’s work in any medium, including e-publication.”

Where’s the Conflict?

The obvious source of conflict is that an agent’s advocacy for the author may be tinged if not tainted by the agent’s self-interest as a buyer.  In determining the disposition of a client’s property, the agent must now promote his own publishing company as a valid candidate for publication. Is the agent’s e-book company better than Random House, HarperCollins or Simon & Schuster?  It may actually be, but the agent has disqualified himself from objectively advising his client one way or another. This puts the author in a quandary: whom can he or she now turn to for an unbiased evaluation?

Obviously the answer depends on the agent’s integrity. But it stands to reason that authors in that position should be offered the opportunity to engage a disinterested third party – a lawyer or another agent or the Authors Guild – to objectively evaluate his or her options.

As we said previously, as the publishing industry rebuilds itself from the ground up, every denizen of the ecosystem must not just adapt but reconstitute. Agents are no exception, and it is entirely possible that a decade from now their role will have only the faintest resemblance to that of hustling for commissions today.

Richard Curtis

Smashwords Introduces Ebook Publishing and Distribution Service for Literary Agents

Powerful, Proven Tools to Manage Ebook Publishing, Metadata, Distribution and Sales Reporting

LOS GATOS, Calif., November 17, 2011 — Smashwords, the leading distributor of indie ebooks, today introduced a new service for literary agents. The service provides literary agents simple but powerful tools to manage the publication and distribution of their clients’ indie ebooks. Service highlights include free ebook conversions, centralized metadata management, distribution to major worldwide ebook retailers, time-saving aggregated sales reporting across all retailers, and special merchandising at Smashwords.com.

“Literary agents will write the next chapter of the indie ebook revolution,” said Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords. “Agents represent the most commercially successful authors. These authors are now asking their agents to add e-publishing services to exploit the potential of their reverted-rights works and unpublished works. Although all authors have the freedom to self-publish, many would prefer to delegate the e-publishing and back office duties to their agent so the author can focus their energy on writing.”

Over 32,000 authors, small presses and literary agents have utilized Smashwords to release 85,000 ebooks in the last three years. 7,500 of these titles were released in the last 30 days.

Until recently, the Smashwords platform labeled literary agents as “Publishers,” even though most agents consider their authors the publishers of record. To address this subtle but important nuance of metadata labeling, Smashwords created this new service expressly for literary agents.

Agents have the ability to upload multiple books on behalf of multiple clients.Agented books appear as “Written by [Author Name], Agented by [Agency Name].”

When Smashwords distributes the book to retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Diesel, the author is recognized as the publisher, not the agent.

Smashwords has also introduced a new home page catalog to showcase agented works, making it easy for readers to browse ebooks represented and curated by literary agents.

To work with Smashwords, agents simply sign up for a free Smashwords account, upgrade the account to Agent status (also free), and then upload books and metadata on behalf of their clients. A co-branded bookstore within Smashwords showcases the agency’s clients and allows readers to view books by recent releases, best-sellers, and highest rated. When readers browse the book pages of agented books, they enjoy contextual discovery links such as “Other books by this author” and “Other books from this agent.”

The Smashwords Agent service makes e-publishing fast, free and easy for literary agents. Service benefits include:

• Centralized metadata management – Agents control the book’s price (Smashwords retailers don’t discount), marketing description and other metadata at their Smashwords Dashboard. They make a single change once and Smashwords propagates
the update to all retailers.
• Aggregated sales reporting saves time – Each quarterly payment includes a downloadable report that makes it easy to map earnings to each of the agency’s authors. Agents can perform custom queries to provide authors granular sales reporting by title, date and retailer.
• Distribution to leading e-retailers – Smashwords distributes to the Apple iBookstore (32 countries), Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBookstore. Amazon distribution is available through Smashwords on request. Books are also distributed to the native catalogs of leading mobile e-reading apps including Aldiko for Android devices and Stanza for the iPhone/iPod Touch. More distribution points in the works.
• Free – No fees for ebook conversion or setup. Smashwords earns a 10% of list price commission for books sold through major retailers (agent receives 60% list). The commission for sales through the Smashwords.com retail store is 15% net after credit card fees, with 85% net going to the agent.

Multiple literary agencies – including Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, the Beverley Slopen Agency and Larsen Pomada Literary Agents – are utilizing Smashwords to publish and distribute ebooks on behalf of their clients. Diversion Books, a publisher founded by literary agent Scott Waxman, is also a Smashwords client.

What literary agents are saying about Smashwords: “Smashwords has offered what many other self-publishing platforms do not, a way for agents to be involved with digital publishing without having to take on the title of ‘Publisher,’” said Abby Reilly, E-Book Project Manager at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, based in New York. “Giving our clients a space in the new and exciting world of digital publishing, while continuing to shepherd all aspects of their literary careers, is a thrilling challenge for our agency. We are delighted to be working with Smashwords to make this happen.”

“Smashwords makes it easy to begin exploring the new digital terrain,” said Beverley Slopen, whose literary agency shares her name and is based in Toronto, Canada. “It is an exciting time in publishing, a time like no other, and our authors want to be there. They are pushing us to broaden our knowledge and our skill set. While ebook publishing is not a substitute for traditional publishing, it adds an amazing new dimension.”

“I have been an avid Smashwords supporter since its inception, and over the past three years have integrated digital publishing initiatives in the career plans of all my clients,” said Laurie McLean of Larsen Pomada Literary Agents in San Francisco. “Most of my clients have both traditionally published books and ebooks in their bag of tricks, and it is exciting to see how they complement each other. While many people have been bashing literary agents as gatekeepers of the old guard in publishing, I feel that digitally-engaged agents are the perfect mentors to guide authors through these turbulent waters of opportunity. The new Smashwords Agent service has made my job even easier.”

Literary Agents – How to Get Started with Smashwords

Visit www.smashwords.com to sign up for a free account in the name of your agency. The confirmation email you receive will walk you through next steps. The “How to Publish at Smashwords” link on the home page at https://www.smashwords.com/about/how_to_publish_on_smashwords provides helpful links to a vast array of Smashwords resources.

For an online presentation outlining the opportunity for agents to serve the indie e-publishing needs of their clients, see this post at the Smashwords Blog and its accompanying Slideshare presentation, the Literary Agent’s Indie Ebook Roadmap: http://blog.smashwords.com/2011/08/literary-agents-indie-ebook-roadmap.html
or visit www.slideshare.net/Smashwords

About Smashwords
Founded in 2008, Smashwords is the world’s leading distributor of indie ebooks. More than 32,000 authors, small presses and literary agents publish over 85,000 indie ebooks at Smashwords. Smashwords has released over 7,500 ebooks in the last 30 days.

Smashwords makes it fast, free and easy for the world’s authors, publishers and literary agents to publish and distribute multi-format ebooks. Smashwords distributes to major online retailers such as the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store, and also distributes to the leading mobile e-reading apps such as Aldiko, Stanza and FBReader. Smashwords is based in Los Gatos, California, and can be reached on the web at http://www.smashwords.com/. Visit the official Smashwords blog at http://blog.smashwords.com/.

The following is an excerpt from a press release issued by Smashwords.
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Smashwords, the leading distributor of indie ebooks, today introduced a new service for literary agents.

The service provides literary agents simple but powerful tools to manage the publication and distribution of their clients’ indie ebooks. Service highlights include free ebook conversions, centralized metadata management, distribution to major worldwide ebook retailers, time-saving aggregated sales reporting across all retailers, and special merchandising at Smashwords.com.

“Literary agents will write the next chapter of the indie ebook revolution,” said Mark Coker, founder and CEO of Smashwords. “Agents represent the most commercially successful authors. These authors are now asking their agents to add e-publishing services to exploit the potential of their reverted-rights works and unpublished works. Although all authors have the freedom to self-publish, many would prefer to delegate the e-publishing and back office duties to their agent so the author can focus their energy on writing.”

For details, click on Smashwords’ release.

Publishing Spoken Here By Richard Curtis Traduttore, Traditore (“The translator is a traitor”) – Italian proverb One of the critical roles literary agents play is that of translator. We perform the task on several levels. The most obvious and fundamental is explaining the nomenclature of publishing to the uninitiated author. The writer who sells his first book to a publisher and reads his first contract is plunged into a sea of words that may be totally unfamiliar to him, or that are used in a totally unfamiliar way. “Force majeure,” “net proceeds,” “matching option,” “warranty,” “discount”—these need to be defined for the novice author. There are many difficult concepts to be grasped, such as “advance sale,” “midlist,” “fair use,” “reserve against returns,” “pass-through,” and “hard-soft deals.” The language has its own slang, too, and our initiate hears bewildering references to who handles the “sub rights,” what is the tentative “pub date,” and what happens when the book is “o.p.’d.” Agents patiently try to demystify these terms, but it may take many years of experience before our clients are completely at ease with them. It may well be true that what distinguishes professional authors from their amateur brothers and sisters is that the pros have undergone this linguistic rite of passage and are now able to sling around “pre-empts,” “first proceeds,” and “escalators” with the best of ‘em. But there is another, and profoundly more important, job for the agent-translator to perform beyond explaining to his clients the terminology of the book industry. I’m talking about using language to forge and strengthen the bonds between authors and publishers. For, while the goals of both may ultimately be identical, they are usually achievable only after many conflicting viewpoints and interests have been reconciled. Sometimes those conflicts become intense, and if allowed to go unresolved can cause serious if not fatal breakdowns in the relationship. An agent, standing between these potential adversaries, must find common ground for them to stand on, else all – including his commission – is lost. And though their differences may be genuine, sometimes they are semantic, and if an agent can pinpoint and settle the linguistic problems, perhaps the more substantive ones will not seem quite so insuperable. Although it’s a stimulating challenge, not all of us enjoy sticking our heads up in this no-man’s land. You must not think, however, that editors cannot be seriously wounded. And it is important to know that fact, because a hurt editor (or art director or royalty bookkeeper) may not want to work as hard for an author who has irked him or her as for one who has been supportive, tolerant, and forgiving. This is not to say that editors are so thin-skinned they fold the first time someone criticizes them. But I do know that if an author or agent injures an editor’s feelings seriously enough, it can undercut his or her initiative, and that may eventually redound to an author’s detriment. Some years ago I phoned a bookkeeper who had been verbally abused by an author a few months earlier. This author was owed another check, and I wanted to know where it was. “Funny thing about that check,” she said, deadpan, “it keeps falling to the bottom of my pile. Must be gravity or something.” It is therefore vital that editors and their colleagues in other departments of publishing companies be handled with a certain degree of diplomacy, and it is in the language of that diplomacy that most agents are adept. We have learned that “a soft answer turneth away wrath.” And most of the time, we are able to rephrase or paraphrase the blunt demands, the raw needs, the hard feelings, the hostile remarks, of our clients into gracious packages of civility that convey everything the author intended without damaging the fragile sensibilities of the person at whom they were directed. I’ve been keeping some notes about discussions recently conducted with editors and am happy to offer herewith a few examples of this process in action. Some of them are tongue in cheek, others are deliberately exaggerated. Still others will sound stilted, and that is because, unfortunately, that is the way I speak. Let’s take one of the commonest problems in our business, that of getting editors to make up their minds about submissions. Editors are burdened with a great many tasks that curtail their reading time. They may be inundated with manuscripts to read. They may be on the fence about a submission and wish to postpone a decision for a while. They may be soliciting opinions or sales estimates from colleagues in their company. They have many legitimate reasons for taking a long time to read submissions. At the same time, some editors seem to have a considerably dimmer sense of the passage of time than people in other fields, such as airline management or television programming. So, one of the first lessons one learns in the agenting profession is how to translate an editor’s promises about time. “I’ll read it overnight” too often means, “I’ll get around to it in a week.” “I’ll read it in a week” means, “I’ll be back to you in a month.” And “I’ll read it in a month” may well mean that the manuscript is lost. In order to reasonably hold editors to their promised schedules, agents use the elegant phraseology of coercion. “As I’m loath to keep manuscripts out of circulation,” I might write, “may I trouble you for a decision?” If this fails to yield a reply, I might escalate to something more pointed, like, “My client is getting restless,” or, “I’m under some pressure to determine where we stand.” Sometimes a humorous approach is in order. I’m a great believer in the power of teasing to accomplish that which solemnity cannot, and I’m not above a little sarcasm under the appropriate circumstances: “When I submitted that manuscript to you, the oceans were two inches lower.” If an editor has sat on a submission for an unconscionably long time, I will invariably get a phone call from my client saying, “You tell that sonofabitch that if we don’t have a decision by Friday, I’m personally gonna come down there and rearrange his prefrontal lobes with an ax haft! ” Justified though that ultimatum may be, it is couched in language this is terminally infelicitous. By the time I’m through modifying it, it may sound something closer to this: “As you don’t seem able to make up your mind, suppose we say that if I haven’t heard from you by Friday, I’ll put another copy of the manuscript into play elsewhere, and you may take as much time thereafter as you wish.” And sometimes I’ll put a finer point on my message with this veiled warning: “Do let me know when your work load is down to a more reasonable size so that our agency can resume submitting books to you.” I’m certain that you must be saying to yourself, “How is an editor going to get these messages if the agent pussyfoots around that way?” The answer is, editors get these messages loudly and clearly, for unless one is incredibly dense, he pr she will have little doubt that a knife has been placed against the throat. Another common problem for agents is, of course, overdue checks. Authors are remarkably articulate when it comes to expressing the discomforts of financial deprivation and to depicting the character and ancestry of those who conspire to keep them in that condition. Unfortunately, most editors would go through the roof if exposed to the authors’ invective. Enter the honey-tongued agent, and though that agent might love nothing better than to say, “Pay up or we’ll vaporize you,” it’s more likely he or she will say something a bit more subdued. Perhaps a subtle form of extortion: “It would be to your advantage to remit payment promptly so as to avoid scheduling delays,” In plain English, this informs the editor that unless his company ponies up the dough, the agent isn’t going to deliver certain manuscripts that the publisher desperately needs to put into production. Because a late manuscript can wreck a production schedule at fearful cost to a publisher, the wise editor will undoubtedly give the check-processing machinery an extra-hard spin when he or she gets a message like that from an agent. I can think of lots of other ways that agents refine the harsh language of their clients without sacrificing effectiveness. For instance, though we may be thinking, “My client just turned in a real turkey,” what we are telling an editor is that, “My client thought you might like to see a first draft of his book before he starts polishing it.” Or, “My client is going to sue you into Rice Krispie-sized pieces” becomes, “My client is contemplating contacting his attorney, at which point the matter will be out of my control.” Or, “My client thinks your editor is so incompetent, he couldn’t spell “cat” if you spotted him the C and the T!” becomes, “I’m not certain that the author’s and editor’s views about the book are entirely compatible.” * “My client is so upset he’s taking big bites out of his living room sofa” translates into, “My client is finding it hard to understand why . . .” * “You’ll use that cover on my client’s book over his dead body!” may be altered to, “My client is pretty determined.” * Here’s a brief glossary of other agently euphemisms commonly employed when tempers start to overheat: * You: “I’m thoroughly disgusted with those people.” Agent: “My client is somewhat disenchanted.” * You: “If I had that editor’s throat in my hands . . .” Agent: “I’m not sure my client is completely comfortable working with you.” * You: “They’re lying and cheating.” Agent: “My client feels he may have detected some discrepancies. * “You: “What a crummy deal?” Agent: “Some of the terms leave something to be desired.” * You: “I wouldn’t sell another book to that butcher if he were the last editor on earth.” Agent: “Let’s have lunch.” The transmutation of hurtful language works the other way around, too, so that when we have to tell a client that his publishers hate his book so much they want to manure a cornfield with it, we may say something like, “It didn’t live up to their expectations,” or, “They found it lacking in certain respects.” Or an editor’s remark to the effect that a certain author couldn’t write his way out of a trash can liner becomes, “They don’t feel you’ve reached your potential quite yet.” Here are a few others. *Editor: “This material is simply lousy.” Agent: “Your editor is disappointed.” * Editor: “What language is your client writing in, anyway?” Agent: “Your editor pointed out some obscure passages.” * Editor: “Your client is the rudest person I’ve ever had the misfortune to work with.” Agent: “Your editor seems to have overreacted to what he perceives as a slight.” * Editor: “Is your client crazy, or what?” Agent: “I’m not sure your editor appreciates your sense of humor.” Of course, not all agents approach matters as delicately as this. Some of us are in fact quite plainspoken, and even the most tactful among us realizes that there are unavoidable occasions when we must unsheath a steel fist from the velvet glove. Still, it is gratifying to know that at least when it comes to the language one may still find reminders of the time when publishing was a profession for civilized ladies and gentlemen.

Richard Curtis

This article was originally written for Locus, The Newspaper of the Science Fiction Field. It’s reprinted in Mastering the Business of Writing. Copyright © 1990 by Richard Curtis. All Rights Reserved.

One of the critical roles literary agents play is that of translator. We perform the task on several levels. The most obvious and fundamental is explaining the nomenclature of publishing to the uninitiated author. Writers who sell their first book to a publisher and read their first contract are plunged into a sea of words that may be totally unfamiliar to them, or that are used in a totally unfamiliar way.

“Force majeure,” “net proceeds,” “matching option,” “warranty,” “discount” – these need to be defined for the novice author. There are many difficult concepts to be grasped, such as “advance sale,” “midlist,” “fair use,” “reserve against returns,” “pass-through,” and “hard-soft deals.” The language has its own slang, too, and our initiate hears bewildering references to who handles the “sub rights,” what is the tentative “pub date,” and what happens when the book is “o.p.’d.”

Agents patiently try to demystify these terms, but it may take many years of experience before our clients are completely at ease with them. Click here for details.

Richard Curtis

From time to time we bring back some of the more popular articles and blogs posted on E-Reads. This one is from December 2009.

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If you do something so horrendous as to provoke your agent to declare “Life is too short,” you’d better start looking for someone else to handle your work. It means you have tried his or her patience beyond its limit. You’re a dead author walking.

We recently described good timing as one of the most important virtues a literary agent can bring to the job. There’s another that most good agents possess, and that’s patience. If timing is the art of “when to,” patience is the art of “when not to.” Unfortunately, that often means when not to knock my head against a wall, wring an author’s throat, or hop in a taxi, race over to a publisher’s office and trash it.

Read how agents’ patience is tried. And ask yourself whether you have a high PITA Factor.

Richard Curtis

In connection with comments about literary agents who also operate publishing ventures, digital book industry authority Mike Shatzkin said this about E-Reads:

It is worth noting here that there’s one dog that hasn’t barked. Richard Curtis was the first ebook publishing agent. He set up his E-Reads business over a decade ago. He also pays 50% royalties. Richard did not create E-Reads to compete with publishers on royalties but because when he did publishers just wouldn’t do the ebooks. He has built his enterprise since that time to nearly a $1 million annual business (meaning that he’s delivering half-a-million a year to authors for properties that, at least until very recently and perhaps still, would never have been put into ebooks by a publisher.) But his name is noticeably absent from the chorus using higher ebook royalties as a public prod to bedevil publishers.

For the complete article click here.

Richard Curtis did not just witness the evolution of the publishing industry from print to digital, he had a significant hand in shaping it.  In a Digital Book World interview conducted by Rich Fahle, the agent and e-book publisher candidly discusses his role. The video may be seen below or on DBW’s website.

From the interview:

“Agents find themselves more and more providing services they never needed to render in the past: cover approval, correcting cover copy, editing, spellchecking authors’ manuscripts, marketing and other tasks that should be the publisher’s, but publishers either can’t or won’t do some of these things. They keep pushing the burden of responsibility back on the author. And if the author can’t do it or is helpless or doesn’t want to, the agent has to do it…

One afternoon about a year ago one of my staff stuck her head in my door, looking concerned. “Are you all right?”

“Sure.  Why do you ask?”

“I haven’t heard a peep out of you all day long.”

“Actually, I’ve been wheeling and dealing.  Just closed a six figure deal in fact.”

“On the phone?”

“No. Online.”

She shook her head.  “Boy, it’s not like the old days.”

She was right about that.  Aside from all the other ways publishing has changed since the turn of the 21st century, very little business is conducted on the phone any more.  The wheeling and dealing are now performed online.

I accept this new condition but I hate it.

I became aware of the shifting customs a couple of years ago when, in a burst of frustration, I complained to an editor that she’d ignored three phone calls.  “No I haven’t,” she said.  “Read your email.”  And there was a message from her: “If you’re calling about the option clause, we accept your language.”

“You couldn’t have said this to me over the phone?”

“Nothing personal. I’m just more comfortable with email, and besides, it leaves a written record”

“What if I hadn’t been calling about the option?  What if I’d been calling to offer you a combination of James Patterson, Dan Brown and Nora Roberts?”

“An email pitch would have been perfectly fine,” she said. “I respond instantly to emails.”

And that’s when I knew the game had indeed changed.

No, I don’t take it personally but as a natural-born shmoozer, delivering messages via my fingertips instead of by mouth is an emotional hardship. What makes it even more upsetting is that this phenomenon is occurring in the most articulate branch of the communications industry. Luckily, authors still like to talk on the phone, so I get plenty of opportunities to exercise my mandibular, glossal and laryngial muscles.

It was some – but not a lot of – comfort to learn that this shift away from phones is not restricted to publishing. Pamela Paul, writing in the New York Times, says “In the last five years, full-fledged adults have seemingly given up the telephone — land line, mobile, voice mail and all. According to Nielsen Media, even on cellphones, voice spending has been trending downward, with text spending expected to surpass it within three years.”

And Paul confirms my own observation that the lapse into silence has even infected industries where everything worth expressing was expressed in talk. “Even in fields where workers of various stripes (publicists, agents, salespeople) traditionally conducted much of their business by phone, hoping to catch a coveted decision-maker off-guard or in a down moment, the phone stays on the hook.”

Well, I suppose that as long as deals and offers continue to roll in via email I shouldn’t complain. But if you want to get an earful, pick up the phone and call me. Please?

Read Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You.

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.

Agent? What’s an agent?

In the mid-1990s, as the Digital Age dawned, I published an essay called Author? What’s an Author? In essence I said that digital technology would force authors and publishers to redefine themselves. Implicit was that agents would have to do so, too.  But the time has come to get explicit.  How are agents redefining their role in the publishing process in the twenty-first century?

In Part 1 of this article we described the forces squeezing agents out of the middle. Now let’s explore a few ways that agents are reinventing themselves to restore their value both to authors and publishers.

Client Services. Over the past few decades, as economic woes forced publishers to curtail editorial services and courtesies that were once taken for granted, agents have stepped into the breach, doing things for their authors that are a far cry from the wheeler-dealer profile of the old ten-percenters.

Among the activities agents routinely perform today are writing proposals, editing manuscripts, composing cover copy, designing covers, developing websites, media and social networking coaching, and more. Folio Literary Management‘s Paige Wheeler “offers the services of a marketing department, a licensing arm and a speakers bureau,” she said in The Evolution of the Literary Agent, a forum conducted by Writers Digest‘s Jane Friedman. (For some unusual services that agents perform, read What I Have Done for You Lately)

Until now, many of these services were proffered gratis, but some agents have begun to feel that in order to perform them competently and professionally they must monetize them.  For some that means raising commissions, for others, charging management fees. Such arrangements are more common in Hollywood, where the talent pays managers to handle legal matters, public relations and social networking. But of course, in Hollywood the talent is a lot richer than garden-variety book authors.

Marketing and Media Coaching. Some agents specialize in training authors in self-promotion and professional speaking. Agent Wendy Keller of Keller Media says “My agency has been working since 1991 to not only sell books, but also train people to become paid professional speakers and to become the type of self-promoting, marketing-savvy authors whose books actually sell. Most important, we teach authors how to test their content before it is turned into a book, so that all possible risks are reduced in advance.” The forward-looking Keller says “Keller Media has always striven to stay on the cutting edge, forcing our authors to build websites or blogs long before most people knew what that meant. Now, we push them to do YouTube shorts, vlogs and sometimes iPhone apps.”

Agent-Publishers. Some agents have started e-book publishing companies.  I launched E-Reads in 2000, Arthur Klebanoff started RosettaBooks in 2002, and Scott Waxman founded Diversion Books in 2010. The former two are dedicated more to reprint of previously published books, whereas Waxman’s venture issues originals. “Through Diversion, Waxman stated in Friedman’s round-table, “we can publish some of these books and therefore offer authors a new alternative. Instead of relying entirely on the big houses, authors now have a real opportunity to pursue a different road, one which gives them more control over their book as well.”

As the publishing industry rebuilds itself from the ground up, every denizen of the ecosystem must not just adapt but reconstitute.  Agents are no exception, and it is entirely possible that a decade from now their role will have only the faintest resemblance to that of hustling for commissions today.

Richard Curtis