Facing Agents and Publishers
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Is doing research a plus or a minus? As I polish my novel, I’ve been doing my due diligence and taking classes, searching the internet, and reading books that cover the publishing process. I’m terrified.
What terrifies me is not facing the inevitable rejection letters. I’ve gotten those before and long ago learned that rejection is part of the business. Rejections still hurt, but, in most cases, it isn’t adversarial. Agents and publishers make bets on which properties will make them money. That’s business. As long as things are done in good faith, I can handle that part of the business.
So, it’s not rejection but what comes after someone shows interest that has me wondering if I’d be better off self-publishing. This morning, I read a post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch on the sneaky practices that both publishers and agents are more and more frequently engaged in.
Her point is that agents and publishers are getting sneakier and sneakier with their contracts and that the author needs to read every line of every contract. She also has reached a point from which she can no longer recommend agents, that enough agents have become predators or, more likely, advocates for their agencies, not for writers.
I don’t know what percentage of people in the business attempt to take advantage of writers, especially unpublished ones. I do know that bigger the business the more likely it is to be run by marketers, accountants and lawyers, who don’t give a damn about the little guy. So want to enter into relationships holding the assumption that they will be adversarial?
Okay, practicing due diligence and hiring an attorney to look over any contract is just part of doing business. Doing so isn’t necessarily adversarial. It’s just being careful. But, from what I’m reading, the publishing industry is becoming more and more cutthroat, more inclined to grab book rights and hold onto them. It’s finding more and more ways to keep from paying royalties. That makes going indie more and more appealing.
Self-publishing requires hard work, marketing, multiple titles and more marketing. Yet, that’s just work. It isn’t battle against the very people who are supposed to be allies.
P.S.
I don’t mean to imply that most agents are anything other than honest, hard-working people who do their jobs because they love the work. I’m just thinking out loud about the industry and my next steps. Publishing is changing. How will those changes impact authors and agents?
Related articles
- The Book is Alive, Well, and Often Self-Published (write4kids.com)
- An agent looks at whether to e-publish (teleread.com)
- The trust-me world of tradition publishing, versus the show-me world of self-publishing (teleread.com)
- The Questionable Future of Agents and Publishers (worddreams.wordpress.com)
- Dealing with Agents and Publishers (writeanything.wordpress.com)
- Guest Post: Pitfalls Facing 1st Time Authors (makingbabygrand.com)
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Although I’m a longtime journalist, I’m relatively new to book publishing. But I must say that my experience so far has been quite good and that my agent has been not only my biggest cheerleader but has offered criticisms that have made my novel better and explained every step of the process of getting my book published, so that I always feel informed and that we are doing this “together.” My hope is that every author can feel this protected and nurtured. Sure, there may be bad out there, but there’s also good. :)
That’s encouraging, Dina. Thanks for sharing your experience.