{"id":1963,"date":"2023-11-10T21:29:33","date_gmt":"2023-11-11T02:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/?p=1963"},"modified":"2023-11-10T21:29:33","modified_gmt":"2023-11-11T02:29:33","slug":"the-agented-author-roleplaying-game-the-only-way-to-win-is-not-to-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/the-agented-author-roleplaying-game-the-only-way-to-win-is-not-to-play\/","title":{"rendered":"The Agented Author Roleplaying Game: The Only Way to Win is Not to Play"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Don’t roll the dice with your hard work. Image by Ana Carolina Franco from Pixabay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As I\u2019ve talked about before, I wasted a year of my career with a schmagent<\/a>\u2014a well-meaning individual who starts a literary agency despite having no prior experience in the field and no clue what literary agents do beyond the most\u00a0basic things. I got off pretty easy in the long run, and the book she signed eventually found a home <\/a>(no thanks to her) and will come out next year. But it was humiliating when the news about her nuking the agency blew up on Twitter and I had to see people saying \u201cWell, what did those authors expect?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So I\u2019d like to help some of you not make that same mistake.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Because there’s no formal process to become a literary agent\u2014no licensing exam, no college certification\u2014 anyone can call themselves an agent. I could start\u00a0The Nicole Willson Literary Agency tomorrow if I felt like it. And some well-meaning people think all they need to do is announce their new agencies, sign authors, send manuscripts off to the Big 5, and wait for those big offers and juicy advances\u00a0to start rolling in. If they\u2019re feeling really fancy, maybe they\u2019ll rope in a few similarly unqualified pals to be associate agents. These people are not<\/i> scammers; they\u2019re clueless. But they\u2019ll still waste your time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During every pitch contest, I see a few more of these DIY agents emerge. And they get clients. Lots of clients, even.\u00a0<\/span>And I understand. Querying is a long, long, LONG slog for a lot of people. When someone offers you rep after you\u2019ve heard Thanks but this isn\u2019t for me<\/i> so many times, it\u2019s so<\/i> tempting to sign and cross your fingers even if the offering agent is brand new to the business.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So just be aware: If you sign with one of these inexperienced people, you\u2019re playing the Agented Author Roleplaying Game. Your agent is performing a cheap knockoff version of what competent, experienced literary agents do for their clients. Signing\u00a0with them\u00a0may make you feel like you\u2019ve leveled up, but it\u2019s highly unlikely to do much good for your career.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Sure, you can say you\u2019re an agented author. People who don\u2019t know the difference between a good agent and a bad one will be duly impressed, maybe even jealous. People who do<\/i> know the difference will shake their heads in dismay when they see your signing announcement on social media. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Your agent might do their best to find your book a home, but the likelihood of that home being at a top publisher approaches zero. Your agent won\u2019t have the crucial industry knowledge they\u2019d learn if they\u2019d worked with a reputable agency first. They won\u2019t have the benefit of experienced mentors. They won\u2019t have contacts with acquiring editors at publishing houses. They won\u2019t know how to negotiate a strong contract. They may not bother to edit your manuscript before sending it out. Hell, they may not even know what kind of editing your work needs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

And they may submit your book to the kind of publisher who\u2019d make a good agent hold up a cross and scream. I\u2019m stunned whenever I research an agent\u2019s record and see they\u2019ve made sales to publishers who have a miles-long thread full of dire warnings at the Bewares and Background Check forum over at Absolute Write. These people clearly think any book deal is better than no book deal, and that\u2019s a mistake no competent agent would ever make.<\/p>\n

Maybe your agent will find your book a home with a decent small publisher. I love small publishers! But you don\u2019t need an agent to work with them. And generally, you won\u2019t get much of an advance (if any)\u00a0with a small publisher. Why would you want to give someone a cut of what\u2019s likely to be a fairly small sum for a deal you could have swung\u00a0yourself? It\u2019s fine for an agent to make an occasional sale to a small publisher, but if they’ve been in business for a couple years and those are the only deals they\u2019ve ever made, that\u2019s a red flag.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But hey, who am I to rain on your parade? If nothing I described above sounds like a deal-breaker for\u00a0you,\u00a0go ahead and play.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, if you want an agent who can sell your book to a bigger, reputable publisher who doesn\u2019t have open submissions? Then this game won\u2019t serve you well. Presumably, you want an agent to get your book into publishing houses you couldn\u2019t get into yourself. A schmagent is very unlikely to help you do that, however nice and well-meaning they may be.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

None of this is to say that well-established literary agencies with rockstar-level agents are free of problems either. Of course they aren\u2019t! But at least with them, your book has a reasonable chance of getting somewhere you couldn\u2019t get it on your own.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I\u2019ve talked about before, I wasted a year of my career with a schmagent\u2014a well-meaning individual who starts a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101,4],"tags":[120,103,5,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1965,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions\/1965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicolewillson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}