Self-Publishing Agents: Unnecessary Evils

Two prominent names in self-publishing (Barry Eisler and J.A. Konrath) are presenting the case that agents have a desirable role as facilitators for authors who choose to self-publish. Barry makes a rational argument at Joe's blog, and Joe himself is trying it with his existing agent. The basic premise is the agent handles the cover, the formatting, and the uploading and derives a 15 percent commission (the same commission the agent would make selling a book to a U.S. publisher). Joe calls them "estributors" but they are not distributing the book to readers, they are distributing them to distributors, which puts them more in a wholesale role, except of course they aren't selling anything.

I respect their experience (Barry is married to an agent, and he'd probably BE a good agent if he so chose), and Joe is probably the most educated self-pubber on the planet, but I just don't see why agents should be considered ideal candidates for this task. What is an agent's current job and experience? To assess a manuscript and find a market.

In self-publishing, they do neither. Their assessment skills have zero value in self-publishing. Right now they assess with one measure: can I sell this to one of the few dozen editors in New York? Self-publishing requires no assessment, unless the agent says, "Whoa, this is crap, you can't publish this!" And who is going to lose their 15 percent to be that blunt? The agent's second role and experience is also rendered useless. The market is already there, and it's the millions of readers owning electronic devices or ordering print-on-demand books.

Presumably they aren't editing the manuscript (which is a different skill that an agent may or may not be qualified for), but it's certainly not a task the facilitator is handling. Let's assume the facilitator knows cover artists. You still have to describe the book, send suggestions, approve the cover file, and basically DO EVERYTHING you would have done on your own except make the first contact (find your own designer) and the last (upload the final file). And you're paying for it, I assume, unless the facilitator is footing some risk and cost.

Okay, the agent can format your file, or have that service arranged. Ted Risk at Dellaster Design will do a very clean epub and mobi for $89. A one-time fee with a fast turnaround time. The "facilitated" author still has to email the MS Word file to the agent/self-pub facilitator, who then sends it to a formatter or has one in-house. The author has merely saved two steps: (1) receiving the formatted file back from the formatting service and (2) uploading it to the markets.

Even if the agent/self-pub facilitator is writing the product description, that won't be written in a vacuum. The author will still have to outline it,  proof it, and suggest keywords, because even IF the agent reads the book, the agent will never understand it as well as the author (this is actually true of the cover design, too). Time saved: not much. It actually sounds like more work to me.

Employing someone in this role means giving up 15 percent for the entire life of copyright, for a book remaining on sale forever, for a job not only saving the author hardly any time at all, but possibly even CREATING MORE WORK FOR THE AUTHOR!

Yes, now you have an employee/partner to manage, and account for, and play email and phone tag with, and the money that could flow straight to your bank account every month will now be held by someone else who MAY, if you're lucky, dispense it quarterly, removing their share first. In my experience in the publishing world, the biggest risk in the entire venture is letting ANYONE handle your money when you don't have to. Too many things can go wrong. I am not saying fraud is likely, but imagine how hard it would be to audit Amazon if you thought your sales figures weren't adding up. And then imagine how hard it would be to audit an Agent/ Self-Pub Facilitator when sales figures don't add up from multiple revenue streams.

No, I am not suggesting all agents are shady and that 15 percent may magically expand to 50 percent under the table. But what would you do if it did? How are you going to audit six or 10 different distributor payments every month or three? Personally, I'd rather have my money shoot straight into my bank account. And in three years, when all the agent does is trim 15 percent before sending the rest on its way, and is not adding any new value at all, an author may just get a little bit resentful, even if everyone kept their word.

(Okay, I forgot the third role and experience of an agent: handling your money. Don't forget, agents are have no certification, degree, membership association, regulatory oversight, or even uniform code of ethics. Most are self-selecting English grads who moved to New York and hung out a shingle. There aren't a lot of accountants and MBAs on the agency rosters. But you're willing to give them your money just because they once were necessary evils?)

Okay, that being said, IF I thought such a service was valuable (and I clearly don't because my overhead on Liquid Fear was exactly $6 and a few hours of time, and it's earned me more than any book I've ever written, including ones that had dozens of fingerprints on them, and I get paid regularly, and heck, sounds like I'd be a better estributor than almost every agent on the planet, except I don't want to handle your money), I would prefer to have an experienced and downsized New York editor handle the task.

While an agent has never picked out a book cover, editors have. While an agent has never handled promotion, editors have. While an agent has never assessed a manuscript's value in the true marketplace of readers, editors have. While an agent has rarely handled layout or formatting, most editors are at least aware of the process, if not having hands-on experience. Agents handle the very front end of a book, an abstract idea with no intrinsic value. Editors are solidly on both edges of the middle of book production.

But the real question is, why would you assume anyone with experience in traditional publishing knows ANYTHING about what is happening right now? Indeed, it's the outliers who seem to be the most successful, not those who are most closely imitating the old model. I am not relishing the fact that a once-respected profession may soon be on the ropes, but I don't need my blood on the canvas to keep agents in the ring.

There's a great Harlan Ellison line in his story Mephisto in Onyx: "Don't confuse a thousand years of experience with the same year of experience a thousand times." If you want to be the monkey, you'll climb higher if you don't have a gang of carnivorous dinosaurs sinking their teeth into your back.

(Update: I talked with Joe a few days ago and under his deal, the agent pays for cover and formatting, so those costs are included in the 15 percent. Makes the deal SLIGHTLY better, but I still believe it doesn't save any work at all and adds risk and complication. Joe also foresees marketing clout one day but I have to ask, where is the agent suddenly going to learn book marketing in the digital era? Picking up a primer on social media? Writers already know more than agents. We've been forced to do so.)

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If you want more of this type of insight imbued with passion and scars and joy, why not try The Indie Journey: Secrets to Writing Success, on sale in July for $2.99 at
Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/58806
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Indie-Journey-.../dp/B0050I5TXA
BN.com: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/indie-journey-scott-nicholson/1101046538
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Cool things to look at

Getting ready to go out of town for a brief trip (combining business with pleasure). In the meantime you can find me today at Candace's Book Blog:


Wed: Stella Ex Libris
Thursday: Gina's Insatiable Readers

Featured books are Tuesday: Burial to Follow, Wednesday: Liquid Fear, and Thursday: Curtains. Hey, thanks for all your support! A column on calculating agents called "Fifteen Percent for Life" is up at Indie readers and JA Konrath and Barry Eisler kick around the pros and cons of self-pubbing if you are a writer type.

Also, cool news--I've traded my "paper advance" for the ebook rights to the translated edition of the Polish edition of The Red Church! So look for Czerwony at an ereader near you! This will make my third translated edition to go live.And a great, simple writing chart by Kurt Vonnegut to help you understand story arc.

If you need any book design, my recs are Stephen at Generation Next for book layout and Ted at Dellaster Design for ebook formatter.

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Pension funds for writers? YESSSSS

Dean Koontz has made the observation that novels are like annuities, earning income for writers over a lifetime. Well, that's true for Koontz and a handful of writers who manage to keep books in print and on the shelves.

Given the constraints of shelf space, the product pipeline that requires a 30-day flushing of "out with the old, in with the new," and the vagaries of sales numbers and warehousing, the publishing-industry model almost guarantees a writer will have NO books on the shelf in their old age, precisely the time when they need income the most and should be enjoying the fruits of their life's orchard.

I wish I had a dollar to give a sick, starving writer every time I've seen an impassioned message-board or tweet feed on a living legend who is facing massive hospital bills and is at risk of losing everything. I'd gladly give that dollar to them. And while it's beautiful that fans and healthier writers always rise to the challenge, it's sickening that it is even necessary.

I was chilled at last year's Dragoncon when I heard fantasy writers Gene Wolfe and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro talking about the tenuous state of their careers, how slowly the money arrived from publishers ("advances" often arrive after a book is actually printed), and how they weren't even sure if they would get that next book deal.

I won't embark on an anti-NY screed here. That was so April 2010 and it was fun, but now I wish publishers the best. Reality is, Big Six publishers "license" material but in fact do everything but own it, often for years and years in which the book is not even available for sale or generating income for the writer. There is no insurance and no pension fund for writers, nor any job security or other benefits, and you get to pay your own self-employment taxes.

Let's celebrate this brave new world where writers are getting money directly in their bank accounts, and regularly. Hopefully, legends have enough control over their backlist--the sum product of a long apprenticeship and decades of personal growth in the craft--to independently release the books or turn them over to caring, fair intermediaries who will fork over the lion's share of the profits.

Today, there are only two reasons your work can't generate income on its own--someone else is keeping your own work from you or you have no audience left. Anyone who needlessly keeps a writer's work out of print today, or paying a 10 percent e-book royalty, is morally a criminal, no matter what the license says.

And as a reader, you no longer have to send in something to a charity auction--you can thank the writer by buying a print-on-demand paper book or e-book, as lucky writers independently release their work. Thank you, all you living legends, and all you writers in the trenches, and all you loyal and passionate readers, and even you publishers, who have laid the foundation for this wonderful new era of writing and reading.


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Barbarians at the Gate

According to Publishers Weekly: "A staggering 764,448 titles were produced in 2009 by self-publishers and micro-niche publishers, according to statistics released this morning by R.R. Bowker. The number of 'nontraditional' titles dwarfed that of traditional books, whose output slipped to 288,355 last year from 289,729 in 2008. Taken together, total book output rose 87% last year, to over 1 million books."

And that's just the books that registered for ISBNs. When you consider e-books, chapbooks, books distributed free through various online outlets, and anything not even in the "nontraditional" system, it's quite staggering. Amazon now has 5 million print titles available, though only 480,000 or so e-books. I fully expect 10 million books to be available, in various formats, by 2020.

What does this mean for readers and writers? Niche audiences. The 288,000 industry titles will probably continue to decline, because the business model favors selling hundreds of thousands of copies of a single book over the hustling of many smaller titles. In the corporate world, economies of scale always make for a good quarterly report, all things being equal. Anyone bitter about the publishing industry should realize it must operate the way it does, and even then it's a difficult business. What's remarkable is that good books still get out there and writers can still have careers.

But a fracturing of the market is inevitable. The major limiting factor in audience building is not the readers' money, but time. Most people are only going to buy a certain amount of books, and many of the early adopters of e-book readers hoarded a bunch of content, much of it low-priced, and have enough reading material to last years. They have to be really persuaded to go out and find more authors, especially when a million titles are staring them in the face. A number of them appreciate what they consider a filter, the winnowing process of the publishing industry that supposedly rejects terrible books and protects readers. The only flaw in that thinking is the publishing industry will most certainly publish a terrible book if it will make money--I think most of us have read a few of them, or at least the first 30 pages.

But who will winnow the other 9 million books? Right now, it's a buyer's market, and people whose manuscripts used to languish in the bottom drawer now have computer files that can be uploaded in a matter of minutes. Over time, readers will churn the cream to the top--it has already happened in a few instances, where self-published e-books have been picked up by traditional publishers. These "success stories" make good campfire tales for those millions of unpublished writers out there. Except now they aren't unpublished.

Writers as brands is a staple of the modern industry, and it will become even more significant as the millions of new authors take the stage and compete on the electronic bookshelf. It's a beautiful, crazy time, and I understand how the traditional industry might feel invaded and pillaged--they had a good thing going, a nice little castle and a high turret from which to view and shape the landscape. Now, nobody knows which way the storms will blow, least of all me. Anyone who believes in her work should have the opportunity to find readers--it may only be a handful, it may be millions. It still comes down to one writer connecting to one reader. Not much has changed, yet everything has changed.

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Writing survival tips? Too late, you're already dead

After last night's writing session, I stayed up after midnight reading the blog of Dean Wesley Smith, a pro's pro and author of 70 or so books. His comments are stunning and eye-opening. I'm not saying the advice works for everyone, especially since he writes a lot of science fiction and fantasy, fields in which a few publishers will still look at unagented manuscripts. He talks about "Killing The Sacred Cows of the Publishing Industry." In fact, he's writing the book.

Since this is part of the goal of my collaboration Write Good or Die, I'm talking with Dean about using some of the material. I knew of him, of course, but didn't seek him out until finding the blog of his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch, herself a prolific writer with a bibliography as long as a river and also a wellspring of practical advice. In fact, her blog is about a "survival guide" for writers, eerily similar to Write Good's subhead of "Survival Tips for 21st Century writers." I think, between the two of them, they just might make it!

Throughout my career, I have paid attention to the small details while focusing on the big picture. I never felt my industry partners in the past cared as much about those details as I did. I understand, because they have different priorities and goals. As well they should. But I didn't adequately fight for what I believed to be right, and those details did turn out to matter. To me, not to them.

The old, broke, and sick living-legend author is practically a cliche now. Professional organizations, conventions, and communities rush to their rescue with fundraisers and benefits. That's heart-warming and inspiring, but also deeply sad at its core. Agents and editors and publishing corporations are not building pension funds for writers. In most cases, they go, "Here is a lump sum, buy your own insurance, pay your own taxes, and by the way, we'll control your content for X number of years and take 90 percent of everything. Oh, and the agent will take 15 percent of that remaining 10 percent. Be grateful. Now go out there and hustle this book for us at your own time and expense, or we'll dump you. And still tie up your rights."

It's insane. Even right now, the lure of "ooh, I have an agent," and "ooh, they really, really like me" is a heady tonic. And, even now, practically speaking, it's the absolute best way to be a "professional writer." That shows the sad state of this occupation, and the lowly fate of most writers. Even the people who love us don't treat us very well. Below the blockbusters, all the rest of us are bottom feeders.

I've always thought of my writing as products of my creation, products of my ownership, and that rightly I should wring income from them for as long as I live, and even pass that income on to my heirs for as long as the works are protected by copyright. I should be free to exploit those products, and achieve the majority of the profits. Dean Koontz refers to his books as "annuities," income-bearing properties. Obviously he's made mistakes, as admitted through his hilarious newsletter, and hasn't been afraid to change agents if things weren't working out.

A writer friend of mine was telling the story of one of his book deals, and when the agent was hemming and hawing a little, the acquiring editor said, "Let's just add a zero to the end." No matter the numbers, that is just plain stupid. A little hesitation automatically increases the property's value by a factor of ten? Would this have happened if the editor was spending her own money? And they say New York isn't broken? Hey, I am happy for this writer, and this writer deserves it.

But please spare me the whining about how major publishing needs to be preserved and protected with artificially high ebook prices so that we can "save the independent bookstores." I am willing to bet if corporate publishing and distribution were decentralized, there would be an explosion of independent bookstores. Of course, they'd better be selling decent coffee and have a POD kiosk, as well as some sort of digital catalog or library. They might even start having book signings again. You know, the part with the writers.

I guess the preservation of any culture depends upon your personal stake in it. If you are an agent getting easy deals, why should you care about the long-term well-being of your clients? If you're an editor who will probably get fired if you don't deliver a blockbuster, why should you risk your neck for a "small book" with a lot of heart? If business as usual is keeping you fed, why bother to change? If you're a writer, why not trust your career to the people who know how all this is supposed to work, for your own good?

Heck, look at me. I'm willing to trade words for magic beans. I'm as stupid as anybody.
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