Anyone heard about this? if you were contemplating it, what would your thoughts/concerns/questions be?
http://janefriedman.com/2013/03/26/amazon-white-glove-program/

I don't see the point really - if I wanted someone to format and upload my documents (and why would I, when there are step by step guides freely available?), I would pay someone a one-off fee to do it. To my mind, an agent is there to sell your work, not to produce it.

I would be more interested if the agent were to offer a publicity/promotion package instead.

Well-balanced article. I think in general new writers need to be more wary of agents than ever. They're clearly getting desperate, as they lose income through lower advances and tighter publishing deals.

But really, how can any writer take this proposition seriously:

Some agents help an author self-publish, literally. This means they format the files for publication and upload them, and take 15% of the sales revenue.

Why on earth would a literary agent have skills in formatting, uploading, etc? They're in exactly the same position here as the author. Anything they've learned, the author probably knows anyway. Formatting, at least for hard copy books, is highly skilled, and can be costly. Why would you pay an untrained agent to do it for you? Worse still, they don't want to charge you the going set fee rate, that any professional formatter or editor would charge - they want 15% of your sales!

I would be more interested if the agent were to offer a publicity/promotion package instead.

But again, how is an agent going to have more expertise in this than you? Particularly where self-publishing is concerned, an activity which, let's face it, most agents are highly allergic to in the first place.

I would be extremely wary of contracting my agent to do anything except represent me in selling my books to a third party - including fine-tuning, if you're lucky and it suits you, to get the book to a saleable point.

Where I can see a role for an agent as the digital revolution revolves is in doing the leg-work in investigating the self-publishing possibilities, in the same spirit as they're better than me at selling foreign rights, or the Google Settlement, or understanding eBook contracts. As Meg Davies says, part of her job is to spend lots of times getting to understanding the ins and outs of very boring things like the Google Settlement and ITIN numbers, so her authors don't have to.

If - for example - I had a backlist of titles that had gone O/P but my agent and I both believed there was still a market for them (perhaps because I had new titles being published) then it might well be that the agent was better placed than me to understand the ins and outs of the possibilities, and help me to decide how best to set about it.

But that's very different from the agent becoming a publisher herself, and so it doesn't represent a conflict of interest - and presumably if the work was well outside her normal responsibilities and workload, we'd have some kind of agreement about commission.

Where agencies have set up a subsidiary of their own to do ePublishing or whatever, it's much trickier, because then they have a whole separate set of interests, which could be in conflict.

So, sounds like we're unanimous; not great for writers.
G

Not quite! I'd like to discuss this more, if I may.
First of all, hello! Some of you may rmember me from way back when: I've been a member for many years, but not active for a while as I was too poor to afford the membership fees, and also no too active in the writing world. Now I'm back!

I've just signed an agent-assisted agreement with my agency, and I'd like to adress a few of the concerns mentioned above, as well as explain why I am doing this, and why I think it's a good thing.

Why on earth would a literary agent have skills in formatting, uploading, etc? They're in exactly the same position here as the author. Anything they've learned, the author probably knows anyway. Formatting, at least for hard copy books, is highly skilled, and can be costly. Why would you pay an untrained agent to do it for you? Worse still, they don't want to charge you the going set fee rate, that any professional formatter or editor would charge - they want 15% of your sales!

My agency had a whole department dedicated to its epublishing branch. The regular agents are not the one who do this work. I imagine that they DO have staff who have these skills! So it's not that the "unskilled agents" are somehow fitting us in alongside their day-jobs. The people who do it, do have the skills.

I don't see the point really - if I wanted someone to format and upload my documents (and why would I, when there are step by step guides freely available?), I would pay someone a one-off fee to do it. To my mind, an agent is there to sell your work, not to produce it. I would be more interested if the agent were to offer a publicity/promotion package instead.

This post seems to cvontradict the one above: the first quote said that these are difficult skills that you have to be highly trained in, the second quote says they are actually only DIY skills! Which is is?

The agencies who do this DO offer marketing along with the tech stuff. Mine certainly does. It's not either/or. It's a whole support package.

As for the one-off fee: yes, this could be done. But the writers who go for this option are seeking a business partner who is as interested in making the book earn as they are. I would be delighted if my agent gets rich on my 15%, as it means I am even richer!

The reason I am so glad that this model exists, at last, is that I am not at all, not even in the tiniest bit, interested in the techniques OR the business of self-publishing. But I do want to self-publish: namely, my very first novel, published 1999, and out of print for many years. I want to give it a second run without having to being a publisher myself. This arrangement is perfect for me.

As for giving away 15%: the novel is earning nothing at the moment. I don't have the time or the inclination to self-publish it on my own. Even if it only earns 100 quid as an ebook, it's still a profit, and I'm happy to give my agent a percentage for taking the work off me.

If it earns more, all the better. I have two other HarperCollins books I could self publish the same way, plus four other novels, plus two memoirs. It might work, or it might not; certainly, I'm entering new territors here, but there is no risk at all.

There are a lot of discussions about this, blogs with long comment threads, and it seems the nay-sayers are all people who enjoy html, metadata, SEO etc and/or running around all over the net promoting their books. That's not for me.



<Added>

edit: oops, sorry for all the typos! I was just finishing off when the door bell rang and I hit "post message" by mistake -- I'll read and edit before posting in future!

Two more points, in reference to the original article:

Authors lose 15% of their sales revenue indefinitely

and:

You’ll spend a lot less than 15% over the lifetime sales of your book.

I don't believe the author has seen an actual contract for agent-assisted self-publishing, My contract allows me to quit the agreement after three years. I know of other authors whose agreements allow the to quit after two years. Trust me, if I feel my agent is not earning his 15% by growing sales, I'll quit!

I'm going to sit on the fence on this one.

On the one hand, I'm kinda sus of any agents getting involved and worry it might be a sort of back door way to get cash from books they cant sell traditionally.

Also, as Emma says, surely doing both leaves them conflicted?

But that said, I do know lots of agents who are really at the end of their tethers with the current trad publishing model. They're seeing great mid listers dumped and lots of bright new work never gettinga chance becauseof the ridiculous conservatism that has a stranglehold on the industry. They believe in their writers! So they're looking elsehwere to help them get their stuff out there.

Difficult one.
HB x

Hi Helen, I think "wait and see" as you are doing, is a good option for most writers. Publishing is in flux now, and agents and publishers are re-positioning themselves; it's too early to take positions either pro or con, and the only reason I'm doing this is because I have nothing to lose whatsoever. Yet I am very positive that the connection to my agent (a big New York one) can boost sales; if their marketing can earn me more in the long run than I could on my own, then they've more than earned their keep, and that's what agents are for. They get us the best deals, whether that is a higher advance with a trade publisher, or helping us rise above the millions and millions of trashy self-published books out there. Time will tell.

As for the question of "conflict of interests", I don't agree. That would be the case if the agent was the publisher; he isn't. I am.

The question was answered well by David Graughan on Joe Konrath's blog; I'm not a fan of Joe usually, as he sees the whole self-publishing/trade publishing thing only in terms of black and white, but the arguments he uses as to why he chose to go this route are the same as mine. In the comments trail to this post
David says:

"A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other." It's hard to see how this applies to an agent who in neither instance acquires rights and in both instances earns the same percentage. As long as the agent makes the same 15% whether brokering a sale to a legacy publisher or assisting the author publish the work herself, the agent is incentivized to recommend the route that looks most likely to make the author the most money. So no hidden incentives, or at least no more so than has been the case with traditional agenting.

and also (quoting from another blog, and using the word "Legacy" to refer to trade publishing):

One of the smartest things said: there IS a conflict of interest with agents on this topic. If an agent doesn't offer self-pubbing services, then they will push their client into sticking with the legacy route, even if it isn't the best route, because that is the only way the agent can make money. That is NOT in a writer's best interests. If the agent offers both brokering legacy deals, and managing self pubbing deals, for the same 15%, the agent makes money either way and doesn't have to push the writer one way or the other. The writer can decide what they want.

And Joe says this, which I think cuts to the quick:

Why is it, if an agent negotiates a million dollar deal, and gets 15% ($150k) no one questions it, but if an agent manged a self pubbed ebook that has a million dollars in sales they don't deserve the 15%?

Anyway, we are all late to the discussions, which took place two years ago. I wish there were some recent updates, but I haven't found any. My agency says that one of their self-published brokered books got on the New York Times list. Other than that, there is little feedback. So I guess I'm a guinea-pig!

Not sure this is the right place for this but Lulu just posted a link to this article which is heartening, to say the least.

http://indiereader.com/2013/05/5-things-indie-authors-do-very-well/?utm_content=buffercd40c&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Buffer