And on a similar line, "From Pitch to Publication" talks about a case where agent and author fell out

Has anyone noticed that even if you adhere to the guidelines Carole gives, showing that you've read her book, she still includes a flier for it when she rejects your script.

How many copies does she want me to buy???

It's worth remembering that the deal is by no means everything, and it's not a simple matter of honourable little publishers and big bad ones. The size of the advance is only a little part of the whole deal. Little publishers can offer the most appalling deals: within the last month or two on WW alone I've heard of a small US publisher demanding world rights while having no distribution or representation in Europe at all, so that the book simply wouldn't be available over here except via a 6 week wait for Amazon, and a tiny UK publisher who so failed to do their sums that they demanded a 20,000 word cut long after the contract was signed, just before the book went into production and two months before publication.

If I were an agent and I took a book on, I would do so with the express intention of putting a lot of work into getting it sold. If the author then came along and said, "sorry mate, sold it without you", I'd be more than a little miffed, and justifiably so, both at my wasted work and loss of income. BTW, who's Roger?

But why would you be dealing with small publishers without keeping your agent up to date? As I said before, it would be up to you both to agree what to do about publishers who don't accept agented submissions. If you can't agree, they're not the agent for you. As far as publishers whose advances wouldn't make the agent much money, they'd just go further down the list of people for the agent to try. But a good agent will leave no stone unturned: 10% of £5,000 or even £2,000 is better than 10% of nothing, and if it does well, the next book is in a much stronger position. And if they can't find even that kind of deal, they'll suggest - as Roger's agent did - that you try other routes.

Roger, BTW, is WWer rogermorris, whose novel was published in the first wave of MNW.

Emma

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Has anyone noticed that even if you adhere to the guidelines Carole gives, showing that you've read her book, she still includes a flier for it when she rejects your script.

I think this is pretty shabby, actually. It's not the same as offering your editorial services as you reject someone, which is downright scammy, but it shades into that.

you are entering into a business partnership

Exactly. As such, the question is always "what is this person bringing to the deal that wouldn't be there without them?".

It's easy to see what an agent brings when a deal goes above a certain value. Less easy to see it for a high-risk, small print-run, first-timer deal.

I don't know the full maths of all this, but supposing a first-timer author was supposed to get 75p from each book and the book only sells 1500 copies. At 15%, that gives the agent only £168.75. I can't see that amount of money buying a whole lot of agent time, perhaps two days if you get a really junior one.

Heck, they could use up all of that up before picking up the phone to a single publisher.

How many copies does she want me to buy???

You have to hand it to her, though, she understands how to make money from publishing.

Wow! This thread is moving too quickly to keep up with.

Emma, all good points!

Now I'd better do some of the paying work that allows me to keep writing...

They'd accept a deal like that in the faith that the next book would be bigger: the loss-leader's a perfectly sensible business principle. If they don't have that faith, they won't take you on. Even if they do, all agents know that some of their authors subsidise others: I share an agent with Penny Vincenzi, and we all know it's not me paying the office rent. Many authors make not much more than a loss for the agent throughout their writing careers, but the agent loves the book and the person and it's worth it for the pleasure of working with them.

But the sums aren't necessarily as gloomy as that. The average advance for a first literary novel from a mainstream house is £5,000-£8,000, so the agent gets between £500 and £1,200, depending on their commission. If the book does better than expected (which is something the author can do something about, and the agent can help too by pushing the publisher into doing their stuff) then there'll be a modest royalty and back-pats all round. If that's only UK and Commonwealth rights, then the agent can still sell US, sub and translation rights too, which nets them 20% because of the higher costs involved.

Emma

But the sums aren't necessarily as gloomy as that.

Finally, a chink of light!

If I accept the loss-leader idea (although I think I use a slightly different definition to you), and I decide that my book is of mainstream appeal, and I use the upper end of the scale of payments to the agent, then I can conceive of the agent thinking it worthwhile to provide all the things that you quote agents as doing for me.

But,

We could work out a graph of the optimum moment at which to side with an agent or go direct to publisher.

There is always the possibility that any first-timer novel may have a limited audience due to timing, marketability, plot, character, writing, subject matter or...

I don't know how many books an £8000 advance translates to, but essentially, the decision to go with an agent or a small publisher comes down to which side of that number I think my sales will fall.

Trouble is, to work that out, I either need some industry knowledge, or I need an agent...

Or an oracle...

Well, at a rough guess, it's about 6,000 books if it's the standard 10% royalty on hardback with a cover price of £15, ignoring the horror-sums of high-discount. Publishers can still make money on a book that hasn't earned out its advance.

A little publisher who sold six thousand would be doing startlingly well. But a small publisher won't do you a hardback, but a trade paperback original, on which the royalty is more like 7½%, and on a lower cover price. It's then all but impossible to get reviews and - more important for sales - media coverage. Nor can small publishers afford the time to pursue this kind of thing, or the money to buy into the chain bookshops promotions.

Emma

There is always the possibility that any first-timer novel may have a limited audience due to timing, marketability, plot, character, writing, subject matter or...

Any writer who has doubts about the plot, character, writing or subject matter of their novel should concentrate on writing a better novelnot on whether or not to get an agent, let alone on wriggling their way onto a few bookshop shelves come what may. If it's good enough, even timing and marketability won't come into it.

If it isn't good enough, and you nonetheless manage to fight it onto a few bookshop shelves, the chances are it will do badly. You're then worse off trying to get someone to take your second novel on than you were with your first. I know it's horrible being rejected, I know terrific writing sometimes gets missed, I know that there are wonderful writers too thin-skinned to keep battling on. But maybe, just maybe, someone who's tried every single agent it seems sensible to try (20, 30, 40?) and been rejected, should wonder if the agents are right: perhaps they should stick that one under their bed, and write a better one.

Emma

Any writer who has doubts about the plot, character, writing or subject matter of their novel should concentrate on writing a better novel

I notice the one you left out of the list is marketability! For which, I have to keep thinking of Stephen King...

To me, my novel is wonderful. Dark, but wonderful. That said, I have been accused of arrogance on more than one occasion and my tastes are not always mainstream. Ergo, I could be wrong, or I could be right and it still might not sell.

No I didn't leave out marketability, I said this:

If it's good enough, even timing and marketability won't come into it.

But good enough is the key here: Stephen King is very, very good at what he does. But we all think our novels are wonderful. I have six under my bed and every single one, when finished and revised and revised again, I thought was wonderful. One came within a hairsbreadth of being taken on by a major publisher. I wouldn't dream of trying to sell it now...

Emma

Emma is proof that the work pays off. Six novels is nothing to sniff at. I hear of so many writers that knock out one novel and spend years trying to fix it. Sometimes you have to move on, and then on again. Each time you do, you improve. So everyone, write this on the top of your monitor now: "You can't polish a turd".

(as said by Darnell in Christine, by Stephen King)

Colin

Hi Emma,
You say it's "all but impossible to get reviews on a trade paperback."
Is this true? I heard that TPs are considered the same as hardbacks these days, they're just cheaper and will therefore shift more copies – but they still get reviewed/media coverage. Is this wrong, do you think?

Well, it's not something I'm an expert in, and I think it's true that the market's moving that way, so I guess it's the kind of careful decision that publishers make. Depends quite a lot how 'literary' the book is, I'd have thought - the more towards the mass-market end of the spectrum, the less reviews matter anyway.

Emma

Yeah, I guess. Thanks Emma.

Depends quite a lot how 'literary' the book is

I am reminded at this point of a lecturer at Warwick University who went near apoplectic at the mention of vegetarian cheddar - how, he asked, can you make a dairy product without using dairy (as in animal) produce?
I have a similar difficulty with the concept of organic food. What exactly is an inorganic carrot? Is it in any way related to a non-literary (def 2: of or relating to books) book?