Short and grumpy

A short and irritable email this week, inspired by a trio of author-interactions I’ve had in the weeks since Christmas.

Three authors. Three stories. Here they are.

Author #1

Sells her debut book to a Big 5 publisher for a reasonably good advance. Lots of excitement, lots of mwahs, lots of happiness.

The excitement and happiness lasts for a while, but in the weeks before publication something in the atmosphere starts to fade. A cover reveal is mishandled on Twitter. A publicist is changed, a bit abruptly. Actual, tangible marketing activity seems hard to locate.

The author happens to grumble – a bit – to me about it. I ask the author what the level of supermarket orders is. She asks her editor (with whom she still has a decent relationship.) Editor says, roughly, “No, a bit disappointing unfortunately but, yay!, orders from Waterstones are yadda yadda, blah blah, change the subject.”

The marketing never materialised.

That’s author #1.

(Info on how to get published can be found here.)

Author #2

Has a reasonable track record over several books. Sales in one (smallish territory) have been good. Sales in the bigger, more influential markets have been weak, probably due to inattentive publishing. Reader reviews and critical reception has always been strong.

Anyway, after a hiatus, Author #2 writes another book and gets a (perfectly fine) offer direct from a publisher.

She goes to her agent with the offer. It is now that agent’s job to turn that offer into a contract, and to knit together a set of deals across the various English language territories, so that the author has a proper sales platform to work with.

But – after weeks of delay – the agent dumps the author. Nothing to do with the author; more a change of direction for the agent.

Now, it’s perfectly OK for agents to alter direction, of course, but that doesn’t, to my mind, mean that you can desert your existing clients at their moment of greatest need. On the contrary, you need to get the deal done, then move on. You take on those obligations when you take on clients. Like it or lump it.

That’s one thing, but there’s another. In this case, the agent was and is part of a large and well-resourced agency with plenty of other agents. So if Agent X wants to change direction, she should damn well speak to her colleagues and say, “We can’t, as an agency, let our client down, so please can someone step in here for me.”

That didn’t happen.

The author – the admirable Author #2 – has a publishing offer that urgently needs attention and she’s been abandoned by both her agency and her agent. Great.

(Info on how to get an agent in the first place can be found here.)

Author #3

This author email wasn’t even especially grumbly. It was just a “hi, how are you” from someone I last talked to years ago.

But one snippet from that conversation struck me. Author #3 got an agent. Agent launches the manuscript at the Big 5 publishers and their immediate competitors. Some nice words came back, but no offers.

The author then thought, “Well, that’s disappointing, but there’s a slew of smaller publishers who might be interested,” … only to discover that her agent had no intention of approaching them. Their relationship ended right there, over the corpse of an unsold book.

And I don’t like any of this. Not one bit of it.

Here’s what I think:

• Author #1: What happened here was that a big publisher killed its marketing efforts when it didn’t get sales from supermarkets. What should have happened was that the marketing effort pivoted to be Amazon-led, not supermarket led. But no such pivot happened. The publisher hasn’t yet come clean with the author, and likely never will, but when the supermarket orders failed, that author’s career was dead – even before the first book of a two-book deal was even published.
• Author #2. Agents can’t abandon authors when authors most need their help. It’s fine to part company, but you have to take the author’s needs in mind when it comes to timing. And big agencies should act like big agencies. If one agent is forced to step out, another should gladly step in. That shouldn’t be forced on the agency by a plaintive author. It should – obviously – be the way the agency wants to approach its business.
• Author #3. If an agent takes on an author, they should take that author on. Yes, a small publishing deal will earn peanuts for the agent, but it’ll quite likely be one of the most important things ever to happen to the author in question. An honourable agent should let the big deals pay for all the deals that never quite happened.

And many agents, agencies and publishers are deeply honourable about these things. I don’t want to suggest that malpractice is rife across the industry. But it is too common.

And I don’t like it.

These things are almost never the author’s fault. It’s just crappy behaviour by people who should know better. But because authors are (weirdly) relatively powerless in their own industry, there are no effective sanctions against bad behaviour. These things come down to a question of honour. Of honouring the broader contract between author and agent, or between author and publisher.

What can we do about it? Not a lot, except call it out when we see it.

What can you do about it? Not a lot, except know that you haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not you, it’s them. Oh yes, and if you start to feel like you are being badly treated by your agent or publisher, then you are quite likely right to think so. It’s time to start making plans to move on.

There.

Rant over.

As promised: it was grumpy.

Alas, however: it was not also short. My bad. I can’t really do short. Sorry.

I shall be sunnier next week. I shall be Mr Sunshine, with my tapshoes on. I have given you a sunny header image to brighten your soul.

And what about you? I think this week we should scrap the Heated Debate and go straight into your experience of Planet Agent and the World of Publishing. What’s been good? What’s been bad? Let’s eat an ice cream and talk about it.