The Literary Agenting System Is Broken

If you have limited financial resources and knowledge of book production, the best way to get your book in Barnes and Noble is to get it traditionally published. How do you get traditionally published? You get a literary agent who can pitch your book to publishers. How do you get a literary agent?

You do the research, of course! You meticulously research agents by perusing their horribly designed agency websites, skimming interviews they did on blogs half a decade ago, and reading their tweets like tea leaves. A good portion of people who call themselves agents will charge writers money, but you know to avoid them. It’s the others that are tricky. How do you make sure that you don’t query or sign with someone who will waste your time?

You can’t. There is no surefire way to keep yourself safe while querying because the literary agenting system is broken.

Disclaimer Time!

I think I’m going to set my lifetime record for feather-ruffling with this post, so I’d best put up a few disclaimers.

1. Certainly, there are people employed as literary agents who work hard to get books sold and do the best they can in the system that exists. Most agents I’ve interacted with are interesting and caring people who love books.

2. This post is mostly about why the model behind agenting is so broken, not about attacking agents or the people who choose to sign with them. Traditional publishing offers several advantages, and the main way to access a major publishing deal is by signing with a literary agent. I love and support many agented authors.

3. I’m talking specifically about literary agenting in the United States and can’t speak to agenting in other countries.

Disclaimers out of the way, let me address the major issues I see with the practice of literary agenting as it stands.

There Are No Gatekeepers for the Gatekeepers

Literary agenting is by and large an unregulated field. While there are practical barriers to becoming a successful literary agent, there aren’t many to prevent you from being a terrible agent that wastes months or years of an author’s time.

To start a literary agency, you can slap together a Wix or Weebly or WordPress and grow a Twitter following of desperate writers in a flash. Make an MSWL and a few podcast appearances to gain instant credibility. Manuscripts will flood in regardless of your ability to actually sell books.

By contrast, starting a publishing house requires money, at the very least, to get books designed and printed, and money is an effective gatekeeper. 

A Few Examples of Agents and Agencies That Failed Their Authors

Let’s name just a few incidents with agents and agencies in recent history. Please note that none of the agents or agencies listed ever charged authors money (the traditional red flag), and that there was absolutely no way for querying authors to have determined they were disreputable. As far as I can tell, these agents and agencies were all respected in the industry.

Gark Mottlieb

Gark Mottlieb is still an active agent and loves to sue anyone who mentions his name, so he’s the only one I’ll obfuscate a bit. In 2018, Gark was criticized for submitting manuscripts to several houses at once, not giving authors updates about their submissions, and refusing to tell authors where he’d submitted their manuscripts. I haven’t been following him closely enough to know if he’s changed his ways, but I certainly wouldn’t recommend querying him.

 Here is a publicly available document from the Association of Author Representatives (AAR) Ethics Committee about the allegations.

Gark is still actively agenting at his dad’s agency and appearing at media events and has sued all the criticisms of him off the internet. So that’s fun.

Twinning: Two Racist Literary Agency Owners

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, both Dawn Frederick, owner of Red Sofa Literary, and Marisa Corvisiero, owner of Corvisiero Agency, made remarks on Twitter that made it clear they cared more about property damage than state-sponsored murder, and both agencies had agents who quit because they didn’t want to work for racist bosses.

At Corvisiero, many agents were also upset about the agency’s recent decision to represent James Dashner, who was accused of sexual misconduct and dropped by another agency. Soon after, Marisa Corvisiero fired all the agents who hadn’t already quit. Both agencies are still up and running.  

Both agents seem to have done their best to bury these stories—Frederick with legal action. Interpret their now-deleted tweets and apologies how you will, but it’s clear these agents don’t want to make it easy for authors to “do their research.”

Danielle Smith

Danielle Smith ran Lupine Grove Creative from 2013 to 2018 and had around 60 clients. The issue was she couldn’t sell books. Instead, she forged emails from editors to make it look like she had sold books. 

Smith made many media appearances that gave her the social proof needed to keep agenting for so many years. In fact, I had her on my to-query list. This scandal only broke because her clients made a private Facebook group to discuss their experiences.

As Rebecca Ruth Gould put it, “Smith’s deceptions were made possible by an industry that has failed to prioritize authors’ need for transparent communication about how their work is sold, marketed, and shared with the world.” 

Maximus Literary

As I was drafting this post, it dropped on Twitter that Maximus Literary was closing its doors out of the blue, leaving many writers to go back into the query trenches. From what I could gather, it was simple case of bad company management. My heart goes out to everyone affected.

Research Isn’t a Cure-All

Let’s take a look at the research tools writers have access to.

Publishers Marketplace

The most accurate information comes from Publishers Marketplace, a website with a less-than-ideal UI that charges aspiring authors $25 per month to see if the agents they’re querying actually have a history of selling books. When you see screenshots of deal announcements, they’re from this website.

QueryTracker

QueryTracker is a free service (with paid premium features) where authors can get crowdsourced estimates of how long an agent will take to respond. It has forums with some honest discussion about agents. However, they happily deleted forum posts when threatened to be sued by one Gark Mottlieb.

Writer Beware

Writer Beware is doing the lord’s work by documenting when literary agents and publishing houses attempt to defraud authors. It’s free to access and has helped countless authors avoid wasting time and money on bad actors. It’s also volunteer-run by writers who do not have the resources to keep information as up-to-date as we would all like.  

The Fabled Whisper Network

As someone with social anxiety, I resent the idea that I should rely on a “whisper network” to stay safe when querying. This comes up again and again. I’m sorry, but people who are bad at making friends shouldn’t have to deal with shady agents. No one should. 

Would you rely on a whisper network to find a contractor, lawyer, real estate agent, doctor, or anyone else who works with something that is precious to you? No. You would rely on accreditations and standardization and laws that are there to protect you, and you’d probably still look at reviews publicly available online too.

I completely understand why authors give this advice. Agents and their agencies have proven to be vindictive toward whistleblowers in the past. Agents tend to have large social media followings and will happily crush authors who don’t step in line. But a whisper network is far from an ideal solution, and the fact that it’s needed at all demonstrates that there is something seriously wrong with the industry.

My Ideas for a Better System

No one likes complaints with no corresponding solutions. So here are my ideas.

1. Break up the Big Five/Four

The biggest problem right now is the oligopoly formed by Hachette, Harper Collins, Macmillian, and Random Penguin Simon. They’re raking in record profits while firing talented editors right and left OR pushing them out with low wages and overwork. More competition will force publishers to be more thoughtful about staffing to compete with other houses.

The Justice Department moving to stop Random Penguin Simon is a great first step, but we need to break up the houses into more competitive pieces. While we’re at it, let’s decentralize New York so that a more diverse pool of people can afford to be part of the industry.

2. Publishers Hire More Acquisitions Editors and Editorial Assistants

Today, agents are essentially working as acquisitions editors. They read through manuscripts to find gems and even perform developmental edits. This happened over time as publishers asked editorial assistants to assist more and more editors, leaving them zero time to actually read through a slush pile.

This work should be brought where it belongs: within publishing houses.

3. Agents Negotiate Deals and That’s It

Authors seek representation once they already have interest from a publisher. Agents get back to their main jobs: helping authors negotiate better deals with publishers—something closer to a lawyer than an editor. They don’t become social media stars, don’t edit manuscripts, and don’t complain about how terrible queries are. People who would once have been attracted to the role because they like interacting with authors and reading manuscripts will instead become editors. People who love arguing and selling things will be attracted to agenting and get authors better deals.

5. Make an Accessible Version of Publishers Marketplace

We need a revamp of Publishers Marketplace that is more accessible. That means free to use with a UI that makes sense and follows accessibility best practices. Publishers should work together to create this and volunteer their information for free in the name of transparency and diversity, equity, and inclusion.

6. Agent Reviews Online and Whistleblower Protection

We need a website—or several—where authors can leave honest reviews of their experience with agents. Instead of whispering, authors should be able to just talk.

In the same breath, authors need to be protected from agents retaliating and blacklisting authors. How do I propose to enforce that? A few ideas are:

• Whistleblower protection acts specifically for querying writers

• Unions representing published authors (similar to the Screen Actors Guild)

• Greater oversight from the FTC

If agents are uncomfortable with this existing, they don’t have to join the industry.

Don’t Let Publishing Gaslight You: This Isn’t Normal

If it feels like the publishing industry expects you to put up with way more sketchy situations than any other realm of your life, it’s because it does. The love of books and writing should not be framed as the counterbalance to excuse providing low compensation, poor working environments, lack of protection, and blatant unprofessionalism—but it is. All the time. It isn’t normal, and you’re right to be upset.