Today’s our last chat with Canadian author Mary W. Walters whose seminal blog post has stirred and shaken literary agents on both sides of the Atlantic. What future is there for the agent in tomorrow’s brave new publishing world? We stand on the cusp – it could be a new Golden Age, or it could just as easily be the eve of extinction. Those agents who truly study the needs of authors are most likely to prosper.
In today’s Write Report, Donna reveals more information about the proposed Google Book-Scan Settlement – click here to go to the site Donna’s talking about.
In Eve’s Salmagundi Club, she finds a site that provides a free extension for Firefox that allows you to select any word on any web page and do useful things.
Links: The Write Report, Hyperwords
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Thank you, Mary, for your "seminal" blog post, and Peter, for taking the time to further discuss these issues regarding the current state of affairs in the publishing world. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for all of us, and with any luck, your efforts will inspire the right people to take the initiative toward change (rather than roll their eyes and scoff that we "don't know how this business works"). I really enjoyed listening to this discussion, learned quite a few things (some very disturbing), and plan to tune in regularly in the future! Thanks again!
Hi Peter, this is an interesting subject, and as an agent I work hard at trying to find new writers, well I exclusively focus on new writers, as I am too boutique for known authors. I do disagree with Mary at times and sometimes feel she is trying to create a bigger problem out of what is more of an annoyance to agents and authors. Perhaps I am concerned that some of this discussion was a bit aimless and not really offering alternatives or much in the way of hope. Yes there is a problem and I am aware of it as all my authors face the great difficulty of just being new and previously unpublished. At times I have great books that I feel have outstanding appeal but, and this is the big but, they all stand on the edge of the genre boxes and not front and centre. Publishers have to do what sells, and I follow and agree with them on this, but booksellers are the ones who really are stifling the business. Just how do you fix that? The agent can't dictate to the book store. How do we reducate book sellers into the carrying and selling of the NEW voice as well as the old ones?
Robert, I think our business (agenting) is in profound transition, just as publishing is in transition from analog to digital. The traditional agent’s role of deal-broker will become, I suspect, less and less important, counter-balanced by authors’ growing requirement for a broader range of support services (and they won’t get that from publishers).
I’d say that the traditional agent has been closer to the publisher than the author. However, the new agent will be much closer to the author. That’s one of the reasons that I think Mary’s voice is so important, because clearly, there are a lot of authors out there who don’t feel agents are doing a good job – and we ignore them at our peril.
How do we persuade booksellers to get behind new talent (and indeed, to support the mid-lister)? Well, any business that allows itself to become hostage to a very small number of very powerful buyers is asking for trouble, and that’s just what’s happened to publishing. Bizarrely, publishing has never been consumer-facing, and they’re certainly paying the price for that now. I suspect the answer to this lies in developing a closer relationship between the author and their readership, which is already happening in some cases quite nicely here on the net. It’s not a short-term – or necessarily complete – solution, but it’s one promising step into our digital future.