I’ve spent much of this week talking w/ agent friends about a specific kind of professional violation: the exciting author who makes a verbal commitment, disappears, and then either signs with s/o else or just poof! Is in PubMark one day w/a surprise deal. (Incoming #pubtip rant)
This happens to us all at least once or twice, and honestly? It’s a terrible, terrible feeling. And it feels just as terrible when you’re an experienced star agent and otherwise v. resilient as it does when you’re just beginning and feel like you’ve lost a precious foothold.
Our livelihood - honestly our whole purpose and value to authors- is built on two things: 1. we are paid on commission for things we have done on spec, on sweat equity. Our time and ideas are capital. We invest them as capital.
2. In order to be the kind of agent who does the job well, we need tremendous trust, transparency, and goodwill with clients. The whole point is that we’re aligning our interests with authors’. That requires tremendous vulnerability along with capital investment on our part.
I offer a lot of my product for free, because free samples sell the cake. I’m competing with 5-6 other agents for nearly every client I sign. As long as I know that, I will give them the whole damn Whole Foods on the free sample tray as I pitch my woo. I love competing! Truly.
But once an author tells me “I like you best! I’m in,” any further capital I’m putting in is capital I expect to be able to convert to money. That author is no longer in the free sample product budget. Most of my capital investment needs to pay.
And if an author who has said that to me or any other agent wanders away, putters, and then signs with someone else? It’s not just ghosting. This is not a romantic relationship. It’s theft. It’s theft of that capital we invested on false pretenses.
I don’t think the people who do this recognize it as such. They think, I imagine, that this IS like a romantic relationship, in that it’s fair to flirt and even commit over wine and candlelight and then just fade away until someone more inspiring or exciting comes along.
It is not. No matter how much time has passed - most clients take at least a year plus to write a book after orally committing, so we’re used to that - we think our product is still in the storeroom, waiting for its day on the shop floor.
Anyway TL DR don’t be a dick, publishing is too small, 99% of writers don’t do this, but the ones who do are usually exciting “gets,” and when they do it they make it harder for the entire author-side part of the industry to work as it should. Fin
