How often does a good agent sell

This is why a subscription to Publishers Marketplace comes in handy.
You can see listed deals for each genre and agent. My agent is successful but she does maybe none to 3 deals a month but these deals are significant ones. I've seen others who do three deals a year...
Researching this on PM is really helpful and allows you to see who the players are for each genre...

CloudyDay said:

I was wondering on average how many deals an agent makes in a year. If an agent goes a year or two without a deal, does that mean they're not any good or maybe burned too many bridges?

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No, it might mean that they were coping with illness, or the illness or death of a family member, or taking time away from the office to do full-time parenting or grandparenting, or training for an Everest expedition, or many other things. Hard to know without other information.

ORION said:

This is why a subscription to Publishers Marketplace comes in handy... Researching this on PM is really helpful and allows you to see who the players are for each genre...

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Please be aware that not every agent puts listings on Pub Mktplace. Some very very big "players" do not list anything on PM at all. Others list very selectively.

Yeah, that's true, but you can get a good idea in general...William Morris Agency is pretty good about posting deals...

Whenever they have a great book submitted to them

My agent's agency doesn't post deals to Publisher's Marketplace.

CloudyDay, why not google your agent's name with "sales." That's how I found the deals my agent made.

CloudyDay said:

Okay Danthia. I'll assume you're joking. I was actually trying to decide if I had signed with a good agent or not. Thanks anyway.

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Actually I wasn't joking. A good agent is like saying a good mother. Everyone has their own views of what that is. A good agent will sell good books whenever they get them. Maybe they have a full client list and everyone has multiple deals in place, so they may not sell anything for a while because they're plate is full and their putting their energy into their existing clients to build their careers. Maybe they prefer to work with a small number of clients, and might not sell a lot in a year, but be awesome at their jobs and do everything in their power to guide an author's career. Maybe they have 50 clients and sell books every month, but do nothing to help a career and if the author never sells another book they don't care because there's always new fish.

It's very subjective. There's no checklist to say yes or no (unless they're a scam agent and are listed on one of the warning sites). You can't look at a set of numbers and say good or bad. You have to do your research and then decide for yourself. Because even if five agents all have great sales records and are great agents, the one that's right for you might not be the one that's right for me. A good agent for you could be a bad agent for me.

If you've already signed then ask them what deals they've made...

Personally, I rarely publish my deals to Publishers Marketplace. The editors often do, though. I'm more likely to mention it on my blog, but even then I often leave out mention of foreign deals. My preference is to publish when I have a signed contract, not a verbal deal. Since months can go by between the two, I just lose track of whether or not the editor posted on PM and don't bother. My clients know I made the deal for them and that's what matters.

A better way to judge may be to go to that agent's website and see what kind of books they rep, which authors they rep, etc.

As for "how often," I'm not sure that's a good criteria by which to judge. I have a client for whom I have done three deals in about a decade. One was a five-book deal, one was a three-book deal, and one was a six-book deal. And each of those deals took months to hammer out (the last took over a year). So is three deals in a decade too few, or just right, for this client?

Z