Clients per Agent?

lkp · Oct 4, 2007

A couple of agents who blog have recently mentioned in passing how many clients they have, and I have been astonished at the huge variation.

Lori Perkins says she has 80 clients
Jennifer Jackson at Donald Maass has 40.
I don't know how many my agent has, but the firm where she works has 100 clients split I guess between the four agents.

Is this a normal range? Do you know how many clients your agent has? Does it matter how many or how few clients an agent has?

ORION · Oct 4, 2007

Mine has about 35 -- there's a site somewhere that lists agents by how many clients they have- but yanno it's the number of SALES not the number of clients-
Check out Publishers Marketplace for deals.

triceretops · Oct 5, 2007

Mine has 39, 26 of which are fiction writers.

Tri

Redhedd · Oct 5, 2007

Mine has about 65 for both fiction and non-fiction, but he says that not all of them are active. The entire firm has more than 400, but it's a pretty major firm and they handle darn near anything.

It's not 100% accurate, but http://www.agentresearch.com/dreckoning.html can give you a rough idea of how many clients and agent has.

lkp · Oct 5, 2007

I saw that, Redhedd, but since they have Lori Perkins at 14 and she said she had 80 a couple of days ago, I'm not sure I trust them!

And I'm not sure it matters because, as Pat said, it's the sales not the clients that count. But still, all things being equal (and all the agents mentioned in this thread are ones anyone would want to have) i think I'd rather be one of fewer than one of more.

Carrie R. · Oct 5, 2007

The key is that they don't have so many clients that they can't give you the attention you want/deserve. Sometimes an agent will have a big list of clients, but not all of them write a novel every year, and some will have a small list of clients who write 4 books a year. Sometimes they might have a really small list of clients and so they spend a ton of time trying to get more clients: reading slush, going to conferences, etc. So I'm not sure that number of clients really equates how busy they are.

Of course, I still asked my agent how many clients he had before I signed

Redhedd · Oct 5, 2007

Carrie R. said:
The key is that they don't have so many clients that they can't give you the attention you want/deserve. Sometimes an agent will have a big list of clients, but not all of them write a novel every year, and some will have a small list of clients who write 4 books a year. Sometimes they might have a really small list of clients and so they spend a ton of time trying to get more clients: reading slush, going to conferences, etc. So I'm not sure that number of clients really equates how busy they are.

Of course, I still asked my agent how many clients he had before I signed

Same here. And also asked how many new clients he took on in an average year, and how many of those were from the slush.

Judg · Oct 5, 2007

I think it matters a great deal more how much time they are willing to invest in a new writer.

Andrew Zack · Oct 5, 2007

Number of clients doesn't matter when you take into consideration at what stage the clients may be. If I do a deal for a client and he goes off to write his book, it's not that time intensive to have him on the list. More relevant to the discussion would be not how many clients, but how much support staff does the agency have? If I had a separate person handling foreign, film, contracts, royalties, bookkeeping, etc., I'd have 100 clients at least.

Z

Clients per Agent?

lkp

ORION

Sailed away years ago

triceretops

Redhedd

Demon Wrangler

lkp

Carrie R.

Procrastinating, clearly

Redhedd

Demon Wrangler

Judg

DISENCHANTED coming soon

Andrew Zack