Hi,
Adam and welcome to Absolute Write.
adamkirkman:
when I was 15 I did do work placements with HarperCollins, Penguin and Virgin Books, and I have continued in the book industry since then for almost ten years, as I now help manage a bookshop in York.
With apologies for sounding rude, but if your only experience in actual publishing was a number of work experience placements back when you were still at school and now you're co-managing a book shop in York, how does that qualify you to work as an agent or publisher? When I was 15, I did a 2 week work experience placement at my local newspaper, but that doesn't qualify me to set up my own paper.
Do you have contacts with editors at either HarperCollins, Penguin and Virgin Books who you can pitch client's work to, or are you essentially forwarding work onto their slush pile?
adamkirkman:
As for the reading fee of £20, I implemented this after an article in Writers' News that saw me absolutely flooded with submissions. As QBF is only part-time for me, I could not give every MS the attention it deserves. It is interesting that so many people who are so keen for me to publish their poetry, for example, aren't even interested in investing a small sum of money in their own future.
Why did you agree to feature for Writers News if you weren't set up to deal with any increase in submissions? If you're being inundated with submissions, then that's probably because you've said you'd read anything and everything submitted. Given that you're essentially a one-man outfit, don't you think it would make more sense to concentrate on one genre of fiction and only accept submissions for that genre, which you can then focus on building publishing contacts for?
In any event, no agent should ever be charging a reading fee for manuscripts - it's bad practice and it offers nothing to an author. As an agent, you shouldn't be reading absolutely everything submitted to you in full - someone with experience would know what they're likely to be able to sell and most can tell within the first 5 pages whether the quality of writing is such that it's worth reading on. What do you give these people for their £20? A critique (in which case you're in the wrong business because agents don't do that), or do you just take the money and give them a yes or no? In total, how much money have you made from these reading fees?
This comment you make about "investing in their future" - what future are they investing in if you can't get them a sale with an established, commercial publisher? There's no "investment" if they're not going to get a return on that money and from the sounds of it, you're not experienced enough to do it for them.
adamkirkman:
If it takes me four or five hours to read a submission in full, I am hardly making minimum wage, and when I do decide to publish a book, it takes me almost three months of working every "spare" minute I have outside my regular job and other commitments. (The videos promoting the books are filmed and edited by myself, and this is part of another project I am involved with.)
To repeat my earlier point, you shouldn't be reading everything in full unless you think you can make a sale of it. In the majority of cases, you can tell within the first 5 pages whether something's got 'legs'.
In terms of making videos - why are you doing that? As an agent, your job is to focus on making sales to commercial publishers who will have their own marketing teams that will promote books. If you want to be a publisher, then you're far better off focusing on getting a distribution contract in place so you can actually place books within stores, which is where they have the best chance of selling.
adamkirkman:
As for co-habiting a literary agency and a publishing company, I really don't see the problem. If I can sell a novel onto a large publishing company, then I am more than happy to do that if they are better resourced than I am. One of the aims of QBF is to get books out there, to raise their profile - and then if someone is interested in buying it, we are more than happy to sell. You ask whose interests it would serve? The ultimate aim is to produce successful books, which benefits the author, the agent and the publisher.
Victoria Strauss has already explained why it's a conflict of interest to have an agency and a publishing company under one roof:
It's a conflict of interest for a literary agent and a publisher to cohabit. If the literary agency can make money by placing people with a self-owned publisher, how much incentive will it have to market clients' work to other publishers? If a publisher can place its authors with its own literary agency, will that agency serve the author's interests--or the publisher's? An important consideration if you want to sell subrights.
But let me put it another way - as a literary agent, how many books have you sold to commercial publishers and how many of your clients' books have ended up being published by your own publication company? I see that on the page for Matt Stephens, you say that you're in talks with a major publishing company about the date for publication - those talks usually only happen when you've sold the book, in which case would you like to say who that company is?
Do you charge authors to publish with your publishing company and if so how much on average?
Of those books that you've published yourself, how many copies have you sold - either in bookstores in the UK or via the web?
If you haven't sold even 1000 copies of a client's book, then how is that book successful and how has it benefited the author? If you've charged an author a fee to publish a book then if anything, the author has suffered a financial detriment because they've paid for a book that virtually no one is buying, which means they won't see a return on that 'investment'.
adamkirkman:
As for it being difficult to get published...it is. Even great books are rejected from publishers through lack of vision, or time, or resources. We all know the stories of books rescued from slush piles. I feel that literary agents and publishers are unwilling to take a risk on authors with no experience, and this creates a vicious circle.
You're expressing a sentiment that's common amongst authors who've been unable to find an agent and/or publisher for their work. No one said that writing is easy and the book business is a hard one. However, it is absolute rubbish to say that neither agents or publishers are willing to take risks on authors with no experience - every author starts out as a newbie with no prior sales record. If an agent or publisher didn't take on new blood, then they wouldn't be able to grow their business. New authors get taken on every day - you only need to open the book review section of the Times or Guardian to see that every week there is at least one debut novel reviewed.
adamkirkman:
I am interested in making money with authors, not from them. The people that I work with (graphic designers, illustrators, website folks etc) are all people who are interested in making careers in these areas and I am giving them the chance to put some experience on their CVs (and I'll be passing along the compliments about the website to Chris.)
If you're charging a reading fee from prospective authors and if you're charging a fee for publishing books from prospective authors, then whether you intend to or not, you
are making money from them. Again - how many books have you sold and how much of that has gone back to the authors concerned?
adamkirkman:
And it's hard work, but mostly fun, and the rewards are certainly not financial at this time, but it is nothing less than super cool to see Daniel Mayhew's 'Life And How To Live It' at the front of store, on promotion, in Borders stores across the country....
If you're not making money then how do you plan to stay in business? Unless you're already a millionaire, it's simply not possible to keep doing something that's costing you money and as a business (whether as an agent or a publisher), surely your goal has to be to make money?
Are you saying that Daniel Mayhew's book is on the front-of-store promotion in Borders? Because I check out the front-of-store promotions all the time at my local Borders store and I can honestly say that his book is not there - that's not to say it's not available elsewhere, but if you have managed to place books in store, I'd be interested in knowing how many books you printed for the first run and whether you paid Borders to put the book on promotion.
It's not a question here about picking holes in you as a person or what you're trying to do - it's about whether you are qualified to do what you're trying to do and from what you're saying, you blatently aren't and that's simply not good for authors.
MM