Publishing contract in hand - should I get an agent?

popgun62

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I have a publishing contract from Permuted Press for four books, but I want to make sure I'm getting the best deal I can get. The thing is, I am a fairly new author. I have four books out, but no really big sales. Permuted Press is offering a pretty low "token" advance, which is standard for unknown authors, they said. Any advice?
 

PortableHal

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Congratulations, Toby. A four book contract sounds like a terrific deal.

I don't know much about Permuted Press. If they have a big audience (strong following, great website, terrific p.r. people, etc), then the advance isn't that important, is it? In other words, if you're going to earn out the advance and make thousands in royalties, the upfront money isn't the main concern.

That's a big "if", though. Do you have any idea how well their authors are doing?
 

D.A Watson

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Getting an agent after a publishing offer

I'd imagine getting an agent is easier if you have the offer of a contract on the table from a decent publisher? I'm asking because this just happened to me about an hour ago, and I'm without representation!
 

jcwriter

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Finding an agent at this point might take some time, particularly if the advance being offered doesn't generate enough commission. You might consider contacting an intellectual property attorney with experience in publishing, someone who'll charge you a flat fee to review the contract.

Congratulations, and good luck.
 

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As a total newb who has no first hand knowledge, everything I've read said that yes, it should be easier to get an agent now. I'm sorry I can't remember where I read this, so take it with a pile of salt (maybe Janet Reid's blog?) but someone, somewhere said that, when you query, you should say in your subject line "Query for book with offer from publisher" or some such.

Either way, congrats!!!!! How exciting :)
 

D.A Watson

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Finding an agent at this point might take some time, particularly if the advance being offered doesn't generate enough commission. You might consider contacting an intellectual property attorney with experience in publishing, someone who'll charge you a flat fee to review the contract.

Congratulations, and good luck.

Much obliged sir. I'll do that.
 

popgun62

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Congratulations, Toby. A four book contract sounds like a terrific deal.

I don't know much about Permuted Press. If they have a big audience (strong following, great website, terrific p.r. people, etc), then the advance isn't that important, is it? In other words, if you're going to earn out the advance and make thousands in royalties, the upfront money isn't the main concern.

That's a big "if", though. Do you have any idea how well their authors are doing?

All of the authors I have spoken to absolutely love Permuted Press. Looking at Amazon, their books seem to rank pretty high in sales, but that's not always a good indicator. I know that many of their bestsellers get picked up by Simon & Schuster in a kind of co-publishing deal.

They are starting a subsidiary called Permuted Platinum that does offset printing, in order to get more books into brick & mortar stores. I also know one of the new owners is Anthony Ziccardi (who signed my contract), formerly a deputy publisher at Simon & Schuster. So I would say the track record looks pretty good.
 

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Congratulations.

Some agents will say 'no' because they don't want to work on deals they didn't groom from the start.

You should already have an idea of the agent(s) you might approach. Politely ask the publisher to give you a couple of weeks to consider the offer. Send the agent a polite email with 'contract offer' in the subject line. Explain the situation, and that you would like to have the agent's help with the contract.

Don't pay up front, you want to set up a commission on royalties. If there is series potential or if you have a lot of standalone books, the agent might want to represent more than just this book.

This almost exactly how I found my agent. I had a great offer, but needed a couple of contract points negotiated. My agent more than earned her commission.
 

D.A Watson

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Hey Popgun. I'm in the exact same boat as yourself. Got an offer from Permuted last night for two novels and a short story, and am now planning on spending the day harassing all the agents who've already knocked me back. Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss our contract terms!
 

D.A Watson

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Is there a reason you need a UK agent? The US field is much larger, and lots of US agents work with the UK.

Actually no. I was thinking I should spend today harassing all the UK ones who've already turned me down but could be I'll have better luck with an agent across the pond.
 

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D A Watson, as you're in the UK you could join the Society of Authors (it costs about £100 for a year) and then you can take advantage of their amazing, free-to-members, contract-checking service. You'll get pages of brilliant advice and it's well worth doing.

I'm not sure if there's an equivalent organisation in the US but if there is, join it NOW, Popgun.

I'd say it's worth looking for an agent. A good agent will improve your contract in all sorts of ways, and will probably find you some foreign and subsidiary rights deals, too.

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade here, and I recognise Permuted Press has some expertise behind it: but I am a little concerned by the number of authors (here and elsewhere) I've seen who have been offered multi-book contracts from PP.

ETA: Moving this to Ask The Agent, where I notice D A Watson has just started a very similar thread.
 
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Old Hack

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There's a very similar thread running at the moment.

Finding an agent at this point might take some time, particularly if the advance being offered doesn't generate enough commission. You might consider contacting an intellectual property attorney with experience in publishing, someone who'll charge you a flat fee to review the contract.

Congratulations, and good luck.

Unless the attorney is experienced in publishing contracts he or she is not going to recognise if a contract is good or bad.

An attorney is not going to be able to find and negotiate contracts for foreign and subsidiary rights.

A good literary agent will be able to do these things.
 

D.A Watson

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Thanks Old Hack.

Here's a thought. Should I get in contact with the agents who've already turned me down (twice in most cases, and for the same books the publisher has offered the contradt for) or pursue fresh avenues?
 

Old Hack

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I wouldn't. You want an agent who loves your work, and who will fight all she can to sell your books as well as she can. Not an agent who is clearly not interested in your work, but who sees the opportunity to make some easy money negotiating an existing contract.

And why have they turned you down twice? Why clog up their inboxes with books you already know they're not interested in? One of the reasons so many agents have turned to a "no response means no thank you" model is that they now get so many submissions they don't have the time to respond fully to each one. And one of the reasons we have agents in the first place is that so many publishers closed their doors on unagented submissions because they couldn't cope with the volume of submissions they received.

You have one shot per agent. Don't waste it. And once you've used it up, don't submit that to them again unless they've asked if you'd revise and resubmit.
 

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Just a thought, but is this deal large enough to interest an agent?
 

D.A Watson

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Just a thought, but is this deal large enough to interest an agent?

Advance wise, probably not as it is a small amount, but the publisher is Permuted Press, one of the bigger US horror publishers and the royalty rates are pretty good. It's from the royalty payments that agents take their cut, right?
 

popgun62

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Old Hack, out of curiosity, what concerns you about them signing a lot of authors? I have noticed that, as well, and just chalked it up to them growing very quickly, since they were bought out by Anthony Ziccardi (formerly of Simon & Schuster) and they are looking to expand into sci-fi and other types of horror. They seem on the level, and all the authors I've spoken to are very happy with them. I'd be interested to hear your concerns.
 

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Hi D.A. As you said, we're both in the same boat. I got my offer about a month or so ago and just now got the contract. They do seem to be signing quite a number of authors, which Michael Wilson mentioned over the phone, saying they were growing quickly under the new owners. I'd be interested to see what Old Hack thinks about it.
 

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I am aware of Ziccardi's reputation, and hope that just adds to Permuted's own. But I share some reservations with Old Hack about the number of authors signed over the recent weeks. That's going to be a lot of books to be edited, produced, and marketed. If Permuted Press has the infrastructure in place to handle the workload and really promote their authors, then bravo for them.

But I'm sure I don't have to name any of the other well-meaning presses who started out - or expanded - with massive production schedules, and promptly turned into author mills generating very low sales for individual authors.

When we call for caution it's not because we don't like what Permuted has been doing up to now. It's because large multi-book contracts can turn catastrophic very easily, for both writers and publishers.
 
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Old Hack

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Just a thought, but is this deal large enough to interest an agent?

It doesn't have to be a huge deal for an agent to be interested.

If the agent likes the book, and the deal leaves enough potential for foreign and subsidiary rights, then an agent might well be interested.

Advance wise, probably not as it is a small amount, but the publisher is Permuted Press, one of the bigger US horror publishers and the royalty rates are pretty good. It's from the royalty payments that agents take their cut, right?

As eqb has already pointed out, the agent takes a percentage of the advance plus any royalties which follow. Remember that the advance is an advance against royalties, so the advance is essentially a royalty payment.

Hi D.A. As you said, we're both in the same boat. I got my offer about a month or so ago and just now got the contract. They do seem to be signing quite a number of authors, which Michael Wilson mentioned over the phone, saying they were growing quickly under the new owners. I'd be interested to see what Old Hack thinks about it.

You asked me that in the other thread too, popgun.

There's quite a lot of crossover between the two so to avoid people repeating themselves I'm going to merge the two of them. Hang on.
 

Old Hack

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Old Hack, out of curiosity, what concerns you about them signing a lot of authors? I have noticed that, as well, and just chalked it up to them growing very quickly, since they were bought out by Anthony Ziccardi (formerly of Simon & Schuster) and they are looking to expand into sci-fi and other types of horror. They seem on the level, and all the authors I've spoken to are very happy with them. I'd be interested to hear your concerns.

I don't doubt that Mr Ziccardi has professional publishing experience: but both good and bad publishers suffer because of under-capitalisation and too-rapid growth.

Permuted is a small press, but I've heard from quite a few authors who have apparently been offered multi-book deals by them in the last few months.

This means they're expanding rapidly, and rapid expansion is very difficult for businesses to accommodate--especially for small publishers.

It costs a lot to bring a book to market, and that cost has to be covered until the book(s) start to sell, which can take upwards of eighteen months or more. With a multi-book deal, those costs are going to stretched out over even longer before they show a return on investment.

Under-capitalisation kills many new publishers, even if their books are great and sell well once they're published. Once they get into debt, they often can't catch up with themselves.

On top of that profit margins are small in trade publishing, so even when the books start to sell well there's not a large buffer of cash to pay for future expansion, or to cover the costs of debts incurred while waiting for books to reach the market.

I wish them well, and hope they thrive. But I've seen plenty of new publishers take on more than they could cope with, and fail as a result. So I'm cautious.