- Joined
- Apr 28, 2008
- Messages
- 2,382
- Reaction score
- 311
- Location
- Casa Chaos
- Website
- www.debkinnard.com
I think you're well away from them. Let me explain: I did have an agent (two, actually) from Hartline. One jumped ship to the Steve Laube agency shortly after I signed with her, and took me (as client) with her. From that time on, it was just a downhill slide.
She sold nothing of mine. No, not one title. During the three years we were client-and-agent, I sold five books and made each and every one of the deals myself. After a while of this, plus lots of non-response to e-mails, I was chatting at a conference with some other authors repped by this same agent, and heard something about "my weekly phone call" from this agent. I was like, WHAT weekly phone call? I'm lucky if I can talk to her twice a year!
I was told that Hartline and later Laube Agency put their energy only in repping a very small and elite corps of authors. If you weren't in this bunch, don't expect communication, contracts, not to mention your weekly phone call.
This same agent was the one who told me, after I pitched her an idea for a novel taking place in central Iowa (the main character wanted to go to Bolivia) that "readers won't accept foreign settings."
This same agent introduced me, in the third year of our association, as "Deb Kinnard, whom I'm trying to get to write romances." (see bio. Romance is all I write.) It was at that conference I decided she was not into selling my work, would never be into selling my work, and I was much better off making my deals myself, and going indie when I wanted to write something out of the box. I severed the relationship that same year and I've never been sorry. In fact, I feel as though I dodged a major, career-stifling bullet.
That's not to say she still takes her 15% of the books still under contract, whose deals I MADE MYSELF. Legal? Yes. Moral? Probably not.
You're better away.
She sold nothing of mine. No, not one title. During the three years we were client-and-agent, I sold five books and made each and every one of the deals myself. After a while of this, plus lots of non-response to e-mails, I was chatting at a conference with some other authors repped by this same agent, and heard something about "my weekly phone call" from this agent. I was like, WHAT weekly phone call? I'm lucky if I can talk to her twice a year!
I was told that Hartline and later Laube Agency put their energy only in repping a very small and elite corps of authors. If you weren't in this bunch, don't expect communication, contracts, not to mention your weekly phone call.
This same agent was the one who told me, after I pitched her an idea for a novel taking place in central Iowa (the main character wanted to go to Bolivia) that "readers won't accept foreign settings."
This same agent introduced me, in the third year of our association, as "Deb Kinnard, whom I'm trying to get to write romances." (see bio. Romance is all I write.) It was at that conference I decided she was not into selling my work, would never be into selling my work, and I was much better off making my deals myself, and going indie when I wanted to write something out of the box. I severed the relationship that same year and I've never been sorry. In fact, I feel as though I dodged a major, career-stifling bullet.
That's not to say she still takes her 15% of the books still under contract, whose deals I MADE MYSELF. Legal? Yes. Moral? Probably not.
You're better away.
