On being a literary agent

Have I talked on this topic before? Do I hear the echo of my own voice? ‘What we do’, I say so many times a week, ‘is read your manuscript. If we think there is a market for it, we’ll try to place it with the most appropriate publisher, negotiate the best possible terms for you, exploit such subsidiary rights as are applicable, and take 10 per cent of whatever we can get for you.’ That’s the bare bones of it. Of course it leaves out all the curly bits, but if we went into all that each time, there’d be no time left to actually get on with doing what agents do. The first and saddest curly bit is that the vast majority of manuscripts which come into the office return to the place from whence they came a few weeks later. The small post office we patronise would certainly go out of business without us. (Not that they’d care. They’ve made it awfully clear how little they appreciate our arrival at 4.55 most afternoons bearing unwieldy parcels to be sent airmail or slowboat, interstate, overseas or round the corner. They do not work on commission.) Not all these manuscripts go back because they’re terrible – though lots are. The really tricky ones are those that are quite interesting, but unmarketable – the passionately committed anthropologist’s view of South Africa, the migrant memoirs in exotic English, the ambitious experimental novel. Sometimes we’ll take on one of these, flog it around for a year or so, find our initial enthusiasm gradually waning under the weight of lukewarm readers’ reports, rail against the conservatism of Australian publishing, furiously admit defeat, feel guilty for having pointlessly raised an author’s hopes. Sometimes it’s the other way around; we’ll approach an author we admire and ask if they would like us to represent them. Personally, I hate doing this: soliciting is the ugly but correct word for the activity and that’s just what it feels like too. It’s salutary though, because it reminds us how authors feel when they come to us. If only we weren’t all so damned sensitive. But if we weren’t, we’d get into a different, safer line of business. An agent’s sensitivities become enlarged (like the alcohol-soaked livers we try to avoid) because they extend to cover our authors as well as ourselves. It’s one of the great ironies of the literary arena that it should be so fiercely competitive when it’s usually regarded by observers as some kind of sinecure, a gentlemanly occupation for delicate or self-indulgent souls. Look at what a writer has to do. First write the book. A beginner will imagine that’s the hard part, and it is, but it’s only the beginning. Next, find a literary agent to take it on. Then wait till the agent finds a publisher and negotiates a contract. (This has been known to take longer than writing the book.) Follows a usually tough time with an editor, who may or may not be in perfect sympathy with the work. Writers whose agents have rescued them from the delusion that they must sign any old piece of paper put in front of them now need rescuing from the next delusion, that they must unquestioningly accept all their publisher’s suggestions on style, content, design, cover etc. Then comes the publication, accompanied by reviews which, if numerous, will be in varying degrees critical: and if not numerous, will be desolating by their absence. Six or so months later a royalty statement arrives. Sometimes it indicates that the writer is actually in debt, particularly if the agent has acquired them a solid advance. More likely a modest cheque will accompany the sales statement – but it nearly always looks, feels, is too modest. Maybe the book is submitted for a prize. Even more agonising, maybe it gets on the shortlist. Let’s take the tensest scenario of all – it WINS a major prize. The reward for this is money, fleeting fame, a little publicity, increased sales (usually), controversy (there’s always a columnist or three who’s sure it was the wrong decision) and a heap of pressure to write an even better book, because now everyone’s watching, and to write it fast before everyone stops watching. I’ve strayed from the role of the agent, and furthermore fallen into the trap of making it all sound thrillingly glamorous, even without mention of film deals and American sales, which sometimes come along with all that brouhaha. The greater the ‘success’ the higher and more numerous the hurdles. An agent is in the ambiguous position of urging the writer on, trying to open up greater commercial possibilities, while also trying to keep them in a sufficiently balanced, hassle-free state to do the work that writers do, that only writers can do, the work we praise and punish them for doing. Mostly it’s not like this anyway. Our agency handles around 40 writers, many of whom will not win prizes or become household names or even earn an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. Most of our time is actually spent haggling over minutiae – an extra one hundred dollars for an article here, a tiny percentage of profits there. Sometimes we’re like lawyers (though faster and cheaper), disputing the small print of a clause which may never be invoked. Sometimes we’re like public servants, standing on standard practice, standard rates. Sometimes we’re like nannies, bossy and mothering at the same time. Sometimes we’re like gladiators, fronting up to the lions because that seems to be the job. Sometimes we put pieces of paper in the wrong files and spend whole half-days searching for them, incompetent secretaries. Sometimes we read. Reading is perhaps the only constant. Has this explained what literary agents do? Probably not. All I know is that when people ask me what I do, I’ve got this one pat sentence (see above) and after that it becomes so complex that it’s easier to talk about the weather or postmodernism. Explaining it is impossibly hard, but doing it is the most satisfying thing I know.

Caroline Lurie

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