My tired brain is having a difficult time articulating this particular thought, but the keystone trait of a person who becomes an agent is a fundamental belief that your taste is good enough to market, but people who believe this quickly split off into two camps

You get the narcissists (the people who want the spotlight and attention and power) and the fans (the people who just want to facilitate more good stories in the world)

Which camp you end up in is very often influenced by the type of mentorship you receive

Without a proper agency/mentorship structure, all an “agent” has to hold onto is their conviction in their projects, because they’re not given anything else. Over time, this hardcore messes with how they see their role in publishing

This also rears its head with “big name” agencies with dubious ethics and a singular focus on money—it becomes about winning and controlling your image, rather than making good books

Some writers can have good experiences with an agent who veers towards the narcissism side of things, and some writers can have bad experiences with passionate fan agents. But understanding the interplay of an agency’s dynamics on the work of an individual agent is KEY

Like, I had a not-so-recent agency experience where the more senior (read: successful) I became, the more power was taken away from me at work, and that impacted how I served my clients in a really negative way, as I began to doubt the fundamentals of my taste &my own experience