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I have so many thoughts about all these agent conversations and threads and don’t know where to start. Or if you even need me to throw more logs onto the fire.
Part of me is off running down a path of how the visible reputations of "good" agents centers on how many *big* book deals they do and how badly I wish we could dismantle that.
And the other part of me just wants to rail about transparency with clients and what good career management looks like. And how dumbfounded and angry I get when I find out people just LIE about shit.
So *deep breath* about my first train of thought: we’ve built up this value system of what an agent can do for a debut author as the reason you should sign with them. Frankly, it’s why I’m not doing Pitch Wars this year.
Yes, each author wants and deserves a strong debut deal. But that can mean so many different things depending on the book and author. And the author chatter and dream agent lists almost never support that breadth.
A lot of agents ride on this part of their reputation without being very good at the rest of it. There’s collective myopia when it comes to career support after those book deals. And then authors leave quietly thinking it was their fault.
I really don’t know what the solution is. I don’t like these public implosions as the end-result of being bad at your job. I wish accountability and transparency were built in more effectively. It shouldn’t take a public reckoning to figure out who is decent and who isn’t.
I’ve been on Twitter the entire time I’ve been an agent. The flashy deal announcements are really fun. But you know? When I’ve done my best work, there is no tweet. My proudest accomplishment in the last year never needs to be tweeted. We have to put value in different places.
