What Do You Do If Things Get Bad?

And what is bad, anyway?

Hi friends,

I’ve been getting lots of Qs for Q&A Thursday, a perk of being a paying subscriber of this newsletter, which is great. But some of those questions make my heart hurt. Writers come to me in crisis about their books, their writing life, their agent relationships and I want to help them ALL. This is not a complaint! You can ask anything! It’s just a fact that sometimes questions are harder to answer than can my query letter be two pages long? (Answer: yes, if it really needs to be.) Anyway, a common theme in some of these harder to answer questions has been what do I do if it gets bad with my agent? And what counts as bad? I’m not going to post these questions, because they’re too long, too detailed, and a little too personalized (and no, no one has told me their specific agent so don’t come looking to me for gossip you ghouls) but I will talk generally about how to tell if it’s bad and what to do.

I’ve written before about what do to if your agent leaves and how it looks to agents if you’ve had one before, but those were other Q&A Thursdays, so you may not have seen them. I’ve taken them down from behind the paywall, so if you need that info, it’s there for you. This is a little different, though, and honestly, I hope you never even need this info.

So, how do you know if what’s going on with your agent (late responses, no responses, unkept promises, or worse) are really bad? What’s normal? What is your agent supposed to do? What kinds of questions are too small for them to answer? Too big? What can you expect?

Well, those are all tricky questions, and a lot of them don’t have specific answers. There is no prescribed time limit that an agent should or has to answer your email, even in the Before Times. Not 24 hours or 4 days or two weeks. Not because your email isn’t’ important or your agent can do whatever the eff they want and you’re at their mercy, but because, well, sometimes there are more important things than email. I am all over the place with emails (and my clients know it, lol—sorry!) I often answer quick things quickly, and sometimes it can take me more than a week to answer more complicated—non-pressing—things. Sometimes I’m able to say “more soon!” to let the client know I’ve seen it, but sometimes I mean to do that and then the phone rings or there’s a Zoom or my kid has no school again or a contract comes in (contracts take precedent over almost everything) and that “more soon!” sits in a drafts folder. This isn’t bad (if I can pass that judgment on myself), it’s just how life is now (and maybe even in the Before Times) and everyone should grant everyone else some grace. I am definitely not reading things as fast as I should be, and clients, I am sorry. I am trying.

So, what are the pressing things? Offers. Contracts. Editors who’ve reached out and said I want to give your client money. Time sensitive submissions. Issues of editors leaving (for good, or maternity leave, or otherwise). Due dates that absolutely cannot be moved. Covers. Some marketing things. Effing blurbs. This is not an exhaustive list. Is the clock ticking? Then it’s pressing.

Your agent is there to answer the small things, and you are not bothering them if you ask them the small things. Ask! If it’s been a week and you haven’t heard back, ask again! You are not bothering your agent I promise, promise, promise. They are YOUR agent. They WANT to work with you. They will tell you (I hope, most of the time) if something will delay their reply.

But Kate, you say, I’m kinda scared of my agent. I worry that if I pester too much or if I say something like you take too long to answer my emails they will be mad at me and fire me. And to that I say DO NOT FEAR YOUR AGENT. YOU SHOULD NOT BE SCARED OF YOUR AGENT. YOUR AGENT WILL NOT TANK YOUR CAREER OUT OF SPITE FOR ASKING QUESTIONS. I really mean it. You can respect your agent. You can be a little intimidated by your agent. But do not FEAR them or fear that they will threaten your career. Maybe I’m not up on gossip, but I don’t know stories of agents doing this and I’m not sure how they would do it. They can’t reach every editor in town and pour poison in their ears. Honestly, agents who would do that have done other things to give them a bad reputation, and editors probably wouldn’t listen! And tbh, that takes time and effort, which is in short supply among the agents I know. We aren’t actually that powerful. We’re just people who know a lot about publishing and book.

That’s the other thing. Your agent is just a person and you can talk to them like a person. If you are concerned about ANYTHING regarding your work or your relationship with your agent, TALK TO THEM. I know it can be scary to send emails like this this, but you have to do it. Your agent likely doesn’t know anything’s wrong, or that you’re struggling with something unless you tell them. (I promise they know what they haven’t read or responded to, but they don’t know how you feel about it.) Honestly, if any of my clients are reading this and are thinking Kate needs to get on the X, Y, or Z I sent them—TELL ME! Again, I am very aware of how long things have been on my TBR, but come talk to me and we’ll discuss what my timeline really looks like and we’ll set our expectations together. And you can tell me, too, that I’ve made you mad or disappointed you or whatever! That’s ok! I don’t actively want to hear these things, not because they may be untrue or they will make me feel bad, because I don’t want to have caused these feelings! But these things happen, I am not perfect, and I hope my clients (and I hope this for other agents/clients) can come to me and tell me what they need. If I can give it to them, I will. If I can’t, we can talk about it more and see what works. Do not be afraid to tell your agent what you need! They may not be able to give you exactly what you want, but they can tell you what they can give.

And if that’s not enough, or if you have this come to jesus talk and things don’t change, and you are not getting what you need, well, then consult your agency agreement, and see what you have to do to fire your agent. Follow those procedures, and thank them for what they’ve done, and move on.

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Things to know about firing your agent if you have already or are in the process of selling your book.

1. If your agent has sent out a proposal for you and it sells, your agent is due commission. You can’t fire an agent 2 minutes before you think you’re going to get an offer (not that you would) and deny them the commission. You can’t take one agent’s submission list and have another one use it to sell your book.

2. If you have a multi-book deal, and you want to leave your agent in the middle of it, you can. That agent will still get commission on anything they’ve sold, for the life of the book, royalties and all. You will ALWAYS get money and statements from your previous agent, no matter what. They legally have to do this and will be in BIG trouble if they do not. They just won’t be on deck to answer questions for you. It **may** be hard to get another agent in the middle of a multi-book contract because any new agent will not have anything to sell for you for a few years. But maybe you don’t need one right away, because you’ll be busy writing. Maybe your editor can be your go-to. There’s no rule on this. It will vary greatly from author to author, genre to genre. But it’s not an automatic no for me if someone comes to me in the middle of a multi-book deal.

3. What about subrights? What about the audio and foreign and movie rights of the book your previous agent sold for you? In the end, unless otherwise stated by your agency agreement, those are yours and you can take them with you. If anything is in progress with your subrights (an audio submission, a movie option) your previous agent can finish that up and if the deals go through, they are due commission, but if there has been no action and no sales, and later down the line you get a new agent who can maybe sell your backlist, your new agent is able to do that. Discuss this with your agent when you’re leaving.

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If things are bad, you’re going to have to have hard conversations with your agent, either on the phone or over email, and I know that makes a lot of people nervous and no one wants to do that, but it’s important. If you feel like you’ve already had this conversation and nothing improved, then talk to them again, or make the moves to leave. No agent is better than an ineffective agent. This is the time to be brave and a grown up and do the hard thing. Your career is worth that effort. Your agent will not retaliate against you for raising a concern. If they do, report them to the Author’s Guild, the Association of American Literary Agents, or at the very least Victoria Strauss of Writer’s Beware. That is the worst possible scenario I can think of, and also the least likely one I can think of.

You have not failed if you have to leave your agent. It just didn’t work out. Maybe your agent got overwhelmed, by work, by life, by another client whose career ate all their time. Maybe they don’t have an assistant, or their assistant left and they can’t get a new one because of the pandemic. Maybe they are trying their best but can’t do it all. Maybe they aren’t that great at their job! Or they aren’t great in the way you need! Anything can be the reason behind the disconnect between what you need and what they can provide. It is not automatically that you suck, your work isn’t important, you’ll never get a deal. Sometimes it’s not really about you at all—something we all need to remember from time to time.

Talk to your agent. TALK TO YOUR AGENT. I cannot stress this enough. They are human, only human. They are not demigods. They can make mistakes and make things right. They can have answers you don’t want to hear, but have to accept anyway. They can tell you the truth and you not like it! There isn’t a One And Only Way to be an agent or a client. There isn’t a One and Only Acceptable Email Response Time. It’s just life and work and books and email. There are no emergencies in publishing. I love to say this and I think it is so true. No one will die if an email goes unanswered. It’s ANNOYING but it is not life or death. Talk to your agent if you’re having issues. Even if it’s scary. Talk to them.

Thank you for getting a vaccine if it’s available to you! Thank you for wearing your masks!

OXOXOXOX,

Kate