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About Carole Blake
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'Blaming
agents for raising fees is like accusing mosquitoes of bloodlust. It's
their livelihood.'
'An
agent has to bear in mind what an author wants: short-term gain (the
largest advance) or long-term financial stability'
'the
publishing trade has always believed that 'short story volumes don't
sell'.
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Norman Lebrecht, writing in the Daily Telegraph on 11 June 1996, said,
'Blaming agents for raising fees is like accusing mosquitoes of
bloodlust. It's their livelihood.' He was talking about the music
industry, but the same point applies to authors' agents.
In the film Tootsie, Dustin Hoffman (playing an out of work
actor) asks his agent why he isn't getting him any work. The agent is
outraged and replies that his job is not to get work, his job is to
'field offers'. I laughed so much at that line that I missed the next
minute of dialogue. A literary agent's job is not as simple as that.
An agent's role is to manage a career based on the combination of talent
and craft. The agent decides, in consultation with their client:
 | when to offer |
| what rights to offer to publishers in which markets (does the publisher
get serial rights, export rights, more than one market?) |
| whether to make a single or multiple submission (i.e. whether |
All the final
decisions are made by the owner of the rights - the author - but
it is the agent's task to sift and sort, to manipulate and improve the
offers, and to explain the implications of all aspects of the offer or
offers to their client.
Recommending that an author take a particular offer isn't always or necessarily, or
only, a matter of looking for the largest amount of money. An agent
has to bear in mind what an author wants: short-term gain (the largest
advance) or long-term financial stability (perhaps much better
royalties or a publisher famed for their marketing abilities).
Copyright © 1999 Carole Blake
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