The Sins of Literary Agents and Publishers

Trying to get a Literary Agent is a near impossible task for a first time author. The vast majority of them are so snobbish and have their heads so far up in the clouds that they wouldn’t recognise a best seller if it hit them! Their standard response to the first time unknown author is ‘Go away you miserable flea!’- that is if they bother to reply to you at all. A few will hedge their bets and say ‘Come back to us when you are offered a publishing contract.’ In other words, they have no intention of actually doing any work on your behalf but if you manage to score a contract they will happily cream 15% of your earnings from you. It is only if you beat them around the head with your manuscript until they see stars in their eyes that transform into $ signs that they will even consider you. There are exceptions, of course, if you happen to be a sleazy porn star or derelict footballer with nothing to say then they will snap you up.

Publishers are only marginally better. Surprisingly I have had some friendly responses from publishers who do reject you politely and say some positive things about your manuscripts. The vast majority do one of three things: they don’t bother to reply at all, they send you a stock rejection or they tell you they only accept submissions from Literary Agents (how do they ever find books to publish?)

If by some miracle of persistence you finally manage to interest a publisher in your work you get offered one of three contracts: a good one, reserved for best selling authors who have proved they can make money for the publisher; a fair one, for those up-and-coming authors who have had some success; or a poor one for the first-time author who has no credentials. At least, I thought this was the way it went until I discovered the fourth type of contract: Take-All. This type of contract is offered to first-time authors in struggling economic times. It says that the publisher doesn’t have much confidence that your book will actually sell but if it does he wants to make sure that he makes all the money and you make very little.

Alas, it is the Take-All contract that my daughter and I have been offered and we now have to try and negotiate up to a Poor contract to make it worthwhile publishing at all. Why don’t publishers give struggling authors a fair go?