Quote:
Originally Posted by AnemicOak
Don't agents have a Fiduciary Duty to their author(s)? If so how can them being a publishing company employee be legal?
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The agent and author's goals generally collide. But authors have been dropped by agents if they become too troublesome. A good agent makes her living by selling SEVERAL books per year to various publishing houses. OFTEN, that agent has a very good relationship with one or two editors who buy those books. She is not going to risk her entire income because one author is being a pain in the ass over a clause. If the author can't come to grips with it, it's much more likely that the author will be parting ways with both the agent and the publisher (before, after or during a deal.)
This is one of the reasons you will see complaint about agents. Agents perform a service--they get your book in front of editors because they have a working relationship with those editors. The better that relationship, the better chance of a deal, a faster read, etc. Some agents help with editing/prep and some don't. Some agents work harder to sell a book when it gets rejected by her top five contacts. Some don't.
The way the marketplace is currently set up, the author is also the last to be paid. The publisher pays the AGENT and then the agent pays the author. Agents make 15 percent of everything an author makes (or sometimes a bit more, depending on the type of right being sold.) Perhaps the hardest thing for an author to accept is that they are at the bottom of the power chain. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, because as someone said earlier, not all authors have business acumen, many don't want the responsibilities, etc.
The difference is that now authors have more options and so do readers. It doesn't require that every reader out there read indies. It does require some do.
No one ever said it was easy to be a writer.