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Originally Posted by darryl
KKR is not a lawyer, but she does her homework on these things, and knows her business. Literary agents owe their existence to publishers who essentially outsourced the job of finding new books for publication to them. Authors who wanted to be published had little option but to engage an agent. If, of course, they could find one who would deign to accept them. But, thanks largely to Amazon, agents are superfluous. Why would you want an English major with close ties with publishers to negotiate contracts for you? To look after your money? To in fact receive it first because they don't trust you to pay them? KKR has made very plain that in her view authors do not need and should not hire agents. She seems to have a new convert in Chuck Palahniuk!
If this is a reputable agency I would hate to see a non-reputable one. Yes, there is no reason to believe that the agency itself or its principals behaved in a criminal fashion. But it seems their business practices and procedures left a lot to be desired. Was there no audit conducted? With other peoples money involved? We will, I suspect, find out at some time in the coming years. I feel very sorry for the authors concerned. It is a tragedy that iconic works like The Godfather and Fight Club may be caught up in this mess.
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Some people will want agents, some people will want to do it on their own. I think that pointing to one crooked agent and claiming that it tars all agents is an extreme position. I also think that if you look hard enough, you are going to find someone who complains about eternal life, so simply pointing at a small number of authors who don't like agents doesn't really prove anything. One can also point at a large number of authors who really like the services that agents provide.
Some authors just like to write and want someone else to handle all the business aspects of writing. That's the service that agents provide. If an author wants to go it alone via Amazon, then more power to them. I seriously doubt that agents and agencies will disappear anytime in the near future.
Years ago, the productivity expert, Peter Drucker, wrote a paper on productivity and knowledge workers. He said that the number one thing that you can do to make a knowledge worker more productive is remove the "chores", i.e. the tasks that do not directly relate to their primary function. For writers, the primary function is writing. That's a big reason why many authors prefer to have an agent and publisher to handle all the chores, while the author focuses on writing. It's the same reason that many nonfiction writers have research assistants. Not all authors want that, but dismissing the value of agents and publishers out of hand really isn't a particularly valid approach.