FutureBook 2012: Agents seek broader role

The relationship between literary agents and their authors will become more of a partnership in future, agents suggested at a panel on “The changing role of the literary agent”, chaired by journalist Porter Anderson.

J K Rowling’s agent Neil Blair, founder of The Blair Partnership, said that agents should take on broader roles on behalf of their clients, and announced that TBP would be setting up its own production company to bring Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy to TV.

Jonny Geller of Curtis Brown agreed: “I do think it is a partnership. We’re managers of copyright. The new phase of the industry means that we have to create partnerships wherever it’s right. That could be anything—it can be with publishers, it can be with technology firms, it can be with ourselves, like Curtis Brown’s own production company.”

He added: “The author must be central to the industry. We came to a stage where it seemed like publishers almost saw their authors as an obstacle . . . Agents have one role, and that is to serve the needs and wants of the author, and they will have a diverse range of needs to deal with. We must allow them to express themselves in any way and in any medium.”

Joanna Penn, who self-published her own books before signing with an agent in the US to secure a traditional publishing deal, said: “For me, an agent is very much a business partnership. If they are not helping, then it is time to employ someone else.”

On the issue of self-publishing, Clare Alexander, of Aitken Alexander, said: “In time, there will be so much self-publishing we will have to invent publishing just to say whether something is good or not.” She added that there was a risk of turning away from growing established authors in the pursuit for self-published newcomers: “There is a real danger of not sticking to Plan A. People are so scared of missing something out of the corner of their eye, they rush on to Plan B, and don’t stick to what they should be doing.”

Geller suggested that self-publishing was changing the business, saying: “There are two models. The one we have had for hundreds of years, which is about taste and a top-down prescriptive approach. The other is the bottom-up approach, where anyone writes anything and the top stuff begins to trickle up. We can develop model B and bring it into A.” Alexander agreed: “Good writing is going to come out of all of this, and that is my job. Whether they come to me, or I have to reach out to them, I don’t care.”

Envisioning what would be next for agents, Geller was optimistic about mergers for both publishers and agents. He said: “Having 300 small agents in London is untenable. I don’t think there’s any way that a big agency is worse than a small one.”

But Alexander said there was plenty of room for smaller, bespoke agencies that offered versatile services to their authors. Alexander said agencies that were “just big enough” would be the best solution.

Blair said he expected to see more consolidation, and said it was hard to ignore the word “manager” when looking at how agents would need to evolve—their role would be to hand-hold authors in an increasingly varied world in order to help authors help themselves.