Agents are feeling the burnout too

When I first started operating as an agent, I remember complaining to a colleague about my lack of work. I sat on their couch, voicing my panic because I had zero list, no emails, no clients and no meetings. I said to them, how anxious it made me to have so much free time when I was building my list and how much I hated not being ferociously busy. And they gave me a pitying look and said gently, that there would come a day very soon when I would regret every single word I had just said.

Fast forward nine years down the line. I have just concluded an auction which, while thrilling, has meant I have had to work evenings every evening, to stay on top of the emails piling in, all extremely urgent. I have had an even 12 publications this year across US/UK in HB and PB and a further 13 to come which means I dream in the words: critical path/comms/sell-in and challenging landscape.

I am currently negotiating four contracts and chasing up several payments which means my fingers ache from writing the words: no/when can we expect/precedent and non-negotiable/compromise.

I am constantly running between meetings in real life and Zoom so my telephone now auto-predicts the words: sorry I am running 10 minutes late! between Tube stations as I catch a wave of intermittent signal.

I have a "sheet of shame" colour coded in all the varying rainbows of guilt for what I am waiting on, have not done and need to do.

And then the piece de resistance: my husband has a work event at his gallery; I have an author launch. My sister-in-law agrees to drive down from Oxford to pick up our child and do bedtime. But at 3 p.m. she rings to say she is stuck behind a burning lorry on the hard-shoulder of the M40 and my mouth fills with the taste of metal. By the time she rings at 4.30 p.m. to say she has not moved in several hours, my husband and I have both in that time gone through the gamut of palatable options we have (none) and who can cancel what (neither). So it is in my leopard print shoes, and bright pink lipstick I regale the bewildered parents at pick up as I collect my kid, and drive him across London to Lambeth with a bag full of toys and hastily packed snacks so he can sit behind the desk of his father’s gallery while I go to a book launch, which I will leave early, so I can take him home three hours past his normal bedtime.

That evening we sit down with pizza and Paw Patrol and a very exhausted sister-in-law who arrives six hours after she set out for London but who will take my son in the morning to give us a micro-break. It is 9.45 p.m. and my son should be asleep and I should be doing laundry but instead, I am checking emails and making a list of all my to-dos for tomorrow while shovelling garlic bread down my throat and watching animated puppies rescue idiotic penguins.

It’s not always like this. But it has been in the past and it probably will be again. So which part of this is easier than, or unfamiliar to, an editor?

In asking questions about our standard of industry care, let us not be naïve to the demands placed on each and every one of us. No one has it easy here. There is no ‘better job’ with ‘better balance’

In The Bookseller’s (much needed) article on industry burnout, there were some harrowing and frankly unsurprising statistics. This is a conversation that has been ongoing for years and finally coming to fruition now. But I have to say, scanning through it, not one experienced agent was mentioned. Did they even get interviewed and why not? Because burnout conditions, working past your allotted hours (what’s that?), weekends spent on the phone to clients, reading manuscripts etc, has been, not just a common feature but a job requirement for an agent since the word was invented. I do not know one agent with a list, who is any good at their job or has the intention of making any money, who is not a 24/7 working machine, sacrificing health, sometimes sanity and often risking a UTI because they forgot to go to the loo as they ran between meetings.

I am actually glad that people want to become agents because they want to love books again. I’ll admit, it’s why I left trade publishing. But the implication that somehow we have it easier than our trade compatriots is frankly – rude. Industry burn out is real; what those editors were discussing was the truth. But leaving agents out of that discussion and — worse — presenting a body of people as unnecessary to the discussion based on one opinion of a recent convert is not okay.

What do you think it is we do? Is it honestly perceived that we are sitting there, Jerry Maguire style, picking up phones to tons of money before dispatching ourselves to five-star lunches and then returning home to prune some orchids, before sitting in a chaise longue listening to Bach and perusing a print out manuscript from the next Pulitzer winner?

Or in fact, are we frantically refreshing BookScan, wondering how we discuss with our authors why — despite everyone’s best efforts — the disconnect between sell-in and sell-through grows wider. Are we perhaps letting someone down somewhere — usually family and friends – because we are trying to give our authors every opportunity we possibly can? Are we maybe lying awake at 3 a.m. worrying about that author who wants to quit, or that author who we cannot sell or that author who we want to get? Are we saying, thank God I love what I do, because sometimes this is brutal?

Now that this is off my chest, let me say this. I admire editors hugely. I admire everyone in the industry in all their roles. I have no arrogance to think that because we may cross over, I could do what they do and with ease. We are all in this together. Same boat, same paddles, same seas. I know how hard editors work because I see it. I know how much is asked of them because sometimes I have been the one asking.

So in asking questions about our standard of industry care, let us not be naïve to the demands placed on each and every one of us. No one has it easy here. There is no "better job" with "better balance" in my opinion and if that makes you want to throw yourself out of a window, before you pull up the sash let me say one thing. The thing that gets me through all of this, is not what I do, but where I do it. This is where I do have it better than some – I have an amazing work environment. I am supported, I am compensated, and so I am able to put my mind on where it matters – my authors and my work. If I don’t go into the office that week, I am not getting a shirty email about where I am. I am not navigating politics and I am not hurtling internal obstacles. I am treated with respect and kindness. I am squeezed constantly by the demands of my work, but truthfully I am not squashed and yes there is a difference.

Instead, I would ask every employer to think about whether or not, if you were the most junior assistant, you would want to work for you. If you felt there was a place for progression, if you felt financially able to wait; if you felt all the things above that I just said.

However in doing so, let’s not compare and contrast and make burnout a hierarchy. Because somewhere someone is running across town feeling like they have failed, regardless of their job title. They are feeling like they haven’t done enough, or are not enough. So please, let’s just remember in caring for ourselves, to also be careful of each other.