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| Jenny Bent, Founder of The Bent Agency |
We both thought that readers would be interested in this discussion, so we decided to post it on our respective blogs. Your comments are welcome!
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Hi Jenny,
I just read your article about the difference between publisher/agent vs. reader tastes. Boy am I glad someone had the guts from inside the industry to write about this! I've been screaming about it for years but nobody listens because they assume it's a sour grapes thing on my part. But what you said is so true. I'm one of those rejected writers who has gone out and successfully sold his books (I have 15,000 Twitter followers, developing a very good fan base)...and that's after having four great agencies unable to sell them (Andrea Brown, Jean Naggar, Marly Rusoff, etc.) Funny, a few months ago I ran into one of your colleagues in NYC and we nearly got into a fist fight over this issue, with him claiming that he has some special gift or "nose for a classic" or some such nonsense!
I didn't know you were on Twitter and just followed you.
Anyway, a big thank you for that article, I really enjoyed it (especially the bit about the glasses!)
Mike
P.S. By the way you might like this post:
What Literary Agents Could Learn from the Girl Scouts
I think this is what set your colleague off! (hope it doesn't make you mad)
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Hi Mike,
No, it doesn't make me mad—I think it's pretty funny. More people need to have a sense of humor about this industry.
I think the thing about having to love a book before you can sell it makes a little more sense than you say it does, however. I'm not selling a refrigerator, after all. If I'm selling refrigerators, I don't have to love them: they're pretty impersonal—I can judge them on objective criteria. And pretty much everyone needs to buy a refrigerator at some point. Everyone likes them. And with girl scout cookies, you don't have to like them to know there's a huge market. But the only way I can even guess if other people will like a novel is if I like it too. It's completely subjective. Unless, of course, there has been market research in the shape of self-publishing. Which is one of the reasons I like self-publishing so much and have repped so many self-published authors—it takes some of the guesswork out of it.
Anyway, good post—and thanks for sending it.
My response:
I see your point, but the first person to sell a new product faces exactly the same problem you face, whether that product is a refrigerator or cookies or or an iPad--the market for it must be created. And the people who create markets for totally new products can do it whether they "love" those products or not, believe me.
Jenny's response:
Still disagree. :) Maybe "love" is the wrong word, however. Maybe it's "get" or "understand." If you "get" why an ipad would be appealing, you can sell it. But if you don't like a book, where again it is a matter of TASTE, not potential demand, how do you know whether or not it will work in the marketplace? Your argument would work better if I just had to figure out whether or not books in general would have a place in the market. Well, yes, people like reading, therefore books will work. But an individual novel? How in the world can I predict an audience for that unless I myself am responding to it in some way?
My response:
I'm so glad we're having this discussion, Jenny, now we're getting somewhere. You stated it perfectly in your last message: "...unless I respond to it in some way." Of course you're right. A good sales & marketing person must be able to understand the needs that any product satisfies in the customer who buys it. But that's a far cry from "falling in love." Example: I'm not a huge fan of Harlequin Romance novels, not because of any highbrow snobbery about them, but simply because I'm a man, and after a couple of hours all that gushy romantic stuff makes me feel a little ill. :-) Yet, I can empathize with women who love that genre, completely understand the appeal of it, and can certainly recognize a Harlequin Romance that is well-structured and well-written. Could I sell such a book? You bet I could! And so could you, if you wanted to (whether you "love" them or not)
Jenny's response:
Well, except that I challenge you to go out and sell a romance novel to a publisher. ;) You might make a great agent, don't get me wrong, and you might understand that romance as a genre works, that women will love it, but without an affinity for this type of book, how will you be able to distinguish between a good or a bad one? Answer: you can't. And that's not even necessarily because you don't read the genre—it's because there's no such thing as a "good" or a "bad" romance novel, it's completely subjective. And so in the face of that subjectivity, what are you left with as an agent? Your own taste. That's all you have to go on. That's what agents mean by "I have to love it."
Once again we come back to the idea that we all know in general that people like books, and then you can categorize it even further by saying that in general people like romance, or thrillers, or literary fiction. But on a book by book basis there is no way to predict what a reader will like. Even if people like the Beatles a lot, for example, that doesn't necessarily predict that they will like a book about the Beatles. As an agent, you only have taste to go on.
Everything changes of course, if a book is self-published first, and you know a lot of people have already responded. Then you don't have to love it. Self-publishing is the new market research.
My response:
I totally agree re self-publishing. If I were an agent I think that's the main way I would find new authors if I needed them, by trolling the self-publishing domain and looking for successes there. At the end of the day, the only way to know if a product has a market is if people will actually fork over their hard-earned money for it. This is even more than "market research"—it's downright proof that the product is viable. The only question is how large the market will be if a big publisher takes over. I think in the vast majority of cases the market will be 10x larger because we self-pubbed authors can barely scratch the surface with our limited resources. If I can sell 10,000 of one of my books a year, I'm quite sure a big publisher could sell 100,000 of that same book given that they don't screw up the product or marketing approach.
Any comments, readers?
Interesting! I have wondered about one point she made and she confirmed it with, "Self-publishing is the new market research (for agents)." JS Stewart
ReplyDeleteHmm. If this is the start of a trend then goodbye sending letters to agents.
ReplyDeleteGreat exchange. I think it's difficult in any industry to sell honestly if you don't believe in your product. With something as subjective as a literary product (for lack of a better term), there has to be a starting point for an agent to get behind the ones he/she represents. I would think an agent would be far more likely to *want* to sell if the work has some resonance for them...and honestly, I would be a little leery of working with an agent who didn't believe in my work as much as I do, as more than just a moneymaker. It's a tricky line, but makes for great discussion.
ReplyDeleteThis was interesting... my head's still spinning a bit to be honest. The concept of self-publishing concerns me because the scams there still seem vague. I'd much rather self-promote with the backing of a publishing contract than the DIY approach, but I can see where both have a particular appeal.
ReplyDeleteI don't know. While I am extremely sympathetic to her argument about loving a book, I don't know that it is an overall rule for selling books.
ReplyDeleteMy father was a sales representative for a big publisher for nearly thirty years and he certainly didn't love all the books he put into stores. He didn't expect the bookstore managers to love them either. They were sold on other grounds, like you mention, that people bought the last book in this genre or that people love romance and you have to have a certain amount of it in your store.
But this is a different area of the book sales world. If I were an agent, getting 1000 queries or more per month, I would hold out for a book I loved too. For one thing, why settle for less when you are being deluged with possibilities? For another, with that many queries, it's helpful to have some set reasons to say no, since you need to say no an awful lot.
An interesting exchange. Self-publishing is the market research, no doubt. But even here the success, just like with the traditional publishing, is based on the marketing plan of the book. Like Ms. Bent says, self-publishing can be big if it is done right. I believe doing it right is more critical to the over success of the book than the book itself.
ReplyDeleteGood blog post. Maybe it's a lot to expect that an agent will only represent books he or she loves. Maybe a better way to put it would be likes, or can understand it's appeal to others.
ReplyDeleteAnyhoo, I get all your posts via e-mail and read every one.
Thanks. On Twitter as JAustenwannabe
Well perhaps Ms. Bent is a rare breed because any interactions I've had with agents (several) have everything to do with whether or not they think they can sell it, and that has everything to do with things like genre, market, etc. Agents aren't sure what to do right now, I think, and I empathize with the constraints they face. It would be a simple world, I think, if agents (publishers, editors, etc.) could choose only books that appealed to them on a visceral level. The vast majority of publishing decisions aren't made that way, I'd venture.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Jenny. The word that hasn't been mentioned in the discussion is, "Quality". As an agency, Jenny's business has a responsibility the their customers, (ie) Publishers, to provide the best quality product they can. Her business, after all, is at stake. How do you define quality? In every case, it is perception. How the product is perceived by the customer. In my case as a writer, the agent. In the case of the agent, the publisher. None of us would last long if the perception of our product is poor, but perception, right or wrong, is all we have to go on.
ReplyDeleteHey Mike,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing this -- absolutely fascinating.
I'm off to read the two related posts you linked to, but before I do I have to say, with all due respect to Jenny: Are you serious?
Well let me ask you. If it's not agents who are responsible for the piles and piles of crap that I see on my weekly visits to the bookstores, than who is?
No, I don't buy it. It's not about LOVE, it's about MONEY -- often mistaken for each other.
All most literary agents have to be thinking (IMHO) is one thing: can I make my commission off of this manuscript? Will it help me get famous (in publishing circles)/promoted/a bonus? (And Jenny hinted at it when she referred to the value of indie-pubbing as a kind of market research.) And I respect that, this is a business.
But don't tell me that every agent fell in love with every book out there. That's pretty fickle and a bit unbelievable -- that's a few thousand books per agent!
Thanks for letting me rant (only half in jest) and keep up the good work.
Carl
PS: This rant isn't about Jenny B., of course! She's cool and one of my favorites. She is always contributing to the writer community in significant ways. Peace.
Jenny has a point...to a point...I personally fall in love with the marketability of a script but try not to inject my personal taste so much. The Indie-self-plublshers have been a good source for promising material but It really comes down to appeal points for me.
DeleteYou people are fun to read, can we get a book out of this?
Interesting exchange! -- although I had to LOL at the "[publishers] don't screw up the product or marketing" part. I know quite a few authors who would beg to disagree with that as a blanket statement.
ReplyDeletePutting myself in an agent's shoes, knowing that I could only represent so many authors and books well, I think that would put a very high bar on what I decided to represent. A bar that could be defined as the difference between love and like. As a writer who has critiqued with other writers for decades, not to mention taught writing for over a decade...there are many books I can believe will ultimately be published, but not nearly as many that I would put myself and my livelihood on the line for.
That's what I love about indie publishing -- the author takes it to the readers, and they decide. No intermediary judgement needed to facilitate the author-reader interface.