Agents Sound Off on New Media
Given their relatively negligible treatment in the media coverage of the e-book biz over the past few months, you could reasonably conclude that literary agents are mere bystanders (or at best, nagging backseat drivers) in the mad dash to forge a viable new-media publishing model. Below, two agents respond with contrasting takes on the evolving e-space — and the agent’s role therein.
Abate: We Need Publishers
Richard Abate, an agent as well as the director of new media for ICM’s literary group, has his hands full these days. He’s the one who fields all those e-pitches and inquiries that now inundate agents’ offices, from dot-coms targeting the publishing community, to author-focused websites hoping to lure a few authors to their advisory boards, to publishers wanting to discuss backlist, print-on-demand, digital audio, and a litany of other rights to ICM authors’ works. Considering that he’s also on the front lines of what the New York Times’s David Kirkpatrick called the “long-running battle between authors and publishers over how to split the putative proceeds” from e-publishing, he’s amazingly upbeat about how it will all turn out.
Abate admits that, prior to Random House’s move to split net revenues with authors, he and his colleagues always asked “that simple question: If e-books are less expensive to make and distribute, why have the royalty rates remained the same?” But in the wake of the RH announcement, he believes the issue of royalty rates for e-books “will be resolvable in the near future,” and therefore questions about the supply of content will take care of themselves. As for print-on-demand titles and their royalties, he takes the position that it’s reasonable for publishers to pay standard p-book royalties on them, because they are even more expensive to produce than traditional books. (See Lipskar’s markedly contrasting view, however.)
As to whether there will be any real demand (harking back to Richard Curtis’ remark that the only two problems e-books face are supply and demand), Abate thinks electronic editions will be slow to catch on with those thirty and over who’ve been raised on p-books — and perhaps not until electronic book manufacturers stop trying to emulate a book, and instead “make an affordable reading device — under $100 — devoted to the total reading experience, with a large screen that comfortably holds all of our magazines, newspapers, e-mail, and other content as well as books.” Regardless of when they catch on, though, Abate believes there will be a place for publishers in the process of getting books to readers. “People don’t buy books just because they’re available,” he says. “There’s a lot more to publishing a book, and we need publishers.”
Lipskar: Authors Are Not Guinea Pigs
Writer’s House agent and new media director Simon Lipskar isn’t pleased about the slighting and dismissive treatment he feels publishing journalists and publishers themselves are dishing out to agents amid the ongoing e-publishing skirmishes. He also feels strongly that asking authors to share the burden of developing the electronic market — and to commit to terms without any analysis — is unfair. An author is not a guinea pig, he insists, arguing that more authors and titles would come to market if publishers would bother to spend a few minutes in agents’ offices, explaining the rationale for the terms they are offering — as does Time Warner iPublish’s Clare Zion.
But given the fact that publishers are resolutely refusing to negotiate on the e-publishing front, Lipskar says, his role as an agent has assumed a critical importance in the new-media field. He says that his duties are two-fold: to identify e-publishing opportunities for his clients and those of the agency, and then to negotiate and mediate the divergent needs of author and publisher. Case in point: Contractual terms, royalties, and discounts for p-books have evolved using time-honored methods and involve careful margin analysis. In the absence of a developed marketplace (and an installed base in many instances), publishers should be prepared to offer — à la Random House — an equal division of revenues, provided that this will be revised accordingly when an industry standard has been developed. Failing that, Writer’s House will accept a shorter term (three to five years, as opposed to term of copyright) of license which will allow for renegotiation as the market matures.
Lipskar cites another example of a completely unacceptable royalty: that offered by most publishers for print-on-demand titles. POD is not a paperback edition of an out-of-print book, he says. It is a digital file whose costs, when rendered into book form, are borne entirely by the consumer — including any shipping and handling — and of course there is no warehousing. The standard POD royalty offered is 6–7.5%, comparable to that for a trade paperback edition, all of which seems to leave the publisher with a big chunk of change.
Taking a longer view of the issue, Lipskar wonders if some day e-book deals might become a function of the value of the client. For example, if Grisham is worth more than an unknown author, perhaps he ought to receive a much larger share of the revenues. Indeed, while publishers can’t seem to think beyond their traditional operating schemes, Lipskar tosses out numerous ideas, such as a notion that publishers offer a uniform amount of money per unit, rather than royalties. A publisher might pay $5 per unit — hard, soft, e-book, what have you. But for the present, Lipskar warns, publishers must drop their contentiousness over electronic royalty rates. It’s a major tactical error to hand ammunition to agents that will only prove infuriating, he says. And that’s precisely what is happening now.
