Business Musings: Writers, Scam Artists, Agents, And More (Sigh)

Just when I thought it was safe to get back into the water…

I’m editing a lot these days. I only edit short fiction projects. Anthologies, anthology series (Fiction River), the occasional nonfiction book, and some magazines. I’m also consulting with the fine folks at WMG Publishing, because they’ll be handling the contracts for the revival of Pulphouse next year. Dean’s vision for Pulphouse includes reprinting some of the older stories, which means we have to deal with estates.

Too often, estates mean agents.

But even some lazy-ass living writers give their agents control of everything. It took me one year—one year—to get my hands on a non-fiction reprint that I wanted for a project of mine. The centerpiece for that project was an editorial written more than 20 years ago by a writer who had forgotten they had even written it. This writer, a friend of mine, doesn’t do email, and mostly stays off-line. (I know, I know.) I didn’t know about their tech phobia when I started into this, and had sent five different emails before I asked another editor friend how to reach this writer.

The editor advised snail mail.

Before I resorted to that, though, I called. The author and I are friends, after all. On the phone, the author told me that their agent handles everything. I do mean everything. The author—one smart cookie otherwise—can’t be bothered to concern themselves with touching anything to do with business. I had no idea this author was an Artiste, but I guess I know that now.

I also know why most anthologists refuse to reprint this author’s work.

I was pretty excited about this non-fiction project when I started it. I missed the publication window because of this agent and this writer. Fortunately, my publisher pushed the deadline back. We’ve pushed it back again, and again, and again. And frankly, I’m not feeling it any more. I have completely soured on the project.

The big bad agent, by the way, negotiated a horseshit deal for the writer that essentially gave me more rights than I would ever need. I offered the usual fee, which the agent did not negotiate up (although he could have). By that point, I was too pissed to give a break to these people. The amount of money—on publication, if there’s a publication—to the agent and the author will be negligible.

It was just a bottleneck of insane proportions.

And not the only one caused by an agent this past year.

But this post really isn’t about the agent. It’s about the writer.

Who the hell gives over control of everything, I mean everything, to an agent?

Oh, most writers. Never mind.

Still, I expect better. And if a writer is going to give control of the business side of her work to an “expert” then the expert better be damn good at negotiating and taking care of the writer’s interests.

So far, all of the agents I’ve encountered who handle everything are the worst negotiators in the business. They let things slide, they don’t care about being paid, they don’t ask for the right kind of language in a contract, they license the wrong rights or sell those rights outright.

Oh, I could go on and on and on—and sometimes do.

Why do I go on and on and on?

Because I’m like those guys from the movie The Big Short.

(SPOILERS! {Just sayin’})

There’s a scene toward the end of the movie in which characters Charlie Geller and Jaime Shipley sneak into Lehman Brothers the day the company goes down. The young men stand on the now-empty trading floor of the corporation—the place they had dreamed of ending up—and one of them says, This isn’t how I imagined it.

And the other responds with the words the audience is thinking: What did you imagine?

Grown-ups, the first young man said.

Yeah. That’s what I expect. From long-term writers. From the people they hire to represent them. From anyone handling anything to do with money and business in publishing.

I expect grown-ups.

Instead, I run into breathtaking ignorance over and over and over again.

On one of the many projects I worked on recently, I contacted a writer to reprint one of their stories. I wrote a standard email letter, requesting permission to reprint, and the writer wrote back that they had no idea if the rights were available. The writer said I should contact the editor who originally published the story and ask.

I was taken aback. I had never had a writer say such a thing before in all of my years of editing. I knew the editor in question, and had worked with him many times. Never once did that editor, in all his various projects, try to control all the rights to a project. It wasn’t in his standard contract, the one he used for his anthology projects. It wasn’t in his special contracts, for other projects. It hadn’t ever happened, not in years of dealing with this man.

Honestly, this is where Writer Me and Editor Me had a conflict. Writer Me decided that Editor Me should get clarification from that writer before going to the writer’s editor. You see, Writer Me figured the editor in question would be confused at best or insulted at worst by the suggestion that he controlled the rights.

I did not want to offend him—as a person, not as an editor I might work with.

So I asked for clarification from the writer on the problem and added, as I do with many writers—bestsellers and nonbestsellers alike—that I would be happy to look at the clauses or contract in question (with the pertinent information like SSN and payment blacked out) to see what rights the author had actually sold. After all, the author clearly had no idea. Frankly, I figured the author didn’t know how to read a contract, and certainly didn’t know copyright law. I’ve seen that dozens of times before.

The next thing I know, I got an angry letter from a Big Name Agent, berating me for being inappropriate by asking to see that writer’s contract. I literally blushed as I read the email. Using vicious language, this guy had shamed me. He had essentially called me an idiot and a charlatan, and he copied the writer on the email.

Let’s back up a minute here. I had no idea that the writer had an agent on this project. The writer had not told me. Had the author told me, I would have gone to Big Name Agent to ask about the rights, through the normal procedures. None of this would have happened.

I had to walk away from my email before responding. I was humiliated (as the agent wanted). Then I got angry. Neither emotion was conducive to a professional email exchange.

Once I calmed down, I realized the mistake was the writer’s, not mine. I wanted to reprint a story and offer the writer money. If I needed to contact the agent, well, then the writer should have said so, and I would have done so.

So…I wrote back to the asshole—oh, beg pardon, agent—and said that I meant no harm; it was just the writer seemed confused about the rights they had sold and their suggestion to go to the editor was unusual at best.

The agent then told me that even though he had brokered the deal, he had no idea if the rights were available and I needed to go to the editor.

Okay. That was weird. If the agent brokered the deal, how come he had no idea which rights were available? That smacked of incompetence or sheer laziness. Either he really didn’t know what kind of deal he had made for his client or he was too lazy to look it up.

It took all of my personal strength not to shame him in front of his client, telling that writer that the agent should know what the hell kind of deal he had brokered.

But I didn’t. I didn’t really want to deal with that idiot writer ever again.

I almost backed out of buying the story. But it’s a powerful piece. I wanted it as a centerpiece to the project—although I was starting to question whether or not a story (any story) was worth the humiliation I had just gone through.

But I had already gone through the humiliation, so what the hell.

I wrote to the editor. It took half a day to compose the email because—remember—I didn’t want to offend him by suggesting he had done something wrong. I also considered the editor a colleague whom I could be honest with, and it took a lot of personal strength to write a neutral letter that didn’t say anything bad about the asshole—I mean agent—or the writer.

The editor wrote back and said he had no idea what rights were available. He sounded as perplexed as I had been about the writer—and the agent—saying he controlled those rights.

Color me very confused. This was so far past standard that I had no idea what was going on.

Then, the editor gave me the name of the publisher and suggested I contact someone there.

In that instant, all of my confusion vanished. Once I had the name of the publisher, I knew exactly what had gone wrong—and it made me mad all over again.

You see, Big Name Agent, working for Big Name Agency, had to keep his grubby little hands off this property because it was published by the pet ebook company that the agency had hired to publish ebooks for the agency’s clients only.

To avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, the agent couldn’t deal with any contract for the ebook publisher—not directly. The Big Name Agency was promoting a lie that it had nothing to do with that ebook service. (If the New York Attorney General knew about this arrangement, that agency would be subject to all kinds of investigations. And given I was still feeling pissed off and humiliated, I seriously thought about reporting them. I wish I had now.)

As an editor, I had worked with that ebook publisher before, and found their contracts to be draconian and ugly. Usually I couldn’t get any traction with this ebook publisher, at least for reprint rights, not without paying a ridiculous fortune, which I wouldn’t do.

However, in this case, the project carried some prestige, so the ebook company had no problem giving me permission to reprint the story— with payment to go to…wait for it…the ebook company.

The ebook company would (maybe) include this subsidiary rights sale in its royalty statement to the author.

Do I know if the company did include the sale? No. Do I think the company included the sale? No. Because there’s no one guarding the store. After all, in this kind of relationship, who is supposed to vet the royalty statements? The agent can’t. And the author—dimwit that they are—has no idea what rights were even sold, which meant the author had no clue what money would be owed on any subsidiary right.

If you’re not appalled by this little story, you should be. I’m rather inured to the idea that someone else gets paid for reprinting the work of many authors. I am, after all, dealing with estates a lot, and on the book side, traditional publishing companies often license subsidiary rights and pass through the payments (in theory) to the author in royalty statements.

That’s pretty normal.

What shouldn’t be normal are two things:

First, the agent should know who the rights licensor is, and did not. Or pretended not to, because of the scam—oh, beg pardon, I mean scheme—the agency and ebook company are pulling on their writers.

Second, the writer should know what rights they licensed, to whom, and whether or not those rights were available. They also should have been able to tell me which company to contact for the rights. If they’re one of those I can’t be soiled by silly business things writers, then they should have at least told me to contact their agent.

Good God.

I will tell you this. I will never buy an original story from this author. And I’ll think twice (or maybe three times) before I reprint the author’s work, no matter how good it is. Life is too short, and I don’t need the abuse.

And this was not an isolated case, just an extreme one. I’ve run into writers who have no idea who controls the rights to their work, writers who have no best copy of the work and don’t care if the copy that’s being reprinted is any good, and writers who won’t get involved past a simple permission.

What I mean by the last point is this: The writer gives me permission in writing because the writer, in theory, controls the rights to the story, but the agent refuses to negotiate the deal. Period. I’ve come across that several times now, each time the agent is objecting to 1) the publishing company I’m working with (not always WMG, and not limited to WMG); 2) the amount I’m paying, but the agent can’t negotiate the amount up because the writer has already agreed to the price; and/or 3) me.

The agent I’ve had the most trouble with so far is one I’ve known since his days as a baby agent. And he’s not the asshole—I mean agent—mentioned above. This other agent, the one I’ve had the most trouble with, is an unremitting asswipe, abusive and nasty and venal, and always has been. He and I have tangled for two decades in person. I hate him and he hates me, and so he does what he can to avoid contact with any project I’m associated with even if it’s in his client’s best interest to be part of that project.

There are agents whom I like a great deal personally, who are extremely easy to work with. There are agents whom I like a great deal personally, who are incompetent when it comes to business. There are agents whom I like a great deal personally, who are average business people, but do just fine when they need to.

And then there are the assholes. The writer’s Big Name agent, whom I mentioned above, moved from Random Agent in my book to flaming asshole with one extremely nasty email.

In the distant past, I made the mistake of telling a writer about their agent’s objection to working with me. The writer sniffed at me, and asked me what I had done to the agent. Nothing, I said. Well, it must have been something, the writer said, and refused to even consider any market I worked with from that moment on.

I mean, seriously.

I know, I know. You folks still want agents. Go ahead. Get one.

But realize there’s another lesson to be had here.

Know what you’re licensing, even if someone else negotiates the deal for you. Know what’s available and what isn’t. Monitor all of your licensing deals, your subright deals, and your contracts.

Because if you don’t, you might not just run into a predatory agent, like idiot writer did above. You might also run into some other predator.

What? You ask.

Well, let me give you one last example.

I was working on an anthology project and wanted to reprint a story from a Big Name Author I had never met. I did not know how to contact the author, and neither did any of my usual information sources. I even contacted various writers organizations that this writer might possibly have belonged to.

No one knew how to get in touch. That’s unusual for really big names. Usually, someone will offer to forward my contact information to the Big Name and then the Big Name will figure out how they want to contact me.

Since no one from my usual sources knew how to contact this person, I went to the original editor, someone I didn’t know.

That editor offered to go to the writer for a fee. The editor also wanted to know what I was offering the writer, which I did not say. The editor then told me that the writer would not take less than $1,000 for the story, which I could pay through the editor, who would see to it that the writer got the money.

Um…holy shit, dude. Really?

Instead, I went to a book editor who had worked with Big Name Author, got the contact information, and you know what? Big Name Author was easy to work with, and was happy with the usual fee that all the other authors got for that anthology.

Did I mention the short story editor to the author? Nope. I didn’t know the author well enough. I had no idea if the author and the scammy editor were friends.

I did, in a later discussion, mention this incident to another anthologist. That anthologist said, yeah, the editor was known for doing things like that and pocketing the extra cash. His sticky fingers were well known throughout the genre.

Only Big Name Author and I didn’t hang out with the right people in that genre. Neither of us knew about it, and I can guarantee that some other writers who published with that editor had no idea either.

I can go on, and often do, about the ways that writers can get scammed.

The key to the scamming almost always is the writer himself. I know I’m blaming the victim here, but the writer usually opens himself up to this kind of scam artist by refusing to learn the business.

I still feel a little humiliated by that damn agent, and angry at that damn writer, and astonished that a writer—any writer—would have no idea what rights were available to their work. I don’t know off the top of my head what rights are available on some of my short stories, but I know how to figure that out within the space of an hour.

And since I rarely sign contracts that take a lot of rights, I can usually guess which rights are available. Generally speaking, most of the rights are available, because I keep close control over everything.

My biggest problem, though, as a writer, an editor, a publisher, and a professional, is that I am like the guys in The Big Short. I expect to find grownups in the business world. Instead, I seem to find a plethora of thieves, scam artists, incompetents, and Artistes who simply can’t be bothered.

I write these blog posts out of my own disillusionment. Every time I have one of these experiences, I feel like those two characters in that movie. I’m looking around at a big important building, hoping for competence—and finding none.

***

One of the reasons I write these business posts is to vent, of course. It’s also to help writers find their way in this confusing industry. My husband Dean and I also teach some business courses that explain some of this stuff. We do so online.

If you want to test your abilities and see where you are as a business person (or in your craft), see the Strengths workshops that we’re doing for a limited time. We also have a number of workshops and lectures available on Teachable.

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“Business Musings: Writers, Scam Artists, Agents, and More (Sigh),” copyright © 2017 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Image at the top of the blog copyright © Can Stock Photo / Colecanstock