Episode 226 - From Gatekeepers to Guides: The Evolving Role of Agents with David Morris
February 20. 2024
"There's a lot of old school mindsets still in publishing, that to be a real author with a real publisher, you've got to have a traditional publishing deal, and that's with a publisher that gets your book into bookstores. And that's just less and less a relevant idea, even though it's something I think a lot of people still hang on to." —David Morris
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David Morris discusses FROM GATEKEEPERS TO GUIDES: THE EVOLVING ROLE OF AGENTS, including the decline of gatekeeper roles in the publishing world; the agent business model and how it is evolving, including the emergence of an indie equivalent of the agent role; red flags to watch out for when seeking that support; and the role of hybrid publishers.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
If one of those topics piques your interest, you can easily jump to that section on YouTube by clicking on the flagged timestamps in the description.
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David Morris is a creative leader, content strategist, and accomplished professional with 30 years of publishing experience. He has worked for major publishers like HarperCollins and Guideposts Books at the executive level with both bestselling and debut authors. David is a literary agent at Hyponymous Consulting and the founder and publisher of Lake Drive Books, an independent hybrid publisher.
Links
David's Links:
Author website: davidrmorris.me
Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/davidrobertmorris
Instagram profile: https://www.instagram.com/dvdmorris/?hl=en
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dvdmorris/
Matty's Links:
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Events
Author website: davidrmorris.me
Facebook profile: https://www.facebook.com/davidrobertmorris
Instagram profile: https://www.instagram.com/dvdmorris/?hl=en
LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dvdmorris/
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with David! What part of the information he shared was the biggest surprise for you?
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AI-generated Summary
David Morris, a literary agent and independent publisher, discusses the evolving role of the agent in today's changing publishing landscape.
Morris describes his background, starting in inspirational publishing and later working as a publisher at HarperCollins. This gave him insight into traditional publishing deals, agents, and author personalities. However, the industry has consolidated considerably, with fewer major publishers and imprints remaining. This consolidation has impacted literary agents, raising the bar for the types of authors and deals they pursue.
Morris notes that a lot of old-school mindsets still prevail, valuing traditional publishing deals that get books into bookstores. But the reality is that most book sales, even for established authors, now happen online through retailers like Amazon. The gatekeepers who once controlled access to readers through bookstores no longer have that power. Authors are now expected to drive sales through their own platform and online presence.
The agent's role has shifted as a result. Agents today may need to take a more opportunistic approach, looking beyond just securing significant advances from major publishers. Morris highlights hybrid publishing as one area agents could explore, where authors pay upfront but earn higher royalties. However, he doesn't see many agents pursuing these types of deals currently.
Morris emphasizes the growing importance of an author's platform, particularly in nonfiction. Publishers want to see that authors have expertise, a strong online presence, and the ability to connect with readers directly. For fiction authors, a great book can help build that platform organically. Agents should advise authors on developing their email lists, social media engagement, and launching strategies.
The traditional agent model of taking 15% commission on advances and royalties hasn't changed much. But Morris sees his role evolving beyond just securing a publishing deal, into more of an "author coach" providing ongoing guidance across an author's career.
For indie authors seeking similar support, Morris suggests exploring services like Reedsy or directories from the Independent Book Publishers Association. However, he cautions against overpromising "magic bullet" solutions and encourages authors to develop authentic strategies for building their platform.
In summary, the agent's role is adapting as the industry shifts. Agents must now be more entrepreneurial, open to alternative publishing models, and prepared to advise authors holistically on developing their careers and connecting with readers in a digital world.
Morris describes his background, starting in inspirational publishing and later working as a publisher at HarperCollins. This gave him insight into traditional publishing deals, agents, and author personalities. However, the industry has consolidated considerably, with fewer major publishers and imprints remaining. This consolidation has impacted literary agents, raising the bar for the types of authors and deals they pursue.
Morris notes that a lot of old-school mindsets still prevail, valuing traditional publishing deals that get books into bookstores. But the reality is that most book sales, even for established authors, now happen online through retailers like Amazon. The gatekeepers who once controlled access to readers through bookstores no longer have that power. Authors are now expected to drive sales through their own platform and online presence.
The agent's role has shifted as a result. Agents today may need to take a more opportunistic approach, looking beyond just securing significant advances from major publishers. Morris highlights hybrid publishing as one area agents could explore, where authors pay upfront but earn higher royalties. However, he doesn't see many agents pursuing these types of deals currently.
Morris emphasizes the growing importance of an author's platform, particularly in nonfiction. Publishers want to see that authors have expertise, a strong online presence, and the ability to connect with readers directly. For fiction authors, a great book can help build that platform organically. Agents should advise authors on developing their email lists, social media engagement, and launching strategies.
The traditional agent model of taking 15% commission on advances and royalties hasn't changed much. But Morris sees his role evolving beyond just securing a publishing deal, into more of an "author coach" providing ongoing guidance across an author's career.
For indie authors seeking similar support, Morris suggests exploring services like Reedsy or directories from the Independent Book Publishers Association. However, he cautions against overpromising "magic bullet" solutions and encourages authors to develop authentic strategies for building their platform.
In summary, the agent's role is adapting as the industry shifts. Agents must now be more entrepreneurial, open to alternative publishing models, and prepared to advise authors holistically on developing their careers and connecting with readers in a digital world.
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today, my guest is David Morris. Hey David, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] David: Hey, I'm doing great, Matty. Thanks for having me here. Meet David Morris.
[00:00:08] Matty: I am pleased to have you here. To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, David Morris is a creative leader, content strategist, and accomplished professional with 30 years of publishing experience. He's worked for major publishers like Collins and Guidepost Books at the executive level with both bestselling and debut authors. David is a literary agent at Hyponymous Consulting and the founder and publisher of Lake Drive Books, an independent hybrid publisher. I invited David on the podcast to talk about the evolving role of the agent. And as we were talking about before I hit record, I'm just interested in among all the many changes that are happening in the publishing world, you know, the agent is such a key role, has been such a key role for so long in understanding how that role is changing.
The evolving role of the agent
[00:00:50] Matty: So, David, I think it might be useful just for you to describe, you know, as far back as it makes sense for you to go, what your evolving role has been, the biggest changes you're seeing, and especially how that would impact authors who are looking toward agents for help with their careers.
[00:01:06] David: Sure. Yeah, if I kind of rewind on some things a little bit, you'll have to just make sure I come back to the main question, you know, what's going on with agenting. Yeah, I mean, publishing is the accidental profession quite often for so many of us, and I thought I was going to be a psychotherapist. And so, I studied psych and religion, but I got into religion publishing 30 years ago. Actually, it was political science textbook publishing for starters, and I worked for a major inspirational brand that was magazine-based, so, it had a large mailing list, and we would use that mailing list to market to this captive audience, saying, "Hey, we like this book, we think you'll like this," you know, direct mail publishing.
It was a different kind of publishing business, but it also introduced me to all the different publishers out there because we would license things from other publishers. This is while I was at what was, what's called Guidepost Magazine or Guidepost books, a little inspirational magazine that's been around for a long time. It's not a newsstand, but it's got a very large, one of the top circulation numbers in the country. And then I ended up being the publisher at the Zovin division, HarperCollins, and that introduced me to really big book deals, the agents that came with that, the authors and the author personalities that came with that.
That experience really taught me what I came to like or dislike about literary agents.
And so, you know, my story is one of consolidated publishing consolidation. And so my position eventually was changed and moved to a different office. And I'm out on my own now. And I decided that, you know, corporate life maybe isn't what I need to do for the rest of my career, and so I decided that I wanted to help authors in a specific content area. I wanted to help them with the expertise that I learned in my publishing career apply it in new ways because the business really has changed. It's very different. So many people, I think you, you kind of know that intuitively, or you kind of know that from what you've observed, but you're not quite sure why or how, why it's happened this way.
[00:03:05] But there are reasons. Being kind of in the belly of the beast at a major publisher, having to be responsible for a multimillion-dollar publishing budget and working with a sales team and the executive suite, I got my finger on it, I think, or at least I got underneath it some, and it taught me a lot about what I want to try to do now.
You know, I think there's a lot of old school mindsets still in publishing, that, to be a real publisher, to be a real author with a real publisher, you've got to have a traditional publishing deal, and that's with a publisher that gets your book into bookstores, and that's just less and less a relevant idea, even though it's something I think a lot of people still hang on to.
I meet publishers, and they love to point out to me sometimes their large sales teams and all the great, amazing things that their sales teams are doing. And I'm thinking, okay, yeah, but I know a lot of entry-level authors and mid-level authors, and their book sales are still 90 to 95 percent online retail, most of which is Amazon.
[00:04:14] Matty: Yeah, it does seem as if the things that used to be maybe five, certainly ten years ago, pretty much hard barriers, there aren't that many hard barriers anymore. It's just that, how hard do you have to work to clear the lowering barriers? So, for example, I wouldn't put it past me as an indie author to see my books in a Barnes and Noble, but I'd have to expend so much time and so much energy in pursuing that that I've looked at it and decided it just isn't worth my time, but the black and white lines that I think were there for a long time are just not there anymore.
[00:04:46] David: I totally agree. One of the things I like to say that's just right in line with that is the gatekeepers aren't there like they used to be. You said barriers. To me, the gatekeepers in the past used to be the bookstores and funneling things through bookstores. The thing I like to say to a lot of authors these days is, publishers used to have the exclusive relationship to consumers, to the readers. And that was because they had the exclusive relationship to the bookstores, and the bookstores were actually a marketing mechanism for discoverability. So if you got a book deal, great, because that meant you're with somebody who has access to consumers.
Well, when people stopped showing up at bookstores or ordering books from physical bookstores in big numbers, in big percentages, they lost that relationship, and now suddenly they're reliant on the author to drive the sales, the author's platform, the author's readership. So, that just means that, you know, a lot of the need for the author to do all the work has shifted to the author. But on the other hand, it also is an opportunity.
You could conceivably get your book into a Barnes and Noble bookstore, especially lately, because they say that Barnes and Noble is more open to local authors and having events. I'm hearing that more from more than one source, but that doesn't mean you're going to get a national buy into all of their 600 plus stores, which is not as many stores as it used to be. Despite all the good news you keep seeing about BNN and NPW.
[00:06:17] Matty: Well, it does seem, the other thing we had mentioned briefly before we started recording was this idea that, perhaps it never was this cut and dry, but it seemed like when I first started exploring publishing in 2013, 2012, 2013, it was pretty much there was sort of the either-or choice.
[00:06:59] David: I think it's challenging, honestly, because for an agent to get enough authors and land enough significant book deals, and a lot of their income is, at least when you're starting out, it's based on the advances, but even still, it can end up being based on the advances quite a bit because the way publishing works, it's very speculative. They'll invest money in an author and a lot of authors in a given year, but they won't necessarily make their money back on each one of them. They won't, those authors don't necessarily see royalty checks. A lot of them don't see royalty checks after that, and it's speculative in the sense that you hope that out of all those that you've invested in 20 percent pay for the 80 percent of the business that you need to generate.
So, I think that some agent, like I talked to an agent a while back when I was first getting into this, and this agent is trying to do deals with all the major houses in New York City. And his view was he's got to sign authors who can get a six-figure book deal.
Well, that's a pretty big author. That's a pretty exclusive and rare space to be in. Just to warrant a six-figure advance, 100,000 advance, you've got to be able to sell 30,000 plus books in one year for the publisher to see it as a good financial deal, or maybe in 18 months to two years at worst, and that's, that I think is having an effect where, you know, probably there's fewer agents than there used to be. I just have to speculate on that. I don't know that for sure. I mean, there are fewer publishers. There's less variety of imprints. There's been so much consolidation that I have to believe that there are fewer agents who are making it work. And all those publishers who've consolidated, they've raised the bar on what they're looking for in terms of author sales.
So I think there's that pressure on literary agents. Now that doesn't mean for an opportunistic agent, which is kind of what I am, I guess, that there's some in-betweens. And, but I think I don't know very many agents who are operating and like doing deals with hybrid publishers, for example.
[00:09:12] Matty: Can you just, clarify what, when you're using the term hybrid publisher, what that means?
[00:09:17] David: Yeah. So a hybrid publisher is, sort of a spectrum of publishers that, basically the way I like to explain it is they work on a different financial model. They ask for money upfront from the author, but they also pay a much higher royalty. Now that might sound just like vanity publishing of old, but there's more aspects to that. One is, it's got to be curated and well-edited and designed content, not just like a service. It's got to have real distribution, which, what does that mean in this world today? Well, if you can get it on Amazon and all the other online retailers, that's basically real distribution. I subscribe to the, with my hybrid publishing, I subscribe to the Independent Book Publishers Association, standards for hybrid publishers, and you can look that up at IndependentBookPublishersAssociation.com, and they explain what hybrid publishing is.
It's turning out to be a pretty good option because there are some very skilled people who have come into that world. You still have to be careful not to spend too much money there. Don't get into a program where they're asking for this package, plus that package, plus another package, but it still can be pretty expensive. I had one hybrid publisher tell me that he tells authors that you've got to plan to spend around $10,000 because that's what it costs to produce a book.
In my experience, he's right. If I add in all of the macro edit work, the copy editing, maybe if there's line editing, the two proof passes, typesetting, design, interior, and cover, and all the labor hours involved in that. Just the freelance stuff that I pay for is at least half that. But if you add in all the labor hours around it, it's definitely a big investment. If a publisher is going to pay you in advance, remember that they may pay you in advance, but then they're also paying upfront for $10,000 plus dollars just to publish one book. So it's a big investment on their part. But that's what hybrid publishing is.
[00:11:17] Matty: And in that scenario, I think you were talking about the role of the agent with regard to hybrid publishing, which I imagine is somewhat different than the role of an agent with regard to traditional publishing.
[00:11:27] David: Yeah, and I don't know very many agents that are really doing it because there's really no advance involved. So they would have to be more of an opportunistic forward-thinking agent that could see that, oh, hey, maybe I can help my author into a hybrid publishing arrangement that's a good one, and if they're making that really much higher royalty rate, and it really is significantly higher, so if your book is going to work, you could earn your money back and pay an agent at the same time, and if it works in perpetuity, great. But for say for a fiction writer who's putting out a lot of different novels, it's probably not a great option, just because, you know, your sales aren't going to warrant that for any one book. It's a different strategy altogether. Yeah. So, I mean, I think in general. In my experience, if you want to go the agent route, you've got to be prepared to really want to hit it big, and that's rarefied air. It's just really tough to be, to find yourself in that position.
[00:12:25] Matty: And what are the considerations that differ between, fiction authors and nonfiction authors and the relationship that they could expect to establish with an agent?
[00:12:34] David: Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of comes down to platform and how platform relates to fiction writing versus nonfiction writing. In nonfiction writing, where I'm more experienced, platform is often related to what your day job is and. Do you have expertise and an idea that comes out of that expertise? And does the expertise in your day job structure give you opportunities to talk about your book, to get speaking going on, to build an, to build an online platform? So like, I tend to like wander into the self-help world a little bit more than most people. Let's just say a psychotherapist who gets a great podcast going, for example, or, you know, and really strong social media to support that. Now, having expertise as a psychotherapist with original ideas that are well articulated can help you build a following. An agent and a publisher can recognize the value in someone presenting a unique, significant concept.
However, in fiction, the challenge is more about originality within the genre you're writing. Literary fiction, for example, is a domain I'm not well-versed in, so I'll refrain from commenting extensively on it. However, there may be considerable agent involvement due to publishers' interest in this genre. The financial rewards, especially at the outset, might not be substantial or scalable. This isn't a judgment on the value of the work but a practical consideration of the scale and the potential for representation by agents in such cases.
The agent business model
[00:14:20] Matty: And can you describe just at a very basic level how the agent is making his or her money in different scenarios, and if that has been changing over time?
[00:14:30] David: Yeah, I don't know that it has changed a whole lot. I think that it's sort of like general market book royalties where, a standard offer for hardcover is 10 percent of List price, to a certain number of units, like 12.5% for the next five, 15% thereafter. I suspect agenting commissions are pretty much the same as well. I haven't heard, and certainly up until a couple of years ago when I was still a publisher, I haven't heard of very many agents deviating from that. And the standard agent commission is 15 percent of your royalties, which includes the advance, which is an advance against royalties. Plus, once you've earned out of your advance, you've paid for that advance with your actual royalty, accruals, you know, then they get 15 percent in perpetuity for that particular book that you contracted the agent for?
[00:15:27] Matty: And this is a really basic question, but I realize I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. So, would-be author, a writer would pitch the agent to have the agent accept them. It's an odd relationship because it strikes me as being, each is kind of the client of the other. So it feels like going to get a lawyer to go represent you somewhere, that probably not how to pitch yourself to a lawyer. You just go to the lawyer, you say, I want to hire you. And then, and now you have a representative to do whatever you need legal expertise for, as opposed to an agent where you're having to pitch yourself. But then once that relationship has been established, is the agent representing you to publishers in the same way that a lawyer would represent you in legal scenarios to third parties? Or am I misunderstanding the relationship between the author, the agent, and the publisher?
[00:16:24] David: Well, I think an agent really should be committed to the author. And maybe, you know, in more ways than one, they should be of like mind in terms of the topic of the writing. They should know the right publishers to pitch that topic to and have some, hopefully some relationships with some of them. I also see it sometimes as like a real estate agent too, kind of that, you know, some similarities there. You approach the agent with your blueprint of the property in a real estate situation, and they're going to want to see what your house is like. How good is it?
How many features does it have? Can they actually sell it? Are they going to make the commission needed to pay for their nice agent, literary real estate agent car? But I think with an author approaching an agent, it's still a similar thing because you're presenting an agent with your intellectual property. However, there really is a big difference; it almost gets back to the lawyer analogy. I talked about what I like about an agent and what I saw in agents that I liked. Those that didn't just help with a proposal, but also helped get the proposal in good shape, shopped it to publishers, assisted with entertaining offers, accepting an offer if you get one, and then negotiating a contract. It goes on much longer than that, really.
It almost gets back to the publishing environment today. I enjoy this part of agenting—author coaching. It's an ongoing part of the relationship. If my author needs to fix something on their website, I'm going to say something. If they're heading into the launch phase and haven't done a few steps in preparation, I'll start saying, "Hey, you need to get a launch team going," or "You need to work on raising your email list in the coming six months before your book launch."
Also, an agent should be an ongoing translator between the author and the publishing house. They speak different languages, have different expectations in the relationship, and the agent can help the author understand why the publisher behaves a certain way. They probably have good reasons. Sometimes the publisher needs help remembering why an author has certain expectations, and they probably have good reasons too. It's a careful relationship, more extraordinary than litigation or real estate brokering. Hopefully, you find the right agent if you're in that situation.
The indie equivalent of an agent role
[00:19:14] Matty: Well, I can imagine many indie authors would be very interested in someone who would point out the problems with their website and encourage them to start an email list and all those other things. Everything you just mentioned, except for negotiating with the publisher. I'm not even sure what that role would be, like a business manager for an indie publisher or something like that. Are you encountering any agents who are doing that or moving into that as the industry changes?
[00:19:44] David: It's interesting, I see people pitching their publishing expertise to everyday authors. Oftentimes, it's more about how to write a good proposal. Yeah, and it's not necessarily about helping you build up your platform, which I think is far underrated. People see it far too cynically at the same time. I don't know that I've seen a whole lot of it going on, but it's definitely something I'm committed to because I've seen, especially in my latter years in my position at HarperCollins Zonderman, I was seeing the authors that were working, and it didn't matter your creed, the color of your skin, your gender, your sexuality. It was like the authors who could connect with their audience online were making things happen, even on a subterranean level, with nobody really knowing why or noticing why. The authors with email lists were the ones that were working.
The role of the author platform
[00:20:42] Matty: We've mentioned the platform a couple of times, and I think that's a really interesting example of how things are changing because I've seen two flavors of the platform idea. One is that a traditional publisher is never going to be interested in an author who has established a platform, especially as an indie because they want someone they can start out fresh with. And then there's another flavor that is, if I attach myself to a publisher or an agent, then they're going to help me with my platform. And then there's the third flavor, I think, that is a publisher or an agent is going to be looking for someone with an established platform so that the author has illustrated that they can communicate effectively with their email list or that they have a compelling social media presence. Is that changing? Do you have recommendations on any of those fronts about an author and a platform?
[00:21:36] David: I still believe that it's the third option. Most publishers are in that space. If you've got the platform, then you'll be more attractive to where publishers are today. Publishers do a lot more celebrity books than they ever have. The ghostwriting business is up. From what I've heard, the thing about that's kind of cool though, is if you actually have original writing, and this kind of gets back to the old idea of, if it's great writing, it should work. You know, I shouldn't need a social media platform or an email list, but if it's great writing, then your social media and your email list should grow naturally too, right? And that can actually be fun. If your content's strong, and you're connecting with people, and they're interested in your stories and your ideas, you're going to find that your social media, your email list, and your website traffic are growing. And you're going to start establishing even a little bit of community.
What's cool today about all that online platform stuff is that you can now have a direct relationship with your readers more than you ever could before. I sometimes say, what would you rather have, 10,000 book sales with people that you hardly ever meet or 1,000 book sales with people who are reading your every newsletter and responding sometimes? It can be very gratifying, and publishing isn't always about the money. It's about the influence, the storytelling, and the fun.
[00:23:07] Matty: The other thing that I was thinking of when you were saying something earlier is that I was asking if there's basically a job title for someone who does some of those agency things for indie authors, except for negotiating contracts with traditional publishers. And I think that the way that's panning out in the indie author community is that it's up to the author to recognize the different areas where they may need specialized expertise, like developing an email list or establishing and then optimizing a website, paying attention to search engine optimization. This is all kind of top of mind because I'm trying to refine several of these things for myself.
And the challenge is that each one of those is an independent standalone thing. So I can spend time researching what a reputable and effective service or individual is to help me optimize my SEO or to optimize my YouTube channel or whatever it might be. It seems as if those people who combine some of those things together so that there's a more holistic look at all those parts of the indie author business other than the actual writing sort of get a bad rap, I think. Because, as you were saying earlier, there's this fine line between people who are doing that legitimately and the people who are just bundling together stuff in a vanity press package and saying, "Here are the 10 things you need." And I don't know that I'm hearing people talk about how to track down that expertise other than one person at a time. You find the person who's the expert at email list building, and then you follow their advice. But nobody who's kind of looking across it.
[00:24:43] David: I agree. I agree. I mean, you know, I get pitched all the time about, "Hey, your website could have better SEO." There's search engine optimization. There's a lot of schlocky stuff, actually, and there's a lot of overpromising going on about if you get the right keywords on your website, you're suddenly going to experience rapid growth. I don't think it's that simple, and yet people, I get pitches all the time about it. So I think it's one of those kind of churn and burn things where people are paying for it, but it's not necessarily panning out. But somehow SEO is seen as like a silver bullet.
I often like to say there's no magic. Try not to do magical thinking in publishing. Try to have a strategy, not magic. Even magicians practice a lot at what they do, and it's illusion. It's not actual supernatural magic necessarily.
Where to look for help and red flags to watch out for
[00:25:36] Matty: So if someone is looking for that kind of help that an agent in other circumstances would provide, do you have tips about where they can look for reputable options or what would be red flags for that one should steer away from?
[00:25:49] David: Yeah, I think one of the challenges is when you start looking for people to help you with an email list or website building, they don't necessarily have experience with book publishing or book authors. So I think that would be the thing to do would be to maybe go onto Reedsy.com, which is one of those online brokerage freelance brokerage firms that connect people with a lot of it is with editors and book designers, but there are marketers there too. And some of those folks know about book marketing for sure. What's the other one that's really Upwork is it?
[00:26:24] Matty: Yeah. I've used both of those. I really like Reedsy because I feel as if, well, Upwork is so general, whereas Reedsy is very much focused on author services. And I've found that, I mean, I've had pro and con experiences on both those, but I do feel like the Reedsy pool is a little more focused, and their contractors are a little better vetted.
[00:26:44] David: Yeah. I would also mention again the Independent Book Publishers Association. A lot of their members are author publishers—in other words, authors who start their own publishing enterprise, however big or small it might be. And I know I can think of at least one person, I won't mention that right now per se, but I know at least one person who's quite present to that organization and its folks. So if you join, or if you just get close enough to that organization, you'll probably start figuring out who those people are.
Selective rights licensing
[00:27:12] Matty: Okay, well, the other thing, I haven't had an opportunity to ask anybody about this, but some time ago, sometime last year, maybe even longer ago, I was interviewing Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors, and we were talking about selective rights licensing. I said, what I would love is to find someone who would take care of non-U.S. rights for me because I'm making a lot of money. Other than the fact that I sell my English language books into foreign markets, you know, I'm not doing anything to pursue translations or anything like that.
So, I would be willing to pay a big percentage of my earnings to someone who would say, you know, if I could say, take these books and whatever their area of expertise was, if they thought that my books would kill it in German, take my books, bother me as little as possible, and then I'll give you, I don't know, 75% of the royalties. I would be willing to give a lot of money to someone because it would be a matter of me earning a little bit of foreign language translations.
[00:28:12] David: Well, there's a very big international rights agency business out there. If you Google international rights agents for book publishing, I'm sure a whole bunch will pop up. People who attend the Frankfurt Book Fair and the London Book Fair and so on. So I would think that there's plenty to research, and there are people to make phone calls with. I don't know how much they take on of the independent author. That sounds interesting to me because I would imagine they're really trying to target publishers a lot of the time with their business.
[00:28:46] Matty: And I think that the impression I've gotten is that if you decide to actively go after foreign rights or translation rights or things like that, it's a research effort. And if you're going after it, you're in essence pitching yourself as you would be pitching if you were going after an agent for a traditional publisher. It's not like you can make a phone call and say, you know, I'll give you 75% of my sales if you find a way to get this into the hands of German-speaking readers in a German translation.
[00:29:18] David: My guess is they're going to ask for a pretty big cut anyway, so you just kind of want to get their attention first and then see how it goes. And maybe it would make it more attractive if you said something different than most publishers or other authors do in terms of offering a bigger royalty. But, yeah, that's interesting. Especially in the fiction market, I would think that in non-fiction, it's harder to translate into other, well, I'm speaking metaphorically, but it's harder for, you know, like American knowledge to be as interesting in Europe or else or more broad than that, especially in my area of religious studies, because it's just very different flavors everywhere.
[00:29:55] Matty: Yeah, I don't normally think about this except when I'm having conversations like this, but I do think there are these big swaths of opportunity where there is opportunity, but the terms of negotiation, the terms and conditions or whatever that aren't really firmed up, so it's hard to distinguish reputable people from disreputable people because there's kind of no history to judge it against. Like is $10,000 reasonable or not reasonable? You know, you have the background to know that in certain circumstances, it is reasonable, but then there are plenty of people out there who are charging $10,000, and you're not getting $10,000 worth of value.
[00:00:00] Matty: I always like to use the opportunity to let people know about Writer Beware. If people are not subscribed to Victoria Strauss's Writer Beware blog, they should definitely do that because it's a great place to learn about disreputable practices. It's a great resource.
[00:00:14] David: Yeah. There are some disreputable actors out there, without question, who are trying to take advantage of authors. I've seen it happen firsthand. One was impersonating Simon & Schuster executives. It was incredible. They even warn about this person on the Simon & Schuster website. I'm amazed they can get away with it, given Simon & Schuster's legal resources.
[00:00:42] Matty: I imagine people are missing legitimate opportunities because they dismiss an email as spam, but it's much more likely to be genuine.
[00:00:54] David: Publishing is very mysterious, and you want to make headway. Books are also very personal, so it's a mix of personal desires and hopes with someone making big promises. It's hard to resist.
[00:01:16] Matty: Are there any pieces of advice? I'm just lamenting the fact that I want this service and don't know how to get it. David, can you share some useful information for those listening who feel they need help with their author career? Are there steps they can take to position themselves for that?
The platform has come up so much that I think it's a good example. If people feel they don't know how to do it themselves or they're at sea, don't have time, or whatever it is, are there resources to help them?
[00:02:03] David: There are one or two outfits that help build author websites. R. R. Bowker, who handles ISBN numbers, is starting something like that. There's another affiliated with the Independent Book Publishers Association. Services like marketing people on Reedsy could help authors take the next steps.
[00:02:27] Matty: There's so much food for thought. There are ideas for where people could look for help, and if anyone is looking for a career in the indie publishing space, there's an unmet need they could pursue.
[00:02:46] David: I agree. If you've learned some things, you probably know as much as anyone else. A lot of the work is very rudimentary, like helping people with the basics of building an online platform. Because it just takes a lot of steps to start getting a website to start doing consistent social media posts to kind of get your head into it. To not be like, "Well, I got to set up a social media posting calendar." That's a lot of advice that you'll often hear, and yeah, that can be beneficial. But you also have to learn how to post organically and become acclimated to the medium. Then you'll have an internal motivation and a desire like, "Oh, it's time for me to post again. I haven't posted in a while."
If you could, you have to establish that sort of dynamic first for yourself before you can realistically start plotting things out on a calendar. People are wired differently, but to me, at a very basic level, having that internal motivation to know how to post on social media is probably the thing to figure out first. And then you can put more structure around it, like a calendar. So there are steps to it. I think anyone aspiring to this position you're talking about could get plenty of work just helping people with some of the basics.
[00:34:50] Matty: Yeah. So interesting. Well, David, thank you for humoring all my wide-ranging questions and for joining me on the podcast. Please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
[00:35:02] David: Sure, my literary agenting work is at hyponymous.com. You can also find me at lakedrivebooks.com. It's a road here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I am. It's a small indie publisher, more in religion and spirituality, but it's very progressive and kind of exciting stories going on there.
[00:35:29] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.
[00:00:06] David: Hey, I'm doing great, Matty. Thanks for having me here. Meet David Morris.
[00:00:08] Matty: I am pleased to have you here. To give our listeners and viewers a little bit of background on you, David Morris is a creative leader, content strategist, and accomplished professional with 30 years of publishing experience. He's worked for major publishers like Collins and Guidepost Books at the executive level with both bestselling and debut authors. David is a literary agent at Hyponymous Consulting and the founder and publisher of Lake Drive Books, an independent hybrid publisher. I invited David on the podcast to talk about the evolving role of the agent. And as we were talking about before I hit record, I'm just interested in among all the many changes that are happening in the publishing world, you know, the agent is such a key role, has been such a key role for so long in understanding how that role is changing.
The evolving role of the agent
[00:00:50] Matty: So, David, I think it might be useful just for you to describe, you know, as far back as it makes sense for you to go, what your evolving role has been, the biggest changes you're seeing, and especially how that would impact authors who are looking toward agents for help with their careers.
[00:01:06] David: Sure. Yeah, if I kind of rewind on some things a little bit, you'll have to just make sure I come back to the main question, you know, what's going on with agenting. Yeah, I mean, publishing is the accidental profession quite often for so many of us, and I thought I was going to be a psychotherapist. And so, I studied psych and religion, but I got into religion publishing 30 years ago. Actually, it was political science textbook publishing for starters, and I worked for a major inspirational brand that was magazine-based, so, it had a large mailing list, and we would use that mailing list to market to this captive audience, saying, "Hey, we like this book, we think you'll like this," you know, direct mail publishing.
It was a different kind of publishing business, but it also introduced me to all the different publishers out there because we would license things from other publishers. This is while I was at what was, what's called Guidepost Magazine or Guidepost books, a little inspirational magazine that's been around for a long time. It's not a newsstand, but it's got a very large, one of the top circulation numbers in the country. And then I ended up being the publisher at the Zovin division, HarperCollins, and that introduced me to really big book deals, the agents that came with that, the authors and the author personalities that came with that.
That experience really taught me what I came to like or dislike about literary agents.
And so, you know, my story is one of consolidated publishing consolidation. And so my position eventually was changed and moved to a different office. And I'm out on my own now. And I decided that, you know, corporate life maybe isn't what I need to do for the rest of my career, and so I decided that I wanted to help authors in a specific content area. I wanted to help them with the expertise that I learned in my publishing career apply it in new ways because the business really has changed. It's very different. So many people, I think you, you kind of know that intuitively, or you kind of know that from what you've observed, but you're not quite sure why or how, why it's happened this way.
[00:03:05] But there are reasons. Being kind of in the belly of the beast at a major publisher, having to be responsible for a multimillion-dollar publishing budget and working with a sales team and the executive suite, I got my finger on it, I think, or at least I got underneath it some, and it taught me a lot about what I want to try to do now.
You know, I think there's a lot of old school mindsets still in publishing, that, to be a real publisher, to be a real author with a real publisher, you've got to have a traditional publishing deal, and that's with a publisher that gets your book into bookstores, and that's just less and less a relevant idea, even though it's something I think a lot of people still hang on to.
I meet publishers, and they love to point out to me sometimes their large sales teams and all the great, amazing things that their sales teams are doing. And I'm thinking, okay, yeah, but I know a lot of entry-level authors and mid-level authors, and their book sales are still 90 to 95 percent online retail, most of which is Amazon.
[00:04:14] Matty: Yeah, it does seem as if the things that used to be maybe five, certainly ten years ago, pretty much hard barriers, there aren't that many hard barriers anymore. It's just that, how hard do you have to work to clear the lowering barriers? So, for example, I wouldn't put it past me as an indie author to see my books in a Barnes and Noble, but I'd have to expend so much time and so much energy in pursuing that that I've looked at it and decided it just isn't worth my time, but the black and white lines that I think were there for a long time are just not there anymore.
[00:04:46] David: I totally agree. One of the things I like to say that's just right in line with that is the gatekeepers aren't there like they used to be. You said barriers. To me, the gatekeepers in the past used to be the bookstores and funneling things through bookstores. The thing I like to say to a lot of authors these days is, publishers used to have the exclusive relationship to consumers, to the readers. And that was because they had the exclusive relationship to the bookstores, and the bookstores were actually a marketing mechanism for discoverability. So if you got a book deal, great, because that meant you're with somebody who has access to consumers.
Well, when people stopped showing up at bookstores or ordering books from physical bookstores in big numbers, in big percentages, they lost that relationship, and now suddenly they're reliant on the author to drive the sales, the author's platform, the author's readership. So, that just means that, you know, a lot of the need for the author to do all the work has shifted to the author. But on the other hand, it also is an opportunity.
You could conceivably get your book into a Barnes and Noble bookstore, especially lately, because they say that Barnes and Noble is more open to local authors and having events. I'm hearing that more from more than one source, but that doesn't mean you're going to get a national buy into all of their 600 plus stores, which is not as many stores as it used to be. Despite all the good news you keep seeing about BNN and NPW.
[00:06:17] Matty: Well, it does seem, the other thing we had mentioned briefly before we started recording was this idea that, perhaps it never was this cut and dry, but it seemed like when I first started exploring publishing in 2013, 2012, 2013, it was pretty much there was sort of the either-or choice.
[00:06:59] David: I think it's challenging, honestly, because for an agent to get enough authors and land enough significant book deals, and a lot of their income is, at least when you're starting out, it's based on the advances, but even still, it can end up being based on the advances quite a bit because the way publishing works, it's very speculative. They'll invest money in an author and a lot of authors in a given year, but they won't necessarily make their money back on each one of them. They won't, those authors don't necessarily see royalty checks. A lot of them don't see royalty checks after that, and it's speculative in the sense that you hope that out of all those that you've invested in 20 percent pay for the 80 percent of the business that you need to generate.
So, I think that some agent, like I talked to an agent a while back when I was first getting into this, and this agent is trying to do deals with all the major houses in New York City. And his view was he's got to sign authors who can get a six-figure book deal.
Well, that's a pretty big author. That's a pretty exclusive and rare space to be in. Just to warrant a six-figure advance, 100,000 advance, you've got to be able to sell 30,000 plus books in one year for the publisher to see it as a good financial deal, or maybe in 18 months to two years at worst, and that's, that I think is having an effect where, you know, probably there's fewer agents than there used to be. I just have to speculate on that. I don't know that for sure. I mean, there are fewer publishers. There's less variety of imprints. There's been so much consolidation that I have to believe that there are fewer agents who are making it work. And all those publishers who've consolidated, they've raised the bar on what they're looking for in terms of author sales.
So I think there's that pressure on literary agents. Now that doesn't mean for an opportunistic agent, which is kind of what I am, I guess, that there's some in-betweens. And, but I think I don't know very many agents who are operating and like doing deals with hybrid publishers, for example.
[00:09:12] Matty: Can you just, clarify what, when you're using the term hybrid publisher, what that means?
[00:09:17] David: Yeah. So a hybrid publisher is, sort of a spectrum of publishers that, basically the way I like to explain it is they work on a different financial model. They ask for money upfront from the author, but they also pay a much higher royalty. Now that might sound just like vanity publishing of old, but there's more aspects to that. One is, it's got to be curated and well-edited and designed content, not just like a service. It's got to have real distribution, which, what does that mean in this world today? Well, if you can get it on Amazon and all the other online retailers, that's basically real distribution. I subscribe to the, with my hybrid publishing, I subscribe to the Independent Book Publishers Association, standards for hybrid publishers, and you can look that up at IndependentBookPublishersAssociation.com, and they explain what hybrid publishing is.
It's turning out to be a pretty good option because there are some very skilled people who have come into that world. You still have to be careful not to spend too much money there. Don't get into a program where they're asking for this package, plus that package, plus another package, but it still can be pretty expensive. I had one hybrid publisher tell me that he tells authors that you've got to plan to spend around $10,000 because that's what it costs to produce a book.
In my experience, he's right. If I add in all of the macro edit work, the copy editing, maybe if there's line editing, the two proof passes, typesetting, design, interior, and cover, and all the labor hours involved in that. Just the freelance stuff that I pay for is at least half that. But if you add in all the labor hours around it, it's definitely a big investment. If a publisher is going to pay you in advance, remember that they may pay you in advance, but then they're also paying upfront for $10,000 plus dollars just to publish one book. So it's a big investment on their part. But that's what hybrid publishing is.
[00:11:17] Matty: And in that scenario, I think you were talking about the role of the agent with regard to hybrid publishing, which I imagine is somewhat different than the role of an agent with regard to traditional publishing.
[00:11:27] David: Yeah, and I don't know very many agents that are really doing it because there's really no advance involved. So they would have to be more of an opportunistic forward-thinking agent that could see that, oh, hey, maybe I can help my author into a hybrid publishing arrangement that's a good one, and if they're making that really much higher royalty rate, and it really is significantly higher, so if your book is going to work, you could earn your money back and pay an agent at the same time, and if it works in perpetuity, great. But for say for a fiction writer who's putting out a lot of different novels, it's probably not a great option, just because, you know, your sales aren't going to warrant that for any one book. It's a different strategy altogether. Yeah. So, I mean, I think in general. In my experience, if you want to go the agent route, you've got to be prepared to really want to hit it big, and that's rarefied air. It's just really tough to be, to find yourself in that position.
[00:12:25] Matty: And what are the considerations that differ between, fiction authors and nonfiction authors and the relationship that they could expect to establish with an agent?
[00:12:34] David: Yeah, I mean, I think it kind of comes down to platform and how platform relates to fiction writing versus nonfiction writing. In nonfiction writing, where I'm more experienced, platform is often related to what your day job is and. Do you have expertise and an idea that comes out of that expertise? And does the expertise in your day job structure give you opportunities to talk about your book, to get speaking going on, to build an, to build an online platform? So like, I tend to like wander into the self-help world a little bit more than most people. Let's just say a psychotherapist who gets a great podcast going, for example, or, you know, and really strong social media to support that. Now, having expertise as a psychotherapist with original ideas that are well articulated can help you build a following. An agent and a publisher can recognize the value in someone presenting a unique, significant concept.
However, in fiction, the challenge is more about originality within the genre you're writing. Literary fiction, for example, is a domain I'm not well-versed in, so I'll refrain from commenting extensively on it. However, there may be considerable agent involvement due to publishers' interest in this genre. The financial rewards, especially at the outset, might not be substantial or scalable. This isn't a judgment on the value of the work but a practical consideration of the scale and the potential for representation by agents in such cases.
The agent business model
[00:14:20] Matty: And can you describe just at a very basic level how the agent is making his or her money in different scenarios, and if that has been changing over time?
[00:14:30] David: Yeah, I don't know that it has changed a whole lot. I think that it's sort of like general market book royalties where, a standard offer for hardcover is 10 percent of List price, to a certain number of units, like 12.5% for the next five, 15% thereafter. I suspect agenting commissions are pretty much the same as well. I haven't heard, and certainly up until a couple of years ago when I was still a publisher, I haven't heard of very many agents deviating from that. And the standard agent commission is 15 percent of your royalties, which includes the advance, which is an advance against royalties. Plus, once you've earned out of your advance, you've paid for that advance with your actual royalty, accruals, you know, then they get 15 percent in perpetuity for that particular book that you contracted the agent for?
[00:15:27] Matty: And this is a really basic question, but I realize I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. So, would-be author, a writer would pitch the agent to have the agent accept them. It's an odd relationship because it strikes me as being, each is kind of the client of the other. So it feels like going to get a lawyer to go represent you somewhere, that probably not how to pitch yourself to a lawyer. You just go to the lawyer, you say, I want to hire you. And then, and now you have a representative to do whatever you need legal expertise for, as opposed to an agent where you're having to pitch yourself. But then once that relationship has been established, is the agent representing you to publishers in the same way that a lawyer would represent you in legal scenarios to third parties? Or am I misunderstanding the relationship between the author, the agent, and the publisher?
[00:16:24] David: Well, I think an agent really should be committed to the author. And maybe, you know, in more ways than one, they should be of like mind in terms of the topic of the writing. They should know the right publishers to pitch that topic to and have some, hopefully some relationships with some of them. I also see it sometimes as like a real estate agent too, kind of that, you know, some similarities there. You approach the agent with your blueprint of the property in a real estate situation, and they're going to want to see what your house is like. How good is it?
How many features does it have? Can they actually sell it? Are they going to make the commission needed to pay for their nice agent, literary real estate agent car? But I think with an author approaching an agent, it's still a similar thing because you're presenting an agent with your intellectual property. However, there really is a big difference; it almost gets back to the lawyer analogy. I talked about what I like about an agent and what I saw in agents that I liked. Those that didn't just help with a proposal, but also helped get the proposal in good shape, shopped it to publishers, assisted with entertaining offers, accepting an offer if you get one, and then negotiating a contract. It goes on much longer than that, really.
It almost gets back to the publishing environment today. I enjoy this part of agenting—author coaching. It's an ongoing part of the relationship. If my author needs to fix something on their website, I'm going to say something. If they're heading into the launch phase and haven't done a few steps in preparation, I'll start saying, "Hey, you need to get a launch team going," or "You need to work on raising your email list in the coming six months before your book launch."
Also, an agent should be an ongoing translator between the author and the publishing house. They speak different languages, have different expectations in the relationship, and the agent can help the author understand why the publisher behaves a certain way. They probably have good reasons. Sometimes the publisher needs help remembering why an author has certain expectations, and they probably have good reasons too. It's a careful relationship, more extraordinary than litigation or real estate brokering. Hopefully, you find the right agent if you're in that situation.
The indie equivalent of an agent role
[00:19:14] Matty: Well, I can imagine many indie authors would be very interested in someone who would point out the problems with their website and encourage them to start an email list and all those other things. Everything you just mentioned, except for negotiating with the publisher. I'm not even sure what that role would be, like a business manager for an indie publisher or something like that. Are you encountering any agents who are doing that or moving into that as the industry changes?
[00:19:44] David: It's interesting, I see people pitching their publishing expertise to everyday authors. Oftentimes, it's more about how to write a good proposal. Yeah, and it's not necessarily about helping you build up your platform, which I think is far underrated. People see it far too cynically at the same time. I don't know that I've seen a whole lot of it going on, but it's definitely something I'm committed to because I've seen, especially in my latter years in my position at HarperCollins Zonderman, I was seeing the authors that were working, and it didn't matter your creed, the color of your skin, your gender, your sexuality. It was like the authors who could connect with their audience online were making things happen, even on a subterranean level, with nobody really knowing why or noticing why. The authors with email lists were the ones that were working.
The role of the author platform
[00:20:42] Matty: We've mentioned the platform a couple of times, and I think that's a really interesting example of how things are changing because I've seen two flavors of the platform idea. One is that a traditional publisher is never going to be interested in an author who has established a platform, especially as an indie because they want someone they can start out fresh with. And then there's another flavor that is, if I attach myself to a publisher or an agent, then they're going to help me with my platform. And then there's the third flavor, I think, that is a publisher or an agent is going to be looking for someone with an established platform so that the author has illustrated that they can communicate effectively with their email list or that they have a compelling social media presence. Is that changing? Do you have recommendations on any of those fronts about an author and a platform?
[00:21:36] David: I still believe that it's the third option. Most publishers are in that space. If you've got the platform, then you'll be more attractive to where publishers are today. Publishers do a lot more celebrity books than they ever have. The ghostwriting business is up. From what I've heard, the thing about that's kind of cool though, is if you actually have original writing, and this kind of gets back to the old idea of, if it's great writing, it should work. You know, I shouldn't need a social media platform or an email list, but if it's great writing, then your social media and your email list should grow naturally too, right? And that can actually be fun. If your content's strong, and you're connecting with people, and they're interested in your stories and your ideas, you're going to find that your social media, your email list, and your website traffic are growing. And you're going to start establishing even a little bit of community.
What's cool today about all that online platform stuff is that you can now have a direct relationship with your readers more than you ever could before. I sometimes say, what would you rather have, 10,000 book sales with people that you hardly ever meet or 1,000 book sales with people who are reading your every newsletter and responding sometimes? It can be very gratifying, and publishing isn't always about the money. It's about the influence, the storytelling, and the fun.
[00:23:07] Matty: The other thing that I was thinking of when you were saying something earlier is that I was asking if there's basically a job title for someone who does some of those agency things for indie authors, except for negotiating contracts with traditional publishers. And I think that the way that's panning out in the indie author community is that it's up to the author to recognize the different areas where they may need specialized expertise, like developing an email list or establishing and then optimizing a website, paying attention to search engine optimization. This is all kind of top of mind because I'm trying to refine several of these things for myself.
And the challenge is that each one of those is an independent standalone thing. So I can spend time researching what a reputable and effective service or individual is to help me optimize my SEO or to optimize my YouTube channel or whatever it might be. It seems as if those people who combine some of those things together so that there's a more holistic look at all those parts of the indie author business other than the actual writing sort of get a bad rap, I think. Because, as you were saying earlier, there's this fine line between people who are doing that legitimately and the people who are just bundling together stuff in a vanity press package and saying, "Here are the 10 things you need." And I don't know that I'm hearing people talk about how to track down that expertise other than one person at a time. You find the person who's the expert at email list building, and then you follow their advice. But nobody who's kind of looking across it.
[00:24:43] David: I agree. I agree. I mean, you know, I get pitched all the time about, "Hey, your website could have better SEO." There's search engine optimization. There's a lot of schlocky stuff, actually, and there's a lot of overpromising going on about if you get the right keywords on your website, you're suddenly going to experience rapid growth. I don't think it's that simple, and yet people, I get pitches all the time about it. So I think it's one of those kind of churn and burn things where people are paying for it, but it's not necessarily panning out. But somehow SEO is seen as like a silver bullet.
I often like to say there's no magic. Try not to do magical thinking in publishing. Try to have a strategy, not magic. Even magicians practice a lot at what they do, and it's illusion. It's not actual supernatural magic necessarily.
Where to look for help and red flags to watch out for
[00:25:36] Matty: So if someone is looking for that kind of help that an agent in other circumstances would provide, do you have tips about where they can look for reputable options or what would be red flags for that one should steer away from?
[00:25:49] David: Yeah, I think one of the challenges is when you start looking for people to help you with an email list or website building, they don't necessarily have experience with book publishing or book authors. So I think that would be the thing to do would be to maybe go onto Reedsy.com, which is one of those online brokerage freelance brokerage firms that connect people with a lot of it is with editors and book designers, but there are marketers there too. And some of those folks know about book marketing for sure. What's the other one that's really Upwork is it?
[00:26:24] Matty: Yeah. I've used both of those. I really like Reedsy because I feel as if, well, Upwork is so general, whereas Reedsy is very much focused on author services. And I've found that, I mean, I've had pro and con experiences on both those, but I do feel like the Reedsy pool is a little more focused, and their contractors are a little better vetted.
[00:26:44] David: Yeah. I would also mention again the Independent Book Publishers Association. A lot of their members are author publishers—in other words, authors who start their own publishing enterprise, however big or small it might be. And I know I can think of at least one person, I won't mention that right now per se, but I know at least one person who's quite present to that organization and its folks. So if you join, or if you just get close enough to that organization, you'll probably start figuring out who those people are.
Selective rights licensing
[00:27:12] Matty: Okay, well, the other thing, I haven't had an opportunity to ask anybody about this, but some time ago, sometime last year, maybe even longer ago, I was interviewing Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors, and we were talking about selective rights licensing. I said, what I would love is to find someone who would take care of non-U.S. rights for me because I'm making a lot of money. Other than the fact that I sell my English language books into foreign markets, you know, I'm not doing anything to pursue translations or anything like that.
So, I would be willing to pay a big percentage of my earnings to someone who would say, you know, if I could say, take these books and whatever their area of expertise was, if they thought that my books would kill it in German, take my books, bother me as little as possible, and then I'll give you, I don't know, 75% of the royalties. I would be willing to give a lot of money to someone because it would be a matter of me earning a little bit of foreign language translations.
[00:28:12] David: Well, there's a very big international rights agency business out there. If you Google international rights agents for book publishing, I'm sure a whole bunch will pop up. People who attend the Frankfurt Book Fair and the London Book Fair and so on. So I would think that there's plenty to research, and there are people to make phone calls with. I don't know how much they take on of the independent author. That sounds interesting to me because I would imagine they're really trying to target publishers a lot of the time with their business.
[00:28:46] Matty: And I think that the impression I've gotten is that if you decide to actively go after foreign rights or translation rights or things like that, it's a research effort. And if you're going after it, you're in essence pitching yourself as you would be pitching if you were going after an agent for a traditional publisher. It's not like you can make a phone call and say, you know, I'll give you 75% of my sales if you find a way to get this into the hands of German-speaking readers in a German translation.
[00:29:18] David: My guess is they're going to ask for a pretty big cut anyway, so you just kind of want to get their attention first and then see how it goes. And maybe it would make it more attractive if you said something different than most publishers or other authors do in terms of offering a bigger royalty. But, yeah, that's interesting. Especially in the fiction market, I would think that in non-fiction, it's harder to translate into other, well, I'm speaking metaphorically, but it's harder for, you know, like American knowledge to be as interesting in Europe or else or more broad than that, especially in my area of religious studies, because it's just very different flavors everywhere.
[00:29:55] Matty: Yeah, I don't normally think about this except when I'm having conversations like this, but I do think there are these big swaths of opportunity where there is opportunity, but the terms of negotiation, the terms and conditions or whatever that aren't really firmed up, so it's hard to distinguish reputable people from disreputable people because there's kind of no history to judge it against. Like is $10,000 reasonable or not reasonable? You know, you have the background to know that in certain circumstances, it is reasonable, but then there are plenty of people out there who are charging $10,000, and you're not getting $10,000 worth of value.
[00:00:00] Matty: I always like to use the opportunity to let people know about Writer Beware. If people are not subscribed to Victoria Strauss's Writer Beware blog, they should definitely do that because it's a great place to learn about disreputable practices. It's a great resource.
[00:00:14] David: Yeah. There are some disreputable actors out there, without question, who are trying to take advantage of authors. I've seen it happen firsthand. One was impersonating Simon & Schuster executives. It was incredible. They even warn about this person on the Simon & Schuster website. I'm amazed they can get away with it, given Simon & Schuster's legal resources.
[00:00:42] Matty: I imagine people are missing legitimate opportunities because they dismiss an email as spam, but it's much more likely to be genuine.
[00:00:54] David: Publishing is very mysterious, and you want to make headway. Books are also very personal, so it's a mix of personal desires and hopes with someone making big promises. It's hard to resist.
[00:01:16] Matty: Are there any pieces of advice? I'm just lamenting the fact that I want this service and don't know how to get it. David, can you share some useful information for those listening who feel they need help with their author career? Are there steps they can take to position themselves for that?
The platform has come up so much that I think it's a good example. If people feel they don't know how to do it themselves or they're at sea, don't have time, or whatever it is, are there resources to help them?
[00:02:03] David: There are one or two outfits that help build author websites. R. R. Bowker, who handles ISBN numbers, is starting something like that. There's another affiliated with the Independent Book Publishers Association. Services like marketing people on Reedsy could help authors take the next steps.
[00:02:27] Matty: There's so much food for thought. There are ideas for where people could look for help, and if anyone is looking for a career in the indie publishing space, there's an unmet need they could pursue.
[00:02:46] David: I agree. If you've learned some things, you probably know as much as anyone else. A lot of the work is very rudimentary, like helping people with the basics of building an online platform. Because it just takes a lot of steps to start getting a website to start doing consistent social media posts to kind of get your head into it. To not be like, "Well, I got to set up a social media posting calendar." That's a lot of advice that you'll often hear, and yeah, that can be beneficial. But you also have to learn how to post organically and become acclimated to the medium. Then you'll have an internal motivation and a desire like, "Oh, it's time for me to post again. I haven't posted in a while."
If you could, you have to establish that sort of dynamic first for yourself before you can realistically start plotting things out on a calendar. People are wired differently, but to me, at a very basic level, having that internal motivation to know how to post on social media is probably the thing to figure out first. And then you can put more structure around it, like a calendar. So there are steps to it. I think anyone aspiring to this position you're talking about could get plenty of work just helping people with some of the basics.
[00:34:50] Matty: Yeah. So interesting. Well, David, thank you for humoring all my wide-ranging questions and for joining me on the podcast. Please let everyone know where they can go to find out more about you and everything you do online.
[00:35:02] David: Sure, my literary agenting work is at hyponymous.com. You can also find me at lakedrivebooks.com. It's a road here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I am. It's a small indie publisher, more in religion and spirituality, but it's very progressive and kind of exciting stories going on there.
[00:35:29] Matty: Great. Thank you so much.