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Guardian essay: ‘Don’t reject agents’—even in the Web era
April 8, 2009 | 7:06 am
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By David Rothman
Has self-publishing—revitalized by e-book and POD technologies—made literary agents obsolete? Here’s the agents’ side, from an author named Jean Hannah Edelstein, writing in the Guardian. She formerly worked for one.
The e-book angle: I agree with her on the usefulness of agents. But the issue isn’t just whether they’re earning their 15 percent. Could some of them actually be hurting books—and society in general—through overzealousness on such issues as text-to-speech for the Kindle 2? Not to mention their past resistance to making clients’ titles available in E?
Related: Google roundup of stories on blind people’s demonstration against the Author’s Guild—for being so stubborn on the TTS issue.
Technorati Tags: Jean Hannah Edelstein
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Comments:
Well, reading the article didn’t make me feel like going right out and securing an agent. Agents may do a useful job in the traditional publishing world, but in the digital world, much of their job (as much of the traditional publisher’s job) can be done by the author, and often is.
If agents want to be part of the digital publishing world, therefore, they will just have to show authors that they can still serve them.