How I No Longer Have an Agent
Dec. 2nd, 2023 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rainwatersparkWell...I know I previously said I would wait to leave my agent until I had a new book ready to query. As it turns out, our relationship very suddenly imploded. Even though I was very angry and hurt by an email she sent me, I tried to lay out my issues and point out that I'm concerned about our communications lately, deciding that I'd give her a chance to explain herself and see if she'll express any willingness to salvage the relationship.
And...she did not.
She said she was sorry for being unclear, but then proceeded to claim I misunderstood what she said, which felt like a defense instead of an apology. Plus, I still think it's unreasonable for her to act like "just because I told you three times that I thought UK submission was a bad idea doesn't mean I was trying to talk you out of it," or even if that truly wasn't her intention, there's no way she can't understand why I would come to that conclusion. Then she wildly misinterpreted something I said in an outrageously unreasonable way and didn't apologize for that at all. Her recent emails have generally felt like they were full of "polite professional-speak" without actually addressing my concerns or truly acknowledging why I might be hurt.
The consensus among my family and friends is that she's purposefully trying to obfuscate how she truly feels, and there's no way I'll ever know for sure what's going through her mind. Still, I'm neurodivergent and I obsess over people's behavior when I don't understand them, so here are the possible interpretations I came up with:
Scenario #1: Assuming that she wasn't completely lying and purposefully trying to mislead me, and that she was being honest this whole time (even though she backtracked on her position and didn't explain why): She is a terrible communicator (for someone who makes a living based on reading), but she cannot accept being challenged and refuses to take accountability for her own bad communication. If she had just said "I completely understand why you read my email that way and I sincerely apologize for not communicating clearly and causing you unnecessary anxiety because that was not what I meant" and said she was willing to discuss how she can improve communicating with me, she would have completely defused my hurt and anger.
In any case, the fact that she seemed unwilling to meet me in the middle feels like she was uninterested in retaining me as a client anyway.
Scenario #2: She was lying about everything the whole time. She didn't want to do UK submission and tried to persuade/manipulate me into dropping the idea; however, when I called her out on it, she tried to backtrack, for reasons I don't understand. My personal theory is that she didn't want to go on submission in the UK because she thought she couldn't earn much money (which would be a massive conflict of interest if true), and when I pointed out to her that UK publishers can offer six-figure deals, she didn't want to acknowledge that I was right and she had been wrong, but that motivated her to backtrack and tell me we could still do UK submission, even though by that point I said I wasn't interested.
She suggested we part ways as a way to get rid of me; however, when I said she brought that up out of nowhere, she again seemed to backtrack. One of my friends suggested she is extremely conflict-averse and was trying to make me happy even if it wasn't what she wanted to do, and also at the cost of communicating any coherent position. I'm not sure if I personally believe that, because even if she was conflict-avoidant, she should have accepted it when I said I was willing to drop UK submission instead of coming back and insisting we could still do it if I wanted to.
I am a very conflict-avoidant person*, and one of the primary ways I avoid conflict is by preemptively apologizing whenever I feel like someone else thinks I might have screwed up. Obviously each person is different, but I'm just not sure I believe that conflict avoidance was her primary motivation for communicating with me the way she did.
(*I'm conflict-avoidant unless/until I feel like conflict is inevitable; once I'm in the middle of a conflict, I can become incredibly aggressive in standing up for myself, and I've noticed that people don't receive that switch well. Sometimes, I suspect that people assume they can bully me into obedience because I usually seem mild-mannered and shy, and then they react badly when I stand my ground and call out their BS.)
All of this is to say, I didn't have the energy to want to argue with her further if she was going to continue sounding this defensive and not receptive to my hurt feelings. So...as of yesterday, I am now agentless again.
I did have to ask her to pull the remaining submissions for Novel #4 and write them off as a loss, but there's a possibility those editors were ghosting me, anyway.
I also have to buckle down and finish Novel #5 in order to query again (querying Novel #4 would be a risk since it's already been on submission to US publishers).
Based on my experience and also speaking with many other authors, no author—and this is even more true for authors who don't have a book deal yet—ever wants to be in the position of terminating with their agent and being back in the query trenches again. While many authors do land another agent, there are also authors who don't. But the industry is so opaque that agents can, quite frankly, get away with treating their clients poorly and authors have very little recourse.
As I mentioned in a previous entry, there are many factors that pushed me to leave my agent. When I look back, there are multiple subtle hints I can now see that make me think my agent prioritized how much money she could make over my desires, which is a massive conflict of interest. I didn't pick up on those red flags at the time, because it's not unusual for an agent to want to get as much money as possible for a client; however, if a client values things other than money, an agent shouldn't pressure them, either. When it looked like a publisher was going to make an offer on Novel #3, my agent sort of pushed me to want a multi-book deal and seemed upset when I said I only wanted a one-book deal. The way my agent easily gives up on my books after they don't sell after one round to all the major publishers now feels like she's no longer interested if she thinks she can't get a big commission. And again, that's a conflict of interest. Money is not the only factor to weigh when considering an offer from a publisher. I've even heard that some agents pressure their clients to take the highest offer if there is a multiple offer situation, even if the author wants to go with an editor with a better vision for their book, and that would be an absolute nightmare scenario to me.
I'm cynical, so I feel like that my agent could probably claim that we parted ways because I was being unreasonable. But I left the relationship because I was starting to get stressed by the idea of interacting with her. Because I don't want an agent who is defensive, who hides or lies about their motivations, who is unwilling to have open and honest discussions with me even if those discussions are difficult.
I want an agent who believes in my books enough to fight their hardest for them. I want an agent who understands that this is my career and I need to have the final decision-making authority on issues that affect my career. I want to have an agent I trust enough that we can have discussions about the industry, about difficult situations and how to strategize if my career isn't going well, instead of suspecting that they might want to persuade me to one course of action or another for their own reasons.
Fingers crossed that I'll be able to find my advocate next year.
And...she did not.
She said she was sorry for being unclear, but then proceeded to claim I misunderstood what she said, which felt like a defense instead of an apology. Plus, I still think it's unreasonable for her to act like "just because I told you three times that I thought UK submission was a bad idea doesn't mean I was trying to talk you out of it," or even if that truly wasn't her intention, there's no way she can't understand why I would come to that conclusion. Then she wildly misinterpreted something I said in an outrageously unreasonable way and didn't apologize for that at all. Her recent emails have generally felt like they were full of "polite professional-speak" without actually addressing my concerns or truly acknowledging why I might be hurt.
The consensus among my family and friends is that she's purposefully trying to obfuscate how she truly feels, and there's no way I'll ever know for sure what's going through her mind. Still, I'm neurodivergent and I obsess over people's behavior when I don't understand them, so here are the possible interpretations I came up with:
Scenario #1: Assuming that she wasn't completely lying and purposefully trying to mislead me, and that she was being honest this whole time (even though she backtracked on her position and didn't explain why): She is a terrible communicator (for someone who makes a living based on reading), but she cannot accept being challenged and refuses to take accountability for her own bad communication. If she had just said "I completely understand why you read my email that way and I sincerely apologize for not communicating clearly and causing you unnecessary anxiety because that was not what I meant" and said she was willing to discuss how she can improve communicating with me, she would have completely defused my hurt and anger.
In any case, the fact that she seemed unwilling to meet me in the middle feels like she was uninterested in retaining me as a client anyway.
Scenario #2: She was lying about everything the whole time. She didn't want to do UK submission and tried to persuade/manipulate me into dropping the idea; however, when I called her out on it, she tried to backtrack, for reasons I don't understand. My personal theory is that she didn't want to go on submission in the UK because she thought she couldn't earn much money (which would be a massive conflict of interest if true), and when I pointed out to her that UK publishers can offer six-figure deals, she didn't want to acknowledge that I was right and she had been wrong, but that motivated her to backtrack and tell me we could still do UK submission, even though by that point I said I wasn't interested.
She suggested we part ways as a way to get rid of me; however, when I said she brought that up out of nowhere, she again seemed to backtrack. One of my friends suggested she is extremely conflict-averse and was trying to make me happy even if it wasn't what she wanted to do, and also at the cost of communicating any coherent position. I'm not sure if I personally believe that, because even if she was conflict-avoidant, she should have accepted it when I said I was willing to drop UK submission instead of coming back and insisting we could still do it if I wanted to.
I am a very conflict-avoidant person*, and one of the primary ways I avoid conflict is by preemptively apologizing whenever I feel like someone else thinks I might have screwed up. Obviously each person is different, but I'm just not sure I believe that conflict avoidance was her primary motivation for communicating with me the way she did.
(*I'm conflict-avoidant unless/until I feel like conflict is inevitable; once I'm in the middle of a conflict, I can become incredibly aggressive in standing up for myself, and I've noticed that people don't receive that switch well. Sometimes, I suspect that people assume they can bully me into obedience because I usually seem mild-mannered and shy, and then they react badly when I stand my ground and call out their BS.)
All of this is to say, I didn't have the energy to want to argue with her further if she was going to continue sounding this defensive and not receptive to my hurt feelings. So...as of yesterday, I am now agentless again.
I did have to ask her to pull the remaining submissions for Novel #4 and write them off as a loss, but there's a possibility those editors were ghosting me, anyway.
I also have to buckle down and finish Novel #5 in order to query again (querying Novel #4 would be a risk since it's already been on submission to US publishers).
Based on my experience and also speaking with many other authors, no author—and this is even more true for authors who don't have a book deal yet—ever wants to be in the position of terminating with their agent and being back in the query trenches again. While many authors do land another agent, there are also authors who don't. But the industry is so opaque that agents can, quite frankly, get away with treating their clients poorly and authors have very little recourse.
As I mentioned in a previous entry, there are many factors that pushed me to leave my agent. When I look back, there are multiple subtle hints I can now see that make me think my agent prioritized how much money she could make over my desires, which is a massive conflict of interest. I didn't pick up on those red flags at the time, because it's not unusual for an agent to want to get as much money as possible for a client; however, if a client values things other than money, an agent shouldn't pressure them, either. When it looked like a publisher was going to make an offer on Novel #3, my agent sort of pushed me to want a multi-book deal and seemed upset when I said I only wanted a one-book deal. The way my agent easily gives up on my books after they don't sell after one round to all the major publishers now feels like she's no longer interested if she thinks she can't get a big commission. And again, that's a conflict of interest. Money is not the only factor to weigh when considering an offer from a publisher. I've even heard that some agents pressure their clients to take the highest offer if there is a multiple offer situation, even if the author wants to go with an editor with a better vision for their book, and that would be an absolute nightmare scenario to me.
I'm cynical, so I feel like that my agent could probably claim that we parted ways because I was being unreasonable. But I left the relationship because I was starting to get stressed by the idea of interacting with her. Because I don't want an agent who is defensive, who hides or lies about their motivations, who is unwilling to have open and honest discussions with me even if those discussions are difficult.
I want an agent who believes in my books enough to fight their hardest for them. I want an agent who understands that this is my career and I need to have the final decision-making authority on issues that affect my career. I want to have an agent I trust enough that we can have discussions about the industry, about difficult situations and how to strategize if my career isn't going well, instead of suspecting that they might want to persuade me to one course of action or another for their own reasons.
Fingers crossed that I'll be able to find my advocate next year.
