When Three Agents Have Lunch

Before I get to the real post, just wanted to mention that Mary DeMuth posted an interview with me yesterday on her blog. She asked some interesting questions! Read it here.

A couple of weeks ago, Kerrie Flanagan of Northern Colorado Writers hosted a lunch for three Denver-area agents: Kristin Nelson (Nelson Literary); Kate Schafer Testerman (KT Literary); and me (me). We met at a downtown Denver restaurant and sat out on the patio watching the world go by, including a panhandler who asked us for money at least five times.

We got to talking about the state of the industry and I have to say, part of me was relieved that I'm not the only one noticing how slow things are lately. Publishers are still acquiring books, but everything seems to be taking longer, and the expectations seem to be higher. It's not uncommon for it to take two or three months to hear back from publishers once we submit—and that's for projects that are pretty darn strong. In addition, some publishers are putting less money into editing their books, so they're looking for a higher level of perfection than they might have expected previously. I'm not happy things are this way, but I'm happy it's not just me!

Our gabbing was interrupted by the waiter taking our order, and the other three rolled their eyes when I ordered a salad. We were at a noodle restaurant, where apparently it's only okay to order noodles. I'm such a renegade.

So then we got into this really convoluted discussion about all the changes to publishing contracts because of the evolving electronic rights situation. (Any normal person would have been totally bored by this.) Electronic rights are really on agents' minds right now, as the publishers are scrambling to get appropriate language into their new author contracts, and we (agents) keep pushing them to make their language more fair to authors. Authors are not being heavily affected by this yet; but some of the contracts being signed today will still be in effect five or ten years from now and the electronic situation will surely be different then. We're trying to anticipate this and get language that protects authors for the long haul. Nice to know that all agents are in the same boat.

Along about then a rogue thunderstorm decided to pass over (not surprising, since this is Colorado). We abandoned our patio table for the très chic lounge inside.

Speaking of Colorado, that was another interesting topic of conversation—the fact that we're all pretty far from the New York City publishing scene. We agreed that it hasn't hampered us a bit in our work. (This is especially true for me since I work with a lot of Christian publishers who aren't in New York anyway.) Technology has made geography practically irrelevant. Even if we live right across the street from a publisher, we're still doing everything by email and phone. Of course, face-time is important, so we travel and meet with editors in person regularly. But in general, I think it's so cool that technology has made it possible to do business equally successfully with people all over the country.

You're probably wondering if we ever got to gossiping about clients or bad queries or the challenges of being an agent. Well, to tell you the truth... no! We love our jobs and while there are challenges just like in any business, none of us are the complaining type. We had a blast talking about the industry and we could've gabbed all afternoon, but alas, we all had actual work to do. And blogs to write.

Back to the grind!