ALL AGENTS GREAT AND SMALL - PART 2
Large Agencies
In the first part of this post we examined the advantages of one-person agencies. What happens when staff is added?
As an agency's business expands it must add new staff members and deploy them according to the organization that best suits the agent's style—a style that may transmute as the agent gains experience. As a rule, the smaller the agency the less specialized are the tasks performed by its staff: in other words, everybody handles everything. As the firm grows, a structure usually evolves along lines of staff specialization. One structure might be described as vertical, with the agent at the pinnacle handling the clients, supported by a staff that services the clients' properties but does not necessarily have contact with the clients themselves. One staff member might handle foreign rights, another movie, another audio, another bookkeeping, and so on.
The advantage of a vertical system, generally, is excellent service, for every aspect of the client's needs; every facet of the property, will be taken care of by a specialist. The disadvantage is that the client list must be kept relatively small—no larger than the capacity of the head of the company to handle his or her clients' work and needs comfortably. If the agent should go out of town for an extended trip or vacation, the agency may be reduced to a maintenance capacity and not be capable of dealing forcefully with the sorts of emergencies that always seem to attack writers the moment their agents board an airplane. Another disadvantage is the vulnerability of the agency in the event of the death or disability of its owner, for there will be no one with deep experience at handling clients to take the place of the late lamented.
As an agent becomes successful they will be solicited by many authors seeking representation. Many are excellent writers with good track records who need the guidance and assistance of a good agency. A combination of profit motive and compassion will compel the agent to offer representation to them. But how can the principal agent fit them into the stable without curtailing the time, attention, and service now lavished on the other clients?
Some agents resist this temptation, harden their hearts, and shut their doors to newcomers. Others resort to hiring employees to handle the overflow of clients. An agency engaging a roster of agents might be described as horizontal, and obviously there is no limit to the number of clients such a firm can take on, for, as soon as it reaches capacity, it can always add a new agent to take on the excess. The boss will still be the boss, and there will still be a staff of specialists to handle subsidiary rights and clerical and administrative functions. But on the middle level will be those other agents, replicating what their boss does. They may be generalists, handling the gamut of literature from genre to mainstream, or they may deal in such specialties as juveniles, nonfiction, romance or science fiction. I would say that most middle-sized and large agencies fit this horizontal pattern; in fact, it's hard to imagine how an agency can become large unless it does eventually expand horizontally.
From the writer's viewpoint, an agency of this type is attractive for several reasons. First, it enables the author to locate within the organization the individual agent best suited to their work and style. Second, if the organization is well run, the author will enjoy the benefit of a team approach under the supervision of the principal agent. And third, if one's agent is out of town or on vacation, or is so thoughtless as to die, there is a good likelihood that a replacement will be found in the ranks of the other agents at the same firm. In other words, the bumpy ups and downs you often experience with a one-person agency will be absorbed by a larger organization, and that is a secure feeling. But there's also a catch.
Most clients of middle-sized and large agencies are content to be represented by an agent who is not the head man or woman, as long as there is a sense that the chief is at least overseeing the work of the subordinate agents and making sure that all of the agency's authors are being properly serviced. Inherent in the very nature of large organizations, however, is a degree of insulation between the head of the company and the activities of those clients he or she does not directly represent. If an author begins to feel that the agent handling their work is not doing an adequate job, they may conclude that the head of the company has more important concerns than the scribblings of a mere midlist writer. Thus is created what might be described as the "A List-B List Syndrome," meaning that the agency has two client lists: the Grade A clients handled by the boss, and the Grade B ones handled by the secondary agents. When that sort of suspicion begins to gnaw at a client, they may eventually decide they must either move up or move out and seek an agency where they will receive more personal attention from the top agent.
It is therefore incumbent on the heads of agencies to make sure that the subordinate agents keep in very close touch both with the boss and each other. At many agencies, that is precisely what happens. In others, the principal agent has administrative and client demands that make supervision of the other agents' activities difficult. Now, it can certainly be assumed that some of those agents are ambitious, and so an atmosphere is created in which a subordinate agent, operating with little supervision, begins to wonder just what they need a boss for anyway. They may be making a good salary and even collecting commissions, but as so much of the revenue they generate must go to paying overhead and a profit to the firm, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow the idea will occur to them that they could do better on their own. For many of that agent's clients, the notion of joining their agent when they start their own agency is extremely appealing, for in a stroke those clients will be transformed from B Listers to A Listers. Things don't always turn out to be as satisfying as that fantasy, though, for the agent may discover that they do not, on their own, enjoy the same success they did when they were a member of a large and influential organization. It is extremely hard and perhaps impossible for the client of a larger agency to sort out just what is the true source of their agent's power and success. Does the person handling you consult with the head of the company or are they handling your account strictly on their own? Is the agent's effectiveness due in good measure to the influence, reputation, and support of the organization, or are these incidental to the agent's performance? Some authors discover the answers to these questions by leaving; others by staying on.
At the summit are the giant agencies, representing many illustrious authors, extremely well-connected in the movie and television area, and moving tremendous amounts of properties, rights, and money. These firms are often broken down into departments, and you the author will be handled by someone in the literary department. These departments usually have senior and junior staff members and operate as potent fiefdoms in a great bi-coastal kingdom. Because the overhead of these firms is stupendous, the clients they take on must be pretty heavy hitters and often are authors whose work is highly adaptable to film and television. The disadvantage is the intimidating vastness of such organizations.
Somewhere in all this is a place for you, and in few businesses is it more true that what's great for one person may be awful for another. I doubt if many authors retain one agent for the span of their entire career. Indeed, for the sake of an author's personal growth, having the same agent from cradle to grave may be a very poor idea.
At least, that's what I tell myself whenever I lose a client.
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This piece was first published in Locus Magazine and collected in Mastering the Business of Publishing
Richard Curtis's books on publishing are available at Open Road https://openroadmedia.com/search-results/books/Richard%20Curtis
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