cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I Will Not Read Her Email Oh wait, there was more that I was going to write about. I just received an email from my idiot literary agent. The first peep I have heard out of her in the last 6 months or so. The subject line is, 'checking in.' What's the content of the message? I don't know and I don't especially care. I doubt that I will bother to read it. I am the fucking master at not reading an email whose existence I resent. I have received emails years ago that I know for a fact were laden with intense drama and which I have never once been tempted to personally read. They sit there archived in my gmail account. My agent has been fired by me but does not seem to take a hint well. She continues to get a cut of my royalties of the first two books but I'm not letting her touch anything else going forward. She fucked up so unbelievably badly on two occasions that I do not care to do business with her again. For a while I was auditioning new agents but then I stopped. I don't think that I want one for a while. As an established author with one successful book on the market and another in production that already got covered twice by the NYT while I was still working on it, I don't think I really need an agent any more to get attention from publishers. Yes, an agent knows what the market is in a given genre and can increase the size of your advance. In my case this isn't all that relevant any more. I need a minimum advance amount for my books in order to survive and cover the costs of producing the books. If this much isn't offered, I won't produce the book. Its a simple business calculation. Could I get a larger advance? That doesn't matter much to me. My short term concern is with getting enough money to allow my basic survival. Long-term, whatever extra I could have squeezed out from a larger advance will just show up later in the form of royalties. So I get the same money either way. If the book doesn't produce much in the way of royalties then I'd still be happy because I don't want to take a big advance (unless its a fucking huge one that I could retire on) that isn't fully earned out in actual sales. If your book doesn't earn out the advance then you don't get offered a contract for the next book. The goal here is a long-term career writing books. Not selling one book and running off to Tijuana with the advance money and telling my grand-kids some day about the one time I sold a book. I want a stable of good sellers out on the market that all add up to a steady stream of healthy royalty checks year after year. For that to happen, I just need to dig my heels in the sand over my royalty rates and insist on the modest advances that are necessary to keep living and writing more books. And over time the books and their annual royalty checks will add up to a good living. I really do not think that I need a literary agent at this point to make that happen. Certainly not a literary agent who sits on my advance money for weeks on end while travel plans for a book have to be canceled for lack of funds. Certainly not an agent who twiddles her thumbs and does nothing for six fucking weeks after a media boomlet involving articles in the WP, V1llage voice, NPR and the NYT when I have sent her a book proposal and sample chapters to pitch while my name is on every acquisitions editor's tongue. I don't believe that I will be reading this email. 11:52 p.m. - 2011-09-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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