Wednesday, June 22, 2011

MBM2: Agents And The Marketplace




This is ME BEING ME, where I am going to talk about what's going on in my mind and what I've been thinking about is:Agents and The Marketplace.

I'm an avid listener of podcasts, esspecially writing podcast like Adventures In Sci-Fi Piblishing, I Should Be Writing, Writing Excuses, and Odyssey WritingWorkshops Podcast. They're normally the first place I heard news from the industry I'm hoping to work in. It was in this vain, I became horribly depressed. I was listening to Adventures In Sci-Fi Publishing (AISFP 124 - Kristine Kathryn Rusch)In this interview, she says outright, Wait at least two years to get an agent because the industry is kind of up in the air right now. Professionals are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, except their wearing nicer suits. The rise of E-publishing has turned the market on its ear. When an author can write a book, edit it, market it, get book covers and, simply put, successfully cut off publishers, what roll do publishers have? Agents and Publishers are trying to figure it out.
Also, Rusch warned about agents misbehaving in this unclear publishing climate. There are agents getting writers to agree to ridiculous contacts like having writers sign over enture books or everything in their backlist to the agent. New writers in this climate are like chum in the water for a bunch of scared, blind sharks. Yet another reason why it's a horrible idea to writing at all. But if you take the two years to let the industry settle down and figure itself out, like a female college student, when you're probably born to write. Take that time to sharpen your fiction and blow your writers out of the water. That's what I'm going to have to do, because I just can t stop.

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