The Rise Of Agent-Publishers Is Bad For The Book Business

paidcontent reporting:
As this emergent Agent-Publisher construct grows into a mainstream strategy, it brings to the surface a set of concerns that deserves interrogation. Can an Agent effectively represent an Author’s best interests in such a dynamic? If you remove the central plank of an Agency and replace it with the central plank of a Publisher, is it still the same ship?
A Crisis of Professional Ethics
The duty of agents, and their special virtue in exigent times, is to think beyond the present, lead their clients wisely into new opportunities, and build the most well-equipped team to get them there. I want to believe this is the calling that leads agents to develop digital publishing arms for their clients: a call, as I suggested at Digital Book World earlier this year, to radical mediation.
Yet even if Agent-Publishers hold such noble intentions, there is one party with whom they cannot mediate on their clients’ behalf: themselves. An agent representing a client’s works to licensees cannot realistically maintain his or her unwavering allegiance to that client when the licensee is the Agency itself—however the “digital publishing arm” of the agency is described. This conflict is unavoidable, and has repercussions across the relationship, from an Agent’s signing of a client, to the preparation and pitch to publishers, to the decision to publish independently, to the terms established for profit and expenses, to the rights grant and term and beyond. Every instance of the relationship is brought into question if the agent’s primary position as author advocate is compromised. This concern is not adequately addressed by claiming good intentions. Nor by gesturing toward a trusting agent-author relationship. Nor by claiming we are in a time of experimentation. Certain principles do not evaporate in the face of innovation.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-why-the-rise-of-agent-publishers-is-bad-for-the-book-business