So Are Nonfiction Books Dead or Not?

I feel like that's a good opportunity to step back because not every listener of this podcast actually knows how the book industry works and what an agent does and what an editor does and when the supply chains come in and all of these things.

So can you give us like kind of the basic like spiel about how it all works and how it all fits together?

Yeah, sure.

So in the United States, if you want to publish a book with a big commercial publisher, so I'm referring to what they call the big five, which is Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, and Simon & Schuster, and then what we call the Tony Indies, so W.W. Norton, Bloomsbury, Gray Wolf, that tier, you have to work with a literary agent.

These bigger houses will not look at work that is unagented.

I'm sure there's some exceptions to that at Norton and Bloomsbury in the academic space, but in their commercial trade, they look to literary agents to, one, really develop projects before submitting them and sort of put our imprimatur on things that they are ready for commercial acquisitions considerations.

So we're kind of gatekeepers in that way.

And two, be a neutral third party.

So they can focus on the sort of creative and subjective aspects and not so much the business with authors.

We preserve the sort of integrity and non-awkwardness of the publisher-author relationship, ideally.

Or we mediate it back into a healthy place.

So yes, you cannot get a commercial book deal in the United States without having a literary agent.

And I am one of those.

My job is to search for promising commercial work, develop it with authors I can help to the full extent of my ability, make it the most commercial possible iteration of what it is, And then match make it with an editor at the major house or independent house, negotiate all of the financial aspects of the deal, make sure that they're getting most favored nations in terms of royalties

and

concessions and rights.

Then sort of do whatever needs to be done to make that a smooth experience for my authors and help them with long-term career planning as well.

And for all of that, I and every reputable literary agent take a 15% admission.

So I don't make money unless my authors make money.

And there's a very narrow exception to that, which is if I'm selling foreign rights for an author, which is its own complicated alley.

So if we reserve the right to sell those books in translation, I'm taking a 20% commission because we work with a network of literary agents abroad and split that 10 and 10.

But in all other cases, I'm taking a 15% commission and nothing up front.

Yeah, so I'm kind of, I suppose I'm kind of like Virgil in Dante's Inferno.

I'm somebody who's been in purgatory for a long time.

That's purgatorio.