Hello all
Another literary agent this week with a slightly different experience.
Quite a lot here. You might notice I’ve now started asking everyone why average author earnings are so low despite growth in the industry. I think this interviewee does a really good job of explaining some of the reasons for this. Essentially, we all need get our heads around high discount clauses.
But first, I usually use the proceeds of this newsletter to help pay my son’s after-school club bill and I am extremely happy that I will have to start paying that again next week. So please do contribute if you can.
interview
How long have you worked in publishing and how much do you get paid?
I’ve worked in publishing for a little under 10 years overall, and my salary is £32k. There is a bonus structure in place at the agency I work for, related to how much commission I bring in, but as yet I’ve not qualified for one.
Like many other agents, I am fortunate to work in an agency which pays me a salary, but agencies can also employ agents on a commission-only basis, or with a very low basic salary + a share of commission on top (once you’ve earned your basic salary back). And obviously if you’ve set up on your own, or started your own agency, you’re entirely reliant on what commission you bring in and balancing that income with your work expenses.
Tell us a bit about what your job entails.
I’m looking for and taking on authors; reading and editing; pitching and submitting their work to try to get deals in as many formats and as many territories as possible; negotiating offers and contracts; managing authors’ issues or queries and helping smooth out their relationship with their publisher; checking royalty statements; looking into rights and contractual issues; keeping in touch with editors and scouts.
How do you feel about the amount of money you earn?
As another agent has pointed out in these before, unlike in other parts of publishing, as an agent you can clearly see what you bring in and therefore what you’re worth to the company. As an editor in a publishing house, you might see what your books bring in, but that reflects multiple people and departments’ efforts, and an undefinable part of all of their salaries in turn.
Agents only make money when our authors make money – selling rights in the UK, US and translation, and Film/TV options and purchases. But as average author income has dwindled, so too has an agency’s average commission per author. Other than my direct sales (UK and some US), deals come from our foreign rights department, a US agent, or a film agent, but in those cases we would split commission – and internally it would be allocated to each department.
But it’s not as simple an equation as what commission you bring in, you should earn the same in salary. Most agencies are hoping for their agents to – at minimum – bring in their salary + overheads + likely expenses. Some agencies simplify this sum into bringing in double – or even triple – your salary in commission. If your agency doesn’t have a robust backlist, that can put further pressure on every agent consistently bringing in enough, year on year as the agency has less of a guaranteed cushion.
But what does that mean in terms of income from book deals?
If I sell a book to a UK editor for £10,000 (a common enough level of advance, even for the big houses), the agency earns £1,500 in commission. If I only sold books in the UK (i.e. everything at 15% commission) and only at an advance of £10,000, I would need to do nearly 2 such deals per month just to cover my salary – but taking overheads/targets into account, I’m looking at 3 to 4 such deals per month – around 40 per year. Of course, a six-figure advance shaves off a huge amount, but as editors are always keen to stress – despite how it can sometimes be made to look in the trade press – those six figure deals are not very common, and can be very genre dependent. It’s not uncommon for a literary novel to sell for anywhere from £500-£3,000. And some things just don’t sell at all, and you’ve put in all that work on spec. Other rights then become a significant stream of income, but with many translation rights deals in the four-figure territory, volume is vital. US rights are key, as their population and therefore their market is so much bigger, so there’s more money flying around – but the competition can be very fierce.
None of this is taking into account that given the spacing of UK & US advance payouts, actually you’d need later advance tranches from previous deals and royalty payments on earned-out contracts to actually begin to cover your salary in any one year. This is also why moving as an agent is very difficult – you usually leave those contracts and all the commission on them behind, so you’re essentially starting from zero each time you move, with many of your existing authors busy working on the books you sold before.
This is all a slightly depressing over-simplication, as advances are hugely variable, and I make no mention of royalties. In reality, an agent’s earnings are more like the Perato distribution (20% of sales account for 80% of income).
To that end, up to a point I can’t begrudge my salary. Like many others who have featured here before, I have become distinctly aware of my friends in other industries storming ahead of me in recent years, and it’s embarrassing. And I know of plenty of people in publishing houses who have similar experience, similar lists/taste, and have had similar success, who earn a lot more than I do.
It’s hard to hear friends both in and out of publishing talk about what they’re “worth” or “deserve”, based on what they feel they put in without clear metrics. It makes me feel like I’m worth, or deserve, less, because my actual monetary value is so tangible, so the huge amount of work I put in is irrelevant.
Do you own property?
I co-own a flat with my partner, made possible by the inheritance from the death of two grandparents.
Do you have a pension?
Yes, only since automatic enrolment was brought in across the board – so I didn’t have one for several years of working. My employer contributes 3% (the minimum), I contribute 5%, and the Government adds tax relief of 1%.
Have you made financial sacrifices for working in books? Do you think it’s been worth it?
Certainly day-to-day and lifestyle sacrifices, and some resulting friction with friends who have recalibrated on their higher salaries – though it would be so much harder if I had to rent, and if I didn’t have a partner. Instead I’m now worried about the financial sacrifices of the future: how we will afford to have a baby with the costs of childcare being what they are, and my partner in a similar earning bracket to me.
Has it been worth it? There are so many fantastic people in publishing, and many have become friends. I feel privileged to work so closely with so many impressive authors and to have been a key part in bringing some brilliant books into the world.
Having said all of that – as of yet, I’m not sure whether it’s been worth it. Deciding both to go into publishing and then to be an agent are decisions I turn over often in my mind, because I need more financial security. So much of agenting is luck and perseverance, so I’m sticking it out for now, but if I can’t make it happen in the next few years, I suspect I might need to leave agenting and probably the industry.
What would you change about the industry, to make it fairer, if you had the power to do so?
I think the disparity of pay across the industry (like in many industries) is shocking – very senior salaries can be stratospheric. Early on in publishing, I had to get a weekend job, because my salary wasn’t enough to live on while renting. There were points I lived on 14p instant noodles. In those early years, when I occasionally (less than once a year) asked for a salary increase, it was always a lengthy and uncomfortable process. I would be grudgingly bumped up by about £2k, and was told each time how grateful I should be.
As I’ve said before, as an agent your value to the company is very stark, so I don’t question that senior agents I worked with earned the (often very large) amounts of money they were taking home, but given how much of that work was supported by junior staff, the stark difference is galling. I do think there is something of a punishment mentality with junior members of staff – we went through it, so now you have to, too. Certainly, I can find it difficult now seeing starting salaries creep up closer to my stagnant salary, a decade in.
I do think that authors shouldn’t be left out of these conversations or considerations: if you take inflation into account, average author income dropped by 42% between 2005 and 2017. We need more information on those stats before we can draw any strong conclusions, but I’m not sure the number of new books published in a year has increased that sharply over that period, and meanwhile many publishers have been posting record years of turnover or profit. So where’s it going, and why isn’t a bit more finding its way to the author?
Do you think money is wisely spent and invested in the business?
My answer would be a cautious yes, though I have some concerns about distribution of marketing spends. In general, the belt has definitely tightened from the previous publishing generation, particularly with regard to expenses, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
I know people cite the tendency to a few bottles of celebratory prosecco being an unwise expenditure, with lower salaries being what they are, but those bottles of prosecco have nothing to do with why that assistant’s salary is low; it’s akin to the “avocado toast is why millennials can’t buy a house” argument. I think the industry’s tendency towards socialising, drinks and parties is a real saving grace – something I’ve really missed over this past year – and I think that social aspect can be rewarding in a different way when you’re at the lower end of the earning scale (not that I’m suggesting a party makes up for poor pay).
Any other comments?
Following on from the above point about socialising: unlike many other industries, whilst publishing’s salary disparities are large, the social hierarchy is quite flat. That’s something I think is hugely commendable and can be very helpful to more junior staff – don’t be afraid to speak to more senior people, and to ask them questions and advice. This also helps as a junior agent: most (though not all!) very senior editors and publishers won’t bat an eyelid about acquiring a book from an agent who’s much younger or just starting out. I’ve spoken about a lot of frustrations in earning as an agent, but there is also a great deal of democracy in it, too.
Publishing salaries at the bottom have not budged much in ten years, despite industry growth. Why do you think that is?
Competition for entry level jobs. Senior management’s disregard for inflation / the cost of living – it’s easy not to notice the pinch of rising food and utility costs when you have a much bigger buffer. And, as I said before, a bit of a sense of “we had to go through it when we were your age”, without really understanding what the starting salaries mean in today’s world, vs others’ starting salaries at their time. I think we can all be a bit guilty of that.
I’d urge people who have been in publishing for anything over 5 years to put their starting salary and first year of work in the Bank of England inflation calculator – it puts not only current starting salaries into perspective, but also often your own current salary . . .
Why does the average author make so little money?
High discount royalties now make up the vast majority of authors’ sales – an author rarely receives their actual agreed “home” royalty. Little to no movement on ebook royalties despite them being of zero marginal cost to the publisher.
Book sales, too, have become very unevenly distributed – it feels like there is a shrinking number of books which do phenomenally well over a reasonably sustained period, and the idea of a “midlist” author is disappearing. This has only intensified during the pandemic. But I think publishers’ allocation of marketing budgets and priorities are also partly to blame for this – by playing into these shopping trends, rather than trying to buck them, they can sometimes leave other books to languish.
Also, in the age of the Internet, network effects can contribute to a much stronger power law distribution of sales in the creative industries: where those at the top reap the bulk of the rewards, and there’s a long tail of people who make hardly any money at all.
Do you think there is problem with salary transparency in publishing? Is it something that others at high levels take seriously?
Those low starting salaries, reluctant and rare tiny raises, and constant reminders of how “lucky” we are to work in such an industry combined cultivate a scarcity mentality, and that makes people less willing to be upfront about their own salaries. I think we worry that if we rock the boat, we might adversely affect our own small gains. I can’t comment on whether it’s something that others at high levels take seriously – I haven’t seen any evidence for or against.
What would it take for things to change? By that I mean (for example): a starting salary of £30,000 rising to £40-£50K over five-ten years based on meeting clearly established targets?
I support fairer remuneration in publishing houses, and across the board. I don’t know what that would look like, but perhaps tethering the top salaries to the bottom ones with a clearer pay structure not only for junior roles but also senior roles would create more transparency and proportionality.
I think it’s a trickier issue to unravel on the agency side of things – or, rather, our targets are all too clear. But in amongst the uneven distribution of what’s selling, and the marketing spend, there’s often a huge discrepancy in the size of advances, which means that without one or more of: an author who’s a complete star; being a “hot” agent at the time; or a long tail of books at the agency you currently work at, it can be really hard to consistently keep your commission high enough.
Do you think more competitive remuneration and salary transparency would have a positive impact on diversity in the business?
Definitely. People without a potential cushion – who don’t come from middle-class background and/or who don’t have family in or near London – are taking a far bigger risk by starting to work in publishing with the sort of starting salaries that have historically been given. Positive steps are being taken, with starting salaries creeping up and offices opening outside of London, but I think the next few years are key to see whether there is a significant shift in recruiting more diversely. With regards to salary transparency, I’m always shocked by how few industries are upfront about the salary, or the range, offered for a job. I think being open about salary bands or expectations creates a base level of accountability, and would hopefully set a precedent of candour.
Thank you, literary agent! Precedent of Candour would have been a much better name for this newsletter. You must be v good at book titles.
If your brain is tired after reading all of this, you might need a coffee, which means, I also do. Please help keep me caffeinated here