Agents and authors want to sell books, pay the bills, and have successful careers, but sometimes it seems like both parties are glaring at each other from opposing camps, like they don't believe the other is *actually* on their side.

For the most part, though, I think most authors are very aware their agents aren't making money off them until they sell — and they *want* to sell and make their agents rich. (I know I do.)

That's all.

- Author pays agent (varying) amounts of cash and never sells a book.

- Agent earns more from sold books than author does.

- Authors without the ability to pay agents up-front are locked out of most publishers altogether.

The whole current system is very flawed, but unfortunately I've yet to hear a solution which betters it. However, if a solution can be found where an author is paid for, an agent would then also be paid more. And if publishing were more profitable, then authors would be paid more.

Any ideas on how to make publishing more profitable?

I have a friend whose comic was put out in standard floppy comic format (individual thirty-page issues). It didn't garner the interest of traditional comic fans. I told him, "Because of the genre and style of your story, there is potentially a huge market for it online in webcomic-savvy teens and adults." He built a site, shared it online for free, and collected enough ad revenue to pay the bills for his family of four. If I had been an agent giving him that advice, it would have been fair of me, I think, to get a small % of the ad sales, especially if I helped to get the site going. (In this case, I wasn't an agent and I didn't want anything — he's a friend!)

While, as an agent, you wouldn't make suggestions like "put it online for free" for a book you'd already sold the print rights for, it's possible you could set yourself up to help the author generate income from creative variations on their work other than a book, generic ebook or movie. Some ideas you might not have time to handle (like getting a Massive Multi-player Online game company to license the I.P.), but there are millions of creative media formats being explored on the internet, and if you nurture the right connections, you and your author might be able to benefit from them without having to write/shepherd more new books for the same old percentage.

Let me give a Daphne-specific example. ^_^ Let's say you have a client who's written a book called, say, THE SHERLOCK HOLMES HANDBOOK. This Handbook could, conceivably, make a great interactive program for iPhone/iPad, which could be used as a portable reference for when a reader accidentally happen upon an appalling murder in a dark alley, or just to click on links embedded in the app that direct the reader to awsum-possum stores where they can buy Holmes-themed gadgetry, clothes, etc. Or it could be a highly addictive trivia game about Holmsian lore covered in the book.

A publisher MIGHT think of such ideas, but let's say in this case, the publisher is very busy just getting printed book out, so making interactive apps is not their big priority — and you can't make the app, either, because you're not a programmer.

What you CAN do is find an app-building company that wants to license the I.P. for an app, or you can outsource the design & coding of your own idea for an app to a company that builds apps as work-for-hire (or for their share of the profits via royalties). They do all the grunt work, and your client ends up the primary owner of an app that could sell like zombiecakes on the iPhone and bring in money for everyone involved.

And you won't be out of much time if it doesn't. (Certainly not as much time as it took to flog and sell the original book!)

Other forms of media are a crap shoot just like a book is, but the more crap shoots you have out there for one I.P., the more likely it becomes that one of them will turn up the right roll of the dice for a little extra cha-ching!

Can you tell I've been thinking about this a lot lately? ^_^

I can see an agent charging for some things. Like for example, I would pay for a critique of my manuscript (depending on the cost of course). But when it comes to selling my book, commission only.

When it comes to sales, commission is one of the best ways to know your agent – real estate, literary etc. will work hard to make the sale. Plus, it would be an accounting nightmare trying to figure out the billing.