This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Opinion Andrew Lownie


Andrew Lownie looks at the future of agenting, how the traditional boundaries that separated authors, publishers and agents have blurred, and what agents can do to combat it


A flexible approach


Te publishing landscape is rapidly changing with the growing opportunities provided by digital publishing and the growth in social media and with online and supermarkets replacing book stores. Te way publishers publish and what they publish is changing and we as agents will have to respond to that change to better protect the interests of our authors. I see the book market in the


future being 5% major publishers/ authors/agents, perhaps 20% middle-rank agencies/publishers/ authors and 75% will be self- published books in one form or another. Publishing will become more polarised between established brands, tie-in TV books and celebrity books and the rest, but it will also become more fragmented as the “long-tail” argument makes even specialist digital publishing profitable. Tere will no longer be clear


demarcation lines between what publishers, agents, booksellers and authors do. Booksellers have packaged books for their outlets in the past and I see them taking a more active role in the whole publishing supply chain. Publishers have traditionally sold rights, as well as published books, but we are now seeing them selling directly off their own websites. Authors are buying in editorial and marketing expertise and combining the roles of author, agent, publisher and bookseller, and many will increasingly adopt an à la carte view towards representation splitting books between agents—sometimes several—and publishing some themselves.


The Bookseller LBF Daily


Deliver stories to our stand J355 or email your news to tom.tivnan@bookseller.co.uk. View content from The Bookseller Daily at www.thebookseller.com. To subscribe to The Bookseller email info@booksellersubs.com or call 44 (0)1604 251040 Editorial 44 (0)20 3358 0365. Advertising 44 (0)20 3358 0393 E-mails first.secondname@bookseller.co.uk. Editor Tom Tivnan Deputy editor Felicity Wood Web editor Katie Allen Reporters Charlotte Williams, Lisa Campbell and Joshua Farrington Production Brian Payne Head of sales Matt Colgan Production controller Johanna Mackin Managing director Nigel Roby


© 2013 Bookseller Media Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed by Headley Brothers, Ashford, Kent.


market to help exploit the increasingly complex ways content can be sold, licensed and repackaged but remuneration is likely to change. Many authors for lucrative books which are easy to place are already choosing to simply pay fees to a lawyer rather than agency commissions. Agents may increasingly look at a combination of retainers and hourly rates as well as differing rates of commission depending on the author and the deal. All of us in publishing will have


agents, perhaps 20% middle-rank agencies/ publishers/authors and 75% will be self- published books in one form or another”


As publishers buy fewer books


and are more cautious about what they buy, agents will need to look for other outlets for their authors’ work, combining their traditional role with a more entrepreneurial and wide-ranging approach managing careers and “brands” in the way celebrity and sports agents work. Agents will need to be more actively involved not just in packaging books with a whole host of partners outside conventional publishing but also “establishing” them in the marketplace. Just as publishers are signing up successful


I see the book market in the future being 5% major publishers/authors/


self-published authors, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t do the same with books that agencies have already tested and trialled. We will see many more


e-publishing initiatives ranging from my own agency’s Tistle programme and Trident Media’s e-book division, which only publishes existing clients and charges the usual 15% commission, to Diversion Books which accepts unsolicited submissions and splits revenue 50/50. Authors will still require


someone with knowledge of the


to be more pro-active and flexible in seeking out and exploiting the opportunities that digital publishing has brought. We will also need to see how our expertise can be utilised in other ways, providing a wider range of services such as offering consultancy services to self-published authors, and offering creative writing courses, though the irony there is we will simply be making our money from telling people how to write and publish books that we may ourselves be unprepared to agent and publish. Te digital revolution has created


huge opportunities for all of us in the publishing community but it will also require us all to raise our game to fully take advantages of those opportunities.


Andrew Lownie has been a literary agent since 1985, and became the youngest director in UK publishing the following year. He set up the Andrew Lownie Literary Agency in 1988. He will be talking at 4 p.m today in Te Future of Literary Agents seminar, in the Author Lounge.


20 THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT LBF | 16 APRIL 2013


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24