Be the Agents of Change

Source: Unsplash

Okay—the book is finished, it’s eloquent, honest, and contributes a story the Anglosphere’s canon needs to hear! You’re ready to approach publishers. Now what?

If you’re a poet, like me, good luck, my friend. More often than not, us virtuosos of verse will be our own advocates when approaching publishers with our debuts. If you’re a novelist, however, you’re in luck: you do not have to approach the gatekeepers alone. It is now time for you to find an agent. But why seek one?

Although the dream of bringing an author’s story into material realization is the end goal, we must remember that publishing is first and foremost a business. Ever since the 1980s, the literary agent has become a necessary entry point into the mainstream publishing market. Today, many of New York and London's big-name publishing houses will not accept un-agented submissions (Thompson 73). Statistics speak to the agent's necessity: a senior editor at a large New York publishing house estimates only 3-5% of one hundred contracts would be un-agented (Thompson 73). Medium-sized publishing houses also follow their big-named competitors' example. Philip Gwyn Jones, editor at Scribe UK, states that of the books they publish annually, often only one text is un-agented ('Publishing'). Publishing houses have good reason to encourage the agent stipulation. Agents play many important roles—they negotiate book contracts, international, and media rights; translate business and legal-ese for the authors; and, advocate for them and their stories.

Although being represented by an agent is necessary to approach many publishers today, a 2015 UK publishing diversity study, commissioned by Spread the Word, found that finding agents for BAME (black, Asian, or minority ethnic) authors might not be as easy as it looks. Their study interviewed 203 UK-based published novelists of which 30% identified as BAME. Of those BAME authors, only 47% of their debuts were agented in comparison to 64% of White novelists’ debuts (Spread the Word 8). As their literary careers progressed, 53% of BAME authors remained un-agented versus only 37% of White authors (Spread the Word 8). Besides showing a notable discrepancy in agented opportunities, we must ask why might this discrepancy exist?

One glaring issue is that agents of Caucasian ancestry in both the US and the UK are over-represented in their field. Let’s once again take a look at the 2019 Lee & Low Diversity Baseline Study. Of 516 North American literary agents, an unsurprising 80% self-identified as White or Caucasian. You can find the full distribution of their surveyed literary agents below:

Source: Lee & Low Books

Although specific diversity statistics were not cited in Spread the Word’s study—statistics that Lawther, the study’s commissioner, points out were either not kept by the businesses, or kept from their research team—49 literary agents were asked about perceived diversity in the UK’s publishing industry. The two questions posed to agents, and the distribution of their alarming responses, can be seen below:

I was saddened to read of the 27% of agents who had never consciously considered the cultural diversity of their client list, and surprised to see a majority 32% who cited "finding BAME authors" as a challenge. Due to the 5% who blatantly believe there's a "lack of market demand," I have to wonder how many of the 32% have bothered to look?

The presumption that today’s target readership is “totally mono-cultural, White middle England” women, aged 33-55, is one that many in the UK publishing industry still believe (Forna, as qtd. by Spread the Word, 14). It is grossly out-dated. “By 2051 one in five people in the UK is predicted to be from an ethnic minority; a rise from 14 percent in 2011 to at least 30 percent” (Spread the Word 3). As seen in the last post, a majority-minority population from 2020 onward is the future of the United States. No longer can we assume that we are writing for a single type of audience.

When considering our authors of color, however, why do these statistics matter? Besides racial representation in numbers, why must agents -- essential mediators and ambassadors -- match the diversity of their clientele? To answer these, we must view the role of the agent from the author’s perspective, not the publisher’s.

1. The First Gatekeeper

As we established above, many of the trade publishing houses in the Anglosphere refuse to review un-agented submissions. This stipulation is a smart one: if any writer off the street could submit their manuscripts directly to the publishing house, the house would waste precious time weeding through too many texts. The literary agent, well-versed in what specific publishing houses specialize in, and what they have published before, is then an excellent surveyor to find manuscripts with promise. The power the Anglosphere’s publishing houses have gifted the agent is this: they now hold the keys to the commercial kingdom.

The first to see manuscripts, literary agents determine whose voices deserve to get heard when they choose who they'll represent. An author of color who is searching for an agent in an 80% or 92% White-dominated field in the US or UK, respectively, is then often submitting their piece to agents who have never experienced the culture, language, and possible marginalization and stigmatisms those authors of color have. We have to wonder then, how many agents have missed, misunderstood, or dismissed essential cultural cues that are integral to authors of color’s stories? How many agents are given the right to say “yes” or “no” to stories about cultures they have no experience in? This leads us to the second position of power many good agents hold for their authors: the role of first editor.

2. The First Editor

Clare Wallace reminds us that agents often work for free, until they are contracted by a publishing house (Wallace, 'Author/Agent Discussion'). Being an agent is a risky business: agents put their agencies’ and their relationships with publishing houses on the line by backing certain authors. Smart agents, then, are often the first editors of their author’s pieces so their best work is represented to publishers. With evidence that shows the most marketable books by authors of color are literary fiction that exoticize difference, agents may unconsciously encourage their authors of color to perpetuate what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls “the single story.”

Adichie, an award-winning Nigerian author whose characters were once critiqued by her creative writing professor for “not being African enough,” describes the danger of assigning one story to communities of color in her 2009 TED Talk, which you can view above. Her White professor critiqued her characters for being “too much like [him]”: educated, middle class people who drove cars. Instead of embracing the similarities between himself and her characters, he encouraged the dividing myth—the story of sub-Saharan African peoples is one of poverty and economic struggle. This is dangerous. It becomes the story that readers may assign to all African peoples, and one that young readers of colour feel they need to write to become published. If we “show a people as one thing, as only one thing over and over again, [then] that is what they become,” Adichie warns in her TED Talk.

Unfortunately, by identifying as part of a race of people, an author is looked to as a spokesperson for that race and that race’s assigned story. If those authors do not repeat their single story, by not “upping the sari count, dealing with gang culture, or some other image that conforms to White preconceptions” (Spread the Word 8), then they, like Adichie, often risk rejection for “inauthenticity.” Additionally, authors are often asked to insert Whiteness into their stories to ensure they remain "accessible" to White readers. One UK author was told “to make sure one half of a love relationship was White, because White readers would have problems reading books with ‘foreign’ settings or all-Black casts” (Spread the Word 8). Kean’s interviews found that many authors of color accede to their agents and editors’ requests in fear of hindering their publications (Spread the Word 8).

Although I truly believe no agent means to ask their authors to perpetuate stereotypes, or exoticize difference, agents do need to be aware of "the single story" myth. Developing a consciousness about it will help the agent both be aware of their own objectivity, as well as better prepared to advocate for their authors of color when seated at the publisher's table. The "single story" reality brings us to the third crucial role agents play for their authors of color: the author’s advocate.

3. The Author’s Advocate

Although agents may have experience of what sells and what does not, it is not the agent’s job to place seals of “authenticity” on their authors’ work. If we accept Janklow’s idea that “the writer is the star, much like [in] the movie business” (Thompson 64), then agents who truly prioritize and trust in their authors must also trust in their stories. When making a pitch, agents can be champions to their writers in many ways.

In their pitches, agents are often responsible for positioning their client’s work based off of previously published texts. Informed agents can use their knowledge of the “single story” myth to their advantage to highlight how original and essential their client’s stories are to future, culturally diverse markets. Additionally, veteran agents can utilize their respected clout to back new voices of color. Agents’ reputations, or “webs of collective beliefs,” Thompson stresses, are powerful for “in the absence of clear-cut evidence to support judgements, the backing of a trusted agent lends credibility to authors and books” (76). By positioning their authors as unique voices, and placing their full support behind to their clients, agents can deconstruct the question of whose comfort today’s stories should cater to: the White reader who still seeks to reinforce the single stories of people of color, or the author who aspires to portray their characters in ways that are familiar to them and their communities?

Another aspect of being an author's advocate is also tied to two important L-words: loyalty and longevity. Although an author and agent must have a mutually advantageous relationship that sees eye-to-eye on business and artistic goals, another way an agent can be an author's advocate is to stand by their clients, even if one of their books does not sell as well as anticipated. Rather than looking at moderately successful books campaigns as defeats, agents, authors, and their chosen publishers can look at the campaign as a learning experience, particularly in an Anglosphere where publishing authors of colors may be unfairly complex. The entire team can ask the questions: Where did the text's sale fall short? Was the text written or edited into the right tone that reached the author's intended audience? Was the text marketed in the right places by the right people? Was the book placed on the right booksellers shelves in the right part of the bookstore?

How do we begin to develop agents of change?

After reading others' suggestions on how to ensure equity in publishing, I have two main suggestions on how to develop agents of change. The first is to ask literary agencies to examine the racial diversity of their current and potential employees. Breaking into the publishing industry is hard enough for new authors without having to justify the authenticity of their stories to those who have never been seen as Other. Speaking as a writer of color, if I had to choose between being honestly represented by myself, or having to adhere to restrictions put on me by an agent who I had to explain my existence and art to, I might choose to go agentless as well. Ensuring that literary agencies are hiring and maintaining a culturally diverse list of agents may persuade authors of color to choose their agencies over others. As agents are also usually in charge of negotiating international rights, having multicultural and lingual agents on staff will also help agencies be prepared for the global publishing market.

Raphael Mokades, owner of Rare Recruitment that specializes in “recruiting BAME people [for] blue chip employers in public and private sectors” (qtd. by Spread the Word 4), suggests that the Anglosphere’s publishing industries analyze the following aspects of their companies to deeply consider their cultural diversity.

Source: Spread the Word

Although diversity in literary agencies is a good start, Pulitzer-prize winning poet, Gregory Pardlow, points out that increasing the publishing industry's racial diversity is not enough. In a roundtable discussion called "Equity in Publishing: What Everyone Should Be Doing" hosted by PEN America Center that you can read here, Pardlow argues:

If we want aesthetic diversity in the books that come to define our culture, then I don’t buy the argument that diversifying the shape, configuration, and hue of the faces of editors and agents will get the job done. There is no reason to expect people with different phenotypes to have different cultural tastes and allegiances if they all have similar educational backgrounds. My sense is the problem is in the education.

He brings up a good point about the institutionalized nature of the Anglosphere's higher education systems, and who we associate with and learn from. I was very lucky to have stepped foot into my English Education course at Boston University that I spoke about in my first blog post. In that course, I was asked by a professor of color to examine what I reading and who told me to read it. Had I only ever encountered BU's English Department's curriculum, I would have been hard-pressed to find literature that deviated from the dead-white-guys canon that has become the standard for higher education in the Anglosphere.

This brings us to my second point: when agencies seek interns and staff, perhaps they should also consider a college degree only measures one form of education. Agents, undoubtedly hold much power in determining whose voices are heard, and what stories are told in the Anglosphere. Agents, then, have the responsibility to educate themselves about what stereotypes many big-named Anglosphere publishers are asking authors of color to perpetuate, as well as take proactive action to ensure that they do not ask authors of color to continue to do so. They might do so by asking themselves: What is the racial diversity of my clientele? Are each of my clients receiving equitable support from me and my agency? Who surrounds me at work, and who do I choose to surround me with? What type of literature and media do I read and watch?

The questions above are even questions I need to remember to ask myself, and I encourage all of you to do, too! Together, we can build an Anglosphere that encourages and seeks awareness about the many cultures that contribute to it.

Although this post was long in coming, and long in length, thank you for persevering till the end! The next post will be about those who have the final say before author's essential stories go to print: the editors.

Hope you are all healthy and well,

Kaci

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Works Cited:

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. “The danger of a single story,” YouTube, uploaded by TED, 7 Oct. 2020, youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg.

Lee & Low Books. “Where is the diversity in publishing? The 2019 Diversity Baseline Survey Results.” The Open Book Blog, 28 Jan. 2020, blog.leeandlow.com/2020/01/28/2019diversitybaselinesurvey/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2020.

Pardlow, Gregory. "Equity in Publishing: What Should Editors be Doing?" PEN America Center, 24 Oct. 2015, pen.org/equity-in-publishing-what-should-editors-be-doing/. Accessed 31 Mar. 2020.

Spread the Word. Writing the Future: Black and Asian Writers and Publishers in the UK Market Place, edited by Danuta Kean. Spread the Word.org.uk, 2015.

Thompson, John B. “The Rise of Literary Agents.” Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century, Polity Press, 2013, pp. 59-100.

Wallace, Clare. “Author/Agent Discussion: Gilly McAllister and Clare Wallace.” Writers & Artists: The Insider Guide to the Media, writersandartists.co.uk/writers/advice/1014/preparing-for-submission/how-to-find-a-literary-agent/. Accessed 31 March 2020.