Sells the book
Knows which ten editors might want it, and which ten would waste six weeks. Submission is a craft, not a mail-merge.
Agents
How an agent improves a deal
Fifteen percent sounds like a lot until you see the first draft they did not let you sign. An agent’s work is not cheerleading. It is a market, a mark-up, and a memory of what last year’s contracts looked like.
Makes a market
Where there is more than one interested house, the agent runs a process. Auctions exist because someone knows how to hold them.
Reads the contract
The value of an agent is often the clauses you never see. Joint accounting, matching rights, and a useless reversion die in the mark-up.
Sells the other rights
Translation, US/UK, serial, and a film introduction. This is frequently worth more, over a book’s life, than the domestic advance.
Stays when the editor leaves
Editors move. The agent is the continuity, and the person who can get a book out of a dying list.
The same book, two pieces of paper
Not every agented deal looks like the right-hand column. This is the difference a good mark-up is for.
| Point | Unagented first draft | After a decent agent |
|---|---|---|
| Advance | The first number they offer, often the only number. | An auction where there is heat; a reasoned counter where there is not. 15% of a larger pie is the point. |
| Royalty schedule | Net on print, 25% ebook, audio at 10% net, high-discount at 40%. | List/RRP defended, escalators in, high-discount threshold raised, audio at the going rate. |
| Grant of rights | World, all languages, all media, term of copyright — because that is the form. | The market they can sell. Translation, US/UK, film, and merchandising reserved or split properly. |
| Reversion | Out of print if unavailable, which an ebook never is. | A sales threshold, a failure-to-publish long-stop, unsold sub-rights back after a period. |
| Option & matching | Next two books, same terms, matching right, 90 days from manuscript. | One book, terms to be agreed, short first look, no match. |
| Joint accounting | Still in the draft, because nobody took it out. | Out, except on a true combined-advance two-book deal. |
| Foreign & film | Left with the publisher at 50/50, or not sold at all. | Sub-agents at the fairs and a film/TV co-agent. You pay 20% on those deals, not 50%. |
| Career | Each book is a one-off email to whoever will reply. | A strategy: which house, which editor, when to move, when to wait. |
Commission, without folklore
UK and US literary agents work on commission. 15% of what you receive from a domestic volume deal is standard. 20% is common where a sub-agent handles translation, a US co-agent, or film. You do not pay the 20% on top of 15% on those deals; the higher rate is the shared one.
The selling agent remains ‘agent of record’ on that contract even if you later move. New work can go elsewhere. Old contracts generally cannot.
- A good agent does not charge a reading fee, an editing fee, or a ‘retainer to submit’.
- They do not take more than the going commission (15% domestic, ~20% with a sub-agent).
- They do not need to be named on the copyright. They are not a co-author.
- They cannot make a quiet book loud by force of will. They can stop you signing a bad quiet-book contract.
- You can sell a book without one — small presses do this every week. You should not sign a Big Five (or equivalent) contract without someone who has signed fifty of them.
When you might not need one
A small press you chose
If the grant is narrow, the term is short, and the royalty is a true partnership split, a solicitor’s hour may be a better spend than 15% of not much.
A second edition of something you already control
Reversioned backlist, or a book you published yourself that a house now wants. The rights picture is the issue; an IP solicitor may be the right reader.
Work-for-hire you understand
A packager, a branded series, a fee. Know that you are selling the copyright and price it as a job, not as a novel.
Unagented is not the same as unread. A publishing solicitor for a few hundred pounds is cheaper than a life-of-copyright mistake. Stewart’s own books are represented by Paper Lion.
This is a practical guide, not legal advice. The sample contracts are composites drawn from typical UK and US trade terms in the mid-2020s, not copies of any one publisher’s agreement. Always have an agent or a publishing solicitor read a deal before you sign it.