Agents Who Publish So Other Agents Don't Have To

The ethical question of literary agents acting as publishers has been simmering for some time, ever since a few brave souls stepped into the role of e-book publisher for their clients.

For ages, the mantra has held that an agent has a conflict of interest if said agent can also publish the manuscript being shopped. Where is the incentive, goes the reasoning, to hustle and push and cajole and wheedle some publisher when the agent has the ability to do it...and reap more of the rewards.

With so many options available today for an author to produce an e-book, from Smashwords to Kindle Direct, the agents could also warm themselves with those ethical standards and watch their clients do all the work and reap all the rewards, with not a crumb for the agent.

So for all the literary agents who feel squeamish about stepping over a boundary that has long been in place, Trident Media Group offers a service that can keep hands clean and ethics intact.

Trident Media has erected a little boundary of its own, in that the firm has made its new e-book enterprise a separate entity under its media group umbrella.

They will begin with the backlist from the John Campbell Agency. They intend to offer the service to their own clients as well.

It used to be that writers hunting for legitimate literary agents were told to watch out for those who asked for money up front, or those who had a conflict of interest because they also were publishers.

The culling process will become more complex, as writers will have to determine if the agent they're querying is genuinely trying to sell manuscripts to the big publishers, but with those big publishers merging and realizing synergies, who can say but that guideline could fall by the wayside.

Will there come a time when it will be commonplace for literary agents to also act as publishers, competing against the likes of the Random Penguin House and HarperCollins?

Is the future in publishing the creation of hundreds of small publishing houses, in which authors can submit directly without an agent, because the agent is the publisher? Or will the bigger agencies, like Trident Media, join the ranks as junior members of the Big Six publishers?