David Mamet Joins The Club

The trickle of literary agents acting as publishers is growing into a torrent.

ICM, one of the most powerful agencies in the literary universe, is making the move. Can you feel the earth shifting there under your feet?

They are not using the self-publishing platform for an obscure author who wishes to re-introduce a backlist to a new audience. They are helping David Mamet publish an original, never before read piece of prose.

You're feeling the rumbling now, aren't you.

Mr. Mamet is going to join the club and publish an e-book using the digital publishing services offered by his agent. His reason is simple. No matter who publishes his next work, he has to do the marketing himself. Publishers don't do that expensive sort of thing any more.

If he has to plug his own work, why not just publish it himself and get the 70% royalty instead of some small advance that has to go into promotion anyway?

The time is coming when a literary agent will be needed to connect an author to a good editor and publicist, and then step aside while the author goes forward.

Available as a trade paperback or e-book

Once again, agents cite the lack of support their non-blockbuster clients receive from publishers. Agents love books and want to see them published, even those that fill a small niche that the beancounters at the big houses don't care to fill due to minimal returns on investment.

So you'll be wanting a literary agent, even in this brave new world of self-publishing, because they know people who know how to create an eye-catching cover. They can get the blurbs for the back cover, they can get publicists to promote your self-published book, and they can do what the publishers used to do.

The publishers aren't worried, or maybe they are just whistling past the graveyard when they declare that Mr. Mamet isn't going to be followed by a stampede of big name authors going their own way.

An author wouldn't dream of leaving their editor, the person who breathes life into dead words and understands where the author is coming from and going to. So as long as the editor doesn't do something rash, like start up their own editing firm, the authors will stay and accept their advances and pay out of pocket for publicity if they don't like what the publisher does for them.

Is all that changing, or is this a one-off scenario?

No one can predict the future, but you can watch for signs. If big publishing houses start putting more money into promotion of smaller runs, and if the number-crunchers take a different approach to cost accounting, then you'll know that Mr. Mamet and his agent at ICM were on the cutting edge of the next big thing.

Which meant the literary agents who change with the times, making themselves relevant in an industry that began without the need for an agent to introduce an author to a publisher, will survive the ongoing evolution.