The Association of Author’s Agents released an updated code of ethical guidelines today which were written to help Agents who “may not yet have had the opportunity to work out what good practice might mean to them”.

From The Bookseller:

The Good Practice Guidelines for New Agenting Services, which sits alongside the AAA’s Code of Practice, aims to help agents who are changing and diversifying their services to include helping authors publish their own work. Lizzy Kremer, committee member of the AAA and agent at David Higham Associates, led the drafting of the 14 guidelines, which address how agents should conduct themselves when it comes to remuneration, contracts and offering advice to authors. “Up until now, almost all of the ways in which agents have supported authors have been guided by the structure of an author–publisher contract,” she told The Bookseller. “Those contracts very clearly set out the obligations of the publisher to the author. When an author is assisted to self-publish there is no such contract, so we need to make sure that the author is well served.

While I don’t know how well this new set of ethical guidelines will be received, I do feel that new guidelines are sorely needed, especially ones which say that “an agent has an overriding fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their client at all times”.

I have heard some horror stories over the past few years of agents not acting in an author’s best interest. For example, in June of this year Claire Cook wrote on Jane Friedman’s blog about why she was breaking up with her agent:

I finished writing a draft of Book 2 of the new Must Love Dogs series. My agent not only read but also gave me helpful editorial advice. We seemed to be on the same page in terms of the steps I needed to take to get my career back on track. I’d already self-published Must Love Dogs andMultiple Choice with her full knowledge and support. It seemed to me that if I could get my career moving again, it would only benefit us both down the road. And then one day on the phone my agent informed me that in order to continue to be represented by this mighty agency, I would have to turn over 15% of the proceeds of my about-to-be self-published book to said agency. Not only that, but I would have to publish it exclusively through Amazon, because the agency had a system in place with Amazon where I could check a box and their 15% would go straight to them, no muss, no fuss.

That is an agent who was clearly not acting “in the best interests of their client at all times”; it is one thing to ask for a cut but another to demand an Amazon exclusive. That sometimes does result in higher revenue, but not always and thus should not be the sole option.

And that’s not the only example. I actually have a half dozen, but I’m going to single out the best/worst example.

In April 2013 David Gaughran profiled Argo Navis, the self-pub arm of Perseus Book Group (which is itself both a publisher and distributor). Argo Navis is only available to authors through their agents, and it offered terrible terms, including taking a 30% of net while billing the author for any services beyond distribution.

That 30% is a far higher commission than an author or agent would pay to BookBaby, Draft2Digital, or any of the other ebook distributors, so it might surprise you to learn that a long list of agents were partnered Argo Navis . According to David, last year that list included some prestigious names:

Writers House

ICM Partners

Carol Mann Agency

Cynthia Cannell Literary Agency

The Hartnett Agency

Paul Bresnick Literary Agency

Pinder Lane & Garon-Brooke Associates

Curtis Brown (US)

April Eberhardt Literary

David Black Agency

Elizabeth Kaplan Literary Agency

Folio Literary Management

Levine Greenberg Literary Agency

Liza Royce Literary Agency

Melanie Jackson Agency

Janklow & Nesbit Associates

Joëlle Delbourgo Associates

Arcadia Literary Agency

Harvey Klinger

APA Talent and Literary Agency

Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency

Irene Skolnick Literary Agency

FinePrint Literary Management

Donald Maass Literary Agency

But now that the AAA has put out new guidelines which remind us that “an agent has an overriding fiduciary duty to act in the best interests of their client at all times”, I’m sure that all of these agencies will cut ties with Argo Navis.

The sad truth is that some agents have a very different idea of what it means to act in the best interest of their client from what a disinterested outside observer might think. And since those agents were not (in the opinion of this pundit) following the old guidelines, I do not see what the new ones will add other than to provide a fig leaf.

The agents who were going to behave ethically already are, and the ones who aren’t would not have been helped by the new guidelines anyway. but hey, they’ve have that fig leaf, at least.

images by free photos & art, aturkus