Lousy Job Markets Open Holes for New Jobs

And I just thought of a cool new job.

You’ll be blown away…wait for it…

Ebook agent.

Oh, yeaaaaah. Let me repeat that for those of you who thought I was kidding the first time.

Ebook agent.

There are already agents, such as Lori Perkins who have also put on the hat of publishers. However, I’m talking about an agent who shops out mss primarily to epubs.

There are plenty of reputable epublishers out there, but also plenty of sharks. Consider what happened to a friend of mine:

I epublished a novel back in July through eTreasures Publishing. The contract was quite good and quite straight-forward. Then in Sept, she decided to go to print, even though I had an addendum to my contract sayng that I would keep my print rights, since I intended to send my novel [NAME] to an agent. Everything was hunky-dory until she called me on the phone, demanding $458 + shipping for 25 copies of my book. Since my hubby and I are on a limited income, and that $458 is 1/4 of our monthly income, there was no way we could afford that. She cancelled my contract and gave me back all my rights. I was rewriting the story (since I found 80 typos in the first 200 pgs of the novel that were put in there between the time I sent the galleys back to her and the time she published).

This is sad and it needn’t happen.

Agents could help shield writers from wasting their efforts on dodgy epublishers, and winnow out submissions from slush to send to epublishers. In other words, their role would be exactly the same, except with “e-” added in front of everything.

What’s wrong? You don’t like this idea? You thought epublishing meant an end to the tyranny of agents and editors?

Sorry. No.

Some epublishers have already become “submit by invitation only” publishers, and others frequently close submissions for the end of the year (and others for years without end).

“Yeah,” says potential ebook agent, “but what about $$$?” Many epublishers are royalty only.

I say, run with that. An agent who sells a lot of ebooks is going to receive 15% of royalty checks from a lot of authors. I think right now it would be easier to make decent money as an ebook agent than as an ebook author. I believe this so strongly that I would become an ebook agent RIGHT NOW instead of simply posting my great idea for all you chubs to steal. I’m not, only for the same reason I haven started my own epublishing house. If I had an ounce of business talent, I wouldn’t be an artist, and my family would have a much higher standard of living.

“Hm,” potential ebook agent says now, “Okay, but would any authors bother with an agent who is only promising epublishing? The big money is still in print.”

I say, build a website, call yourself an agent and garner a few sales, and they will come. Oh, will they come. You too will have a slush pile of your very own to overflow your inbox. And if you pick good authors, quality will speak for itself, and maybe you will soon be subbing to print. It could happen.

If you do decide to go into this business, write to me, and I’ll link to it here on my blog.