[elalond]

As I see it, when authors want to self-publish, they are not looking for an agent but for people who offer services that would help him bring the work out (except if they have an agent already). So, I believe, that this kind of services where agents acts as a intermediary between authors and contractors and retailers is focused on authors searching for traditional deals. Those might in their desire to snag an agent be willing to sign off much more than those 15% on self-published books, especially because of the carrot: “ let’s publish the book digitally, see how it does and then if we have a story to tell in terms of sales in terms of the electronic self-published version, we go back out.”

 

[elalond]

I'm fairly certain I haven't argued one way or the other whether I think these authors are making good business decisions, so I remain unsure what this has to do with anything.

This is the main discussion of this thread (and I think of the comments on Passive Guy's blog). Is self-publishing through agents which means loosing 15% a good business practise and in what kind of value they would have to bring for that 15% to make sense. That or I have completely misunderstood this thread's purpose?

 

[elalond]

Nope. You didn't misunderstand as far as I'm concerned.

Than JRTolmin's comment has everything to do with it.

Regarding only what is written in the article (where the agent doesn't mentions anything beyond acting as contractor, uploader of the files/publisher and collector of the money) this is for me (as for the most of you) a bad business decision, and which, I believe, will mostly target authors aiming for traditional publishing. And not all the authors aiming for the trade, but only those who will have money to pay for the services contracted by the agents and whose stories will be able to awake agent's interest. The most depressing thing is that there is a high possibilities that this service might become very much desired among aspiring writers.

 

[elalond]

Kristin has two options for her clients.

Option one: The agency pays for everything except developmental editing. In this case, the author agrees to a term of liaison of 2 years. The author can still ask the agency to pull the book from any and every venue if for some reason they don't want to continue--they just can't republish it themselves until two years have passed. And the contract states that even though the agency paid for the cover art, copy-editing, etc, the author owns the digital files, and so has literally nothing to do to get upload-ready files.

Option two: The agency pays for nothing. In this case, the author can post the file wherever they want, whenever they want, and just upload their books to places the author can't reach on her own.

This is what I do. I do all the work and get 100% of everything from Amazon, B&N, and anywhere else I can upload myself. My agent uploads to Overdrive, so that my book is available to libraries and Google Plus and Ingrams. She uploaded a book to Kobo for me, back when you really couldn't get on Kobo through Smashwords and before KWL opened.

She gets 15% of the revenue from those venues where she uploads me and those venues only, and only for as long as I think it's worth my while to keep my books there. There is literally no term of liaison for option two. So this is not "15% for life"--it's 15% for only as long as it's worth my while to be on those venues.

I have no idea what Dystel is doing. It's already obvious that her exact implementation is different from Kristin's.

I agree with ElHawk. This sounds like a reasonable deal.