Chapter 05
What are their fees?
A legitimate agent is paid when you are paid. The percentages are boringly standard. The fees that should make you walk out of the room are the ones charged before anyone has sold a word.
Literary representation is a commission business. In the UK and the US the going rate for a book deal in the home market has been 15% for years, and it has not drifted because the trade bodies and the authors who compare notes will not let it. Foreign and dramatic rights usually cost more because a second specialist is often in the chain. That is the whole price list, give or take a point.
Typical commission
| Market | Commission | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Home market (UK or US volume rights) | 15% | The standard literary commission on the advance and royalties in the agent’s home territory. |
| Translation / foreign rights | 20% | Often split 10% + 10% with a sub-agent in that language market. |
| US/UK when a co-agent is used | 15–20% | A London agent selling US rights (or the reverse) may share the extra points with a co-agent. |
| Audio, if sold separately | 15–20% | If the publisher does not take audio, the agent may sell it elsewhere at the same family of rates. |
| Film, TV and dramatic rights | 15–20% | Sometimes handled in-house, sometimes with a co-agent or a talent agency. Confirm who does the work. |
| Theatre | 10–15% | Stage agents often sit closer to 10% on live performance; read the agreement. |
Commission is taken from money actually received — the publisher’s payment to the agency, which then remits your share. You should receive statements. You should be able to see the publisher’s figures. If the arithmetic is a secret, that is not representation.
What you should never pay
Do not pay a reading fee. Do not pay a retainer to be “taken on.” Do not pay for an introduction to an agent. Do not buy editing, design, or marketing from the same office as a condition of representation. The Association of Authors’ Agents and the Association of American Literary Agents both treat upfront fees as a line you do not cross.
If someone wants money before they have sold the book, they are not betting on the book. They are betting on you.
Expenses
Postage and photocopying used to appear on statements. Email ended most of that. Reasonable, receipted costs — a courier, a copyright filing, a lawyer for an unusually knotty contract — can still be passed on if the agreement says so. They should be itemised, modest, and discussed. An open-ended “admin fee” is a reading fee that has learned manners.
The agency agreement
Read it. Look at the commission rates by category, how long the agency remains entitled to commission after you leave (deals they made should stay theirs; your next book should not), how either side terminates, and whether they claim a share of work they did not sell. Ask what happens to submissions already out in the market if you part company.
You are allowed to take the agreement to a solicitor, or to the Writers’ Guild, or to another author. An agent who bristles at that is telling you something useful.
Film, TV, and talent desks
Talent agencies sometimes work on different schedules and with packaging conversations that a book agent will never have. The commission is still a percentage of what you earn from the work they represent — not a monthly standing charge for being on the books. If a “manager” wants 15% and the agent wants 10%, do the arithmetic on a modest deal before you feel flattered.
When 15% is a bargain
A good agent earns the cut by raising the advance, keeping territories, pulling audio back, or stopping you signing an option clause that ties your hands for a decade. A poor agent costs you 15% of a smaller number and a year you will not get back. Shop for judgement, not for a discount. Anyone offering to represent you at 5% to win the job is not running a sustainable office, and you will feel that later.
If the percentages above match what you have been offered, you are in the ordinary, professional part of the forest. The next problem is not money. It is how you approach them.