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Between Author and Agent:
A Cautionary/Epistolary Tale
by A. D. Coleman (and divers hands)
For four heady years between
1987 and 1991 I achieved the goal of many writers: representation
by a high-powered New York literary agency whose very
name made other writers' jaws drop. Getting in was a
fluke; the agency's primary foreign-rights specialist
was a photography buff and a long-time fan of mine.
J-- S-- handled my account for about a year, and then
left to pursue another path in his life. Things rapidly
went downhill from there. So I got to fulfill a writer's
dream, and then watched it turn into a nightmare. Here's
the heart of the story, which takes up shortly after
J-- S--'s replacement took over my account.
-- A. D. C.
January 1, 1988
R-- L--
MegaLit Agency, Inc.
New York, NY 10022
Dear R--:
Enclosed is a set of 31 slides
from J-- M--'s Staten Island Ferry suite, along with
the mss. of my accompanying prose poem. J-- T-- of Magazine
A is expecting this, so please send it along to him;
also, please give some thought to other potential outlets
for it. Seems to me it could work in a number of publications.
I'm still waiting for the H--
G-- slides. Heard from C-- G--, who won't be back until
early April -- so I've put J-- T-- on hold insofar as
the interview is concerned.
Looking forward to our lunch
next week.
A. D. Coleman
Staten Island, NY
February 1, 1988
Mr. Allan Coleman
465 Van Duzer Street
Staten Island, NY 10304
Dear Allan:
Following our conversation last
week, and bearing in mind some of the concerns that
came up in our discussion, I thought that perhaps the
time had come to sit down and honestly weigh the advantages
and disadvantages of the current client-agency relationship,
taking into account the course of eveuts over the past
year, and looking ahead to the likely outcome of major
marketing in the near future.
And I'm afraid it falls upon
me to report that the consensus at this end is that,
as we don't believe we can substantially improve upon
the markets already established for your work, we don't
have much choice but to conclude that the client-agency
relationship is no longer of any benefit to you. We'd
initially agreed to representation with the understanding
that new and original book projects would be a major
part of our marketing agenda, and as a matter of course,
as a courtesy, took on journalistic articles as well.
However, since that time the prospects for a major book-length
project have dimmed considerably, and, as you've indicated,
no plans for a complete book can be expected. And, regrettably,
we're not convinced that there's a major magazine market
available for your specialist or general interest pieces;
I hope I'm wrong, and it's a sad admission of the overly-commercialized
state of the magazine industry, but that's what the
evidence tells us. In light of the above, we feel it's
best all around if we release you of your obligations
to us; and this letter shall serve to dissolve the contract
between us.
I'm truly sorry that this is
the outcome we must have, but the market facts are facts,
and regardless of our positive feelings towards your
work, we'd like to keep your best interests in the forefront.
I'd obviously have liked to have seen things reach a
happier conclusion, and I certainly hope you'll have
better luck with your material in the very near future;
towards that end we're returning, under separate cover,
all of your material we currently have on hand for your
safekeeping.
Again, my very best wishes for
your success in proving our assessment and that of the
markets with which we deal an incorrect one.
Sincerely,
R-- L--
MegaLit Agency, Inc.
February 4, 1988
R-- L--
MegaLit Agency, Inc.
Dear R--:
I am saddened but not surprised
by your letter of February 1, in which you seek to cut
me loose from the agency. Saddened for obvious reasons.
Unsurprised because your lack of enthusiasm for and
initiative in regard to my work have been obvious since
J-- S-- turned me over to you so abruptly a year ago.
I'm well aware that I'm not --
and will never be -- on the agency's list of top clients.
Indeed, I assumed from the beginning, despite assorted
reassurances, that I was J--'s pet project (due to our
mutual interest in photography), and half-expected to
be cut loose at the end of the first contractual period,
since J-- is now long gone.
At the same time, I'm not a troublesome
client. I don't call up to chat, I don't need my hand
held, I don't ask for coddling, I don't get into fights
with editors and publishers that require mediation.
The only things I ask my agent to do are business-related:
* negotiate contracts
* keep track of materials sent
out through the agency
* pursue payment for contracted
material
* make occasional inquiries regarding
copyrights, etc.
* seek new markets for my work
For these services I am quite
willing to pay the percentages demanded by our contract.
So long as we're engaging in
a critique of our professional relation, however, let's
make it two-way. Neither of the two people who have
represented me at MegaLit Agency, have been effective
at finding new markets for my work. Whether that's because
this work is unmarketable is a matter of sheer speculation
on the part of anyone, though -- because neither of
my agents at MegaLit Agency have tried to break me into
new markets. J-- S--, a foreign-rights specialist, made
no attempt to sell any of my work in Europe. You, with
special knowledge of the Canadian market, made no attempt
to find Canadian outlets for my work -- didn't even
think of it, in fact, until I suggested it. Neither
you nor Jonathan ever sent out a completed essay, off
the shelf, to any publication I didn't suggest first;
neither of you ever sent my book manuscripts and proposals
to a publisher I didn't suggest; neither of you ever
brought in a sale on your own initiative, or negotiated
a deal I didn't instigate and arrange.
To your credit, you both negotiated
those deals well -- well enough, from my standpoint,
that this service alone was worth your fee. And, to
his credit (and on his own initiative -- the idea had
never occurred to me), Jonathan did retrieve for me
not only the rights but even the plates to my book The
Grotesque in Photography, for which I am ever in
his debt.
It was my hope, when I joined
the agency, that I would finally discover where and
how best to market my work. That hope was encouraged
by MegaLit Agency's reputation (and advertising) as
a savvy, aggressive outfit. After two years, I can safely
assert that none of that aggressiveness has been applied
to my work. Therefore, I have reason to disbelieve the
claims that you treat all clients equally, and to discredit
any assertion that my writing is unmarketable.
I'm a forty-four-year-old writer
with twenty years of professional experience under my
belt. I'll be the judge of when "the client-agency
relationship is no longer of any benefit to me,"
and of how to "keep my best interests in the forefront."
Your hypocritical, mealy-mouthed use of these phrases
-- in a letter clearly concerned only with your best
interests and the benefits of this relation to you --
insults my intelligence.
As it happens, I disagree with
you on those points. Even if all the agency does is
negotiate contracts I bring in, track the material it
sends out, and secure payments, I consider it to be
of benefit to me and in my best interests to maintain
my relationship with MegaLit Agency. Let it be clear,
then, that this relationship is not terminated by mutual
consent. And, according to my contract, the period during
which it could be terminated unilaterally by either
of us expired almost two months ago.
So it looks like MegaLit Agency
is stuck with me for another two years. I've no real
desire to be somewhere I'm not wanted, but I also refuse
to accept such shabby treatment and cavalier violation
of your contractual obligations. I realize that by thus
forcing myself on the agency I'm virtually asking to
be sent to Siberia. So be it. Turn me over to the lowest
man or woman on your totem pole. Maybe I'll finally
get lucky and hit someone with gumption enough to treat
me as an experiment in marketing.
Yours,
A. D. Coleman
Staten Island, NY
cc: Head Honcho, MegaLit Agency, Inc.
February 8, 1988
Head Honcho
MegaLit Agency
Dear Mr. Head Honcho:
By now you will have received
the copy I forwarded to your attention of my letter
to your employee, R-- L--, responding to his illegal
attempt (apparently authorized by you, as he wrote of
the "consensus at this end") to break the
agency's contract with me.
I am awaiting your response to
this situation, as is my attorney. In the meantime,
I want to acknowledge receipt, today, of two large boxes
of my material, shipped via UPS, carelessly and loosely
packed so that some of the material arrived in crumpled
condition.
Included in this shipment was
the enclosed material, which pertains not to me but
to other of your clients. This correspondence seems
to have been sitting in R-- L--'s hands since J-- S--'s
departure. Seems to me these writers deserve better
treatment.
Also included in the shipment
was a set of photographs by C-- G--. These were to have
been sent to an editor at A C-- of A-- as illustrations
for a proposed article, the manuscript of which had
already been sent on to him. This editor has been awaiting
these photographs; publication decisions -- and, thus,
my economic livelihood -- have depended on their transmission
via your agency. The C-- G-- photos were to have been
sent out last fall -- therefore, well in advance of
the sudden, unannounced, and contractually impermissible
interruption of your services to me.
This raises some serious questions
concerning R-- L--'s performance of his duties as my
representative, and the general quality of the agency's
representation of me since J-- S--'s departure.
I'll look forward to hearing
from you forthwith on these matters.
Yours,
A. D. Coleman
Staten Island, NY
February 11, 1988
Mr. Allan Coleman
465 Van Duzer Street
Staten Island, NY 10304
Dear Allan:
Thank you for your letter of
February 8, and the letter copy dated February 4.
I'm sorry if you've gotten the
impression that our attitude towards you was in any
way offhand or cavalier; it isn't. For the record, it
was Mr. L-- who urged continued representation after
J-- S-- left the agency, arguing in part that at least
one new book project from you was under discussion.
I understand now that you no longer have plans for a
new book project; however, if you think it valuable
to you to have us represent your journalism for the
major markets, we'd be happy to do so.
In keeping with the terms of
our contract, if you'd like to continue agency representation,
that's all right with us, and we'll be back to you shortly
with your new contact; in the meantime, since we work
as a team here, representation will continue.
It was not our intention to criticize
you personally, and we don't feel it profitable for
there to be bad blood on either side. My suggestion,
then, and I hope you'll agree: let's put any bad feeling
behind us, and move ahead on new work.
We'll be in touch shortly, and
for now, all best wishes.
Sincerely,
Head Honcho, MegaLit Agency, Inc.
February 18, 1988
Dear Allan:
In keeping with our recent correspondence,
this will confirm that your new contact here at the
agency is Mr. J-- B--.
J-- is the person who will be
working most closely with your account, and is looking
forward to hearing from you.
Best wishes,
Head Honcho
MegaLit Agency, Inc.
March 7, 1988
J-- B--
MegaLit Agency, Inc.
Dear J--:
I'm glad we met last week --
it's more pleasant to do business with someone you've
encountered face to face. I look forward to working
with you in the future.
I'm presently drafting the book
proposal I mentioned to you, for the project I call
Mortal Coils: Photography and Death. I hope to
have a working draft of it to you by the end of the
month. In the meantime, my Thanksgiving piece can go
out to several editors. And I'd like you to make inquiries
for me concerning rights to some of my writing.
I wrote extensively for the Village
Voice between 1967 and 1973, and for the New
York Times between 1970 and 1974. (I assume you
don't need the title and date of every column I wrote
for the Voice and the Times. Annotated
checklists of these writings are available, if necessary
-- but they're many pages long.)
The column I wrote for the Voice
was titled "Latent Image." The first one appeared
on June 20, 1968; the last on March 15, 1973. (Roughly
170 columns in all during that period.) Additionally,
there was a considerable amount of theater criticism
for the Voice, published between September 1967
and November 1968, plus a few features on various subjects
during that same time. Finally, there were two articles
on photography published in the Voice between
1974 and 1977.
For the Times, I wrote
approximately 120 articles on photography between March
8, 1970 and November 4, 1974. All appeared in the Sunday
Arts & Leisure Section; aside from the last one
or two, which appeared on the "Art" page,
all appeared on the "Camera" page.
I was never on staff at either
the Voice or the Times. I was always a
freelance. I have no recollection of ever signing a
"work-for-hire" agreement, nor of signing
away any rights. I have no copy of any letter of agreement
with either publication in my files; my guess is that
I went into both situations on a handshake, believe
it or not. I'm interested in discovering what contracts
(if any) cover this writing. Could I ask you to inquire
of them what actual contracts exist, and then to apprise
me of the legal status of that material vis-a-vis my
use of it?
(The policy of both is to permit
authors to reprint material, without fee, in books of
their own authorship, but to charge a fee for reprints
of it in anthologies, etc., a fee which is supposedly
split with the author. However, as I was not on staff
at either publications, received no salary but only
the fees for my essays, and never to my knowledge signed
a work-for-hire clause, it seems to me that they bought
one-time rights only, and that all other rights should
be mine.)
This is important information,
because I'm currently discussing with interested parties
the possibility of converting all my writings on photography
into a database. In that connection, the rights issue
is vital.
I believe that short letters
of inquiry from you will be effective in extracting
this information quickly from the Rights and Permissions
Departments at both journals.
I'll talk with you about this
next week.
Best wishes,
A. D. Coleman
Staten Island, NY
March 10, 1988
Dear Allan:
Thanks for your letter. I'll
see what I might be able to discover regarding your
Voice and Times work of some years ago.
I've now had a chance to read
"Gobble, Gobble: Spicing uip the Bland Tradition.
To be blunt, it's impossible to focus on what other
high or low points the piece might have when I encounter
something demonstrative of such appallingly bad taste
as comparing a Thanksgiving meal to PCP. If you'd be
able to think of some more appropriate analogy, I might
be able to consider sending the piece back out to market.
As it stands, I think it's difficult to evaluate recipes
in the proper frame of mind.
All best wishes,
J-- B--
MegaLit Agency, Inc.
March 15, 1988
J-- B--
MegaLit Agency, Inc.
Dear J--:
Not long after our phone conversation
this afternoon, the mail arrived. It brought with it
issues of a UNESCO-sponsored magazine which has valued
my writing enough to translate one essay into French,
Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Russian and Arabic. It also
brought your abrasive letter of March 10. To which of
these two evaluations of my work am I to give credence?
Your missive opens up in one brief paragraph a can of
worms on which I've no idea how to put the lid. My response
has three levels.
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1.
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Matters of taste are always
arguable -- or inarguable, depending on where
you put the emphasis. If my joke is indeed in
bad taste (even "appallingly bad taste"),
then that fact escaped not only me but a number
of readers I've shown it to, the editor who published
an earlier version of this piece a number of years
ago, the editor at GQ who held it for three months
and invited its resubmission, and R-- L-- of your
own agency. Surely this suggests that what we're
dealing with here might well be your opinion and/or
taste pattern. It might be worth your while to
conduct an experiment: without prejudicing their
reading in any way, run the essay past several
of your colleagues at the agency, then ask them
if they find anything in it to be in significantly
bad taste -- and, if so, what. (On this level,
I might add that if my mild quip so offends you,
we should all be grateful that the output of Lenny
Bruce was never in your hands.)
By the way, you seem to
have missed the point of the article -- which
has to do precisely with the eccentricity of the
basic premise and the humor of the prose, not
the uniqueness of the recipes. If it was purely
a recipe piece, we'd be sending it to Gourmet
and Bon Appetit rather than to men's magazines,
now wouldn't we?
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2.
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More important by far,
though, is this question: to what extent, if at
all, am I required to conform my writing to your
taste patterns in order to have you represent
a piece of my work to a market toward which I've
directed you to address it? I am not aware that
you possess any significant credentials as a writer,
an editor, or an intellectual; that is to say,
I've no idea to what extent, if any, the profession
I've been in for the past twenty years has validated
your taste patterns. (It's validated mine by granting
me considerable influence in my chosen field,
and by purchasing and publishing approximately
800 essays with remarkably few editorial changes,
virtually none of them revolving around issues
of taste.) Nor have I any reason to believe that
your notion of acceptable taste necessarily reflects
the market's. But even if it did, I've been writing
in the public eye long enough to have earned the
right to violate the canons of taste.
I would certainly be willing
to negotiate such a question with an editor. Indeed,
H-- L-- of A C-- of A-- asked me to rethink
a joke in my forthcoming "Open Letter to
Jesse Jackson" -- on the basis not of taste
but of tone. I gave it some thought and acceded
-- partly because I thought he might be right,
partly because he posed it as a query rather than
a demand, partly because I believe in giving editors
some druthers, but mostly because the piece didn't
suffer from its departure. (I'll use it elsewhere.)
That's part of the give and take of the editor-writer
relationship. However, you're not my editor. I'm
not convinced that you're qualified to be. You
seem to be usurping the editor's prerogative in
this case. So unless I can be persuaded that the
agency will be seriously discredited if this jape
appears in a manuscript transmitted under its
aegis, I'd propose that your concept of good taste
has no bearing whatsoever on our professional
relationship, and should not enter our discussions
unless I solicit your opinion on the matter. As
a critic, I operate on the principle that taste
should be kept where it belongs: in one's mouth.
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Which brings me to the
last level, by far the most important: that of
your presumptuousness and arrogance. I'm both
your elder and your senior, my boy: your elder
by a number of years, your senior by a working
lifetime's experience as a scion of publishers
(my parents founded Plenum Publishing, Inc.),
a professional writer and editor in my own right.
Whatever credibility you have in the field of
publishing, young man, comes largely from your
employment by the MegaLit Agency. While you were
still under the legal drinking age I published
120 articles in the New York Times and
170 in the Village Voice with no institutional
credentials at all -- solely on the basis of the
quality and intelligence of my writing. And, all
of that notwithstanding, if I do exactly as you
tell me to, you "might be able to consider
sending the piece back out to market"? Indeed.
Are you truly giving me an ultimatum? Are you
actually refusing to send an article of mine back
to an editor who requested its resubmission unless
I delete from it something that offends your sensibilities?
Who appointed you to be not only my agent, and
my editor, but my censor? What on earth makes
you think you're entitled not only to find a comment
of mine offensive but to determine that it's "demonstrative
of appallingly bad taste" -- in other words,
not only a lapse but evidence of a character defect?
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If you are to represent me further,
J--, you will remember your place and your manners and
address both me and my work with the respect due to
myself and it. If not -- and my guess is that that will
be the case -- I suggest you brush up on your etiquette,
lest you someday cost the agency a truly valued client
with such boorishness.
Yours,
A. D. Coleman
Staten Island, NY
c: Head Honcho, MegaLit Agency, Inc.
March 15, 1988
Head Honcho
MegaLit Agency, Inc.
Dear Head Honcho:
More correspondence enclosed,
FYI. When I said I'd settle for the lowest man on your
totem pole, I didn't mean throw me to Mongo. I can only
take this as a transparent attempt to force me to leave
the agency. It won't work; I begin to find myself taking
a certain perverse delight in seeing to it that you
actually live up to your end of a contract.
I had two very pleasant years
with the agency, Head Honcho. I'll settle for two more
tolerable ones with anyone on your staff who's competent
and not given to insulting your clients. That doesn't
seem much to ask.
Yours,
A. D. Coleman
Staten Island, NY
Enclosures: correspondence from/to J-- B--
Postscript: I never got a replacement;
it was Mongo or nothing. I couldn't bear to talk with
him on the phone, much less meet with him; among other
things, he was physically repellent (though I'd learned
from my friend J-- S-- that, incomprehensibly, he was
nonetheless Head Honcho's protegé).
So I began doing all the work
myself, even negotiating my own book contracts. The
MegaLit Agency even proved incapable of doing me the
elementary courtesy of providing me with the following
four figures at the end of each year:
1. Total amount received on my behalf by the agency.
2. Total amount passed on to me.
3. Total amount of commissions retained by the agency.
4. Total amount of disbursements deducted by the agency.
Turned out they weren't computerized.
For some reason, I believed it
was better to have bad agency representation than none,
and had no other offers. I took a perverse pride in
my association with this operation, and even dutifully
sent in 10 per cent of every payment I received, regardless
of the fact that they did nothing to earn it. It dragged
on that way until mid-1991. Then I had a long-overdue
attack of self-esteem, and asked for an accounting of
the monies I'd paid them for the previous several years.
When no answer was forthcoming,
I did the unthinkable: I sued them in small-claims court
for breach of contract and failure to provide services.
Perhaps because I filed the claim on my own home turf
of Staten Island, which would have necessitated a day
trip for the hearing, they called to negotiate. What
did I want, their lawyer asked? My answer: a formal
end to our relationship on every level -- including
a quit-claim from their end to any royalties on two
academic-press contracts I'd negotiated myself but that
the agency had vetted and typed up. I'd had no profit
from the relationship, and so no reason why they should.
To my surprise, they agreed.
I'm told that no one else has ever gotten out of a contract
with MegaLit, and that an agency releasing an author
in that way is unheard of in the industry. The moral?
Better a big fish in a small pond -- or even the only
fish in a pond of your own making -- than small fry
among sharks circling each other in the dark.
Copyright
© 1988, 2001 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved.
For reprint permissions contact Image/World Syndication
Services, POB 040078, Staten Island, NY 10304-0002 USA;T/F
(718) 447-3091, imageworld@nearbycafe.com
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