It's the Agent Panel!

Moderated by Lin Oliver (standing, far left), the agent panelists are, left to right: Victoria Wells Arms (Victoria Wells Arms Agency), Ginger Clark (Curtis Brown, Ltd.), Kirsten Hall (her own agency, Catbird), Brooks Sherman (The Bent Agency), Erica Ran Silverman (Stimola Literary Studio), and Tina Wexler (ICM Partners.)

Happy Hour Hangouts

A new opportunity at the SCBWI Summer Conference, these informal conversations with faculty members including agents and artist reps (Ginger Clark, Erica Rand Silverman, Tina Wexler, Kirsten Hall and Brooks Sherman) and editors and publishers (Krista Marino, Neal Porter, Sara Sargent, Melissa Manlove, Stacey Barney, Kat Brzozowski, and Reka Simonsen) are a big hit!

Attendees with agent Ginger Clark

Attendees with Publisher Neal Porter

Ginger Clark: Acquisitions Panel

Ginger Clark has been a literary agent with Curtis Brown since 2005. She represents many genres and categories of books in addition to representing the British rights for Curtis Brown's children's list. She's lots of fun on Twitter, and from there you may have learned she's really into wombats and Peter Capaldi, but aren't we all?

Sarah Davies and Ginger Clark tag team on describing how a rolling auction works. All of the bidding publishers give their bid, and then the lowest bidder is asked if they can match the highest bid, and the other bidders are approached in turn, and this can go around a few times, perhaps up to seven rounds.

Compared to a best bids auction, where Ginger asks for editors to name their ultimate bid and no additional rounds of bid-taking happen.

For most books Ginger has sold she's initially sent out the submission to 12 editors. In special cases she's sent the submission out to upwards of 27 editors (and she notes that 25% of those 27 were at Penguin Random House, which is the strange reality of big houses merging into even bigger houses these days).

The most important 'gets' in a contract to Ginger are:

Translation rights, British rights, audio rights, joint vs. separate accounting on multiple book deal royalties (you want separate accounting!!) Ginger will only take joint accounting deals unless there are no other offers OR the publisher is offering them an insane amount of money. Other than that, deal-killers are up to the client, says Ginger.

Ginger's last bit of advice:

When picking an agent, pick someone you think will be a great advocate for you and will be a great, professional advice-giver—don't pick someone only because you think they could be your best friend, or that reminds you of your mom or Peter Capaldi, or because they own a wombat.

(l-r) Peter Capaldi as Malcolm Tucker; wombat from How To Negotiate Everything

The Acquisitions Panel Begins!

From left to right, Rubin Pfeffer (Agent, Content, standing at podium), Alvina Ling (VP and Editor-in-Chief, Little Brown Books for Young Readers), Sarah Davies (Agent, Greenhouse Literary), Ginger Clark (Agent, Curtis Brown), Liz Bicknell (EVP, Executive Editorial Director & Associate Publisher, Candlewick Press), Alessandra Balzer (VP and Co-Publisher, Balzer + Bray/Harper Collins.)

Agents Panel: Ginger Clark

Ginger Clark

Ginger Clark is literary agent with Curtis Brown, LTD.  She represents science fiction, fantasy, paranormal romance, literary horror, and young adult and middle grade fiction. In addition to representing her own clients, she also represents British rights for the agency’s children’s list.

Ginger said the business has changed a lot over the last five years. The Department of Justice suit over ebooks cost publishers a lot. Where once we had six big publishers, now we have five.

This means "you have to be even better than before. You have to make sure everything you do is at the next level of excellence."
 
On self-publishing: 

"It seems to be me that self publishing is something people sometimes do because they get impatient. You want to make sure when you self-publish, you take as much time with the book as you would with an editor who bought it at a traditional publishing house and you went through a couple of rounds of revisions with notes."

On bringing out-of-print works in again
Her agency has a department that facilitates bringing these back; they also sell rights to out-of-print works to digital publishers. 

For a couple of clients, this has brought in five figures of royalties that weren't there before. "But we're not a publisher. We remain a literary agency."

On New Adult: 
This is an area publishers have been ignoring. Self publishers did well in this area and now publishers are paying attention. "That's another sign of how the digital revolution has changed our business."


On creating a brand: 

"I would love my clients to think of themselves as brands because this is a for-profit business. Thinking of yourself as a brand ... you're going to see more success earlier on." 

You can't force yourself to have a different personality or attitude on social media, though. It's about giving your fans an authentic part of yourself. "Maureen Johnson on Twitter is Maureen Johnson in person."


On Twitter: @Ginger_Clark
Her agency website:

Ginger Clark: Contracts - 10 Critical Clauses

Ginger Clark is an agent with Curtis Brown LTD. She focuses on middle grade and young adult fiction.

Literary agent Ginger Clark

As a reminder, these Team Blog posts by design don't share everything our faculty tells us for a variety of reasons. But it would be fun to share everything Ginger had to tell us. Her presentation was funny, generous, and really useful.

She's been an agent for 12 years and is a member of a couple of boards dealing with book rights and related issues--she clearly knows a ton.

On rights: 

Don't sell publishers the cow. "Just keep giving them small servings of milk for a high price." Rights break down in a couple of ways. There's World English Rights. Or just North American. Or World Rights, which includes foreign translations.

Only give a publisher world rights if they're paying you a lot of money. "Like, funny money." If they haven't paid you a bunch, they don't have the same investment and incentive to sell your foreign rights.

Hold onto audio, TV, and film rights, too. A good agent will help you sell your book to an audio publisher and will try to get a film option for you. This is really rare (and especially rare when the movies come to pass). 

On royalties: 

She had an interesting point about ebooks. Authors get 25 percent of the net--less than the 40 percent of the profits they get for hardcover sales. This strikes Ginger as being unfair, and as one reason many authors turn to self-publishing which pays 70 percent of net through Kindle.

Ginger looks at royalty statements and when she sees the "high-discount" royalties showing up as 70 percent of sales, she doesn't like it. She would have negotiated differently. (This is the reason writers benefit from having agents--little details like this can make a big difference.)

Follow her on Twitter: @Ginger_Clark

Ginger Clark: What Makes Your Work Publishable

Ginger Clark has been a literary agent with Curtis Brown since the fall of 2005. [Curtis Brown has been around since 1914, and has three agents that focus on children's books. Curtis Brown was founded by the legendary Marilyn Marlow.]

 

She has more than 30 clients. She's currently looking for MG sci-fi, fantasy and mystery, urban fantasy (no vampires), YA sci-fi, dystopia, space opera, YA cyperpunk and steampunk, YA contemporary and literary. She's taking on new clients and prefers email queries [address: gc(at)cbltd.com].

 

Publishers are finding MG tough right now, she says, because they haven't found a Facebook for MG readers. MG one of the areas of BFYR where you can have successful stand-alone books. You can continue to do that as an MG writer more so than in YA, she says.

 

Children's books are strong and aren't moving to e-books like the adult segment of publishing, and writers don't make as much off of e-books. Kids pass books around, treasure them as possessions. Teen are experiencing digital fatigue, and need books to decompress from technology.

 

YA in a nutshell over the past few years according to Ginger: Vampires led to faeries which led to werewolves which led to angels which led to dystopia. She predicts historical is next in line (the Tudors for teens).

 

Things that came up during Ginger's Q&A:

• She doesn't send a book out these days unless it's had at least one revision.
• Step one, right a great novel. Step two, learn to be a professional in this industry.
• She gets 35-40 e-queires a day, and reads all of them.
• Your novel draft should be complete and workshopped, revised, etc., before subbing and agent.
• She would welcome a great MG stand-alone with a great voice.
• 95% of her day is spent dealing with the business of her current clients. 
• The publishing industry is going through a massive change because of the iPad.  
• A good agent realizes her job is no longer just to sell the print rights to a publisher.

Ginger Clark- Bring your questions: An agent answers them all

Ginger Clark is an agent with Curtis Brown LTD. She reps science fiction, fantasy, paranormal romance, literary horror and young adult and MG fiction. She also reps the British rights for the agency and attends the Bologna and Frankfurt Book fairs.

Ginger Clark said that of the queries she receives; only about 30% are usable for her. In the queries she prefers business format with one paragraph for plot. Mention any publishing credits you may have, address her by name, and include all of your contact information.

Industry recognizes the need to be as visible as possible on the internet. When asked about how many clients an agent takes on in a year, she said that so far this year she’s taken on about 3 clients out of thousands of queries.

Agent Panel: Ginger Clark

Ginger Clark has worked as an agent at Curtis Brown, Ltd. for about five years. She represents science fiction, fantasy, paranormal romance, literary horror, and YA and MG fiction. She handles British and Commonwealth rights for the entire Curtis Brown List.

Follow her on Twitter at @Ginger_Clark.

From her introduction: 

"A good agent thinks globally. A lot of my clients have made as much money abroad as in the U.S., and in some cases, more. The market for a certain kind of fiction is doing well here and it's doing really well abroad."

On editor lunches: Middle Grade is coming back. Editors are looking for series and good MG in general. "We've neglected the 8- to 12-year-olds."

On the YA side: She represents high fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance. "We've had a lot of vampires and werewolves and it's now time to look at the more unusual creatures," she says.

From the Q&A portion, moderated by Lin Oliver:

About international publishing: Think about how you can make sure your book isn't super, super American. A brilliant book about American football isn't going to win over British editors. A good agent should be aware that you can make money when your work is translated. (They have a man on the ground in Bulgaria—interesting! Or, as they say in Bulgaria, "интересен.")

What are subsidiary rights, and what should authors consider retaining: Publishers want to set audio rights as boilerplate—something that's been discussed and settled. Multimedia rights are an issue (especially "enhanced ebook rights," such as gently animated picture books). The problems she has with that: Film companies wouldn't want that to happen. If you're doing a film deal, film companies want the rights or want to "freeze" them so other people can't have them. Good agents think about these issues and talk them over with publishers, as opposed to just agreeing to the boilerplate.

How should writers feel about the simultaneous release of their book in digital format? When you start ebook negotiations, major publishers start by offering 25 percent of net. She's hoping that changes. The giant news last week was that Andrew Wylie had started his own e-publisher. "It was certainly an interesting shot across the bow of publishers."

How would you assess the business, in terms of the centralization of power? What are the opportunities for mid-list authors and unpublished writers? We're about to head into the golden age in terms of power for children's books. Interest in the children's markets is growing.

"The snobbier side of the industry is taking what we do seriously. As they should. Frequently it is the children's division that is making profits and paying people's salaries," she says.

What are the primary services you provide your clients? She's not your therapist, accountant, best friend or mother. "I am your bad cop. Your man on the ground in NY ... When it comes to sitting on the phone with you for two hours, talking about your problems, I'm not the right person for that. Sorry."

Literary Agents View The Marketplace

The Agents Panel is starting!

From Left To Right: Ginger Clark (Curtis Brown), Ken Wright (Writers House), Josh Adams (Adams Literary), and Lisa Grubka (Foundry).

Team blog is covering each agent individually - look for those posts coming up in the next minutes...

SCBWI TEAM BLOG Pre-conference Interview: Ginger Clark

Jolie Stekly offers the latest SCBWI TEAM BLOG Annual Summer Conference faculty interview on Cuppa Jolie--she interviewed Curtis Brown agent Ginger Clark, a first-time LA conference presenter.

Ginger will offer two sessions at the Summer Conference: HOW TO APPROACH AGENTS WITHOUT SCARING THEM OFF and BRING YOUR QUESTIONS: AN AGENT ANSWERS THEM ALL. She'll also participate in a panel LITERARY AGENTS VIEW THE MARKETPLACE.

Here a bit form Jolie's post:

How can it be that the SCBWI summer conference is only a few short weeks away? Is it that the weather has been so cold it doesn’t seem possible that the end up July could be that close? Okay, I suppose that only goes for those of us in the Pacific Northwest. But still! How excited are you to be there? Or…OR are you still deciding?There’s still time. You don’t want to miss the many fab agents attending and critiquing, like Ginger Clark.

As Jolie said, there's still time to register for the event--don't you want an agent to answer all your questions? Click here for registration info.