This week we are re-running our top three posts of 2011.  Here’s #1:

The Professional Literary Agent in Christian Publishing: Good or Bad?

Because my entry into publishing had been through representation of a publishing company as its general counsel, and because of my work for more than 16 years as outside general counsel to the trade association of Christian publishers, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, in 1988 when I acted as a literary agent for the first time for Ken Gire, I was not certain that there was anything noble about the role of the literary agent.  I had serious doubts as to whether serving as a literary agent in the Christian marketplace could possibly be a positive thing for Christian publishing. 

By 1988 I had as much experience in publishing serving Christian publishers and their trade association as I had in serving Christian authors.  In fact, by that time, my experience in publishing was only as an attorney and I had never acted, nor had I seriously considered acting, as an agent for any author.  In fact, in my law practice over the years I had encountered many agents of all stripes and kinds, and I had not found many of them who, in my opinion, had ever added any value to the business transaction in which they were involved.  In my 15 years of serving in the Christian publishing industry, I had become close friends with many people who worked for Christian publishing houses, as well as with many of the Christian authors I was serving.  And, I knew Christian publishing as a very important “ministry” and understood the importance of the role of the “market” in taking the gospel to the nations.  My personal desire was to see the business of Christian publishing strengthened.  But I was unsure about how introducing the “literary agent” into the “ministry” would affect Christian publishing.

Therefore, I decided that, in an effort to adequately and properly evaluate the issue, I would invite several of my author and publisher friends to come to my office, at my expense, and spend half a day in a story-boarding session to discuss the question, “Literary Agents in Christian publishing, good or bad?” 

I asked my client and friend, John Trent, to lead the story-boarding session with some of my other author clients/friends Max Lucado, Ken Gire, and Bill Butterworth, along with friends from the publishing side of the business, Kip Jordon, Publisher at Word Publishing, Rolf Zettersten, Publisher at Focus on the Family, and Rick Christian, an editor at Focus on the Family.  We spent a lively afternoon in my office, learning how to “storyboard” an issue and trying to imagine the results of literary agents playing a role in Christian publishing.  When the session was over, my publishing friends were mostly opposed to the idea and my author friends were, at best, divided on the issue. 

The response of my publisher friends was generally that Christian publishing was different from publishing in the general market and there was no need for Christian authors to have agents.  After all, they concluded, the publishers and the authors shared their faith in common and they could trust each other.  Certainly, they argued, there was no need for an author to have an advocate when we were “all on the same team.”  Another argument was that Christian publishers would always treat authors well and offer the top-selling authors fair deals without anyone being needed to speak for the author.  In other words, Christian publishers could be trusted to always do the right thing.  Further, they said that agents representing authors in the Christian marketplace could never make a living off providing that service because the top-selling authors would never find a need to have such representation (they could always walk right in the door of any Christian publisher and get a publishing contract, so they didn’t need to have someone find a publisher for them).  And, first time authors would not command large enough advances to provide enough return to an agent to make it worthwhile to represent such authors. 

The authors in the meeting were divided in their conclusions.  Some said they would use an agent if the service was available. None concluded that there was no place for agents, but there were some who just did not know if they would want to have an agent.    

Personally, I left that meeting still wondering if I should bring the “professional literary agent” into Christian publishing, unsure whether I even wanted to try. Ultimately, it was Rick Christian who persuaded me, in a conversation following the storyboarding meeting, that I should pull the trigger on this idea.  He convinced me that with my years of experience in Christian publishing and my strong relationships with Christian authors and publishers, I was uniquely positioned to launch the first professional literary agency in Christian publishing.  And he wanted to do it with me.  So, we formed Yates & Christian.

As I look back with the perspective of more than 20 years, I am now firmly convinced that allowing Rick Christian to talk me into this momentous decision was not a mistake.  Even though my partnership with Rick lasted less than a year, our individual roles as literary agents since that time have had a very significant, and mostly very positive, impact on Christian publishing.  I believe our advocacy on behalf of our author clients has created a much more level playing field between Christian publishers and authors.  And I think our creation of some levels of accountability for the publishers has, overall, made Christian publishing a lot healthier.