Season 10 is on hold because the rules for literary agents just changed, and not necessarily in the author's favor. This episode tells you exactly what questions to ask before you sign (or pay for) anything.

🛋️ Overthinking Couch Topics:

The New Literary Agent Ethics Rules

1. What the Association of American Literary Agents changed and why.
2. Which paid services literary agents may now offer.
3. Why editorial work for represented clients must still remain free.
4. The safeguards built into the revised ethics code.
5. Potential conflicts of interest writers should understand.
6. Practical questions to ask before paying for editorial, marketing, or publicity services.
7. Why due diligence matters more than ever when querying agents.

Publishing News

1. Bloomsbury reveals how much it expects to receive from the Anthropic settlement.
2. ISBNdb sources physical books for AI companies, raising new questions about copyright, preservation, and transparency.
3. Hachette launches its Reading Is Golden public service campaign to encourage daily family reading.

• AI firms are buying old books for slop-free training data
• AI firms are buying old books for slop-free training data
• Raising Readers | Reading Is Golden
• Judge Gives Final Approval of $1.5 Billion Anthropic Settlement
• Major AALA Ethics Update Allows Agents to Offer Paid Editorial, Publicity Services
• Hachette’s Raising Readers Initiative Releases PSA
• AI Companies Are Buying Tons of Old Books Because They're Free of AI Slop
• Home : America's Editor - Let's work together.
• More Writing Tips

Host: Rosemi Mederos, America's Editor

Production: Allon Media

Website: writingbreak.com |

Contact: [email protected]

Music licensed from Storyblocks.

If you have plot bunnies coming out of your plot holes, it's time for a writing break.

Welcome back, writers, both agented and unagented. Season 10 was supposed to start today, but there has been an important change in the way literary agents are allowed to operate, and I wanted to make sure you knew and understood what was going on and what you, as an author, need to do now.

The Writing Break café is open, so let's settle in on the Overthinking Couch for some publishing news.

Before we get to our main story, a couple of brief but big stories:

The publishing vs Anthropic settlement has been approved for $1.5 billion dollars, and Bloomsbury has announced their numbers; 14,087 Bloomsbury titles were illegally used to train Anthropic, and the court ruled that each violated title will receive about $3,000, so in total Bloomsbury titles will receive $42 million slices of the 1.5 billion-dollar pie. Since that money is going to be shared 50/50 with the book's authors, Bloomsbury will return home with $21 million dollars in their pockets.

They're the first publishing house to share their numbers.

And, for the comfort and convenience of all billionaires involved, the whole thing is kept hush hush. ISBNdb advertises a legally binding nondisclosure agreement covering the buyer’s identity, strategy, and acquisition targets. Using the term “acquisition targets” to refer to books that will have their copyright protection literally shredded is proof that Fahrenheit 451 was thrown into the Virtual Volcano as a sacrifice to the Gods of Industry. After they were done counting their 30 pieces of silver, ISBNdb acknowledged that the public-relations “optics problem” of destroying millions of books is real.

Now, I know many books get recycled or sent to landfills every year, but these AI companies just keep taking your words, your hardwork, your effort, your talent, your imagination, your life experiences, and continuing to do with them as they please, $1.5 billion-dollar settlement be damned. All this guaranteed secrecy shows us that they know it’s a wrong, dirty little task. They might as well be meeting in dark alleys wearing trenchcoats to hide the goods while rats scurry out and gnaw on the goods, the trenchcoats, and the sellers.

That’s not nice, but it’s a lot nicer than the call to action I wanted to make, inspired by Elton John’s “Burn Down the Mission.”

And now, our main story. The rules have changed for literary agents, and in my opinion, it should make writers a bit wary. It's not easy to land a literary agent, but once you did, they were usually a person you could trust to be putting in their all for you because their compensation came from commission on book sales, so a legitimate literary agent only made money when you made money.

But the Association of American Literary Agents, or the AALA, has now revised its ethics code to allow agents to offer clients paid services, such as marketing, publicity, web design, and, in some circumstances, editorial services, as long as representation is not contingent on purchasing those services. Agents also cannot charge clients for editorial work done to prepare a manuscript for submission.

Publishing has changed, and traditional publishing now expects authors to build their own websites, create newsletters, maintain a presence on social media, cultivate a platform, and just do a lot of book marketing. It's been like that for a while, and if you've been listening to Writing Break for a while, you've heard all about it as well as some tips on how to go about it.

When a client asks me for book marketing help, I point to various resources, but I don't do more than that because book marketing is in neither my wheelhouse nor my bailiwick. In other words, if you ask me how you should market your book, I'd give a remorseful, “idk.”

But lit agents need you to do a great job marketing your book because the more books you sell, the more they make. So when authors would ask their lit agents for advice, they would put in a lot of time and effort into helping in hopes that it made them more money in the long run. So, understandably, the AALA decided there should be an ethical framework for agents to provide those services and charge for them transparently. It's not that lit agents never charged for these services but that it wasn't considered ethical for them to do so, so most didn't.

The AALA says that the important principle is informed consent. Authors must know that the services are optional, representation does not depend on buying these services, and they’re free to hire someone else for these tasks. Theoretically, it sounds like a smart move.

However, before this AALA ethical framework, I knew of lit agents who did this kind of thing, including saying they were interested in a manuscript but just needed their editorial team to work on it before they would sign with the author. Then, the author would pay for mediocre editing and be told over and over that they still needed to make a few tweaks. Months would go by, and the author wouldn't submit to anyone else thinking this agent was going to be the one.

It wouldn't happen, and the author would be out thousands of dollars with nothing to show for it.

Now the AALA says lit agents can offer editing services as long as the author knows it means they won’t be representing them. They are not supposed to charge for editing if they are going to submit on your behalf. But I think it's going to be confusing to new writers, and it's going to give authors false expectations.

As this practice becomes more prevalent, you can expect faster responses from lit agents, only to be offered services rather than representation. They might not even provide the services themselves but insist you use their person, and what you don't know is that they're getting a cut of what you pay that third party. So, manage your expectations and steel your hearts.

Most importantly, please make sure you do your due diligence. Ask if the service is optional. Check around to see if it's reasonably priced and if the lit agent has experience with editing or marketing your particular genre and if they have proven results. You should be able to hire someone else and not lose their representation.

It might not be easy to determine if your agent is recommending a service because it's genuinely useful or necessary or because it's another revenue stream, but take the time to gather data before signing or paying anything. Great literary agents do exist, but there are already too many not great agents who sign you on and then do little to get your work sold, and now a not great lit agent who can make a guaranteed few thousand off of you might use their status as a lit agent to charge you for a bit of work on your manuscript without clarifying that they don’t plan to represent you.

And to be clear, editorial preparation remains part of being an agent. Agents can now offer paid editorial services, but they cannot charge a client they represent for editorial work done to prepare a manuscript for submission. So if they charge to edit your work, representation is not on the table, according to the AALA. If they are going to represent you, editing should be free.

Another significant change is that the old prohibition against simultaneously acting as an agent and publisher has been relaxed. Agents may now advise a client's publishing company, sit on its board, and participate more deeply in licensing arrangements provided they aren't representing both sides of the same transaction. This reflects the rise of hybrid publishing, self-publishing businesses, and author-owned publishing companies.

Even though artificial intelligence ranked among literary agents' biggest concerns in a recent AALA survey, the recent ethics revision contains no AI guidance. The AALA says they're waiting for the landscape to stabilize before adopting formal policy.

Overall, this ethics update by the AALA is addressing changes in publishing, but I would now proceed with increased caution when interacting with literary agents. We're all wearing more hats in publishing, but we're not all equally good at everything. A lit agent who would do a stellar job marketing your book might not have the connections needed to sell your book.

Links to all of these stories and Hachette’s Reading is Golden PSA can be found in the show notes of this episode. Next week, barring another publishing revolution, we're starting Season 10 by clarifying what the writerly world means by "voice" and how to find yours.

Until then, thank you so much for listening, read with your kids at least 10 minutes a day, and remember, you deserved this break.

Thank you for making space in your mind for The Muse today.

Writing Break is hosted by America’s Editor and produced by Allon Media with technical direction by Gus Aviles. Visit us at writingbreak.com or contact us at [email protected].