I won’t go into my long, sad experience with literary agents. (So long, so sad.) I no longer have an actual agent, I use a publishing lawyer. Katherine does have an agent. And a guy I really like, admire and trust, Michael Stearns, is an agent. Of course I got to know him as an editor, before he became an agent. And now that I think about it, I noticed my watch was missing right after I shook his hand . . . Nah. Hmmm. Nah.

We sold ANIMORPHS over-the-transom, un-agented. We just wrote Jean Feiwel a letter and mailed her some books. I sold GONE over-the-transom, though I brought in my publishing lawyer to handle the negotiation. Of the 150 or so books Katherine and I have jointly or severally written, agents have made only a slight contribution. Although we’ve managed to contribute quite a bit to agents.

I’m not dissing agents as a group. No, wait, I guess I’m not dissing them as individuals. As a group I’m plotting their demise:

1) In my experience agents are less likely to know what the publishers want than the editors are.

2) Logically, therefore, the editors should be reading the slush pile. But . . .

3) . . . can’t, because we’re talking roughly nine billion submissions per week.

4) Publishers outsource the slush pile to the agents . . .

5) . . . who are paid by published authors. Thus neatly shifting the cost of the slush pile off the publisher’s balance sheet and onto mine. Well, mine and many others.

6) Unpublished authors get a free ride financially, but are reduced to groveling, weeping, sycophancy, the desperate reading of tea leaves and eventually, if they have any pride at all, a serious drinking problem.

My proposal? Publishers charge $50 to read a submission. Here’s what that does:

1) Eliminates people who don’t really want to be writers but figure “What the hell, I’ll give it a try.” These are the people who clog the system resulting in the current blockage. Am I picking on these people? No. But figure ten submissions at $50 each which, according to my always shaky grasp of mathematics, comes to $500. You want a career in writing, you want to be Stephen King, but you won’t beg, borrow or steal $500? Then don’t waste everyone’s time. You’d spend that much on job interview clothes.

2) Turns the slush pile into a profit-generator for the publisher. Why is this a good thing? Is it because I think Rupert needs still more money? No. By making the slush pile profitable it ensures a vastly-improved degree of efficiency. Response letters would fly out the door. Let’s say a hardy young editor can burn through just a dozen submissions a day. That’s $600 a day, $3000 a week, 156k a year. Real numbers would probably be quite a bit higher.

3) This new system would allow a direct feedback loop from senior editors to the editorial grunts, which would be more efficient (and involve fewer business lunches and less butt-kissing) than the current agent-editor system.

The part of the agent’s job that involves negotiating the deal can be handled by a publishing lawyer for a flat rate. 300 to 500 an hour, which seems like a lot, (because it is) but is less than 15% in perpetuity, which is what an agent takes.

The $50 proposal cuts the number of submissions, makes the process infinitely more efficient, actually placing a premium on speed, and allows serious writers to get their work in front of actual editors. It puts publishers back directly in contact with the people who, after all, provide them with the raw material from which they derive their unholy profits.

Next: I’ll solve that whole Palestinian/Israeli thing.