The Bookseller.com

2nd December 2008

Clare Alexander is a literary agent with Aitken Alexander Associates, and ex-president of the Association of Authors’ Agents. She was formerly a publisher at Viking and Macmillan.

Right royal row

11.02.08

Last week I stepped down as president of the Association of Authors' Agents. My tenure had started after we had sat down with publishers and the Society of Authors to try to work out the implications of the digital age on rights and contracts. It did not prove possible to agree everything, but we could begin to see the outlines of the opportunities and issues that lay ahead. Today, it is hard to imagine a world in which sampling a book online did not exist, and the impact of publishers' marketing is only going to increase—few agents would argue that that is not part of the future.

But publishers, who are committing quite large sums of money to digitise their backlist, want to justify some part of that expenditure by pinning down an author royalty before anyone has any significant income stream that would enable us to determine what is reasonable. In fact, the expenditure will be for the short term and could be compared to the sort of cost that might ensue if publishers needed to update their warehouse—in a way that is precisely what they are doing. They need to digitise their backlist in order to be fit for purpose in a changing retail environment.

Most new manuscripts are delivered in digital form by now, proofs are made available as PDFs, and we are close to the day when all new books exist in digital form suitable for every purpose as a normal part of the production process. Thus the main expenditure on digitising backlist is short term. Going forward, agents will need to resist pressure from UK publishers to use that as an argument for determining terms. British publishers need to bear in mind, in a global market, that authors will be receiving royalties of around 15% of list price from most of their American cousins and competitors. They then need to decide whether the greater cost lies in digitising their backlist, or risking the support they have always had—which involves a real financial advantage to authors—in upholding British exclusivity in Commonwealth and European territories.

But my last AAA meeting was overshadowed by tragedy with the news that one of the most beloved figures in publishing, Kate Jones of ICM, had died. Kate's warmth, her passionate commitment, steadfast loyalty and absolute sense of fair play made her unique. She had been going to stand for election to the AAA committee. As it is, we have a strong new committee with a range of experts who will be well placed to deal with these and other issues in the future, but I am sad that Kate will not now be among them.