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Literary agents who publish their clients' work were likened to foxes raiding the hen house at the Publishers Launch London conference held in London yesterday (22nd June).
Peter Cox, agent and founder of the agency Redhammer, talking as part of a panel on "Innovation in Marketing and Business Practice", moderated by Richard Mollet, chief executive of the Publishers Association, said agents should be working harder to build their clients' brands, rather than "plundering their digital rights".
Cox was given the opportunity to reiterate his view that agents acting as publishers was "morally wrong", and stressed that it was the height of naivety to believe they could do a better job than traditional publishers.
Cox was challenged from the floor by Charlie Campbell, agent at Ed Victor, which announced its decision to publish under the imprint Bedford Square Books in May. Campbell accused Cox of not fully understanding what was being planned by those agents who were using p.o.d. and digital to bring their authors' work back into publication, he said: "You seem to have a strong sense about what it is going to be even before we do."
But Cox responded: "I met a fox at dusk the other day near my house, and he was heading toward my hen coop, and you know what, he said the same thing you've just said."
In an earlier session Campbell had defended Ed Victor's move saying the firm was setting up a "publishing venture, not a publishing house". He said: "We are getting some criticism, but actually not that much, we would always rather be the agent than the publisher." Alluding to the recent Association of Authors Agents meeting, Campbell added: "I'm sure the AAA will eventually come up with guidelines, which we will all follow but you can't regulate something that hasn't yet happened."
Campbell said they were working in the best interests of their authors. "You don't get very far as an agent doing things that your authors don't like. I think this is something that is beneficial to the author, and not harmful to anyone else."
But in his panel discussion, Cox said that there was lots of things agents should be doing to help their authors clients, but publishing wasn't one of them. "There is a huge potential for agents to become business managers, to plug the holes writers won't or can't do, and which publishers aren't doing." He said: "If it isn't hard, then you are not working hard enough."