11. Agents are insiders.
If the market is a herd of elephants, booksellers are underneath being trampled to death while the sales force wipes the blood off their faces and other members of the publishing team stand nearby wringing their hands. In this (really bad) metaphor, agents are a mile away, trying to figure out what’s going on by putting their ears to the ground.
(via The Nervous Breakdown)
When I try to explain why I don’t want to be a literary agent, I tend to fall back on the “If publishing is a baseball team, they’re in the outfield… or maybe on the bench, cheering and heckling?” But this is way more colorful.
