From E-Reads™ via @DigiBookWorld:
A fierce debate about the role of literary agents has burst into flames. Agent Victoria Strauss has summed it up in a posting in Writer Beware entitled Are agents underpaid?
Those who are sympathetic towards the agents’ plight point out that “agents’ job descriptions have expanded over the past couple of decades, and that they must now do much more for the same 15% they earned twenty years ago.” writes Strauss. “They also get no payment at all for a good portion of what they do on a regular basis–reading queries and manuscripts, editing, submitting books that never sell. In a highly competitive environment, with shrinking advances (at the midlist level, anyway) and cautious publishers, it’s getting harder and harder to make a living.” (That’s putting it mildly. See What Your Agent Has Done for You Lately.”)
