A literary agent can be likened to a missionary who does his job for the love of it. He or she is expected to manage and market a manuscript all the way through the publishing process, without charging any upfront fees or relying on the author's finances. The agent is expected to spend untold hours doing the very best to place the manuscript, all at his or her own expense. And that exactly as it should be. Yet, the agent is the person most often blamed when a work doesn't sell.
Many unsuccessful authors aim their disapointment at the agent.
Those who do manage to get published, are astonished to see their work can flop in the marketplace. But this happens more often than not. There would be far fewer disappointments for the writer if they understood what an agent faces, on his trecherous daily mission to sell a writer's work. The current international publishing market is extremely fragmented, and bound to interests which bear little relationship, if any, to the art of fine writing. Sometimes being a brilliant writer isn't enough to break through the steel barriers of a paranoid and disorganized marketplace.