# Mr. Kipling on the Literary Agent

DEAR LOUNGER:

Is it not possible that some of your remarks, in *The Critic* of the 25th May, about literary agents would have been better for a little qualification? They give the impression that the agent sits at his ease drawing commissions from authors' sales year in and year out, for making bargains which the publisher would have made just as fairly had he dealt with the author direct.

We will leave the morality of publishers entirely out of the question. Literary agency is not by any means confined to drawing up contracts between authors of unsurpassed genius and publishers of embarrassing generosity. There is also the little matter, which most men in any profession hate, of collecting monies when they fall due. Looking at the literary agent merely as a collector, is he paid so very much more than other collectors, or are his difficulties less?

Again, with new magazines and syndicates rising almost weekly, it is his business to know which ventures are sound and which are likely to fail; because, though he "has no losses," as the writer you quote from says, he must look to it that his client suffers none. To this end he must, among many other things, control with accuracy the entire detail of simultaneous publication in three or four continents, as well as arrange for translations and Continental and Colonial issues. He must know when and where an unauthorized publication is secretly run into the market, and must stand ready to block its way at once. He must follow the exact rating of journals in England, America, Australasia and the East, their strength and their weakness financially and editorially, as well as he must "know his cables" and the difference in time between half a dozen of the leading cities of the world with which he may be in almost hourly communication. Incidentally, he must meet as they arise all possible complications of the musical and dramatic copyright law, and walk abreast of the thousand wheels within wheels of literary London where they touch his clients and the foreign markets.

His capital is experience and special knowledge of a highly specialized trade, gained by years of contact with a particular type of men and things; and it is this special training, this knowledge and this experience that save him from killing (as an amateur would assuredly try to do) your "goose that lays the golden eggs."

The reason of his being is not to grind the face of the publisher, but to meet him as one trained man of business meets another. At all times he saves the author the mass of profitless, temper-wearing detail that attaches itself to any extended market-work. Your statement that he declines to deal with the young author because "there is not money enough to be made out of the novice" is again very wide of the mark. To go back only a year or two, I know of several "novices" whose work has been introduced to the publisher by the literary agent. These men went to him without a shadow of prestige and he placed their work with success.

Finally, does it seem to you possible that nearly fifty well-known English writers of to-day would pay a man ten per cent. of their taking's for doing nothing in their behalf? With apologies for trespassing on your time,

Sincerely,
RUDYARD KIPLING,

BRATTLEBORO, VT, May 31st, 1895.