What are the pros and cons of an author joining an agency? Utsudo joined an agency after the 2022 matchmaking event. The benefits: the agency saves her time going back and forth with publishers, negotiates better pay and brings new opportunities, though it takes a commission. Unexpectedly, a publisher she really liked only nurtures its own authors and won’t take agency-represented writers, so she lost that chance. Joining an agency has pros and cons worth weighing in advance.

Translated from Utsudo’s original Chinese column.

Joining an agency after the matchmaking event

Around October 2022, I joined an agency.

Honestly, when I attended the matchmaking event, I never imagined I’d join an agency. I only hoped to find a home for my work 《封筆之作》 so it could be published.

When the event ended, the people who approached me weren’t from a publisher but from an agency. When I heard “agency,” I thought I was finally (?) entering show business. Later I learned they’re an agency in the Chinese-language creative world. They’d let me focus on writing while handling other related matters, and match my works with publishers or film and TV companies. That was exactly what I lacked, so I agreed quickly.

The benefits an agency brings

For the first few months, I didn’t feel much—we were mostly organizing my existing works and their rights status. Then news started coming in: the matchmaking status of my works, which publishers were interested, internal collaboration anthologies, speaking arrangements and so on. That’s when it really felt like I’d joined an agency.

Although the agency takes a commission on the work it handles, it saves me lots of time going back and forth with publishers, negotiates better pay, and matches me with more jobs and companies. It’s actually quite worth it.

But because of this, my life has become even busier, with more things to prepare.

A collaboration I unexpectedly missed

Those are the good things, but there was also something unexpected.

Recently I received an email from a publisher I really like, saying they wanted to publish my Ministry of Culture award-winning book. But after they learned I had an agency, they wrote back to decline.

They said their company insists on nurturing only their own authors and doesn’t take authors from agencies. So by joining an agency, I missed a chance to work with them.

I was down about it for a while, because I really wanted to work with them QQ

The pros and cons of joining an agency

At first I didn’t understand why joining an agency would be unwelcome. Later I learned that while joining an agency saves me trouble and opens opportunities I’d normally never reach, some people are put off by agencies raising prices (because of the commission), more restrictions, or the hassle of coordination.

So joining an agency has pros and cons. I didn’t think that far at first, but since I’ve joined and they treat me well—at least I like them a lot—I hope there’ll be more and more work in the future, a win-win for both sides.

Maybe I’ll share more related experiences later. If you get the chance to join an agency someday, weigh which option will help you more.

FAQ

Further reading

• Previous: Hey! I Heard You’re a Writer on Ghost Island #183: Can You Really Write Stories with AI?
• Start from the beginning: Hey! I Heard You’re a Writer on Ghost Island #01: Utsudo’s Debut — A Road to the Dream Covered in Frost
• Utsudo’s books

About the author

Utsudo is a Taiwanese light novelist and novelist VTuber with more than ten years in the industry and 40 commercially published print books. Her novel 《遺失的情書》 received a 2022 Ministry of Culture youth creative award. The 《嘿！聽說妳在鬼島當作家》 series records her experiences as a novelist in Taiwan.