| Wednesday, March 12, 2008 1:32PM | | | | ABOUT CONTEMPTOUS AGENT | Posted By: gloria naylor
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I'm seeking some advice about how to deal with Sterling Lord of Sterling Lord Literistics. He has been my agent for twenty-five years and has now decided to show little except contempt for my patience and loyalty. This agency, for whatever reason, has a very bad policy of not sending its authors royalty statements unless the publisher decides there are royalties due the author. We all know these publishers can and have made mistakes with the monies due us. I have complained about this in the past with little result and decided not to leave the agency over the matter. Now, when I recently requested missing royalty statements over the telephone to put my affairs in order, that request was ignored. A letter sent through the mail was subsequently ignored. And finally, a letter sent "signature confirmation" was ignored.
That letter also contained a request for an addendum to be placed on one of my most popular reprints. A column that originally appeared in The New York Times' "Hers" section. The original title was "A Question Of Language" and over twenty years has been anthologized and reprinted endlessly under the titles, "The Meaning Of A Word" and "Mommy, What Does Nigger Mean?" The meaning of the word, nigger, has changed dramatically during my lifetime. And that column addressed its use within my community during a period when African-Americans were not as dispised as they are today. And when our young men were not hunted down in the streets by the police and by each other. I believe the popularity of that column helps to assuage some guilt today in white America about the commercialization and heavy promotion of that racial slur by the music industry. Therefore, I wanted an addendum placed on any reprints of that column to say that, basically, I believe the word, nigger, should be totally banned from hip hop music unless we are willing to also allow these young singers--as Michael Jackson wanted--to sing about dagos, spicks, and kikes. To date I have no idea if Sterling Lord has any intention to honor that request--since it's clear he has no intention to honor any of my requests as his client.
I have gone through the proper channels to have his neglience and contempt addressed by the grievance committee of National Writers Union and to publicize the way he does business to the other writer's organizations I belong to: Pen and The Authors Guild. However, if he loses every client he and that agency has because of my efforts, that is not the point. There is a certain pathetic element here that breaks one's heart. This is a stately, courteous gentleman who used to pride himself on being a good agent. And he was, for many years, a good agent. What happened to Sterling Lord?
Any answers from anyone who reads this blog would be appreciated:
mayorlady@gmail.com
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7 Comments | Add a Comment |
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| 8-16-09 4:01AM: Toby said...
this woman sounds like an irrelevant complainer. I think if her agent is ignoring her it's because she sounds like a real pain in the ass.
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| 7-12-09 6:32PM: Jonh said...
Nice ;)
Natural Menopause
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| 7-12-09 6:31PM: Crystal said...
great post!!! i really like it
http://www.pen.org/ViewBlogPost.php?prmBlogID=1179&prmProfileID=20744
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| 7-12-09 6:30PM: Crystal said...
Very nice post thanks!!!
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| 7-5-09 9:08AM: Mike said...
Best of luck to you folks.
Mike - the buy regcure consultant.
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| 7-11-08 12:24AM: Seth Fishman said...
Dear Gloria,
I am an agent who works at Sterling Lord, and was just approached by a new client based on your blog asserting that we do not send royalty statements. I am not here to comment on your relationship with your agent Sterling, in fact, this is not my place at all. We have over 15 agents in our office, each on their own projects. If you'd like to give me a ring tomorrow, even though I do not work with Sterling specifically, I'll see if I can help you out. Call the front desk and ask for Seth.
However, for you and all who read this, we absolutely do send out royalty statements to clients, with or without money attached. In fact, we employ a person whose sole duty it is to create easier to understand summaries to accompany the statements, which most firms don't. We'll try to get to the bottom of this, and I'm sorry I had to find out by defending my company's good name (and ask around, it has a good name) to a client because of your blog. A singular, and unfortunate incident.
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| 3-15-08 3:47PM: Anthony Valerio said...
You may have spoken to Authors Guild, if not, suggest it. Believe they have legal dept. Used to anyway. Awful to have had a respectful career and have to contend with this kind of thing. Just a word here, I guess, of empathy. I believe we shared Cork Smith as editor at some point so it isn't easy to find "new" editor, "new" agent.
best of luck-
Anthony Valerio
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