Let’s talk about that agent, if you somehow missed it a few days ago, an agent, Hillary Harwell, tweeted this, just read a query that was essentially the road meets deliverance. And I would love for someone to write this for me, please.
Making this tweet even worse is that when a few people put it out in the comment section, mission that someone had already written that concept and it was sitting in her query inbox. She continued to say, you know, oh, well, the author’s opening wasn’t good. I just wasn’t a fan of this author. Just wasn’t good.
She continued to double down on that take quite a few times. The agent, Hillary Harwell, was fired from her literary agency. And in case, do you think that is an extreme reaction or you’re wondering why people were particularly upset about this tweet? I’m going to break it down first and think that a lot of people have been talking about is idea theft. I think it is worth noting that a concept in and of itself isn’t really anything to people can have the exact same prompt to the exact same concept, and their execution is going to be vastly different. All that said, it is incredibly inappropriate for an agent to take someone’s idea that someone sent to them in a private and then blasted online, not even just like putting the idea up there, but actively encouraging other authors to steal it from them. Like you have spent months, maybe years writing a book, you’re proud of it. And their response is to basically like put out a casting call for the book that you already wrote. Like, well, this person didn’t do a good job. What if someone else did it better? Anyone else do it better?
What makes this really insidious? I don’t know personally anything about the original query or their identity. But even though I absolutely agree that an idea really isn’t anything just because execution styles will be very different, I do think that publishing pretends like this isn’t true. And this is especially the case for marginalize and particularly by Paka authors. So even though white authors can typically get away with writing the same story over and over again. Authors often experience being told like, oh, we already had a black book with which is so the market is saturated.
Even though I hate the idea of publishing all as like a big competition, tweets like this actively encourage people to like act as though it is a competition, compete with each other and try to swoop in and get someone else’s book deal first, which is a mindset that’s really toxic. But tweets like this, they encourage it. And I don’t like that.
I’ve seen a few people say things like, should have like worked with this author since you like the concept so much. I don’t necessarily agree with that. Again, I do not know this query. I’m sure they’re a talented author. I’m sure, you know, they will get picked up somewhere else. But I will say that it is very much a thing that like sometimes you can tell within just like the first few pages if a writing style just isn’t gonna work for you and you’re not gonna be compatible.
But an issue that I have is that this agent is publicly shaming this author. People, when they send a query to a literary agent, they understand that point, that rejection is likely. That stings in and of itself. But this author did not consent to have the agent like blast their incredibly negative opinion about their book to the whole internet. That was not something that they consented to. And that is what they were subjected to.
Ultimately, what I think this speaks to is that it shows to me that this agent does not have affirmative grasp of the power imbalance that exists between a literary agent and acquiring author. Like it or not, the industry, traditional publishing is run by gatekeepers. That includes literary agents, editors, etcetera. Querying authors don’t really have much power in the grand scheme of things. Literary agents have more power within this industry because they have the power to break you into an industry. Good literary agent is able to recognize that power imbalance and treat you and other query authors accordingly with respect and decency. Doing this is not treating querying authors with respect. That’s my personal opinion. Oh yeah, I was very disturbed to see this tweet. Anyway, so those are my thoughts and that is the Hillary Harwell situation.