Anything Goes : Can someone explain a literary agent, manager, and a traditional publishing agent — and how they fit together? by Jessica Novinger

Hey Jessica -- these will be fairly loose answers to your questions but should provide some frame of reference for the roles of agents and managers.

No. Lit managers typically don't do a ton of the dealmaking and hammering out negotiation details, but some can/will. Lit managers works primarily to help develop writers and find them jobs. Agents do more of the high level negotiations these days for said jobs or other jobs they arrange for you.

Do agents act as managers?

Not really anymore. They did a lot more in the old days, but today manager and agent are two separate jobs. Agents handle more of the dealmaking. Managers handle more of the talent development and positioning.

Do agents in traditional publishing understand the film and tv market, and vice versa?

yes, very well and very much so. there is a ton of collaboration between the literary and film/Tv worlds. whatever amount of collaboration you think they might do, multiple it by a factor of 10. any book from a major publisher gets read by studio development offices.

How do managers make money? (Is asking that taboo?)

Not taboo. Managers make between 5-15% of your project sales. Agents around the same. They make money by having a strong book of clients working on popular and prolific projects.

For an author/illustrator who is juggling, say, a children’s book about a greedy dinosaur and a script that is science-fi thriller with a splash of organized crime, should they seek an agent or a manager?

You should seek a publisher for your children's book. Or self-publish (which includes marketing yourself). If you have a book with an audiences and a decent amount of sales, you will be more attractive to representatives. If you only have one script, you can seek agents and managers, but they typically like to see more of a body of work than one script.