Creative Circle
Out of context: Reply #24
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- Horp0
Agents are in the business of agenting for their own business ends, they're not in the business of being nice and treating workers as clients.
I had a number of agents as an illustrator and when you figure out how much money they make from the commissions versus how much money they make from their roster, its clear that 'roster' is an income stream of almost equal importance, sometimes more.
My first agent... a very big agent based in London. Roster of about 200 artists on their books back then (no idea how many now). 60% were sleeping (ie not getting regular commissions, not 'hot' and 'exciting') 20% were bankable regular work, 10% were frequently getting commission and 10% were superstars who got the really big, well paid commissions and commanded high fees thanks to their profile, hotness, and unique skillset.
Over a two year period, the amount of money an agency required an artist to 'invest' in their career furtherance was about 3k. Lets argue that 2k of that was profit, and 1k was the ACTUAL cost of promotion (in reality I'm being very generous to the agent with that 2/3 split, they buy space and print in bulk at it would only cost them about £100 per year per artist, but I'm being nice so lets call it £1000).
So that means that a roster of 200 artists, each keen to promote as much as possible in the hope of securing exposure, commissions, reputation and income etc, will give the agent 3k per annum for promotion work. The agent will pocket 2k per annum per artist. Thats £400,00.00.
£400.000 before taking their 30% commission fee on any job. If they commission £2million pounds of illustration per annum, that gives them another £600,000.
If you consider that roster income fee is more likely to be £500,000 than the £400,000 as I suggested, and £200million is a lot of commissions, it becomes clear that roster = almost half of their revenue, maybe a half, maybe more for smaller set ups with modest roster sizes.
All agents work to a ruthlessly profit-driven business model. One of the biggest misconceptions out there is that agents represent artists. They represent themselves.