by Nathan Bransford

I want to emphasize up front that the views here expressed are completely my own and may not reflect the views of my previous employer.

You know that phrase about how a combative person could start a fight in an empty room? Well, agents could start a negotiation in an empty room.

And because of that, despite what you may hear in some circles, I really, truly don’t think agents are going away in the new era of publishing. Agents are way too important to the business, authors need advocates, and whatever frustrations the unpublished may have with the whole getting-an-agent process, I think it’s pretty telling that authors don’t just ditch their agents the minute they finally get a deal.

Agents are not just gatekeepers, and they are very important for authors who want to maximize their revenue and stay in the publishing game. They serve as an important point of continuity, they are great at getting the most out of an author’s potential, and heck, I was an agent in real life and I still have an agent. She’s a crucial and indispensable part of my career as a writer.

But even if I feel very strongly that agents will survive into the e-book era, the times are definitely changing, and old systems are facing new challenges.

And what’s the biggest challenge agents will face? I wonder if it’s standardization of terms.

The unpublished often believe that agents exist because of the publishing funnel, and to be sure, that has helped cement agents’ central importance to the publishing business. But what really enables agents to exist is the fact that up until recently, every deal, big or small, was up for negotiation–the size of the advance, the terms of the contract, the rights up for discussion. As long as there were complex facets to a publishing deal and those elements were up for discussion, authors needed an experienced advocate to get the best terms.

But technology and scale are increasingly facilitating one-size-fits-all deal models that are fair for all parties. And that, I think, is potentially a threat to the future of agenting as we know it.

Apple’s iTunes and App stores have been revolutionary in many respects, but perhaps the most revolutionary is the one-size-fits-all 70/30 revenue split for all apps and content. Big companies, small companies, in between companies, it’s a 70/30 split. That’s the deal. That 70/30 split is so powerful it even caused most major publishers to adopt the model across the board for e-books.

Don’t like the 70/30 split? Well, too bad. It’s not up for negotiation.

And what happens if/when this is applied to the publishing world? You’re already seeing this essential model utilized by e-book distributors like Smashwords, who take a standard percentage cut for e-distributing your book. If you sell 5 copies or 500,000, it’s the same split. Everyone gets the same deal, and there’s no room for negotiation.

And if there’s nothing to negotiate, do you really need an agent?

Well, you might actually! There are still subsidiary rights to consider, like film and foreign rights (assuming you’re big enough to be offered foreign rights and film deals), and thinking about the various elements that go into making a book, having an agent can provide some of that crucial cachet that can help a book’s success.

But I wonder if the old agenting model of taking 15% commission is increasingly only going to be viable for agents representing the biggest of authors: the writers who have enough clout to have publishers fighting to offer them large advances and who, therefore, have the ability to negotiate their own terms, and who are generating sufficient revenue.

But everyone else? In the e-book era, I think you’ll increasingly see advances give way to a more standardized split in revenue based on actual copies sold. And when that happens, agents will have their traditional role challenged and will have to find new ways to stay relevant if there are no significant terms to negotiate. And if the trend of polarization between blockbusters and everyone else continues, you could see this squeeze even further.

If there’s nothing meaningful to negotiate, an author may well need someone to help them navigate the ins and outs of the publication process. So will some agents then move to some sort of billable hourly rate or a consulting model or some other flexible combination? We shall see.

I really truly don’t think agents will go away, but I wonder if agents of the future may have to adapt to an unfamiliar new foe: standardization.

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Nathan Bransford is the author of Jacob Wonderbar and the Cosmic Space Kapow, which will be published in May by Dial Books for Young Readers. A former literary agent, he now works in the tech industry. He blogs at http://blog.nathanbransford.com and can be found on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nathanbransford

This post originally appeared on his blog.