20/03/2011

What do Pimps and Literary Agents have in common?


According to this Nobel Prize recipient: "Agents have strong nerves and stamina. To them the term  'sensitive soul of an artist' means the same as DAB beer, and any attempt at serious conversation with them about art and artists would be a waste of time. They well know that even an artist without a conscience has a thousand times more of it than the hardest working agent. Their weapon lies in understanding that an artist cannot do anything but create, whether paint pictures, perform, sing songs, or carve in stone, or granite. An artist resembles a woman who cannot do anything else but love and falls with every kind of male donkey that falls in her ​​sight. Artists and women are particularly well suited to be exploited, and each agent is ninety-nine per cent a pimp."
Heinrich Böll

Like pimps, literary agents are on the way out. The Internet has changed everything:

"the use of the Internet for prostitution as well as other changes in the sex industry have resulted in the disintermediation of prostitution, allowing prostitutes to deal with clients directly. This has rendered pimps largely superfluous, at least in the United States." Source: WikiPedia

The use of the Internet has allowed writers to bypass the pimps literary agents and reach readers directly, via e-books...

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