Are literary agents 'Gods'?

"Having finished your first novel, you have polished it to the best of your abilities, got rave reviews from your peer group of ‘wanna be' authors, and you think the most difficult part of your journey, of becoming an internationally published author is over. But, it is not. Before you seek an international publisher in mature markets like London or New York, you have to find a literary agent. ‘Finding a literary agent is akin to finding God [...]

Many first-time writers, especially those not familiar with the ‘behind the scenes' of publishing industry, would ask: Why do we need a literary agent in the first place? To answer this question, we need to understand what exactly an agent does. An agent, for an author, is an editorial consultant, a writing coach and a critic rolled into one. She markets your work to the right publishers. She also takes care of your financial interest. Above all, she understands the nitty-gritties of publishing, everything from e-book royalties and permission forms, to movie option agreements." source

Are literary agents Gods of the industry? Do you need a literary agent to publish a book with a 'traditional' publisher? The title says it all:

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NATO's Secret Armies

"This fascinating new study shows how the CIA and the British secret service, in collaboration with the military alliance NATO and European military secret services, set up a network of clandestine anti-communist armies in Western Europe after World War II.

These secret soldiers were trained on remote islands in the Mediterranean and in unorthodox warfare centres in England and in the United States by the Green Berets and SAS Special Forces. The network was armed with explosives, machine guns and high-tech communication equipment hidden in underground bunkers and secret arms caches in forests and mountain meadows. In some countries the secret army linked up with right-wing terrorist who in a secret war engaged in political manipulation, harrassement of left wing parties, massacres, coup d'états and torture.

Codenamed 'Gladio' ('the sword'), the Italian secret army was exposed in 1990 by Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti to the Italian Senate, whereupon the press spoke of "The best kept, and most damaging, political-military secret since World War II" (Observer, 18. November 1990) and observed that "The story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller." (The Times, November 19, 1990). Ever since, so-called 'stay-behind' armies of NATO have also been discovered in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Austria, Greece and Turkey. They were internationally coordinated by the Pentagon and NATO and had their last known meeting in the NATO-linked Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) in Brussels in October 1990."

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Spying: "Money is for Nothing and Chicks are Free"

"Smartphones and e-mail might be revolutionising espionage, but old-style personal spycraft is as important as ever when it comes to protecting -- or breaking -- state and corporate secrets.

But while the skills of electronic snooping are important, where information ends up can come down just as much to private deals put together in anonymous offices by spy chiefs, companies and powerful individuals.

"People using intelligence resources for their own private ends?" he said. "I'd love to say it doesn't happen. Doing someone a favour, maybe getting yourself a nice position on a board when you go into the private sector? It happens. Even in the United States."

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Spy in your pocket

"Most Western states have powerful spy agencies that can read most domestic traffic, and sometimes overseas messages as well. How this functions is controlled by legislation, although this varies and it is impossible to tell how tightly it is followed.

Intercept intelligence appears to be heavily exchanged between the main Anglo-Saxon powers -- Britain and the United States, and also Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

A 2010 book "The Secret State" by academic Peter Hennessy says 50 to 80 percent of intelligence discussed at Britain's weekly joint intelligence committee briefing is of U.S. origin.

Continental European states often suspect Anglo-Saxon powers of spying for business ends. All European Blackberry traffic goes through UK or Canadian servers and partly as a result many European governments are reluctant to use the system.

Most security experts believe Western powers occasionally use spy services for commercial ends but their main focus is on tackling militant threats and fighting economic crime."

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Humanitarian Assassination

"Britain's intelligence services carried out assassinations and did 'some very bad things' during the Cold War, according to the former spy and novelist John Le Carre.

Le Carre - real name David Cornwell - worked for both MI5 and MI6 during the 1950s and 1960s.

His revelations come in the same week that the body of MI6 worker Gareth Williams was discovered in a holdall in his London flat.

But the former secret agent, who is about to have his 22nd book published, insisted that Western intelligence agencies operated very differently from their Soviet Bloc counterparts.

He said: 'Even when quite ruthless operations were being contemplated (in the West) the process of democratic consultation was still relatively intact and decent humanitarian instincts came into play.

'Totalitarian states killed with impunity and no one was held accountable.'"

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Devil must be purged from books

"The government and publishers have been called upon to come out with measures that will forestall the breeding of 'negative literature' that has the potential to corrupt society", Said Professor Daniel Buor and "appealed to support publishers through the award of contracts for them to publish relevant literary works for public consumption [...]", because "reading exposes the reader to wisdom and experience as well as abilities to enhance his experience and abilities to perform more efficiently". He advised that "it was equally important for publishers to be selective in their publications to curb moral decay in society, explaining that "pornographic literature is having a toll on the moral life of the youth and must be eliminated from the system".

SOURCE

Novels, your gateway to understanding the world

"[...] do novels serve a wider function beyond latte chat?

According to international research, novels do more than mingle souls, as John Donne said of words on paper. Novels may inform us better about world issues than authoritative non-fiction data dependant studies.

This is the finding of a team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics. Dennis Rodgers of Manchester University's Brooks World Poverty Institute said in 2008: "Despite the regular flow of academic studies, expert reports and policy position papers, it is arguably novelists who do as good a job -- if not a better one -- of representing and communicating the realities of international development.

"While fiction may not always show a set of presentable research findings, it does not compromise on complexity, politics or readability in the way that academic literature sometimes does. And fiction often reaches a much larger and diverse audience than academic work and may therefore be more influential in shaping public knowledge and understanding of development issues.""

SOURCE: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

From an author's perspective I can say that history and actual events in my novels are only as factual as they fit the plot.