John Cusak woos his girl with carefully selected excerpts from The Vaults audiobook in the iconic scene from Say Anything

Iambik sent me the files for the audiobook version of The Vaults. I'm supposed to listen to the whole thing and get back to them with any changes/edits by next Friday. They are aiming at a July 13 release. The cool thing about Iambik is that their audiobooks are available as downloads for $6.99 — less than most paperbacks.

Anyway, this brings me to one of the many reasons why agents are such a godsend. They — and by they I mean my agent and other people in the agency who take on specific types of tasks such as negotiating foreign rights, etc. — work on selling various foreign, audio, and film (no success in the film department at this point) rights while I work, write, whatever. Essentially, all I do in the process is sign a contract. It's a nice surprise to check my writing-business email and find a message letting me know, for instance, that they have an offer for Romanian language rights.

To date, Italian, French, Chinese, Romanian, and Russian language and English audiobook rights have been sold. There is also a large print edition — I just got a copy in the mail today.

Agents seem to take a lot of heat on different message boards and chat areas and I can understand the frustration of being a writer and not having an agent (I've been there, trust me), but there is simply no way (at least as a new author) that you can do yourself what an agent can do for you. If you are an unagented writer, keep querying, there is no shortcut that I know of unless you are famous for some other reason, in which case you probably don't need my advice.

Have a great 4th!