Writers allege that a standard entertainment-industry practice harms their earnings
If you’ve been following the Writers Guild of America’s raging dispute with Hollywood’s Association of Talent Agents (ATA), you know that a complex labor battle has reached the breaking point this week.
At the heart of the battle: the movie- and television-industry practice of packaging. Last month, in a strong and widely read article, the writer David Simon (The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Street) shared his personal experience with the practice. In packaging, agencies bring writers together with other clients they represent, assembling teams of talent a studio might need for a show. The agents forgo their commission from their clients in these cases and are paid directly by the studios.
That, say the writers, is the problem: agents are supposed to represent only their clients, not work for the studios’ money. As David Simon notes, agents who engage in packaging may have a conflict of interest that works against writers while enriching the agents. Packaging, argues Simon, systemically depresses writers’ earnings. Agents counter that packaging makes them work all the harder for good gigs for their clients because they make money when the studios make hits, a win-win-win. So far, the agencies have offered to share 1 percent of their packaging fees with the writers, but they appear unwilling to give up packaging altogether.
Another ethical conundrum: agency-affiliated production companies like the producing and distributing company Endeavor Content, which is an affiliate of William Morris Endeavor (WME), an agency that represents writers and other talent. As writers see it, agencies in affiliate arrangements of this kind are basically now in the production side of the business, unable to fairly represent writers and other artists. The agents say these affiliations create more jobs for their writer clients.
On April 12, talks collapsed between the ATA and the Los Angeles and New York chapters of WGA, resulting in many of the guild’s 15,000 writers firing their agents at the guild’s behest.
There has been confusion since then about whether writers who are also members of the directors’ guild (DGA) or the actors’ unions (SAG and AFTRA) should follow suit. As might be expected, there’s also dissent in the ranks of the writers. One prominent TV writer and playwright, Jon Robin Baitz (ABC’s Brothers & Sisters) has come to the defense of his agents at CAA, saying that the WGA has “betrayed the interests of the membership” in pushing things to such a dramatic point.
But some of the biggest names in writing are following the union’s orders, if reluctantly. Stephen King tweeted about breaking with Paradigm Agency, “This is never what I wanted. My rep has been honest and diligent for over 40 years. Not his fault, but we’re a union family. Come on, ATA. Come on, WGA. Solve this so we can go back to what we do.”
We’re reminded of a difficult time from 2013 to 2015, when literary agents and their clients were wrestling with cases in which some agencies were either starting to publish their clients or offer agent-assisted publishing of various kinds. (For example, Kristin Nelson at Nelson Literary in Denver opened an agent-assisted digital imprint, which she has since discontinued.) Debate was heated—was an ethical line crossed when an agent published an author or tried to help? That said, the book business was never near an industry-wide break of the kind we’re seeing in Hollywood. Furthermore, the practice of agents publishing their author-clients hasn’t become a profit center and thus remains a fringe activity.
Bottom line: Everyone now waits to see which side blinks. The WGA has posted a listing of the agencies agreeing to the new code of conduct, but the Big Four agencies (CAA, WME, UTA, ICM) are holding firm. No further talks have been announced, and the public has little patience for such situations if entertainment content is compromised. But at the heart of this deadlock lies a kind of perpetual unease between agencies and clients: do agents really have writers’ best interests at heart? One might wonder whether more hybrid options might be right for changing creative industries. The time to discuss, debate, and experiment is before it all falls apart in negotiations, obviously, but that’s often easier said than done.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
