Since then, I've been writing steadily for major houses for good
money, I'm in better control of my career, I have better contracts (a
literary lawyer now negotiates my contractual terms; she does a better job and costs me a small fraction of what I was paying in
agency commissions), my advances have improved, and even my foreign subrights income has improved.
The normal commission for a
literary agency is 15 % of all
money associated with an author's book that the
literary agency was directly (or sometimes indirectly) responsible for.