Agents serve a purpose in trad publishing, not only to make sales, but to protect authors. This is a business, and no matter the wonderful intentions of publishers, an author who comes to the table without representation, especially a marginalized author, stands to lose a lot.

So I’m gonna be really honest, open calls at major publishers scare me. We have a huge access problem in this industry, and there’s much work to be done. But opening that door without the mechanisms in place to protect marginalized authors, without top-down changes? That’s risky.

ALL of that risk falls on the writer.