The literary superagent who revolutionized 20th century publishing

In the middle of the 20th century, the job of the literary agent was almost nonexistent in the Spanish language, Maribel Luque, tells Catalan News. Then, Carmen Balcells came along: “It was a revolution.” 

Carmen Balcells is known as the literary superagent who was the driving force behind the Latin American Boom of the 20th century, representing superstar names from the continent such as Gabriel García Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Isabel Allende, and many more. 

A large part of her success was down to the fact that she revolutionized the publishing industry in Spanish-language markets to give authors much more favorable conditions, allowing them to focus solely on their work. Balcells also took a very hands-on approach to her job, solving any issue she could for her clients, way beyond those of the page and the publishing contract. 

Born in Santa Fe de Segarra, in the western Catalan area of Lleida, in 1930, Balcells first started working in the industry with publishing houses ACER and Seix Barral, before eventually founding her own agency and making use of the contacts in Latin America she had already made. 

Maribel Luque started working at the Carmen Balcells Literary Agency at the age of 18, learning from Balcells every day from a young age. “The simple fact of listening to her talking on the phone was a masterclass. I was studying Spanish philology at the time, and I left the agency many, many days feeling that I was learning much more from that woman, listening to that woman, her tone, the way she expressed her ideas.”

Luque has now risen the ranks to become Literary Director of the agency, and tells Catalan News that during the early years of Balcells’ career, she could immediately see gaps in how the publishing industry worked, how things were skewed in favor of publishers and to the detriment of authors. “She had realized what kind of contracts writers were signing.” 

At the time, writers received “almost no money” in advance for their works, and publishing contracts usually lasted “for the whole term of copyright, for the whole world.” This meant that writers were living in very poor conditions and were “almost slaves for the publishers,” Luque says; Carmen Balcells “changed absolutely all this.”

At the helm of her own agency, Balcells negotiated with publishers herself, on behalf of the authors that she represented, and fought for much-improved conditions. “She was a completely new character, new personality for all those publishers.” Temporary terms were first added to contracts, meaning the writer signed licensed rights to the publisher but for a limited period only. Once that period was finished, rights reverted to the author to be sold again, possibly to a different publisher; wherever the best offer was available.

Additionally, Balcells did away with global rights for publishers and instead dealt with each market separately, which also made writers more money for their work. Nowadays, such practices are industry standard, but they only became that way after Balcells made that change with the force of her character and hard work. 

The trailblazing agent took her rigorous hard work all the way to the highest office in the country to fight for her writers. “She went to (the Spanish government headquarters) Moncloa and had a very powerful conversation with the government,” Luque says. There, Balcells negotiated with the then-Prime Minister José María Aznar, “to change the way publishers pay taxes for their work.”

“It doesn't make any sense if a writer declares the money collected for an advance in one year, because it may happen that they don't collect anything else during the whole period of the contract, and that doesn't make any sense [for taxes]. So it's much more convenient and fair to distribute this advance in different years,” Luque explains. 

“That's the clause we know as the Balcelles clause in contracts. And all the other agencies learned the ropes of the job for all these strategies created by Carmen.” 

With an incredible nose for identifying up-and-coming talent, a personal touch to develop their talent, the courage and boldness to back them and take on a firmly established industry, Carmen Balcells managed to turn publishing on its head. In the process, she has been attributed, in part, with fostering the Latin American Boom; or at least creating the conditions to make such a cultural phenomenon flourish. As Maribel Luque sums up, “she was unique, really.”