Can you have more than one agent in voice over? What are the rules for having multiple agents? Gabby goes through all that and more.
Should I Have Multiple Agents for Voice Acting? - There are rules you need to follow. - 5:18
Hey guys, welcome to another edition of The Gift of Gab. Today I'm filming in my rock room because why the hell not? Not everything has to be done in the studio! We're going to talk about agents and working with more than one agent. Stick around.
Hey guys, thanks for joining me, thanks for subscribing, thanks for all your support, uh yeah, you guys are awesome. Keep the comments and the feedback coming and of course, reach out to me on my website and we'll chat, I look forward to it.
Today we're going to talk about working with talent agents, specifically working with multiple agents. I get asked this a lot, "Can you have more than one agent in voiceover? How many can you have?" The answer to that is a little complicated because it really comes down to what sort of contracts are you signing, what sort of exclusivities exist, and what the geographic territory of the agent is. But the short answer is... yes, you can have more than one voice-over agent, but you gotta know how to work with multiple agents and you've got to understand a little bit about that process.
Agents are not really thrilled when actors work with more than one agent and it's for the obvious reason: because they're all competing for the same work. If you are submitting to multiple agents, you already have multiple agents, there are a couple things that you really should know about that process. The first, and I think the most important, is to understand that you have to play fairly. You can't choose favorites, you can't pick sides, you can't arbitrarily decide that you're going to answer an audition from one person and not another, you have to have a system in place. The person who got you an audition first is the person you answer the audition through. It's it's that simple. That's how you avoid any kind of issue or conflict there. You will get the same audition from more than one source. Today, I had four. They were literally the same audition from four different sources. So the first person to send it to me is the person I responded to and sent the audio in.
There is one exception to that, one exception: that rule is based on geographic territory. If the job is in the same location as an agent where you have an exclusivity, then the job goes to that agent, making sense? If you book work in Idaho and you have a talent agent in Idaho, and they are representing you, then the job via that contract that you sign and agreed to is theirs by default - that's who you would submit the audition through.
Something I've been hearing about recently that has really been a what the F*** kind of moment is people asking if they can retract an audition, meaning they've already submitted through an agent and now they're coming back to that agent and saying, "Oh I need to take the audition back because I want to submit it with somebody else." What?! NO! That's that's insane! That's crazy and that's a really, really good way to piss off everybody who reps you. It's not cool. Once you've submitted, commit - it's that simple. You can't play games with people's income. Remember a talent agent makes a percentage of what you make, so they have to work 100 times harder to equal the same earnings.
And lastly, I want to warn you against what's called double submitting. This is the biggest no-no, it's a huge taboo, it's a gigantic problem and it really shouldn't be happening. You can only submit an audition for a single job one time. If you get that same audition for multiple agents, you can only submit for it one time with one of those agents. If you double submit, what you're doing is creating complete chaos because if you were to book the job, the agents now have to fight it out over who gets the commission and who gets to represent you, and often if you put talent agents in a position like that, they're gonna drop you from the roster really, really fast. You also might find that you lose a lot of money because everybody is entitled to their commission and their percentage. Therefore you might end up paying more in commission than you actually made on the booking.
The other thing is this double submitting like that it's it doesn't do anything for you, right? It doesn't increase your odds of getting somebody's attention. It doesn't increase your chances of booking the gig. It really is just tacky. Don't do it.
So there you go, a little bit about working with multiple agents. Yes you can absolutely do it, you just have to be smart about it. You have to have open and honest dialogue and talks with your agents about your relationship with other agents, and from there you can make a really successful business happen. Thanks again for watching guys. Bye!
704-674-8294 / GabrielleNistico.com / gabby@voiceovervixen.com
Gabrielle Nistico, Gabby Nistico, The Voiceover Vixen, The Business First VO Coach, #VoiceoverVixen #VoiceOnFire #BusinessFirstVOCoach Voiceover, Charlotte, North Carolina, Voiceover Demo, Voiceover Coaching Advice, What Not To Do, Working Actors, Los Angeles, New York,, How to Be a Better Voice Actor, voiceover coaching, YouTube Channel, Voice Acting Coach, talent agent, audition, auditioning, talent agency, voiceover talent agent, auditions