But the point is, assuming Charlie is a good agent, Julian would also have made more money (and with less effort) because Charlie would have put in the work to ensure Julian got a good deal.

The point I was replying to was that OP screwed over their agent, which is not fair.

Your point that OP would have been way better of if they did let their agent handle it from the beginning was made quite clear already:

> Looking back, I can see that I should, at this point, have handed the conversation over to my agent, Charlie, who negotiates my book deals with publishers, and who is a complete darling, and good at this sort of stuff. But I got stuck. I think I thought that bringing in my agent would potentially mess up this pure art relationship. Maybe he would be too ruthless, and it would all fall apart! Of course, now I can see that it would have had the opposite effect; Markus and I could have talked art, and Carl and Charlie could have talked money, and everyone would have been much happier.

Yeah, I incorrectly assumed you had misunderstood that, sorry. I read your “there was no exclusivity agreement” to mean “there was no reason for him to involve his agent”.