Earlier this week, the Association of American Literary Agents significantly revised its Canon of Ethics, which sets the standards for ethical behavior from your literary agent. Among the revisions are the following:
Agents can take on editorial services work for a fee to authors who are not clients (as long as they abide by certain rules, such as not steering querying authors to their editorial services). It's an effort to separate the literary and editorial services from each other.
Agents can receive payments to appear at conferences and teach classes.
Film/TV agents cannot accept producer fees without their client's prior written informed consent.
Packaging fees for film/TV adaptations have been eliminated.
I'm a publishing attorney, but as you may know, I'm a literary agent at Perry Literary as well. I'm so glad to see these revisions.