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Frauds
The internet is full of scam agencies who are
only interested in exploiting writers, rather than representing them
effectively. Take ST Literary Agency. These guys advertise on Google, which is a warning from the start – literary agents are swamped with submissions and try and keep a low profile. If somebody is paying to advertise for
submissions tread carefully. This agency says they don't charge a reading fee.
After they accept your manuscript they send you a contract to sign. At the end of the contract – after the point where you are supposed to sign – there comes the first mention of the $129 fee you have to pay. This will apparently be refunded when they sell your book. Don't hold your breath. Any agency raking in $129 from each author it takes on
isn't going to have much incentive to put in the hard work of making a sale.
Eagerness to sign new authors isn't necessarily a sign of a scam, but it's definitely a reason for caution. Other things to watch out for are reading fees, especially if these are disguised as something
else. I saw one agent who, for $35, would put your work on his website "for other agents to see", and would also consider it himself. He didn't charge a reading fee, apparently, but he wouldn't consider your work unless you posted it on his website first. Which cost $35. A pointless semantic distinction, obviously intended to deceive, which should have any writer running a mile.
Again, a reading fee doesn't necessarily mean scam – but they should certainly make you think twice. The official code of practice for the industry does not endorse the charging of any kind of reading fees.
The latest trick scam agents are trying to employ
to get round this is to tell everyone who submits to them that they need to have
their work edited – and then refer them to a professional editor who is,
of course, in cahoots with the agency, who share the fees you have to pay to the
editor. When the editing is done do these agencies accept the writers? Doesn't
really matter. Real representation isn't on the menu either way. What happens if
you suggest you have your work edited, but by a different editor? Oh no, that
isn't acceptable – the agency has a long-standing relationship with this
particular editor and wouldn't trust work done by anyone else.
Another one to watch out for is agencies that
"place" books with what are essentially vanity publishers. The agent
who you approached to supposedly promote your book to the best publishing house
possible (and who would have started out by telling you what promise your book
showed) suddenly turns around and tells you that no mainstream publisher would
ever accept your book, and that the best you can hope for is a self-publishing
deal they've "landed" for you, where you have to pay thousands of
dollars to have your book published, or have to agree to buy thousands of copies
once it is printed (hope you've got a big garage). Of course, the vanity
publisher would have printed your book had you approached them direct, and you
may even have to pay extra to cover the inevitable kick-back that the agent will
be receiving.
These scam agents are particularly difficult to
spot, because there are no direct fees, and the agency can even provide an
apparently impressive list of publishers they've recently sold to, and point you
in the direction of dozens of amazon listings for books they've represented and
sold. That's why it's important to check not only that an agent has a list of
publishers they've successfully sold to, but that you check these publishers out
to make sure they're not vanity publishers.
If you have any other specific examples of scams I could add to this page please let me know by using the contact form on the
Feedback page.
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