Scam artists

When I was at the Book Expo a few weeks ago, I picked up a card for a company and it said, "I don't want people to die with a book still inside of them."

Ow, that would hurt. But really, there are several companies around to take advantage of writers' dreams: Including scam publishers and scam agents. I can't even imagine the thought process: "Hey, let's find people out there who have a dream, and rip them off by falsely leading them to believe we can make their dreams come true."

One popular bait-and-switch goes like this: An agent will advertise that he or she is looking for new writers. (Real agents do NOT need to place display ads desperately seeking writers.) Then they send you a letter back saying they love your book, and for $1,000 they will send it out to editors. Or even better, they say that if you use such-and-such editing company to get your book in shape, for a pretty penny of course, they will represent it. They are in partnership with the editing company.

Recently, a list has been going around of the "20 worst agents." One agent got so incensed that she's on it that she successfully shut down a website mentioning her. Someone else wrote about it on a blog:

Remember Barbara Bauer, that horrible old harridan and scam agent who tried to get me fired because I reproduced the Twenty Worst Agents list and she was on it?

Apparently Barbara Bauer made a screaming, abusive phone call to one Stephanie, the person who owned the web host. Bauer claimed that having AW's scamhunters post her email address at AW was illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)...

For more discussion:

http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007577.html

Note: I do not believe that the company that had the "book inside them" quote was itself a scam publisher; it seems like it just offers tips. I thought their sloga was cute. But there are scam artists out there.

Agents should not charge you for representation. The way they make money is: They love your book, they sell your book, and THEN they get 15 percent of the profits. You don't pay them up front. That's why they're picky about what they take on.