Nancy Ellis not only engages in questionable business practices--witness the lawsuit--but has left behind her a long string of dissatisfied clients and almost-clients. Folks get together and swap Nancy Ellis stories. There have been enough complaints about her that she has been quietly "disinvited" from at least one major conference she used to attend.
At the conference where I met her (as a total newbie), I pitched her my novel; she glanced at pages and sounded quite excited, and asked for me to send the whole manuscript.
The next morning, it was announced that the editor I had submitted my opening chapter to for an advance read had given me the Editor's Choice Award--and also asked to see the whole manuscript. Ms. Ellis instructed me to 1) Write a nice letter to the editor thanking her and informing her that I was now working with Nancy Ellis to get the manuscript in pitch-perfect shape before submitting it, and 2) To mail the mansucript to Nancy Ellis' agency ASAP.
I did both--and also stopped pitching to other agents who expressed interest (more fool I).
After a number of weeks, I received a form letter from her agency informing me that they had received my manuscript and that it had been assigned a log number, but that "owing to the number of submissions we receive, it may be a matter of months before yours is reviewed."
I wrote an e-mail to Ms. Ellis, asking what was up. She tersely replied that she had just returned from travel and hadn't gotten to her 'priority reads' yet.
I answered that this was fine--I just wanted to be sure that I hadn't been routed to her slush pile by accident, since she had requested me to get the manuscript into her hands ASAP.
Twenty minutes later, I received an e-mail from her assistant, reading "Nancy Ellis regrets that she cannot represent this manuscript. We wish you the best of luck placing it elsewhere."
Wow. Fast reader.
I whined to a few writers, and suddenly I had a whole raft of other horror stories--in these cases, from former clients. (One claimed that the agent's voice-mail said, "If you're an editor, leave a message. If not, don't." I can't vouch for the truth of this tale, but it sounds quite likely to me.) One woman had her novel half-heartedly represented for a long period, with no real results and then, when she was informed there was no market for her work, had another agent sell it on the first go-round.
No crime in all of that--but none of us were surprised when there WAS an actual crime. And, in addition to stealing royalties from her clients, it has also been alleged by the Author's Guild that when she left LitWest to form her own agency, she 'transferred' her client list without informing the authors (though she did write to a number of the publishers to ensure that the knew they agency of record had changed.)
My dealing with Ms. Ellis left a very bad taste in my mouth; and, while I was waiting for her to 'work on' my manuscript, the editor who requested it had changed jobs to a position where she no longer handled my genre. But all-in-all, I feel lucky that in her tiff about my having the nerve to contact her directly she blew me off. I now have a good NY agent with a great sales record; I could be signed on with Ms. Ellis, wondering why I never heard any good news.
Oh, and as a fun bonus, until recently I was receiving e-mails inviting me to an expensive writing workshop she runs in Northern California. Imagine! A chance to get detailed feedback from a real agent (and, it is subtly implied, a chance at representation)!
WriterPerson may feel sorry for Nancy Ellis. I don't.
