Agents who don't accept unsolicited queries

Maryn: Good girl. Here's chocolate as a reward. But if you backslide, you have to eat the chocolate with sushi. (I have found this a very effective disincentive to backslide.)

Trolls: FYI, folks: we're all hep to the "have one sockpuppet criticize the other to throw off suspicion" trick. If that's the extent of your cunning, it's just pathetic. Do try harder.

Coyote said:

I also completely disagree with Richard and whoever else believes there is no competition among writers, and WORSE, that there are enough readers to go around.

Click to expand...

Maybe there aren't enough bookbuyers to go around. There are certainly enough readers.

As a writer, I don't consider myself in competition with other writers. What can I say? It's just not a notion that ever crosses my mind.

And Victoria, I think it is an awfully broad statement to make to say that someone who charges a fee is probably not going to sell your book, since several successful agencies do this.

Click to expand...

You note that I said "probably". That means that my statement allows for exceptions--for those "several" successful agencies. On the other hand, there are hundreds of fee-charging agencies that have never sold a book (if you want to know how I know this, it's because I have files on more than 400 of them). Which amply supports my use of the word "probably".

And it is also a very general statement to intimate that established professionals don't charge fees, when that is not true either.

Click to expand...

Hmm. You must not have read the final paragraph of my post.

I respect trying to keep writers from being taken advantage of, I really do, since I am one, but maybe you should take a poll or do a study or something to get the facts completely straight and maybe garner some statisics.

Click to expand...

I'm wondering why you think that the things I say are not based on such research efforts.

- Victoria

bodacious said:

Victoria. I think it all depends on how you define fees. Are we talking about reimbursements here or reading fees? If you are talking about reimbursements, it doesn't take much looking to find agents who charge for this.

Click to expand...

Most agents expect clients to bear some of the cost of submission. But typical practice is to let those costs accrue and deduct them from the writer's advance. So the writer doesn't have to pay out-of-pocket before a sale is made (except, sometimes, in special circumstances, such as terminating a contract early).

A fee is money routinely requested in advance--as a "deposit" on contract signing, for instance, or a monthly "retainer", or the bad old reading fee (which is almost extinct nowadays). If an agent--no matter how well established--requires his clients to pay him something upfront as a condition of representation, it's a fee.

Intermittent billing for submissions costs is more ambiguous. I personally don't think it's in writers' best interest, and there are plenty of disreputable agents who seriously abuse the practice (billing for nonexistent costs, billing for pointless extras such as fancy bindings, or billing for every stamp and paperclip). In fact, as with an upfront fee, an agent who wants you to reimburse as you go is quite a bit more likely to be disreputable than not. But as I mentioned before, more and more established agents seem to be doing something like this (though it is still not typical practice). If an agent wants you to reimburse as you go, check his/her track record. If it's substantial, you may want to consider this agent. If it's small or nonexistent, run away.

All of the above illustrates a basic fact of the publishing business: there are no infallible rules (Wait. That's a rule. Oh well). To just about every broad statement one can make, there's one or more exceptions. I try to make this clear in my posts here and elsewhere, and also on Writer Beware, by using words like "generally" or "typically" or "probably". Unfortunately this is a subtlety that often seems to fly right past people who have an anti-watchdog axe to grind.

- Victoria

Victoria, what term do you suggest in place of "scammer" for questionable or disreputable agents and publishers who haven't been convicted, then? I know "fraud" has legal meanings that mean the word should be used with care, but I wasn't aware "scam" did too.

Call them "a very bad idea."

Quote:
Originally Posted by Coyote
I also completely disagree with Richard and whoever else believes there is no competition among writers, and WORSE, that there are enough readers to go around.

Maybe there aren't enough bookbuyers to go around. There are certainly enough readers.

Click to expand...

There is a smidgen of truth to Coyote's statement. According to the May 30th Publisher's Weekly (page 6, at the top) there is a marked increase in new titles being produced, versus buyers to buy them. That's not to say that there are less READERS, but new sales have only risen 5% from 1999, whereas new titles being produced have increased by 30% in that same time. In 1999, there were 119,000 titles produced in the United States. In 2004, there were 195,000. Sales of books in 1999 amounted to $23.9 million, but sales in 2004 were $26.4. Yes, it's an increase, but the publishers are a bit concerned because even more publishers are seeking ISBN blocks, according to RR Bowker. 11,458 new ones registered just in 2004.

But there are still plenty of readers. If I sell just one million copies of each of my books out of the 296,341,792 people in the U.S. (according to the 2000 census,) I'll be a very happy camper!

And, of course, those readers buy more than one book every year.

writers and readers

What Birol said.
I've been muttering to myself for the last few posts about that. What does it mean that there aren't enough readers to go around? It isn't as if I as a reader am assigned some one or two writers to personally support by buying all their work, and am groaning under the weight.
I think there's a confusion between proportion of writers to readers, proportion of books to writers, and proportion of books to readers. Which one are we talking about?
Just as each writer needs a lot of readers to buy his work, each reader needs a lot of writers to supply his pastime (or research, for nonfic).

Another point regarding competition, from a reader's pov - if I read a book I enjoy, and that particular writer has nothing else available at the moment, I will look for other books like that one. After I'd read all of Barry Hughart's books I wandered disconsolate about the shops and libraries looking for more Chinese historical fantasy. Darn it, where are his competitors? I'm waiting on you!!

-Barbara (who can now stop feeling bad about reading someone's lifetime output in a couple of months.)

James D. Macdonald said:

Call them "a very bad idea."

Click to expand...

Heh. I do. But I need a term for them, if "scammer" isn't applicable. Jaws gave us "commercial publisher" to use in place of "traditional publisher;" what term can we use for these agents/publishers/editors/whatevers?

Cathy C said:

In 1999, there were 119,000 titles produced in the United States. In 2004, there were 195,000.

Click to expand...

I wonder how many of those 76,000 new titles were self/subsidy/vanity pubs. If its a significant proportion (as I suspect it is) that could account for the relatively tiny increase in sales. Heck PA could account for a few thousand of those and we know how few copies are sold by them.

aka eraser said:

I wonder how many of those 76,000 new titles were self/subsidy/vanity pubs. If its a significant proportion (as I suspect it is) that could account for the relatively tiny increase in sales. Heck PA could account for a few thousand of those and we know how few copies are sold by them.

Click to expand...

iUniverse: 18,000 (10% of all ISBN assignments?!) http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA601501.html?display=current&industry=By+the+Numbers&verticalid=792

PublishAmerica: 4000 (2%) [Not sure if this article means 2003 or 2004]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25187-2005Jan20

Random House:: 3500 (1.8% - thats all possible formats)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25187-2005Jan20

Could not find specific numbers for Xlibris which I believe does more titles than PA and is close to iUniverse's figures. Also toss in Lulu, Trafford, Authorhouse and others for good measure and I get the sense your looking at close to 25% of all titles for 2004.

Also another point to ponder. Bowker uses the word "title" not "book", this might be because calendar's, journals and other items are assigned ISBN numbers and given "Titles". New editions and revisions are also generally given new ISBN numbers. So, are the 192,000 "titles" really new *books* or a mix of books and other things?

Mike

Aconite said:

Victoria, what term do you suggest in place of "scammer" for questionable or disreputable agents and publishers who haven't been convicted, then?

Click to expand...

I usually say "questionable". Actually, though, I try not to attach a term like that to a specific agent--as in, "so and so is a questionable agent". What I prefer is to say "so and so charges $250 upfront, which isn't standard practice among successful agents", and let whoever's reading my post or e-mail draw the logical conclusion (or not). If you stick to the facts and avoid labels, it's easier to defend yourself when you get a nastygram from the agent. (Jaws has trained me well.)

Turning the question around...I also don't like "legitimate" as a description of a good or non-questionable agent. What's legitimate, anyway? I prefer "successful" or "established".

- Victoria

I wandered disconsolate about the shops and libraries looking for more Chinese historical fantasy

Click to expand...

batgirl, you might try WHITE TIGRESS, by Jade Lee, if you don't mind erotic content. I've heard her Chinese history is exceptional and the book is getting high marks everywhere. There's also a sequel.


http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0843953934/qid=1118716557/sr=8-3/ref=pd_csp_3/103-1792429-4707017?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Hmm.. Coyote and Bodacious have both joined the banned... they weren't both coming from the same IP address, were they??

Yeah, Coyote was stirring up trouble on the Children's Board too.

Well, shoot. If they're both banned it's no fun doing a point-by-point with them now that I'm back from Writer's Weekend.

I wonder why were they banned? Was it merely for not having a clue what they were talking about?

James D. Macdonald said:

I wonder why were they banned? Was it merely for not having a clue what they were talking about?

Click to expand...

Bodacious was banned by Jenna for rudeness in (IIRC) the Reasons We Don't Recommend PA thread. I suspect Coyote was banned for the same in another thread.

Correction: It was the new Action Request thread.

victoriastrauss said:

What I prefer is to say "so and so charges $250 upfront, which isn't standard practice among successful agents", and let whoever's reading my post or e-mail draw the logical conclusion (or not).

Click to expand...

Okay, got it.

For less formal times, is "twit" acceptable, or is there a legal definition to "twit" I'm not aware of? (I'm being only slightly facetious.)

MartyKay said:

Hmm.. Coyote and Bodacious have both joined the banned... they weren't both coming from the same IP address, were they??

Click to expand...

I'm a newbie who found this great board when I felt I was being scammed...er.. "twitted" hmmm..anyway, I felt that perhaps an agent I was dealing with wasn't playing fair. It is under the ST or Stylus thread. As a newbie I might not know much, but I truly think from what I saw was posted in here, that these were one in the same as the "President of Stylus." What he said had too much similarity with their "philosophy" and his wording in that post.

Nice idea! I think we should call them "tweeters". They sing pretty songs that have no substance. Who could object?


" Help me! I'm being tweeted!"

" That rotten tweeter took my money!"

" He tweeted me and then skipped town."

Just try not to catch "chirpies" in the process.

*groan*