I'm a bit dubious. Two solid sales are listed for the agency--one to Kensington, one to Palgrave Macmillan--but other clients appear to be unpublished, or to be previously published through their own efforts or other agents.
There are some red flags on the website, including a total lack of information on who is actually running the agency (it's thus impossible to determine what qualifications they may or may not have--I was able to find out the name of one of the agents, Curtis Russell, but only by searching other sources) or when it was established (two sales for a small agency that has just started up isn't bad, but two sales for an agency that has been in business for more than a year is not great). Also, though the agency says it's looking for fiction, both sales to date are nonfiction. So whether the agency has any knowledge of the fiction market is an open question--and again, you can't ascertain this, because there's no agent CV on the website.
There's a blog, but there's nothing on it but regurgitated general publishing news.
Something else odd: I Googled PlainSmart, and found
this. It's a cached listing for one of the books they claim as a sale--on the website of Trafford, a POD self-publishing service. If you read the fine print on the book cover, it says "Published by PlainSmart Publishing in cooperation with Trafford Publishing." Did the agency start as a self-publishing venture?
Oh, and that nice statement in their FAQ about dishonest agents? It's "borrowed" almost verbatim from Writer Beware's
Literary Agents page.
Their version: "Dishonest agents prey on writers by charging fees, promoting their own editing services, engaging in referral schemes, and misrepresenting their expertise and knowledge. These types of agents don't earn their income from selling manuscripts to publishers, but from charging fees to their clientele."
Our version (under the "Dishonest Agents" heading): [SIZE=-1]" Dishonest agents prey on writers by charging fees, promoting their own paid services, engaging in kickback referral schemes, and misrepresenting their knowledge and expertise in order to obtain clients. These agents don't earn their income from selling manuscripts to publishers, but from charging money to clients."
I guess it's a backhanded form of flattery.
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- Victoria