OK. I'm an author represented by Sharlene, and I can clear up a few things here.
First, I was never offered any editorial services - or any services of any kind, other than her trying to sell my manuscript to publishers (which she did successfully).
Second, I was never required to agree to a contract before reading it. Wherever that came from, it sounds ludicrous to me, and I would have run away fairly quickly.
Third, I've also dealt with Clelia at the agency and I found her very professional and helpful when reading one of my novels - they ultimately passed because she only dealt with young adult novels.
The only issue anyone has ever mentioned to me about Sharlene is that she had a minimum fee level. What that meant was, when I received my advance for the book she sold, she received her minimum fee before I got my advance. Her minimum fee was $2500. So I received half of my advance and she received the other half. Once my book earned out its advance, royalties would go to me until their combined amount would have equaled her minimum fee, and then she would start collecting 15% of the royalties - after what she would otherwise have collected ended up matching the amount she had already taken.
I think I explained that poorly. So I'll try again. Her standard fee is 15% of everything. So let's say my book sold 5 copies and my royalty for that was $10 (that's not an actual figure, just a round one for easy math's sake). Her fee for that would be $1.50. So once my book sold enough copies that my royalty would have been enough for her fees to reach $2,500, her 'minimum fee' would have been reached. But that's not how it works. Instead, when I was paid my advance, she took out her minimum fee from the beginning and then didn't collect her fee on royalties until the royalties had accumulated enough that it would have reached the $2,500 mark for her, then she starts collecting her fees on royalties above that amount.
I don't know if that's shady or not, because she's my only agent, but I do know this: in dealing with her, I felt like I was treated professionally, efficiently and like she went to bat for my project not only with publishers but with TV and movie studios. Any time a possibility presents itself, she's hammering away at the potential to get my project into more hands.
She is lightning-fast to respond to anything I send her, and she even went out of her way to help me hone and polish my book proposal, offering notes and suggestions, none of which she ever asked me to pay for. The only money I ever paid Sharlene came from the publisher, not from my pocket.
