I'll second what Jim said. There's no way that Tarisai Literary Agency can be legitimate.
Real agencies don't charge their clients for negotiating with publishers, or for anything else. The only way they make money is by taking a fixed commission on sales. And real agencies emphatically don't sell their authors into vanity houses, ever.
If Tarisai has a pattern of selling its clients into one vanity house, Arima, then it very likely has an interest in that operation or has arranged to receive kickbacks from them. There are lots of vanity houses, and since it looks bad for Tarisai to have placed almost all its clients with the same publisher, you have to assume there's a material reason all their business is going to Arima.
If you've paid fees to either company, but especially Arima, do what you can to get the money back. It was gotten from you under false pretenses.
I'm as amused as Jim is by the copy on Tarisai's website:
Tarisai Literary Agency is aware of the demands of the industry and will not make irresponsible suggestions for clients wishing to approach publishers. However, where work is deemed not only well-written, but also potentially commercial, we will suggest publishers either for client to approach directly, or in exceptional cases we will forward work ourselves after discussion with author.
Tarisai has no idea what literary agents do. They gather the business has something to do with submissions, and they've heard that agents negotiate with publishers on behalf of their clients. What they've missed is that submitting clients' manuscripts to publishers is dead standard procedure for agents, and a central part of their work.
The third paragraph tells the same story:
Disclaimer: we cannot take responsibility for manuscripts lost in the post. Never send the only copy of your work. We may, if we cannot find suitable publisher or editor, return your work unread, along with your cheque.
Tarisai has seen references to agents submitting work variously to publishers or editors, but doesn't understand that they run in tandem -- i.e., that when you've found a suitable publisher, you've also found a suitable editor. More disturbingly, they think that
finding a suitable publisher or editor precedes
reading the client's work.
I've been referring to the Tarisai Agency in the plural, but Tarisai may be a one-man or one-woman business. If so, that person is
[email protected], who may or may not be a 24-year-old Seventh Day Adventist from Zimbabwe who speaks English as a second language and is inclined to be a bit of a conspiracy theorist.
