P&E's agency ratings...

Barbarique said:

Does anyone happen to know what criteria P&E uses to determine their different ratings? (Positive, not negative.)

I'm curious because I find myself in the unexpected but agreeable position of having my full MS being read by a "Recommended" agency and a partial request from one which is "Highly Recommended." Presumably these distinctions mean something; but what, exactly?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Go to P&E and click on rating criteria. It should answer your questions.

Congratulations by the way!

Regards,
Scott

Maybe try PM'ing Dave and ask.

We don't post the criteria for positive ratings for two reasons.

One is it ought to be obvious what will bring that about. A track record of sales, good contracts, and fair dealings along with avoiding the obvious criteria that bring about a negative rating goes a long way. Doesn't mean we don't take into account musings, statements, complaints, and compliments from the rest of the industry, but those receive lesser values unless they're strongly documented.

Two is we've had some scams try to game the ratings by claiming they were as good as the businesses we rated favorably through the use of weasel words and such. So, since the criteria should be obvious, we've decided we won't post the positive criteria. We haven't any complaints from anyone receiving a positive rating thus far, so we're inclined not to mess with that.

We believe there is, but we're keeping in mind that some agencies are smaller than others so the bar for them isn't quite as high for some things we track. Otherwise only the largest agencies would ever reach recommended status.

P and E ratings

Does anyone know how P and E ratings of "Recommended", "Highly Recommended" etc are given? I've seen their listing for reasons why agents/publishers are rated as "Not Recommended", but I've not been able to find any criteria for the positive ratings. I know that several legitimate and very good agencies simply have a $ by their name without the "recommended". Are the recommendations based on author experience and a certain number of positive experiences relate to recommended status and an even higher number to highly recommended? Or, is there another way that these agencies and agents receive this status? Thanks!

The dollar sign beside many agency ratings means solely that there are one or more confirmed sales to reputable publishers. Nothing more, nothing less.

Like I stated before, we don't post the criteria for what earns a positive rating so that the scams won't try to game the system.

P&E is currently converting to Windows 8. It will be in a state of slight disarray while everything is reinstalled.

Little did I realize just how much disarray Windows 8 involves. Three days just to get the speakers working is ridiculous. Hope to have this finished by Monday.

One of the two P&E sites is live again and current. We'll be working on the other site to get it right again.

Does anyone know if the in Virtuo web site is down? I tried to visit it this evening and got a message that it was shut down.

I just have a question about P&E. I've decided to send out a dozen letters today since I'm getting too anxious again about not hearing back on submissions, and I limited myself to agents with $ in front of them.

I'm just curious if P&E is not up to date on some of the agents without $ or they legitimately can't find sales for these agents and I should't bother checking out their website--running out of places to submit to.

(Also, if I manage to find websites for agencies that are listed without websites, where do I send the info on P&E to?)

For the past week (almost two weeks) P&E's internet access was very limited so the site was temporarily not being updated. As far as the stats go on agencies, those are dependent on us finding out that information. In a few cases we couldn't find verifying info. In others, we did so we limited marking to only those we could verify. If an agent feels that the agency they work for is being slighted, they're welcome to forward the information to us as to where it can be verified.

Questions or information can be sent to P&E at [email protected].

Also, our mirror site appears to be down. Does anyone have a site that can mirror the P&E site? At present, it's very big (slightly over 10 MB so about 12 MB is needed).