QueryTracker

Personally, I don't see how having a successful father-in-law makes him a great choice. It just means he knows someone who knows some people in publishing.

What sort of experience does he have? What agencies has he worked for to learn the ropes?

I just don't think "I'm so-and-so's son in law" is going to pull a lot of weight.

If he's any good, why would the father-in-law's name be a secret?? I'd want to know that he can deliver the goods, and if his FIL is head of William Morris I'd think that's highly relevant.

Fantomas
Why don't you tell them who you really are? You are Chris Hawkins (or maybe Kris Hawkins), one of the creators of litmatch, and you have been out to get QueryTracker ever since you discovered that it is better than your site. You should be ashamed of yourself, coming on here, pretending to be someone else, and manipulating the good people of AW, just to try to make QueryTracker look bad.

How do I know who you really are? I know because I've been aware of you stealing data and ideas from QueryTracker since August. I planted the fake Bishop listing and others on QueryTracker to prove it. Looks like it worked. I intentionally went too far with Bishop to see if you had any limits. You did not list this one (good for you) but you did the others.

The newsletter only went out to Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins. Only Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins can see these fictitious listings on QueryTracker. No one else even knows they exist. Try it. Create a different account and look for Bishop, he won't be there. I say again, no other users on QueryTracker can view these fake listings. They only appear for litmatch accounts.

You even created an account on the QueryTracker forum and asked about Bishop there. No one replied because no one else knew what you were talking about. You called yourself Fantomas then as well, though you signed the post "Phil".

I have documented everything, if anyone wants to see the proof.

I have tried to understand what it is that has angered you so, because you are certainly out to get QueryTracker. I know you were upset when you were trying to push your site and others kept mentioning QT instead. But trying to slander QT is not the answer.

It's not like there is a fortune to be made from these kinds of sites. If that is what is motivating you, you can stop. There is no money in it. It is a love of writing that motivates me, and therefore I am not prepared to play these cutthroat games which you think are so necessary.

-Patrick
(See how I openly say who I am. Are you mature enough to admit who you really are Fantomas?)

I just noticed that you tried to post as khm42269 but then had to delete it when you realized you had logged in with the wrong account. A little more deception, almost gone wrong. Yes, I know that khm42269 is you, too.

Good eye, Patrick. Do people never get tired of this foolishness?

I'm tired of it, that's for sure.

Interesting. I was wondering why I couldn't find that address or agency name.

Sorry Kris (Fantomas) if you are going to create a new account on QueryTracker to test what I said, you will have to create one that does not have "hawkins" in the name, or you will still see the fake agents.

The two you just created "krishawkins2" and "krishawkins3" won't work.

Bizarre.

- Victoria

Wow. Just wow.

Oh, and hi Patrick! :waves:

What an eccentric performance....

Hello Patrick,

I’m glad you gave us this chance to clear the air about a number of things related to both our sites, and the increasingly bizarre situation that has been developing since the launch of LitMatch in September.

Let’s go back to the beginning, which was a message board post on Writers.net where my wife posted an announcement about LitMatch:

http://www.writers.net/forum/read/10/175522/175522

We were still getting onto our feet then, and while we were working through some data questions with A.C. Crispin, “Lilly Grant” began a series of attacks and accusations aimed at discrediting us before we were even out of the gate. “She” even went so far as to attempt to corrupt data on our site by exploiting a bug that has since been corrected. We treated the situation the same way we would any other user inquiry, and did not rise to “her” bait.

Since then (and even before), we have been shadowed around the internet by Patrick and his friends, always in anonymous blog comments whenever someone has something complementary to say about LitMatch, often with more attempts to discredit us. He has also badmouthed us on his message board, and baited us in his blog. In addition, Patrick has purchased Google ads targeted at our domain name, attempting to steal traffic away when someone searches specifically for us. We also recently lost our page on MySpace, and though we have no information as to why, it’s difficult to not see this as part of a pattern.

Now, on to Martin Bishop. We first became aware of this “agent” in an email sent directly to me by Patrick, ostensibly as a newsletter. (I opted in to his newsletter just as Patrick’s partner “Lotheus” and “Lilly Grant” both opted in to ours.) We hadn’t heard of him, and because we research all tips that are sent to us, regardless of the source, we did some digging. We got the reference to the movie Sneakers right away, and saw the listing was obviously fake. What we couldn’t understand was why Patrick was so out to get us that he created a bogus listing in his database and baited us by sending it in a mass mailing. It just didn’t make sense, and we hoped that Patrick wouldn’t have gone so far as to mislead his users to get at us.

Fantomas was our way of getting to the bottom of things, and not once was that persona used to badmouth you or QueryTracker in any way. Frankly, I’m glad your misinformation was only directed at us, because it means that you were only baiting us again and not misinforming those who had put their trust in you. The whole thing makes me sick to my stomach in that we almost lowered ourselves to using the same base tactics that have been used against us for almost two months.

So, did we use Fantomas as a device to try and understand why you were posting bogus agents on your website? Yes. Are you prepared to admit that you used “Lilly Grant” and anonymous postings over and over again to attempt to discredit us?

As Victoria said, this whole episode is truly bizarre. You appear to have been itching for a fight since we arrived on the scene, and we can understand your being concerned about competition. What we can’t understand is why you’ve resorted to such underhanded measures to try to get rid of us. You’re going to some pretty extreme lengths, creating fake agents and publicly baiting us over and over again. There’s no reason for this petty bickering, and I apologize to the members of this board for our part in bringing this issue to Absolute Write.

Patrick, I would like nothing more than to put all this juvenile behavior behind us. If you’d like to discuss the issue directly, I will be more than happy to do so via email.

Sincerely,

Christopher Hawkins
Kris M. Hawkins

LitMatch.net

Did I mention that weird stuff goes on? I am baffled at the whole thing. I guess I missed act 1 or something.

Ah. No longer confused.

Maybe you are right. Maybe I was itching for a fight. But when you are coming to my site two or three times per day, and then I find text on your site that is a direct copy/paste from mine, well it tends to upset me. Care to tell everyone where you got your list of clients? You might as well confess, because there are tell-tale plants there, too.

As for corrupting your data through some bug of yours, or deleting your MySpace account, you give me much more credit than I deserve.

And how about you clicking my Google ads 200+ times this past weekend? I am sorry to inform you that Google noticed and refunded the money. Now who is harassing who?

I suppose what it all boils down to is that if you had not been copying from QueryTracker, then none of this would have happened.

And I agree that this is not AW’s problem and we should not bother them with it (though they may find it interesting). If you want to email me, please do so. It is a shame you didn’t come to me in the first place. We could have worked out an agreement that would have benefited the writing community as well as both our sites.

And by the way, I didn’t realize there was a Martin Bishop in Sneakers. Good catch.

Arguments from other boards belong on other boards. This topic is closed.

How reliable is querytracker.net?

I am signed up on querytracker.net to view the stats of some popular agents. I was just wondering if anyone knows how accurate those stats are, or how often authors update them? I'm noticing that NONE of the 20-something agents I've looked up on that site have it in their stats that they've accepted a full or offered to sign anyone as an agent. Yet, I know based on some of the posts here that some of these agents are in fact representing authors.

Apologies if this is already in another thread, just steer me on over to it if that's the case.

The data is put in by individual writers with submissions out, not by the agents or any third party. So it's possible that a) the particular writers who submitted to those agents haven't heard back from them, or b) the writers who put in the querytracker didn't remember to go back and update it after they got a response, or c) some combination of both.

Did you ever see that commercial where this guy was at the gym? He gets on the scale, and it tells him his weight. And then he jogs around the gym ONCE, and gets back on the scale and is sad to find that his weight hasn't changed. Then the caption says "Want results fast?"

That's how this querying process feels. I mail them off, and then I open the mail box again to see if there's a response.

tomothecat said:

Did you ever see that commercial where this guy was at the gym? He gets on the scale, and it tells him his weight. And then he jogs around the gym ONCE, and gets back on the scale and is sad to find that his weight hasn't changed. Then the caption says "Want results fast?"

That's how this querying process feels. I mail them off, and then I open the mail box again to see if there's a response.

Click to expand...

This is so funny; I just referenced that very commercial the other day when I was talking about waiting to hear back from agents.

My new favorite toy

This isn't really a lead or anything, but it is somewhat networking. My new favorite toy is querytracker.net

What a great website! Before I was organizing all my addresses, names, and "sent/rejected" labels on a word document. This is SOOOO much easier.

/end promotional message

Sorry to go all late-night-infomercial on you guys there, but I'm just loving this site.

I love that site too!

QueryTracker, yay or nay?

I'm wondering if anyone here subscribes to querytracker, what they think of it, and is it worth it?