So why haven't the police done anything about it then if this is a scam?
Sophia1
The New York Literary Agency: Warning
- Thread starter victoriastrauss
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So why haven't the police done anything about it then if this is a scam?
Sophia1
Smile! What do you think brought me here I was doing some research on them. I don't disbelieve any of you, I am just checking the facts.
Of course not but I do not judge anyone without evidence.
Sophia2
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Of the 4 books, at least 2 were sold by the authors, NOT by the agency.
You're absolutely welcome to.
I will note, however, that the people on your side of the fence have manuscripts in hand they wish to sell, while the people on my side of the fence have 5-digit royalty checks. The grass is pretty green over here where I am.
So, you think your publisher will be stupid when they send you your advance and all of your royalties? I must say that's the first time I've heard that opinion. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of eBay, Amazon, and other online transactions that take place every day. Every time I pay my mortgage I guess I'm stupid. Pretty much all people are stupid all the time, apparently.
You're absolutely welcome to.
I will note, however, that the people on your side of the fence have manuscripts in hand they wish to sell, while the people on my side of the fence have 5-digit royalty checks. The grass is pretty green over here where I am.
So, you think your publisher will be stupid when they send you your advance and all of your royalties? I must say that's the first time I've heard that opinion. Not to mention the hundreds of millions of eBay, Amazon, and other online transactions that take place every day. Every time I pay my mortgage I guess I'm stupid. Pretty much all people are stupid all the time, apparently.
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In general, scam victims don't like to come forward and admit they've been scammed. Also, it's difficult to explain something like this to a prosecutor.
As far as this case in particular, let's just say that actions have been taken and leave it at that.
Well if there were enough complaints to google about it surely they would take the site down from the top slots.
Someone asked me about why the US?
An author that I used to know in the UK was upset when a UK publisher then did a deal with the US and both publishers then got a cut from it. He said it was better to go direct to the US especially as the US is the largest market for our types of books.
Sophia2
Someone asked me about why the US?
An author that I used to know in the UK was upset when a UK publisher then did a deal with the US and both publishers then got a cut from it. He said it was better to go direct to the US especially as the US is the largest market for our types of books.
Sophia2
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Why would they, as long as he keeps paying them?
Google AdWord positions are based on payment, with the highest bid receiving the highest position. That he's able to consistently receive high positions and the frequency with which the ads occur on a daily basis incidate that the agency's spending a considerable sum on advertising.
Where does that money come from? None of it comes from sales. All of it comes from authors.
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You mean, should someone tell NYLA that they're a scam? I rather think they know it already.
Besides, Bobbie shows up here all the time, usually as a sockpuppet.
It's easy to recognize the pattern. New poster shows up. Posts only in the NYLA-related threads, saying the folks here are misguided or uninformed. But they can't list any sales that Bobbie's made, and they ignore the well-documented case against him. Quite often, they turn rude, then vanish in a huff.
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It's hard to interest the police in literary scams to start with. The dollar amounts are low, and the victims are reluctant to come forward. It's also difficult to explain how normal publishing works, and how this differs, to a jury. Prosecutors have limited time and resources -- they go after the big-ticket items first.
Let me explain in some detail how Fletcher's scam works. (Before you begin, you have to understand that WL Writers' Literary Agency is owned and operated by a man who already has been adjudged guilty of stock fraud in Washington State.)
You send in a query or a manuscript.
Their auto-responder accepts it, and requests that you get a paid critique.
If you go with their suggested critiquer that's money in their pockets. If you don't, that's cool because....
Their auto-responder waits a while, gives you the "Four Green Light" letter, and requests that you get the manuscript edited.
If you go with their suggested editor that's money in their pockets. If you don't that's cool because....
Their auto-responder waits a while and suggests that you buy a web page. If you get your web page from them that's money in their pockets. If you don't that's cool because....
Their autoresponder waits a while and suggests that you sign up for the Aggressive Agent program. If you do, that's money in their pockets. If you don't ... they drop you.
If at any point in this process you write to them and ask "What's up?" their autoresponder comes back with the "You beat me to the punch by a few days" letter. They have a variety of other form letters that they use -- we've seen and discussed many of them -- which they've come up with over the years, based on their dealings with disappointed authors.
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Proof? Here's proof of the pudding: Ask them for the titles/authors/publishers of five books they've sold in the past twelve months. A company with "active conversations" on over sixty books (as we've heard many times) should have sold 10% of them or more in the following year. Where are those sales?
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Granting them the two sales they claim they made themselves this decade is being incredibly generous on our part. That's taking the word of a convicted conman on its face. I haven't personally contacted those two authors to ask them. Not that WL Writers' Literary has been exactly forthcoming on exactly who those lucky writers are.
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I have my suspicions about what the "Aggressive Agent" program entails, but I'll save that for another post.
I'm not sure I understand this. Your friend feels that they got done by a publisher so he advised you to get a US agent? What's your area of fiction?
I'm also confused as to whether or not you've actually signed with WLA, Sophia2. You suggest in one post that you have and that you're happy with them (although I note that you have not answered my previous questions as to how many publishers they've submitted to on your behalf and how close they are to a deal) but then in another post you say you're here to do research. Given your business experience, why would you research an agent after you've signed with them?
Regarding your comment about getting the police involved, sometimes the police will take the view that it's a civil law matter rather than a criminal law matter (i.e. they'll tell you it's a contractual dispute). There's a thread here about a UK scam artist who took quite a few people for a ride and neither the OFT or local trading standards (who usually deal with scam agents) would touch it - pointing people to the civil courts. Saying that - I think that there have been a couple of cases in the US where scam agents have been prosecuted, although sadly not WLA - I think I'm right in saying it was for fraud, but am open to be corrected (given that I'm not a US lawyer).
MM
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Here are the sales that NYLA (and the variously-named other agencies under the same umbrella) is currently claiming, to my knowledge:
Too Much Tuscan Sun, by Dario Castagno, sold to Globe Pequot Press. This book was self-published by the author in Italy. It fell into the hands of a Globe Pequot author, who showed it to her editor. The publisher contacted Mr. Castagno directly to offer a contract. NYLA had nothing to do with this sale. This has been confirmed from multiple sources, including the author. (The publisher, not NYLA, probably is responsible for the foreign rights sales.)
The Fulfilling Marriage, by Rev. Billy Crone, placed with Mapletree Publishing Company. Several issues here. First, NYLA continues to refer to Rev. Crone's book by its pre-publication title, A Marriage Built to Last (you'd think the agency that had sold a book would know its name) and to say that it's "due to be published soon," when in fact it was published in March 2006 (again, you'd think they'd know the book was out). Second, Mapletree accepts submissions directly from authors--Rev. Crone did not need an agent to place this book, and may well have placed it himself. Third, Mapletree doesn't pay advances, which means that a reputable agent, whose income derives from commissions on sales, wouldn't go near it.
Bipolar and Pregnant, by Kristen K. Finn, sold to HCI. The book is listed at the HCI website, so it's not a figment of NYLA's imagination, but the author's website doesn't mention NYLA (or any of the other agency names) and this sales claim has been made only in private correspondence from Sherry Fine and on Publishers Lunch.
There's not enough info at this point to know what the real deal is. But here's my guess. The book's publication date is September 2007. The Publishers Lunch announcement was May 4, 2007. When the sale was first discussed here, in early May, the book was already on the publisher's website and at Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com, etc--complete with cover. Books from commercial publishers typically take a year or more to bring to market--and though a cover is prepared well before the pub date, it takes several months at least for covers to be designed and approved. Here, however, we see a gap of just five months between the sales announcement in Publishers Lunch and the publication date; and at the time of the sales announcement, the book and its cover were already online. Especially since HCI is another publisher that accepts unagented submissions, I'm guessing that this is another author-sold book that Sherry Fine and the merry crew is taking credit for.
I haven't seen anything about a fourth sale.
Even if NYLA et al could claim unambiguous credit for four solid, commercial, revenue-generating sales, this would be a wretched track record. They've been in business since 2001 under one name or another; that's less than one sale a year. Even a small agency will make way more sales than that on a yearly basis, and a large agency--and you can bet that NYLA is large--will sell dozens or even scores of books a year.
- Victoria
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Bipolar and Pregnant would make a fifth sale.
The other two that make up the four are:
Where Do The Laws of Physics Come From by Victor Stenger (Prometheus Books) and Shades of Brown by Denise Becker (Genesis Press).
Victor Stenger has been selling physics books to Prometheus since 1988 (a decade before WL (under any name) was founded), suggesting that this wasn't a very hard sale to make, and Denise Becker sold the book herself.
Since none of those is "a UK publisher" there may be another lurking in the wings that we don't know about. Or, perhaps Bobby Fletcher is just blowing smoke. Again.
The other two that make up the four are:
Where Do The Laws of Physics Come From by Victor Stenger (Prometheus Books) and Shades of Brown by Denise Becker (Genesis Press).
Victor Stenger has been selling physics books to Prometheus since 1988 (a decade before WL (under any name) was founded), suggesting that this wasn't a very hard sale to make, and Denise Becker sold the book herself.
Since none of those is "a UK publisher" there may be another lurking in the wings that we don't know about. Or, perhaps Bobby Fletcher is just blowing smoke. Again.
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Sounds like the UK publisher made a subrights sale in the US. Typically, with subrights, the publisher takes 50%, and the author gets 50%, of the sale. That's why you want to keep as many subrights as you can when you're signing the contract with a publisher.
This is something else about literary contracts that WL Writer's Literary doesn't know anything about. You'd need a real agent to negotiate 'em.
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People here really have done their homework and have the facts, and honestly what would be their reason for saying bad things about a literary agency? Some have claimed sour grapes (odd that the most vocal of posters on the subject have been published multiple times and yet have sour grapes). Some say that the nay-sayers don't want the competition (odd that the people who don't want competition go out of their way to help others, even offer free online writing advice). In the end whatever. If you disagree, then that's fine.
They still won't sell your book.
They still won't sell your book.
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The "Aggressive Agent" program:
This is all speculative on my part. Here is one way that it might work that matches all the facts we know.
Say an author pays to get an "Aggressive Agent."
Fletcher (under one name or another) solicits a newbie/startup/amateur agent (of which there are entirely too many) with the following pitch:
This works about as well as you'd expect: Amateur agents in Bent Fork, Oklahoma, have no useful contacts in the publishing industry, nor are they able to get editors to return their calls, nor are they able to negotiate contracts. Fletcher has off-loaded all the expenses, and all the work, of agenting onto someone else. If, as is marginally possible, the newbie sells a manuscript (probably to an equally small, startup publisher), that's money in his pocket. If the manuscript doesn't sell, then it cost him nothing but it did provide evidence that he's not a total fraudster: See! Manuscripts were submitted! It's not our fault that the author wasn't good enough to sell!
Since the author paid for the service to start with it's a certain moneymaker. Even though it's worthless.
This is all speculative on my part. Here is one way that it might work that matches all the facts we know.
Say an author pays to get an "Aggressive Agent."
Fletcher (under one name or another) solicits a newbie/startup/amateur agent (of which there are entirely too many) with the following pitch:
You will be an associate, a lead agent, of the WL Writers' Literary Agency, the most powerful agency group in the country. We will supply you with everything.
You get: A fully edited manuscript, a professional query letter, and a list of thirty publishers with the editors' names and addresses. What you do: Print out the manuscript, print out the query letter on your own letterhead, and make the submissions. You make the followup calls and negotiate the sale. You will get to keep half of the commission.
You get: A fully edited manuscript, a professional query letter, and a list of thirty publishers with the editors' names and addresses. What you do: Print out the manuscript, print out the query letter on your own letterhead, and make the submissions. You make the followup calls and negotiate the sale. You will get to keep half of the commission.
This works about as well as you'd expect: Amateur agents in Bent Fork, Oklahoma, have no useful contacts in the publishing industry, nor are they able to get editors to return their calls, nor are they able to negotiate contracts. Fletcher has off-loaded all the expenses, and all the work, of agenting onto someone else. If, as is marginally possible, the newbie sells a manuscript (probably to an equally small, startup publisher), that's money in his pocket. If the manuscript doesn't sell, then it cost him nothing but it did provide evidence that he's not a total fraudster: See! Manuscripts were submitted! It's not our fault that the author wasn't good enough to sell!
Since the author paid for the service to start with it's a certain moneymaker. Even though it's worthless.
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They aren't mentioning these two sales these days. The sales claims I've seen in their correspondence over the last year mention Tuscan Sun, the Billy Crone book, and "one sale to a publisher in the UK and another sci-fi sale," titles and publishers not given. I think we can assume the unnamed sales are fictional.
The HCI sale just began to be claimed in the past month or so.
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It is possible that by the "sci-fi sale" they mean The Chronos Project: A Race Against Time by Marc Anthony Rios, Blu Phi'er, 2006. It's really hard to tell what they mean since despite repeated requests they refuse to give title, author, publisher, and date to back up their claims.
The Better Business Bureau has compiled a report and continues to add to it. That's probably the best we will see of any action taken against them. That is, unless someone is wealthy beyond means and can afford to sue. Even then, it's hard to prove as many of the other posters here have stated. The best thing we can do is try and prevent other writers from falling for the trap.
I've sent them several proposals in the last year or so, as have others on this board, and each synopsis was more ridiculous than the last.
The NYLA responded by requesting the full MS, and this after they claimed to have read the synopsis and considered it to have merit.
They're a scam. Pure and simple. Their business relies upon those who have not yet cottoned on to them, or those who refuse to accept the proof that this shower are as far removed from literary agents as it's possible to get, even when the truth of this is staring them directly in the face.
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No
There is a website that lists scams
Well those people obviously have a few issues, if one is serious and mature then one listens, listening has never been a strong point of humanity, hence why the planet is in a state. I imagine these are first time authors who feel their dreams have just been dashed. However, anyone with any experience with publishers and agents know that to be realistic one has to be in for the long haul.
One certainly should not do it for the money that is for sure.
Sophia2
I don't sign anything without research and or without consultation with a corporate lawyer. So no, I haven't signed anything and I haven't paid them a penny.
Non-fiction see newbie forum.
Sophia2
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There are lots of websites that list scams.
This is one of them.
Preditors and Editors is another.
Did you have a particular site in mind?