• Guest please check The Index before starting a thread.

Agents charging Fees

Donna Pudick

Banned
Flounced
Joined
Dec 21, 2005
Messages
290
Reaction score
10
Location
Florida
There are so many great manuscripts out there, it seems an awful waste of time to wait for major repairs on an inferior book.

My partner and I do most of the reading. We offer editorial advice, but do very little editing. We don't have the time. My extra readers work for free. Most of them are retired published writers and/or publishers/editors who feel privileged to be reading original works. Sometimes I use an expert in firearms or police procedure, or such, to check out sections of a book. They work for free, too, also for the privilege of seeing new material.

Of course, I'm living in a place that's replete with folks like that, so it's easy for me to find willing readers. If I can't find a reader for a specific genre, I won't consider the book.

The only free-lance editors/readers I know who work for money, work for publishing companies and are paid by the company, not the author. I worked in that capacity myself for several years. Many big houses use in-house copy editors these days.

If an author's book needs paid work, s/he should take it back and do it over.
 

MyTorchIsBroken

Registered
Joined
Apr 13, 2007
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
Maybe there's a reason....

I have a theory about why the number of fee charging agents are on the increase and it's all to do with Bill Gates. I have a couple of questions:

1. Do you have a PC?
Of course you do. You're reading this forum and participating it. This means you have at least an operating system and an Internet browser.

2. Do you have a word processor?
If you are using Windows, then you do. Even Linux systems come with a basic word processor.

With this in mind, and the old saying that everyone has a book in them (although not a very good one on the whole), it is now very easy to get a correctly formatted MSS into a PC in under a year. This has grossly overburdened the agent system, which is still stuck in the pre-PC era. Not many agents accept e-mail queries, and very few will accept e-mail submissions.

This means that with the typical agent not giving feedback on an MSS for up to 12 months, people are being tempted away to these fee-paying agents, who will give a quick response, who accept e-mail queries, and will seem to pander to the whims of very fragile new writers.

And there's more.... A typical agent could work for a year with a new writer, for that writer to just give it up. That means a lot of effort has been invested by the agent and now they have nothing. If you think about it, who wants to work for nothing?

Enter the fee-charging agent. They will get back to you very quickly. Is that a bad thing? Many fee-charging agents do have books on the shelves and movies in the theatres. Those who don't are scammers and should be avoided, I agree. But what of the rest? Why shouldn't the writer pay for their initial representation and therefore invest in their future career? This will make the writer think twice about dumping the project. If you have invented a widget (book) then it will cost you something to have it built and that would cost you (fee-charging agent). Afterall, they don't know if you're going to drop the project, do they?

New writers should change their attitude towards writing in the 21st century. If you're lucky, you'll find a non-charging agent and get published. If you can afford it, self-publish. The mid-way is to pay some small fee upfront for the inital representation. NEVER pay for reading or reports. These are scams.

Just to add that I am not an agent, I have never been published, have been turned down by five fee-charging agents (not all of them take on work "just for the money"), and I am not represented. These are just my thoughts as to why the number of fee-charging agents are on the rise.
 

DaveKuzminski

Preditors & Editors
Requiescat In Pace
Registered
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
5,036
Reaction score
859
Location
Virginia
Website
anotherealm.com
Many fee-charging agents do have books on the shelves and movies in the theatres.

New writers should change their attitude towards writing in the 21st century. If you're lucky, you'll find a non-charging agent and get published. If you can afford it, self-publish. The mid-way is to pay some small fee upfront for the inital representation. NEVER pay for reading or reports. These are scams.
Many? In retrospect, I think the true answer to that is few. On top of that, a number of scam fee-chargers have claimed to have sales. However, when investigated carefully, those sales often turn out to be to vanity publishers or entirely false claims. Some have even turned out to be books published by authors before the agency was established.

As it stands, writers have changed their attitude towards writing in the 21st century. They've wised up to the scams and they're avoiding fee-chargers because there's no incentive for an upfront fee charger to sell their work to a commercial trade publishing house when the agent already has the author's money.

Also, self-publishing is not the best route for many books. It's suitable only for limited categories.

The best way to be published is to submit only to non-upfront fee chargers and commercial trade publishing houses. If neither of those shows any interest in the author's work, then the author should reevaluate the work being offered. There's a good chance it's not ready for publication. In rare instances, that's not the case, but the odds of that are very slim.
 

victoriastrauss

Writer Beware Goddess
Kind Benefactor
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
6,704
Reaction score
1,314
Location
Far from the madding crowd
Website
www.victoriastrauss.com
Many fee-charging agents do have books on the shelves and movies in the theatres.
The more than 400 agent files in Writer Beware's file cabinet conclusively prove otherwise. There's an overwhelming correlation betwee upfront fee-charging of ANY kind and a lousy to nonexistent track record.

Of those 400 files, I'm pretty sure I could count the number of fee chargers with a genuine and RECENT track record on the fingers of both hands.

- Victoria
 

MyTorchIsBroken

Registered
Joined
Apr 13, 2007
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
I can see I've hit a raw nerve here. So, if fee-charging agents are such a boil on the face of agents, why isn't there more action to get rid of them? Why is the publishing industry happy for them to carry on? Why is it that all people do is whinge about them in these forums?

If these agents are so bad, why has no one approached BBC's Rogue Traders and exposed them? After all, they are as bad as a plumber charging you £1,000 for fitting a tap washer.

I know that bad publicity might drive them out of business, but surely it is time for the industry to wise up to these people. Maybe one way would be to speed up the query-request/refusal process. 12 months to hear back from an agency in the 21st century is totally unacceptable. After all, you wouldn't wait 12 months for an on-line order from Tesco would you?
 

JulieB

I grow my own catnip
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 17, 2006
Messages
2,403
Reaction score
213
Location
Deep in the heart o' Texas
Bill Gates? We had good word processors available long before MS-DOS. Made it easy for anyone to format a manuscript. If MS-DOS/Windows hadn't become dominant, another OS would have. Then we could conveniently lay the blame for all bad things at the feet of someone else.

(I'm not the biggest fan of Microsoft's business practices, but this isn't a target. Sorry.)
 

JulieB

I grow my own catnip
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 17, 2006
Messages
2,403
Reaction score
213
Location
Deep in the heart o' Texas
Twelve months is way out of the ordinary. A friend of mine is querying agents, and she's had responses to her e-mail queries within hours in some cases. And yes, she's been sending her queries to AAR member agencies.
 

MyTorchIsBroken

Registered
Joined
Apr 13, 2007
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
I wasn't blaming Bill Gates directly for the rise of fee-charging agents, however, with the proliforation of PCs, writing a book has perceived to have become easier, and quicker, making agents groan under the number of modern-day submissions.

So, you had a wordprocessor 20 years ago did you? I have been in the IT industry for over 20 years, and back when I started, "personal computers" were the size of desks, £15,000, and were worse than useless. You must have been very rich to own one of those.
 

MyTorchIsBroken

Registered
Joined
Apr 13, 2007
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
The problem is different over here in the UK. Only a very small number of agents accept e-mail queries, and only the fee-charging ones accept submissions vie e-mail. And there in lies the problem. If more UK agents switched on to IT and responded faster (6 months is the norm over here) then the fee-chargers would quickly go out of business. It is very expensive to post in the UK and e-mail would make things a lot easier, but the UK is about 5 years behind everyone else.
 

DeadlyAccurate

Absolutely Fazed
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 18, 2005
Messages
2,536
Reaction score
522
Location
Fort Worth, Texas
Website
www.carlaharker.com
I can see I've hit a raw nerve here. So, if fee-charging agents are such a boil on the face of agents, why isn't there more action to get rid of them? Why is the publishing industry happy for them to carry on? Why is it that all people do is whinge about them in these forums?

May I suggest you read Preditors & Editors and Writer Beware and its blog in their entirety and then decide if you want to continue supporting these statements?
 

victoriastrauss

Writer Beware Goddess
Kind Benefactor
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
6,704
Reaction score
1,314
Location
Far from the madding crowd
Website
www.victoriastrauss.com
I can see I've hit a raw nerve here. So, if fee-charging agents are such a boil on the face of agents, why isn't there more action to get rid of them? Why is the publishing industry happy for them to carry on? Why is it that all people do is whinge about them in these forums?

If these agents are so bad, why has no one approached BBC's Rogue Traders and exposed them? After all, they are as bad as a plumber charging you £1,000 for fitting a tap washer.
I suggest answers to some of these questions in my blog post from last year, Why Scammers Are Hard to Put Away.

The publishing industry isn't "happy" for fee-chargers to carry on. The AAR, the agents' professional trade group in the USA, prohibited reading and referral fees for its members years ago, because these practices were being so widely abused. And many publishing people actively speak out against literary scams and schemes, on their blogs, at conferences, or elsewhere.

On the other hand, fee-charging agents really are not a part of the publishing industry. They comprise their own industry, which is devoted to making money directly from clients, rather than from selling clients' work. The only point of connection between the real publishing industry and the shadow-industry of fee-charging agents is the writers the fee-chargers entrap.

- Victoria
 

JulieB

I grow my own catnip
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 17, 2006
Messages
2,403
Reaction score
213
Location
Deep in the heart o' Texas
So, you had a wordprocessor 20 years ago did you? I have been in the IT industry for over 20 years, and back when I started, "personal computers" were the size of desks, £15,000, and were worse than useless. You must have been very rich to own one of those.

25 years ago I had a Timex (Sinclair to you in the UK) 1000. I did word processing on it. That was a $100 computer. Yeah, I was filthy rich. </sarcasm>
 

ResearchGuy

Resident Curmudgeon
Requiescat In Pace
Registered
Joined
Mar 26, 2005
Messages
5,011
Reaction score
697
Location
Sacramento area, CA
Website
www.umbachconsulting.com
If I may comment . . .

It seems to me that the other side of the coin is that a writer has to accept that a legitimate, non-fee-charging agent cannot jump through hoops to put the writer's manuscript on the fast track. It will go into the queue, possibly with dozens or more from equally hopeful writers.

Likewise, the writer has to accept that his or her manuscript might be rejected with only a sentence or two. The agent cannot invest more time than that in commenting (let alone a more comprehensive critique), as the agent makes money only from selling manuscripts to publishers and has to focus on the highest-value possibilities available, not on unsalable manuscripts. Also, any comment beyond "Your manuscript does not meet our present needs," or words to that effect, is inviting an angry response from the writer. The exception might be where the agent sees promise if the manuscript is revised, or for a better targeted future manuscript. Without at least that future potential, the only reasonable response is to reject the manuscript in a few (preferably inoffensive) words.

IMHO, reflecting my observations in recent years, FWIW.

--Ken
 

Popeyesays

Now departed. Rest in peace, Scott, from all of us
Requiescat In Pace
Registered
Joined
Apr 20, 2006
Messages
1,461
Reaction score
163
You know Torch, there is nothing keeping you from submitting to U.S. agents via e-mail.

Regards,
Scott
 

JulieB

I grow my own catnip
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 17, 2006
Messages
2,403
Reaction score
213
Location
Deep in the heart o' Texas
Ken, you're spot on.

ETA: MyTorchIsBroken: My first "real" PC 20 years ago cost under $500 because I built it myself. It was a fast 286 with two floppy drives. I used PC-Write. Word wasn't an option yet.
 
Last edited:

MyTorchIsBroken

Registered
Joined
Apr 13, 2007
Messages
13
Reaction score
0
Just for the record, I don't agree with fee-charging agents and they should be shut down. It seems to me now after spending 7 years unsuccessfully trying to get published that the only people actually making money out of writing are fee-charging agents, software manufacturers, and these so-called book doctors.
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
Many fee-charging agents do have books on the shelves and movies in the theatres....

Name three.
Why is the publishing industry happy for them to carry on?

The publishing industry ignores the fee chargers. From the point of view of the editors, the fee-chargers don't exist. They don't interact with 'em.

Twenty years ago I had an Atari 800. Wrote my first half-dozen novels on it. (I'd still be using it, but it broke and I couldn't get it repaired.)
 
Last edited:

aruna

On a wing and a prayer
Super Member
Registered
Joined
May 14, 2005
Messages
12,862
Reaction score
2,846
Location
A Small Town in Germany
Website
www.sharonmaas.co.uk
The problem is different over here in the UK. Only a very small number of agents accept e-mail queries, and only the fee-charging ones accept submissions vie e-mail. And there in lies the problem. If more UK agents switched on to IT and responded faster (6 months is the norm over here) then the fee-chargers would quickly go out of business. It is very expensive to post in the UK and e-mail would make things a lot easier, but the UK is about 5 years behind everyone else.

This does not correlate with my own experience. I have sent in many email queries to UK agents and have received answers and manuscript e-submission requests within a day. These agents include Eugenie Furniss of William Morris and Vivienne Schuster of Curtis Brown. Jane Gregory's agency, Andrew Lownie, and several other top agencies also accept equeries AND e-submissions. I know of at least one UK agency that ONLY accepts e-submissions.

Or this, from Robin Wade's Agency:
Submission Guidelines

New proposals for full length adult and children's books are always welcome. We much prefer to receive queries and submissions by email, although we do, of course, accept proposals by post. There is no need to telephone in advance.

.......
We aim to respond to email submissions within seven days of receipt. If we subsequently request a full typescript, we aim to respond within thirty days. .
(my bold)

(And yes, they do respond within seven/thirty days)

When I sent in manuscripts, I have had responses mostly within two weeks.
 
Last edited:

waylander

Who's going for a beer?
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Oct 24, 2005
Messages
8,278
Reaction score
1,567
Age
65
Location
London, UK
Just for the record, I don't agree with fee-charging agents and they should be shut down. It seems to me now after spending 7 years unsuccessfully trying to get published that the only people actually making money out of writing are fee-charging agents, software manufacturers, and these so-called book doctors.

It took me 3 days to go from initial query to offer of representation with my London-based agent. All done by e-mail.
If you have spent 7 unsuccesful years trying to get published and not had any encouraging replies from editors/agents, then I suggest that the answer lies in the quality of the work you are offering them.
 

Momento Mori

Tired and Disillusioned
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 25, 2006
Messages
3,389
Reaction score
802
Location
Here and there
MyTorchIsBroken:
If these agents are so bad, why has no one approached BBC's Rogue Traders and exposed them? After all, they are as bad as a plumber charging you £1,000 for fitting a tap washer.

How do you know that people haven't tried approaching these programmes? I know people who work at the BBC and most of the time, consumer affairs programmes like Rogue Traders and Watchdog focus on the kind of crimes that (a) they can get co-operation from local Trading Standards for and (b) are likely to affect a large number of people. The number of people who've been ripped off by dodgy plumbers is likely to exceed the number of people who've been ripped off by fee-charging agents - at least, insofar as the United Kingdom is concerned.

You also need to consider the fact that in the UK, it's very difficult to get Trading Standards interested in dodgy agents in the first place. I'm having one of those mental spasm days so I can't remember the name of the agency, but earlier this year one of the AW threads here helped bring to light a rogue agent trading in Scotland who had taken dozens of people for a ride, albeit for little cash. One of the victims did contact their local Trading Standards and got told it was a contractual matter for them to take to their local court. There's no legal aid for doing something like that, which is why many people didn't want to risk throwing away good money after bad.

I do seem to remember that Watchdog highlighted a scam scriptwriter agent a few years ago - again, this was highlighted on one of the threads in this Forum, but in that case people had been taken for thousands of pounds, which made it of particular newsworthy interest.

MyTorchIsBroken:
Only a very small number of agents accept e-mail queries, and only the fee-charging ones accept submissions vie e-mail. And there in lies the problem. If more UK agents switched on to IT and responded faster (6 months is the norm over here) then the fee-chargers would quickly go out of business. It is very expensive to post in the UK and e-mail would make things a lot easier, but the UK is about 5 years behind everyone else.

A quick look in this year's Writers' and Artists' Year Book says that this isn't the case - it lists agencies that are willing to accept email submissions.

In any event, it sounds to me is that the 'problem' is that there are some writers who are impatient to get on, which means they're looking for shortcuts when there are no shortcuts to publication. The second problem is that some people who write a book are simply unwilling to do their research into who to submit their manuscript to and what the process entails. The number of UK agents who've spoken about receiving manuscripts for a genre they don't represent or people who submit query letters written on pink paper with a picture of their cat attached is truly depressing. Anyone who is serious about being an author needs to do their research and see what it is that they're getting into. If more people did that, then there wouldn't be anyone for these scammers to feed on.

MM
 
Last edited:

LloydBrown

Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 3, 2005
Messages
1,749
Reaction score
196
Location
Jacksonville, Florida
Website
www.lloydwrites.com
So, you had a wordprocessor 20 years ago did you? I have been in the IT industry for over 20 years, and back when I started, "personal computers" were the size of desks, £15,000, and were worse than useless. You must have been very rich to own one of those.

Huh? You've worked in IT for 20 years and never heard of the Apple II, released 30 years ago? It cost around $2,000 and sold several million copies. We had a Kaypro that cost a bit less, and it worked just fine. The TRS-80 was available in 1979. In fact, it's likely that there were over over half a million PCs a year being sold 20 years ago.

All of these fit quite comfortably on desktops, and nobody had to be rich to buy them.
 

Diandra

Registered
Joined
Sep 7, 2008
Messages
30
Reaction score
1
Question

I am new for this type of industry. Can someone please tell me what types of fees or charges should I be aware of if I publish a book?
 

MadScientistMatt

Empirical Storm Trooper
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 30, 2005
Messages
1,692
Reaction score
252
Location
near Atlanta, Georgia
Website
madscientistmatt.blogspot.com
I am new for this type of industry. Can someone please tell me what types of fees or charges should I be aware of if I publish a book?

There aren't many besides your investment in time. You'll need a servicable computer and printer, and may need to pay Kinko's to print out your manuscript if your home printer isn't up to snuff. And you have to pay the postage when you mail it in.

A publisher should not charge you any fee or charges - period. They should pay you at least a couple thousand for the book, unless it's some very specialized niche work.

Agents also should not charge up front fees. They're like real estage agents - they sell manuscripts and take a cut of the sale price. Some agents may take an extra cut for things like postage and copying, but this isn't very much and ideally should be deducted from your advance.