Harris Literary Agency (Barbara J. Harris)

Anyone knows anything about the following agencies?

Harris Literary
Amy Rennert Agency
Jennifer DeChiara Lit. A.
Nicholas Ellison, Inc.

Thanks!

For Harris Literary, check here.

Hi, I don't know anything specific about the agencies listed, but I did a little checking for you:

Harris Literary
-- Predators and Editors has them listed as having professional sales, but charges fees. Not Recommended.
-- I pulled up the agent verification linked through Writer Beware and got this: You have asked about an agent/agency not listed in the various groups of experienced literary agents on our web site, nor among the fifty or so new agents whose names would have generated a positive response.

We have never found an independent record of a sale made by this agent/agency in the public record sources in the US, UK and Canada that we have been tracking since 1980. Moreover, we are aware of complaints about the business practices of this agent/agency.

****************

Amy Rennert Agency
-- P&E gave them the coveted "Recommended" mark! Whoo hoo! (That mark is the main reason I queried my agent)
-- Agent verification response: The agent about whom you are inquiring is absolutely legitimate.

*************

Jennifer DeChiara Lit. A.
-- P&E says "Further information unavailable" but has a mark that they have sold to royalty paying publishers. I don't know what that means
-- Did not come up in Agent Verification at all.
-- Did a search for her and found this: JENNIFER DECHIARA: Before forming The Jennifer DeChiara Literary Agency in 2001, DeChiara was a literary agent with Perkins, Rubie & Associates and The Peter Rubie Literary Agency. A New York City-based writer, she has worked in the editorial departments of Simon & Schuster and Random House and has been a writing consultant to several major corporations. Jennifer is a frequent guest at writers conferences, where she lectures on publishing and the art of writing.

****************

Nicholas Ellison, Inc.
-- No specific marks either way from P&E, but the agency put a note there: "We are accepting a broad range of projects these days... However, we are not considering Young Adult or Science Fiction at this time."
-- Agent verification response: The agent about whom you are inquiring is absolutely legitimate.

****************

Anyway, looks to me like you should avoid Harris like the plague. Jump on Rennert if you get a chance. And DiChiara and Ellison should both be fine. Good luck to you!

Robin

Thanks! I will stay away from Harris then (I did go to their site and can't find most of their "listed" published work -- bad sigh!)

Any comments regarding Harris Literary Agency would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

Do a search on this agency--there's been discussion about it before.

Short answer: Fee charger. Blitz submitter. No real sales.

- Victoria

oops! thank you. forgot to do that.

Writer Beware is seeking contact from dissatisfied clients/former clients of Harris Literary Agency. Please e-mail me, Victoria Strauss, at beware@sfwa.org.

Thanks!

- Victoria

This page listing volunteer lawyers may be of use. dwij.org/matrix/vla_list.html

Don't do it. Just came back from there and they'd accept the book for a fee of $250. I said "no thanks" and made them send back the manuscript. They did so.

Victoria, I want to say I never get good information on a search in this site. Never. I searched for Noble once, didn't get the longer thread, but the short one that I saw first.

To be clear, I saw only the short. The long one didn't follow.


David

I've had trouble with the search function recently too. Here's the long version on Harris:

Writer Beware has received a number of complaints about the Harris Agency. It offers writers a choice of paying $250 up-front for expenses, or providing 25 copies of their ms. at their own cost. This is nonstandard: reputable agents don't ask for expense money up-front as a condition of representation, or require authors to copy their own manuscripts. So many copies of a ms. aren't needed, anyway; unless an auction is being conducted, mss. are generally sent out one or two at a time, and only on publisher request.

I'm not aware that the Harris Agency has ever sold a book to a major US publisher. It claims a very small track record of about 12 sales over its 6 or 7 years in business (compare this to a successful midsize agency, which will sell at least that many books each year). Five of the sales are to a Chinese publishing house which I and others have tried to research, so far without success; another is to a niche publisher that appears to sell only online and doesn't require authors to be agented. The remainder are to established small publishers (which also usually don't require authors to be agented).

I've received reports that Harris employs a blitz approach with submissions--sending out queries to 20 or 30 publishers at once, with a form the publisher can check off and send back to indicate interest. It also "bundles" queries, sending several in a single envelope. These are unprofessional methods, and editors hate them. Some writers have also reported that when the initial round of queries didn't result in any sales, Harris had no follow-up plan even though the agency contracts had some months to run.

Based on documentation I've received, submissions don't always appear to be well-targeted. Also, I and a co-author conducted a survey of editors at major publishing houses a couple of years ago, in connection with an article we were writing, and were told by several of them that they tend to ignore Harris because it so often sends inappropriate or unprofessional submissions.

- Victoria

[James D. Macdonald]

Harris Literary Agency has a record that's -- spotty -- at best.

[Daughter of Faulkner]

Greetings!
I have begun to query agents in the past week and am getting 2 hits for every 10 queries. I think it's like playing the slots!

Forgive me if I've missed this one, but has anyone heard of the agency below? I researched their authors and get the sense either they are self-publish or e-publishers... Any help would greatly be appreciated!

Barbara J. Harris, M.A.
President

Harris Literary Agency
P.O. Box 6023
San Diego, CA 92166
Phone: (619) 697-0600 fax: (619) 697-0610
email: HLit@adnc.com
www.HarrisLiterary.com

Barbara J. Harris, M.A.
President

[DaveKuzminski]

Originally Posted by Daughter of Faulkner

Forgive me if I've missed this one, but has anyone heard of the agency below? I researched their authors and get the sense either they are self-publish or e-publishers... Any help would greatly be appreciated!

Have you checked out Preditors & Editors (tm) yet? It's at URL http://anotherealm.com/prededitors and it has an extensive listing of agents and agencies with recommendations that might answer your questions about whether the agency you found is reliable.

[Daughter of Faulkner]

Geez!
I knew I smelled a rat!

THANK YOU!!

[J. Y. Moore]

Originally Posted by DaveKuzminski

This page listing volunteer lawyers may be of use. dwij.org/matrix/vla_list.html

Wouldn't you know it, there isn't one in Tennessee.

[James D. Macdonald]

Another useful page:

http://art-support.com/artisthelp.htm

[UrsusMinor]

Harris Literary
Amy Rennert Agency
Jennifer DeChiara Lit. A.
Nicholas Ellison, Inc.

Hi--sorry to be coming into this so late, but the COMBINATION of names you listed above I found rather alarming.

Harris Literary is, of course, a somewhat suspect organization, and Nicholas Ellison I've never heard of.

Amy Rennert, on the other hand, is a quite well-established West Coast agent (when MacAdam/Cage editor Pat Walsh recently wrote a book on writing, Amy Rennert was the agent he chose--out of the horde of agents he knows--to represent it). Jennifer DeChiara's agency is relatively new, but she has been an agent for some time, and has a substantial sales history. I'm sure both of them would be alarmed to find themselves on the list above.

And, in raising red flags about Harris Literary, it is important to make sure that no one confuses them with "Joy Harris Literary Agency." Joy Harris is totally legit and a major player, with a couple of famous sales under her belt.

Originally Posted by maestrowork

Anyone knows anything about the following agencies?

Harris Literary
Amy Rennert Agency
Jennifer DeChiara Lit. A.
Nicholas Ellison, Inc.

Thanks!

If you're asking about the Harris Literary Agency in CA, my book was "accepted" by them several years ago. When I checked out their list of authors, however, not one had been published in the US. Also, they "suggested" that I send $250 to cover submission costs -- copying, phone calls.
Thanks, but no thanks. Maybe they've changed, but that was my experience.

Originally Posted by christinedg

Any comments regarding Harris Literary Agency would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you.

I looked up on Amazon the "authors" she has listed as sold. Not a single one of them came up uner the subject search for book title. Under authro search, a couple did--but not for the book Harris allegedly has sold.

[CaoPaux]

FYI: This agency has been named one of Writer Beware's 20 Worst Agents/Agencies.

[Pat Walsh]

Skip the Harris Agency entirely.

Amy Rennert is, as written above, my agent and she's great.

[Toni1953]

Link to Jennifer DiChiara:



http://jdlit.com/

I queried her and was rejected, but she seems legit.

[CaoPaux]

Thanks, Toni!

Ms. Rennert hasn't built a site yet, but there's this: http://www.publishersmarketplace.com...rs/amyrennert/

Nicholas Ellison, Inc. turns out to be a "separate, independent division" of Sanford. J. Greenburger Associates. http://www.greenburger.com/code/nei/nicholas.htm