I read several posts about Jack Ryan from CT. Mr. Ryan represented a novel of mine for about six months. During that time he got it to the desks of eight editors from the largest publishing houses. He also sent me those editors' responses which was of great value. We didn't score, but he certainly exceeded expectations as an agent.
I am an editor at a Big Six publishing house, and I just wanted to share my experiences with Jack Ryan with you, so that you understand the way he operates.
Last week, I got a query from Mr. Ryan. It looked familiar, so I went back in my old email files, and discovered that he had sent me the same query for the same novel in December. When he queries me then, he told me that another editor in my imprint had suggested that I might be interested in the book.
So naturally, I called the other editor in my imprint, and asked her if this was true. It was not. She had never heard of Mr. Ryan before, and had not had any contact with him. He straight-up lied to try to get me to review a submission, which really turned me off, so I thanked him politely and told him I was not interested.
When he queried me last week, there was no mention of the December query.
Here are my feelings on what happened here. If I was more gullible/less friendly with my coworkers, I might have been willing to look at the submission--in fact, most of the time I do take a look at anything that is queried to me by agents. If that had happened, I most likely would have read some of it, and if I didn't like it, would have written a polite rejection letter that had a modicum of praise for the novel as well as my reasons for passing.
Mr. Ryan then would have been able to pass my rejection on to his client as "proof" that he has editorial contacts at respectable publishing houses--ie, proof that he is capable of doing the job he claims to be capable of doing.
I'm not going to say that Mr. Ryan is a scam agent, but he is certainly not a good agent. His behavior is the kind of agent behavior that makes me want to warn authors not to trust him with your book, because a poor agent (even one who isn't trying to take advantage of you) is often worse than no agent at all.
