Barbara Bauer Literary Agency / Literary Management Professionals

[DaveKuzminski]

I also heard from a writer friend (her day job requires that she knows about this sort of stuff) that unless Bauer pays out to have the name of her agency trademarked that we can leave the warning posts up for as long as we like.

I suspect your writer friend's trademark information isn't entirely correct.

 

[HapiSofi]

Consider how many consumer sites post warnings about trademarked products.

 

[James D. Macdonald]

Tee hee!

[size=-1]quod she, and clapt the windowe to.[/size]

 

[CaoPaux]

 

[HapiSofi]

Snerf!

Where's Medievalist? She ought to be in on this.

 

[James D. Macdonald]

"A berd! A berd!" quod hende Nicholas....

 

[HapiSofi]

"Why, lat be," quod she, "lat be, Nicholas! Or I wol crye, 'Out, harrow, and allas!'"

 

[Dawno]

...Dom Deluise is dead, ...

You mean his career? He's still breathing - last time I checked the IMBD it didn't have a date of death.

 

[JulieB]

You mean his career? He's still breathing - last time I checked the IMBD it didn't have a date of death.

According to Wikipedia, he's still working.

 

[cynthia]

I too am a victim of Barbara Bauer. Naive as I am, i send her the $650 fee (for expenses she claims), then found out about her, cancelled my contract one month later and could not get my money back. What do I do? I am probably going to have to sue her and I am in Florida and she is in New Jersey, so it will take more of my money, but someone has to stop this woman. Andy advice?
cindy Pelton

 

[mdin]

Hmmmm. Barbara Bauer. It seems that name should be familiar, but I just can't place why...

I don't know what to tell you other than good luck. I'm curious. How long ago did you send her the money, and how did you hear about her?

 

[Begbie]

Cynthia, you may be able to sue her in your home state via a long-arm statute, since she holds herself out as an agent nationally. Long-arm statutes are for defendants who seek and do business in states outside of their own. Contact the Small Claims division of your local courthouse; they may be able to help.

 

[TwentyFour]

I too am a victim of Barbara Bauer. Naive as I am, i send her the $650 fee (for expenses she claims), then found out about her, cancelled my contract one month later and could not get my money back. What do I do? I am probably going to have to sue her and I am in Florida and she is in New Jersey, so it will take more of my money, but someone has to stop this woman. Andy advice?
cindy Pelton

Call Judge Judy, she seems to be filled with scam publishers and agents now.

 

[Deleted member 42]

Snerf!

Where's Medievalist? She ought to be in on this.

*Sigh*

I missed this entirely altogether, and it offered both sentence and solaas.

 

[eldragon]

Dom Deluise is dead?

 

[Popeyesays]

Call Judge Judy, she seems to be filled with scam publishers and agents now.

You have to have filed for binding arbitration or in small claims court to be considered at Judge Judy. She used to head up family courts in one of the boroughs of New York.

Regards,
Scott

 

[Anonymisty]

Call Judge Judy, she seems to be filled with scam publishers and agents now.

Judge Judy getting her teeth into Barbara Bauer....Now THAT would be entertaining!

 

[Gillhoughly]

Sorry-sorry-sorry!

I bow to the better info above on the delightful Dom and apologize to him and just everyone that I was (thankfully) wrong.

I bet he wouldn't be too happy that the BBLA has him on the website.

NOW who's doing one of those unauthorized, inappropriate things?

Hey Barb--I KNOW you read this--when you gonna SELL A BOOK?

She's got a pic from a book signing on her website that JulieB sent me to--it's at least ten years old. Check out the bad clothes!

 

[Popeyesays]

Sorry-sorry-sorry!

I bow to the better info above on the delightful Dom and apologize to him and just everyone that I was (thankfully) wrong.

I bet he wouldn't be too happy that the BBLA has him on the website.

NOW who's doing one of those unauthorized, inappropriate things?

Hey Barb--I KNOW you read this--when you gonna SELL A BOOK?

She's got a pic from a book signing on her website that JulieB sent me to--it's at least ten years old. Check out the bad clothes!

You know I looked on her website and tried to track down ANY way of contacting the authors who appear in those out of focus pictures of "Books we helped publish". I found none at all--short of writing the publishers to ask if Barbara Bauer was involved or not, I know of no way to check it out.

That seems shifty at the very least. One would also note that nowhere on her website does it claim these books were agency sales.

Maybe they were people she rooked and then once they severed their connections the books actually sold?

Regards,
Scott

 

[JulieB]

She has one mainstream romance author that she's apparently helped get published. But the story is hiding at the bottom the 9/11 poetry page! That and a warning about people who say bad things about her.

Any romance writers here? This isn't my genre, but there is a claim that the author won three RWA awards. A cursory google didn't turn anything up.

 

[Caro]

As far as I can tell, Cleo Chadwick published three Regency romances with Zebra:

A Midsummer Night's Kiss -- 1991
The Scarlet Spinster -- 1992
A Lakeside Season - 1995

Rita Awards for Best Regency in the years she would have been eligible (from the RWA website):

Emily and the Dark Angel by Jo Beverly - 1992 (for 1991)
An Unwilling Bride by Jo Beverly -- 1993 (for 1992)
Diedre and Don Juan by Jo Beverly -- 1994 (Scarlet Spinster was late in the year so might have rolled to the next)
Gwen's Christmas Ghost by Lynn Kerstan and Alicia Rasley -- 1996 (for 1995)

I was at all of those ceremonies except 1994, btw, and I remember the winners quite well because I was on the old GEnie RomEx board with them.

Nor is she listed as a winner of the Golden Heart (for unpublished authors) for any year I could find, a member of the Hall of Fame, Lifetime Achievement Award, or the Emma Merritt Service Award. However, I managed to discover that she won a Romantic Times award in 1991 for A Midsummer Night's Kiss. Romantic Times is very different from RWA; it's a review magazine and the awards are somewhat more fan driven.

In short, while BB may have actually helped Ms. Chadwick sell her books, she's fibbing about what awards were won.

 

[victoriastrauss]

Just to be clear: it does seem that Barbara Bauer has sold some books. But her sales appear to stop cold sometime in the mid- to late-1990's. This can sometimes happen when a fee-charging agent concludes that the fees are more lucrative than the hard work of manuscript selling.

- Victoria

 

[James D. Macdonald]

Indeed. The bottom of the 9/11 poetry page is a bizarre place to put her success story --

Author Cleo Chadwick along with happy fans of her three award winning novels (Romance Writers of America Award for Best Regency Romance Novel) attend her bookstore signing at a major retail chain. Chadwick's three unpublished novels were sold by the Barbara Bauer Literary Agency, Inc. to Kensington, Zebra and Pinnacle Books, edited by Wendy McCurdy and Jennifer Sawyer.

​

Let's look at Cleo Chadwick. Cleo has three novels published. They are:

A Midsummer Night's Kiss (Paperback)
ISBN: 0821734075 Kensington Pub Corp (May 1991)

The Scarlet Spinster (Paperback)
ISBN: 0821723812 Kensington Mass Market (December 1992)

A Lakeside Season (Zebra Regency Romance) (Paperback)
ISBN: 0821748173 Zebra Books (January 1995)

That is to say, the most recent sale listed is over a decade ago.

We suspect, from other sources, that Barbara has four other legitimate sales to Masquerade Books, all by Lyn Davenport:

The Guardian (November 1995)
Tessa's Holidays (February 1996)
Dover Island (April 1996)
The Guardian II (March 1997)

As noted on that Wikipedia talk page, a sale to Masquerade is nothing to boast about.

Now let's look at "Some popular books the agency helped get published" on Barbara's "Our Clients' Work" page (seven books pictured):

The Scarlet Spinster (1992) and The Guardian (1995)have already been discussed. The others:

How to Paint: A Course in the Art of Oil Painting by Gloria Foss
ISBN: 0823024563 Watson-Guptill Publications (January 1992)

Father Orsini's Italian Kitchen by Joseph E. Orsini
ISBN: 0312095244 Thomas Dunne Books; Reprint edition (June 1993)
(The answer to two mysteries here: the hardcover first edition (ISBN: 0312063520, 1991) was from St. Martin's Press, and the forward to this book is by Dom Deluise.)

Tessa: The Beckoning Breeze by Lyn Davenport
ISBN: 1562010697 Blue Moon Books (August 1994)

Educar Sin Pareja by Carl E. Pinkhardt
ISBN: 8489778019 Ed. Medici (May 1998)
Appears to be a Spanish translation of Keys to Single Parenting (Barron's Parenting Keys)ISBN: 0812093313 Barrons Educational Series Inc (February 1996)

L'enfant unique, atouts et pièges by Carl E. Pickhardt
ISBN: 2226110925 Albin Michel (November 1999)
Appears to be a French translation of Keys to Parenting the Only Child (Barron's Parenting Keys) ISBN: 0812097696 Barron's Educational Series (September 1997)


That's not a great track record for someone who claims to have been in business since 1984.

Babs says, on her 9/11 poetry page:

N.B. Blogs, discussion boards and web sites of competitors which knowingly or maliciously deny and disparage the achievements of the Barbara Bauer Literary Agency, Inc., and/or our clients may be guilty of criminal fraud and/or copyright infringement.
​

What can I say? Go for it, sweetheart. As long as you're here: can you tell me what "helped get published" means? How is that different from "represented"?

Have you sold any books this millennium?

​

 

[emeraldlatina]

My experience with Barbara Bauer

I too have fallen victim to Barbara Bauer. In 2001 I decided to sign on with them thinking they would help me. First I had to do a telephone consultation- she called me but warned me prior that I would be billed $75. She called me up and said I needed to first pay $650.00 for the contract and then another $500.00 for the copyright fees. I asked her about the $650.00 and she said the money was for photo-copying, phone calls etc. I thought okay fine. I trusted her. Now I mind you, I live in Canada and these were all in US dollars so with the exchange rate you can imagine how much I shelled out. A few months went by and I emailed her asking how it was going, had I received any offers. She refused to tell me anything unless I agreed to another phone consultation- $75.00. I had to send her the money first and then she contacted me back with a date and time of the call. She calls me and says that she's been going around with my work, nothing yet, offers are close but when I asked her who was she talking to, what publishing companies she wouldn't tell me. And the conversation lasted not more than 6 minutes- I don't think it was worth $75.00 that call. So a year passes and I get a letter, it's been a year I need to re-new the contact and so stupid me still believing that she is a great and hard-working agent, I send her $650.00US. And the phone calls for the consulation, $75.00. This went on for three years, last November I told her that I didn't want to re-new because I wanted to go in another direction. She emails me and says that if I don't send her $650.00 within 24hrs she was going to 'toss my work in the garbage because she needed the storage fee money.' Storage fees I thought? I found out from someone that the $650.00 is the storage fee in which she keeps everyones work, like a locker. And I don't even know if the actual storage/locker charges that much. She's probably pocketing the rest of the money. The company loves new comers who don't have a clue about the publishing industry, such as me but now I know better. When I started looking around for new agents I came across her name and I was stunned to see how many people hate her and how she's one of the worst. I wished I had done my research before. I feel sorry for the people who are still with her. I found out first when I saw her name on the wikipedia website and then I googled her. She really took advantage of me and yes it did hurt because I really trusted and believed her. But what goes around comes around.....

 

[SC Harrison]

Wow. Just...wow.

My heart goes out to you. Please stick around and get to know some of the people here. They can answer just about any question you may have, and you don't have to worry about getting robbed.

Wow.