Update on My Experience with Langons...
Thanks for the advice, Victoria. I appreciate it. I was apprehensive as I moved forward with my dealings with Langtons and my cautiousness proved wise.
Romi, I hope that your arrangement works out. But I would NOT recommend that anyone bother with this agency based on my experiences. As I wieghed the option of an editor she repeatedly dodged my specific questions about her agency and the editor she would recommend. She avoided even acknowledging any request to speak on the phone (something I normally would not EVER ask of an agent until they start trying to sell me services).
Finally after a lot of vague responses I simply asked her for the contact information for the editor she recommended. I thought it wouldn't hurt to get in touch with them and check them out.
How did she reply to that? She INVOICED ME! Attached to her email was an $975 invoice for an editing service called "Editorial Experts 4 U" a company that was founded by her according to a quick google search. Which she never mentioned. In fact she went out of her way NOT to mention it. She definately made it sound like she was merely helping me find an agent who was to be a third party.
I replied politely but firmly that I was concerned that she had not been dealing honestly, professionally, or directly with me. I asked her why she had not been up front with me that the editing money would go in her pocket, expressed offense that she invoiced me when all I had asked for was contact information, and made it very clear that unless she spoke to me on the phone to clear up any misunderstandings that I would not be able to work with an agent I could never trust.
Several days later she finally replied in an email littered with typos and bad grammar offering flimsy excuses and dodging the tougher questions. She NEVER exhibited any specific knowledge about my manuscript, its plot, its characters, or its structure only regurgitated the claim that it "loses steam in the middle", and finally offered to talk to me on the phone that week but stated she "didn't know what more she could say".
Naturally, I politely agreed that I would like to speak to her at the time she suggested and promised not to take up too much of her time. But I definately had lots of specific questions about her editing service (which by the way has a very unprofessional "under construction" website), her email ettiquette, her agency, and to see if she had even read my manuscript by finding out if she knew key plot points or even the names of characters.
She never replied to that email, and she never called. It's been weeks. Finally today my manuscript was returned by them in my SASE (brownie points for doing that at least).
I'm definately passing all of this on to P&E, and hope to save other people the waste of time, money, and frustration. Two moths of game playing when I could have been shopping my manusrcipts around to others. Even if Langstroms is not maliciously or actively trying to take advangate of aspiring authors (and I think they probably are), thier business ettiquette is so out of line that they shouldn't be operational.
Again, I did talk to some authors who had success working with them, so hopefully those of you that are currently signed will get a deal out of it. But writer beware!
-Kevin
I will probably get back into the blogging by end of Jan, once my mind is off the editing!
