I got a response from a literary agent and just wondered if this is normal for them to request a bulk sum of money, as I've never had a response before and wanted to be sure. It seems genuine but my friends have been scammed by similar situations in the past so I am a little uncertain. Dear xxxx, We've read your manuscript and thought it was well-written, especially as your debut novel. However, the difficulty rests in the fact that you're an unpublished author in this genre and that you live abroad, and therefore it would probably take more time and work on your proposals to convince commissioning editors to make an offer on your book. It costs us about £20 - £25 per submission once you add in the cost of drafting the cover letter, preparing a marketing brief, printing & posting (with return postage) for each submission. We normally send three rounds of submissions to 5 publishers in each round, starting with the larger publishers and working our way down. If you're prepared to cover the cost of your own book submissions (which would be £350 in total), we would be willing to represent you on this book. Once we get your first book published, we'll cover the cost of all future book submissions for you from our 15% commission on the advance and royalties. That's the only way be can afford to take on your book, and help to get your work published. Let me know if that's of interest, xxxx, as we would like to represent you. If so, I'll send you a formal literary offer, listing the publishers whom we plan to approach with your book, along with a formal literary contract for you to sign & return to us.
No. This is absolutely not appropriate behavior for the agent. Money flows to the author, not from the author. You should not pay one penny to agents, publishers, or anyone else; the agent gets paid his percentage _after_ you get paid, and the publisher gets paid from their share of profits on the book. Do not use this agent, or any other agent who asks you for money.
Rings false to me too, though I have no experience --- just based upon my experience with proposals in my own business. Sounds off.
I contacted this group directly and they wrote back saying the reason for the price is normal publishers only go for a sure deal and so don't charge. This group prefer to charge and so give more people a chance to approach publishers. Sounds plausible but still fishy to me, I did some research and while they do have a lot of authors published none of them were really noteworthy and further research showed that this group make the same offer to every potential writer but only a handful ever get published and usually only by smal independant publishers. Thanks for the advice guys, this weekend I will look elsewhere.
Yeah, that's a good decision (to look elsewhere). This'll probably turn out to be a money snagger; they snag your money, you get nothing back (they probably won't even market your book, and if so, market it badly).
yes, that's a total scam! ALWAYS check out publishers and agents on preditors & editors before even considering contacting them... http://www.invirtuo.cc/prededitors/
Thus, publishers are familiar with them as a group that will pitch anyone, and likely puts their submissions in the same category as unagented manuscripts. Sounds like the people who got published through them would have done just as well submitting their manuscripts directly.
no legit agent will charge the writer a penny for representation... they get paid when the work is sold... pay them beforehand and there's no incentive to work hard to find a publisher and get paid, is there?
Do not give these people money. They probably WILL send your work to publishers, but the publishers won't read them. If they do read them, it's because they're on exactly the same slush pile your work would be on if you submitted the novel to the publisher yourself.
