Harris Literary Agency

[Mark]

Anybody had any experience with this agency? It looks like they might
be interested in representing me, and I was wondering if anybody had
any stories to tell (good or bad).

Mark

[Cedrick Lipkovitch]

Post by Mark
Anybody had any experience with this agency? It looks like they might
be interested in representing me, and I was wondering if anybody had
any stories to tell (good or bad).

Do a google search and see for yourself. They advertise, they solicit
unpublished authors, they charge a fee to submit your MS to publishers,
and they appear to be on most publishers' "ignore" list.

Any one of those should suggest to you that you are better off either
selling the MS on your own, or keeping your day job.

[419eater]

Post by Cedrick Lipkovitch

Post by Mark
Anybody had any experience with this agency? It looks like they might
be interested in representing me, and I was wondering if anybody had
any stories to tell (good or bad).

Do a google search and see for yourself. They advertise, they solicit
unpublished authors, they charge a fee to submit your MS to publishers,
and they appear to be on most publishers' "ignore" list.
Any one of those should suggest to you that you are better off either
selling the MS on your own, or keeping your day job.

Here here!

Mike.
www.419eater.com

[Mark]

Post by Cedrick Lipkovitch
Do a google search and see for yourself. They advertise, they solicit
unpublished authors, they charge a fee to submit your MS to publishers,
and they appear to be on most publishers' "ignore" list.
Any one of those should suggest to you that you are better off either
selling the MS on your own, or keeping your day job.

Thanks Mike! My initial search didn't turn up anything of substance,
so your findings definitely help. Do most publishers have "ignore"
lists that are viewable by the public?

Mark

[Cedrick Lipkovitch]

Post by Mark

Post by Cedrick Lipkovitch
Do a google search and see for yourself. They advertise, they solicit
unpublished authors, they charge a fee to submit your MS to publishers,
and they appear to be on most publishers' "ignore" list.
Any one of those should suggest to you that you are better off either
selling the MS on your own, or keeping your day job.

Thanks Mike! My initial search didn't turn up anything of substance,
so your findings definitely help. Do most publishers have "ignore"
lists that are viewable by the public?

Not by the public, no ... most publishers basically just go out and
commission MSS to fill their lists from packagers, agents and authors
they know and trust to deliver the goods. If this is news to you,
definitely keep the day job.

Anyone can call themselves a literary agent, set up a web site, rent a
mail drop at Mailboxes Etc., take out an ad in Writers Digest and
solicit MSS from unpublished authors, by the way. And charge a fee up
front for "expenses" to submit MSS to publishers, whether or not they
actually do anything but toss the MS in the trash when it arrives (which
is far better than most of them deserve from what I've seen). And charge
fees to authors and get kickbacks from contractors for "editing"
services that will "improve the chance of selling this MS". And
disappear and reappear under a new name whenever word gets around that
it's just another scam playing on the vanity of amateur authors.

If you really want to make money in publishing, set yourself up as a
"literary agent actively seeking new undiscovered talent." You probably
won't get a lot of repeat business once each of your authors figure out
what's up, but since everyone seems to think they have a book in them
whether they've ever actually read one or not, there's no foreseeable
shortage of suckers.

[Mark]

Post by Mark
Thanks Mike! My initial search didn't turn up anything of substance,
so your findings definitely help. Do most publishers have "ignore"
lists that are viewable by the public?
Mark

As Mike seems to be MIA (Here here!), anyone else care to sound off
about their experiences with this agency?

Mark

[Mike]

Post by Mark
As Mike seems to be MIA (Here here!), anyone else care to sound off
about their experiences with this agency?
Mark

Hi Mark:

I would just avoid them. A friend of mine used this agency and
unfortunately got burned. Though they didn't charge her a reading fee,
and the only money they required at least initially was the cost to
cover the shipping of query information and manuscripts, they
requested that money up front before sending anything out at all, a
bulk amount that would cover the cost of sending out 30 sets of query
information (cover letters, synopses, and first three chapters of her
novel) and six complete manuscripts. When she asked if she could send
just the cost to cover the query information and then send the
manuscripts to the agency separately if they actually got requested by
a publisher, she got an ominous, menacing-sounding response saying
something like, "We only have one way of doing things around here, to
avoid confusion, and we're sticking to it." Since this was the only
agency that showed any interest in her work, she went ahead and sent
the money on the premise that any unsent manuscripts would be returned
to her at the end of the contractual period (I believe something to
that effect was stated in her contract). When that time came and the
agency didn't find her a book deal, she asked for the return of her
manuscripts but was told that everything had been sent out. When she
asked which specific publishers had been sent complete manuscripts,
the agency started giving her the runaround, saying at first that no
complete manuscripts had been requested yet nothing remained to be
returned, and later that they sent out the mss as part of the initial
query information. She continued to ask them for the names of the
publishers to whom the mss were sent, but would get emails saying
"we're going on vacation for 3 weeks and will be in touch when we
return." Of course she got no further response to any additional
queries she sent. All she got for her troubles was a sheet of paper
listing 30 publishers (some of them not even known for fiction
publishing) to whom a query letter was supposedly sent; no returned
materials, no refund of unused shipping costs. Granted there may have
been some stipulation in the contract legalese she may have missed, or
should have verified beforehand, it still smacks of a scam, and you'd
be wise to take Mike's advice and just avoid this agency.

Good luck!

[Berry Kercheval]

Post by Mike
I would just avoid them. A friend of mine used this agency and
unfortunately got burned. Though they didn't charge her a reading fee,
and the only money they required at least initially was the cost to
cover the shipping of query information and manuscripts, they
requested that money up front before sending anything out at all, a
bulk amount that would cover the cost of sending out 30 sets of query
information (cover letters, synopses, and first three chapters of her
novel) and six complete manuscripts.

If you are trying to get a commercial publishing company to publish
your work, and not going the "vanity" or "self publishing" route, then
you need to remember the basic rule of being a commercial writer:

MONEY FLOWS TOWARD THE AUTHOR

Authors in general do NOT pay legitimate agents for shipping, for
queries, for postage and so on. A true agent is your business
partner, and hopes to make money off of brokering your sales, not from
ripping you off directly. Any agent that asks for up-front fees of
any kind should be examined very carefully indeed.

I recommend "Preditors and Editors"
(http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/) and "Writer Beware"
(http://www.sfwa.org/beware/) for more information.

[Mark]

Post by Berry Kercheval
Authors in general do NOT pay legitimate agents for shipping, for
queries, for postage and so on. A true agent is your business
partner, and hopes to make money off of brokering your sales, not from
ripping you off directly. Any agent that asks for up-front fees of
any kind should be examined very carefully indeed.

Thanks Berry and Mike. Based on what I've heard so far I'm not sure
it's even worth my time investigating them. They don't sound legit, so
unless someone actually chimes in with a "positive" experience about
working with them, my time would probably best be spent exploring
other agents/options. *sigh*

Mark

[radiobuff]

Any agency asking for fees - run away. If you are good enough, and the
agency/agent is honest and supportive and, most importantly, believes in
your work, you will not, and should never, be asked for money. Period.

Post by Mark
Anybody had any experience with this agency? It looks like they might
be interested in representing me, and I was wondering if anybody had
any stories to tell (good or bad).
Mark