One of my e-mail groups spoke about agents. I had to say something about my own personal experience with one and why I'm now going to the self-publishing side of things. This will be a long story to tell.
It was 1996, I read the ads in Writer's Digest and found a literary agency called Sunrise Literary Group searching for unpublished writers. They wanted three chapters, I sent in three chapters of my The Storyteller's Tale. I got word from them about a week and half later, they couldn't take me on but their friend and associate Royal Gillette read over the chapters and he was interested in becoming my agent, here's his info.
So I called him up and spoke with him with my father by my side. He loved the story and said that I had a real good chance of getting it published. We agreed and he said (this should have been our red flag) he needed $1,500 to become my agent. I'm like I need to see some authors books that you have gotten published. He rattled off some names - fake names of book titles and authors.
We went to our local bookstore and asked for the book titles and authors to find no one by that name or book titles in their book shelf on their computers. We called him up and told him what we found. He came up with the smaller stores wouldn't have them yet as they're in the big stores. We believed that and we sent the money, not once did we use our search engines for him and the books he had said.
A few days, I got the contract and signed it, sent it back to him. He did tell me that he sent my manuscript off to Del Ray by Fed Ex, but when I called them and asked if an agent by the name of Royal Gillette sent anything to them by Fed Ex, the lady on the phone said no, never heard of him before. I thanked her and told my dad what she said. My dad told me to call Royal. I did but got only his answering machine. I left a message stating I need to talk to you urgently about my book. He didn't call me back for at least three days. I told him that I had called Del Ray to make sure that the manuscript got to them, they said that they never got anything from you. You said that they were interested. He came back with well, the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing there. They have the manuscript and we're in contact about it. Just hang tight, Beth. I'll call you when we get the news.
After that, I never got anything from him about any rejections or acceptances till January of the following year, stating that he was moving closer to New York City to get closer to the big publishers and if your contracts expire during the move, when we are settled in our new building, we will renew them.
I never got anything back, so I put his name into the search engine and found several people who had him as an agent and every single one of them got asked money first and then the contract and then they heard nothing from him and they found out that he was a con artist. I was devastated by this information. I sent him a letter demanding an explanation of the claims from these other clients of his claiming that he just ripped them off of their money and their time in searching for an agent who was not a con. My letter was returned unknown recipient. I sent another letter to the company I got him from, same thing happened.
I had spent a year not searching for an agent because I thought I had one, when all I had was a con artist.
The first red flag on this was that he asked for money upfront - no agents get money up front, they get their money from the royalties that come from your book being sold and published.
The second red flag was that the authors and the books they wrote never existed at all - when your bookstore says there is no one by that name or the book, you need to get to your computer and put them into your search engines. I didn't find anything on the authors or the books Royal had told me that he got published.
I got conned as did my father who believed his cons. I lost $1,500 to this person and a year of searching for an agent.
The moral of this is when they ask for money upfront and the authors and books that they say do not come up in any searches, run as far as you can, they are not legit agents.
