Thread: Agents asking you for money!

I'd like to share with everyone something that happened to me.

I sent off my manuscript to lots of agents. I mean lots. I sent some via post and some via email. Within about an hour I got an email from an agent.

He loved it!

He thought it was fantastic. I couldn't believe it. I replied and the next thing I knew he was on the phone. He was on the phone for about half hour. Explaining how he thought we could probably get an advance of between £5000 and £10000. What? £10000. I started shaking.

He told me how he would break down the publishers and send it to the big boys first. Then some smaller ones "if needed". Then smaller still, etc, etc, etc.

Then the kicker came. Right at the end. "Obviously, this process is going to cost money." He said. "So we ask for £250 from all our authors to cover this cost!"

Oh dear.

Then I was followed up with quite high pressure stuff. Emails, phone calls, etc. I really didn't know what to do. Was this my big chance or not?

In the end I said no. I'll hang on a bit. After all I had sent out lots of letters.

I would say this. If someone claims to be an agent asks you for money. Say thanks, but no thanks.

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

There are lots of these so-called agents out there and they are so crooked they can bite their own tuckus without bending over.

If the agent was a real agent, loved the book, thought it was so great, confident he could sell it, he would have wanted to sign you on as a client right then and plan on getting his 15 percent off the top when a publisher bought it. That's how it works. The agent gets a cut, and a well-earned cut when we are talking about traditional publishing, after, not before, the book is sold. When you make money, he makes money.

The first red flag should have gone up with his overly enthusiastic praise of the book. My old agent used to say things like, 'yeah, it's okay. Maybe I can peddle it somewhere'.

An agent never asks you to pay money for his/her services. As Garza said, they take a 15% royalty from all sales you make. If the book doesn't sell, they don't make a dime. There's one simple guideline to remember when dealing with this situation: "Money flows to the author. Always. Without exception". If an agent or publishing house asks you for money to "edit the novel" or "get it in with the 'big' printing houses", they are full of it.