[HN Gopher] The Latest Fake Literary Agencies
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The Latest Fake Literary Agencies
Author : Tomte
Score : 95 points
Date : 2025-01-06 15:04 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (writerbeware.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (writerbeware.blog)
| rawgabbit wrote:
| What are some real agencies?
| KittenInABox wrote:
| https://querytracker.net/ is a common search engine for
| literary agencies.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| pretty much the only things that are really important are the
| last two points
|
| >A real agency is highly unlikely to email or phone you out of
| the blue with an offer of representation or a claim that a
| traditional publisher is interested in your work (real agents
| don't pre-shop manuscripts for authors they don't represent).
|
| >A real agency will not require you to pay anything or buy
| anything as a condition of representation or publication. Other
| than the agent's commission, there should never be a cost
| associated with rights acquisition.
|
| highly unlikely is politespeak for never going to happen unless
| your self published work is making tens of thousands of sales
| already.
| api wrote:
| Same goes for angels and VCs emailing you out of the blue with
| serious offers. It can actually happen but it will only ever
| happen if you have a product with real traction already. It
| will never happen for an idea, a half baked MVP, or a just
| launched thing unless it's blow off the paint incredible... in
| which case you will see traction likely before any investment
| offers.
| KittenInABox wrote:
| A real agency is unlikely to, but can definitely email/phone
| our of the blue to talk about representation. This is in a few
| cases: have you gone viral for some reason? Did you win an
| award somewhere for unagented fiction (short stories, a one-off
| poem, etc)? Do you have a large existing following in the field
| and have publicly said you're unagented/working on something an
| agent can represent you in? Do you already have a significantly
| successful literary career in the indie/self-published space?
|
| But generally yes, an agent is not going to contact you
| randomly.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I mean it's true I said tens of thousands of sales, but I
| supposed people could understand that as hyperbolically
| meaning "having a significant level of success already,
| without an agent", which it seems to me all of your examples
| are just variations of that particular magical 50-shadeish
| type of thing.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Agents don't sit passively in their offices waiting for
| projects to come in. They network, scout for talent, poach
| other agents' clients. But they are not randomly emailing
| unknowns. That doesn't happen. Established agents may have
| younger, less-established agents working for them who are
| hungrier to build their own lists, but even they have enough
| coming to them they don't have to do scammy things like this.
| relistan wrote:
| Interesting info. But neither this, nor the previous post linked
| from it, explain what exactly the money scam is. I guess the main
| audience is supposed to know already.
| gkoberger wrote:
| Each one explains the scam -- book trailers, ghostwriting, book
| seals and access codes, "relicensing", etc. High level, they're
| each trying to sell nonsense to unsuspecting writers who think
| they've found a publisher for their book.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| All variations of advance fee fraud?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Not quite; it's more selling shovels for a nonexistant gold
| rush. Lots of people want to "become a Writer" for ego
| reasons, and it's easy to sell them services that promise
| to help with that. But even if you're legitimately trying
| the book market is terrible and most people make nothing.
| mattmanser wrote:
| Yeah, but it's no different to trying to become a rock
| star. And you don't have to be in the 16-24 age bracket.
| Part of what you're paying for is the dream.
|
| When I was a naive young person we did something similar,
| paying a bit for our track to be on a CD. I've no
| illusions now, but I still joke I'm a published musician.
|
| And there are still plenty of ways to become an author if
| you want. I have a guilty pleasure of LitRPG books, which
| are generally terrible and riddled with problem authors,
| but there's a cadre of writers who are making good money.
|
| They write in a serialized format like Dickens used to.
| Chapter by chapter, release it for free on RoyalRoad, get
| traction. Then they package a book up for Kindle
| Unlimited, take the old chapters off RR apart from some
| taster chapters, and start a Patreon for advanced access
| to new chapters.
|
| There's one series which is absolute trash, Defiance of
| the Fall, where he's admitted he's dragging the story out
| as he's making so much money.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| the scam when preying on writers will always be the same - pay
| some money here.
|
| As such it is actually easy to catch out the scammer.
| magic_smoke_ee wrote:
| It's easy to catch when the customer is _sophisticated._
| Business-unsophisticated writers looking at random for
| literary agents may well end-up paying money up-front for
| zero value services. I had a quick look around, and found
| this seems to be one sensible rubric:
| https://aalitagents.org/canon-of-ethics/
| deeviant wrote:
| The article did indeed get to where the actual scam is, albeit
| quite a bit into it.
|
| These fake agencies obviously give no advance, then push you to
| buy services related to supposed publishing of your book. 5k
| this, 10k for that, we're almost ready, just another 15k for
| xyz and we'll totally pay you that 350k for you book!
| bsenftner wrote:
| This is abut literary agencies, but the fake business scam is
| growing and can be in any industry.
| magic_smoke_ee wrote:
| This. LLMs provide very low cost fake content generation
| capabilities. That makes due-diligence ever more comprehensive
| and thorough in the absence of a meaningful, proven referral.
| anarchonurzox wrote:
| I've seen an increase in both warnings about these kinds of scams
| and cautionary tales by those who've been burned. I'm glad people
| are raising awareness, but I worry that this is just one more
| datapoint toward the overall erosion of online trust.
|
| It seems like the only way to really combat this is through
| closed / semi-closed trusted networks, but those tend to become
| dominated by personalities and difficult for newcomers to break
| into. The reduced trust in "outside" voices then leads to echo
| chambers and groupthink. I think we're already starting to see
| some of this in the kinds of books being put out by the big
| publishing houses; I don't have hard numbers (and maybe I'm just
| getting old and cynical) but a lot of recent titles feel
| extremely generic.
|
| There's a subplot in Neil Stephenson's Fall (or Dodge in Hell)
| where media and other networks are so saturated with false,
| meaningless, clickbaity, or otherwise negative-value content that
| they become either less than worthless, or require paid "filters"
| to extract actual value. I'm getting a sense of being close to
| that point already and I don't know what the right move is from
| here to reduce the fracturing of my wider social circles.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| People with stars in their eyes getting taken for a ride by
| external scam artists instead of whoever is the current
| Weinstein of that industry thats scandalous. Not really though.
| bunderbunder wrote:
| Two wrongs don't make a right.
| cobertos wrote:
| > It seems like the only way to really combat this is through
| closed / semi-closed trusted networks,
|
| This is the only way. The cost of spinning up a new identity on
| the web (with supporting documents, pictures, etc) is near zero
| now. There's only 3 or 4 things to really vet people, and those
| can be faked with more effort.
|
| The only real way to vet someone nowadays is IRL, and that
| requires non-trivial effort but provides most guarantees you'd
| want in new participants in an online community.
|
| > I'm getting a sense of being close to that point already and
| I don't know what the right move is from here to reduce the
| fracturing of my wider social circles.
|
| I have this feeling too. My guess is that social circles will
| be less fluid and dynamic. Traditional centers of trust will
| become more important.
| nradov wrote:
| Most people are terrible judges of character and honesty,
| especially when dealing with psychopaths. Bernie Madoff met
| most of his victims IRL and they completely trusted him.
| cobertos wrote:
| IRL is definitely not fallible but it's better than the
| internet-only. To my knowledge there's no way to stop a
| motivated and skilled actor, like a Bernie Madoff
|
| It pains me that this feels true as someone chronically
| online and used to find great use from the internet, but
| online-only has more failure modes now. There's still ways
| to do it though.
| wyager wrote:
| One of the most useful features of the "early" internet, which
| has been steadily diminished over the last 30 years, is that
| internet usage was sort of an implicit IQ test. The entire
| system was "semi-closed".
|
| Now that the internet is available to the entire world,
| including basically anyone with a pulse, that feature is
| entirely gone.
| nradov wrote:
| Many people on the Internet have completely different world
| views and moral systems. They think in ways that are
| fundamentally alien to most of us here. This is largely
| orthogonal to IQ. For example, in some cultures it's common
| to find people who would score above average on a standard IQ
| test and yet they literally believe in magic / ghosts /
| curses / astrology / etc. It's difficult for us to reconcile
| that, yet those people exist.
| fredfoo wrote:
| I don't think I could name more than a dozen countries that
| openly fight delusional thinking of a mystical nature,
| there's China, Cuba, Vietnam.
| ponector wrote:
| Lot's of people believe in god from the old Jewish tales
| (the bible). It's just easier to believe in it than accept
| responsibility for own life and handle consequences.
| Everything is an Act of God! All good and bad things.
| slightwinder wrote:
| > but I worry that this is just one more datapoint toward the
| overall erosion of online trust.
|
| What online trust? Internet has always been a prominent source
| for the most scamy content. You should never trust anything
| blindly, that is today as valid as it was 30 years ago.
|
| > It seems like the only way to really combat this is through
| closed / semi-closed trusted networks,
|
| Those are open to other levels of scam and abuse. This is not a
| problem of being open or closed, but whether one has the
| ability to evaluate their business-partners. And in that
| regard, open communication has proved itself to be a reliable
| source of information and to root out scams.
| flpm wrote:
| This type of scams prey on the ego of the target. In the
| attention economy everyone wants to project an aura of expertise.
| Someone interested in your expertise is just about the perfect
| bait. Literary agents, publishers, VCs, sponsorships, etc.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| Post needs [2024].
|
| Probably not all the _latest_ fakes, not any longer.
| quercusa wrote:
| These people must read a lot of Dan Brown books:
|
| _I am Damon Green, a leading literary agent..._
| daveguy wrote:
| I particularly like this part from the final thoughts:
|
| _" solicitation is one of the first and most common signs of a
| scam these days"_
|
| This is true about most scams these days. So much so that I have
| been advising non-technical friends and family to stop directly
| responding to any communication you did not initiate. Instead ask
| yourself, "how would I go about addressing or confirming this
| with the supposed source if I hadn't received a message about
| it?" Also helps with avoiding the encouragement of marketers.
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(page generated 2025-01-09 23:01 UTC)