A different experience
While I agree that Neil appears to be a nice person, I had a different experience with him than others appear to have had. I have taught courses online for many years. The company that I work for has been acquired by an investment company that decided to cancel one of my classes simply because they felt it was pulling students from a course that they acquired from a different company for which they charge much more money. Since I had received numerous rave reviews about this course and it was clear that there was a need for this information, I decided to turn the course into a book, which I hoped to offer as a "suggested resource" in my remaining classes. The only way I can offer this as a "suggested resource" is if it's published by a traditional publisher. It doesn't matter if it's a very small publisher -- it just has to be a traditional publisher.
Since I have a built-in audience of, on average, about a hundred potential purchasers of this book per month, I thought it would be fairly easy to find an agent. I had read good things about Neil and so I wrote up a proposal and sent it off to him. My proposal was extensive. I included numbers of readers beyond my students that I could possibly reach, competing books (the last book that was written for this market was published 5 years ago and received several bad reviews due to sloppy writing), wrote a description of each chapter, included many, many student testimonials about how much they'd loved this as a class, added my bio and specific things I planned to do to market the book once it was published and built-in outlets that I had in addtion to my classes. I thought it was a very strong proposal.
A few minutes after I'd sent the proposal to Neil via email, I got an email back from him saying that he didn't think it was a good book idea. I doubted that he'd had enough time to read the proposal since his response came so quickly, so I wrote back and nicely pointed out to him that this was based on a course that had already proven its worth and that my students were begging for this type of book.
His response was that I should self-publish it. When I told him that if I did that, I couldn't advertise it in my existing classes. He got all hung up on that and sent me back an email about how he couldn't believe that the company marketing my courses wouldn't allow me to advertise a self-published book. We went back and forth on this for a bit until finally we decided to talk by phone.
He spent most of our time still talking about how he couldn't believe that this company wouldn't allow me to advertise a self-published book. He said that he didn't want to represent my book or try to help me find a publisher because in his opinion, the information in it could be found on the Internet. (I thought that was a particularly absurd thing to say since most anything can be "found on the Internet" these days, and furthermore, as I explained to him, that finding the information in my book in a form that was targeted for my audience wasn't --- as one of the testimonials I'd included said -- all that easy.)
It was like he didn't even hear me. Finally, he said that if I wanted to publish a book, he'd received a letter from a publisher in Colorado who was looking for people to write books for him. By this time, I was so tired of trying to get my point across and confused by his responses that didn't make sense, I said okay, tell me about it.
It turned out to be a guy who got the idea of creating a series of books for seniors. (By the way, Neil said the reason he was suggesting this to me was because he figured I was a "senior." I have no idea where that came from and later, when I thought about it, was more than a little insulted.)
But, as I said earlier, by this time, I was thoroughly baffled by our conversation, so I told him to send me the info. It was so bogus, I couldn't believe that an experienced literary agent would even pay any attention to it, much less try to get people to write for this guy.
First, the concept was, in my opinion, condescending and insulting to older people because it assumed -- at least for some of the suggested books -- that seniors are totally ignorant about computers, cell phones, digital cameras, and other technology.
Second, most, if not all of the subjects that this fellow wanted people to write about have been written about by many other people with far better credentials than him or me. For example, one of the books he wanted was about how to take care of your health and another was about how to take care of your finances. Hello? Has anyone heard of Dr. Oz or Suze Orman, amongst other well-known experts?
Third, this fellow said upfront that he couldn't afford to pay people much for writing these books, but promised that they would get large royalties on the sales. This was where I thought Neil was really letting down people that he was passing this on to. He's obviously been around long enough to know that there are people on every corner who would like for you to spend weeks and months of your time without pay on the promise of "sharing in the royalties." Furthermore, doesn't Neil know that when a fellow like this is acting as a publisher, but in reality is publishing his books as POD, there isn't that much left to pay royalties unless they are in high demand and can command high prices.
I told Neil that I was turning down this "offer" and I told him why. He didn't seem to "get it" and still seemed to think this was a great opportunity. (BTW, this occurred several months ago and I notice that the Colorado publisher doesn't have any additions to his "series" of books for which he's written one of them.)
Perhaps Neil and I just had a personality conflict, but in my dealings with him, he didn't appear to be a very good listener and seemed like he was going off on tangents that had nothing to do with what I needed or wanted to do. I felt disappointed in him.
