WL Poets Agency / The Poets Literary Agency

victoriastrauss

Writer Beware Goddess
Kind Benefactor
Absolute Sage
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
6,704
Reaction score
1,314
Location
Far from the madding crowd
Website
www.victoriastrauss.com
triceretops said:
Here's a question… if a literary agency buys a publishing company so that they can publish or partner books they believe in, is that a conflict of interest?
Uh, yeah--and also interesting this should be mentioned, as I've suspected for some time that Bobby and cronies have done exactly that.
I can tell you right now that the company is participating in a new business model. We're promoting a joint venture where we have put up $2500 in partnership with the author and the publisher to get the book out the door.That's unique! And that's how much we believe in what we are doing. The ad is in the PMA newsletter and has been for 4 months.A copy of the ad can be seen using this link.http://www.theliteraryagencygroup.com/pma-literaryagencyad.pdf
Bobby et al have made this pitch before--once through their editing branch (which makes it clear who will actually be forking over that $2,500) and once at Publishers Marketplace.
We think that we are the ONLY LITERARY AGENCY that has stepped up to put our own money behind certain authors that we represent. If you can find any other agency that has done this please let me know.
First off, it's not your money. Do you seriously expect us to believe that $2,500 won't come from the authors? Secondly, you're absolutely right--we can't think of any other agency that has "done this. " Because when other literary agencies place manuscripts, it's based on the ms.'s merits, not on bribes to publishers.

- Victoria
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
victoriastrauss said:
Secondly, you're absolutely right--we can't think of any other agency that has "done this. "

What, agents promoting co-publishing ventures? I can think of three right off the top of my head: the Deering Literary Agency, Canadian Literary Associates, and Trident Media of Washington, DC.
 

xhouseboy

In the Yellow Woods
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Sep 3, 2005
Messages
1,512
Reaction score
324
sherryfine said:
Dear Message Board Citizens;

Please take a few minutes to read an important message for writers.

The company has asked me to tell you, in my own words, what I do and to let you know just one aspect of what they do to help writers sell their work.

I work with Sherry Fine, our director of acquisitions, and I am using her login for speed and efficiency with this post. One cavet, I am in phone sales, so if there are grammar or spelling errors in the post, please realize that you are the writer, and that's your job to write 100% correctly, not mine.

See attached Message Board Citizens Rebuttal.

Cordially,

Rey Best

Dear Rey,

And that would be the same Sherry Fine who recently posted a rebuttal of all the accusations posted against her name. The same Sherry Fine who just days after this rebuttal responded to a load of nonsense I sent to her, and claimed that she wished to see the screenplay based on the utter garbage she received.

Two options here. She's a dyed-in-the-wool scamster, or not very bright at all - in fact, bordering on completely stupid. Probably both, if you and she think that anyone with a solitary brain cell pays any heed to your garbage.

It's in the jail you and your ilk should be, pal. Not still slithering about the Net desperately trying to flog your snake oil. A century ago, you and Sherry would have found yourselves dumped in the desert and it would have taken a week to scrub the tar and feathers off.

Cordially,

Someone who'd like to kick your arse.
 
Last edited:

HapiSofi

Hagiographically Advantaged
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
2,093
Reaction score
676
Uncle Jim, that was a spectacular takedown, and yet I believe there's a very significant point you missed.

What this fellow is describing is the lengthy process of putting together a list of houses, acquiring editors, what kind of work they're looking for, etc., starting from absolute ground zero. He's working from publicly available general resources.

What this means is that Fletcher's agencies haven't previously had any of that information on hand.

Do you see the implications?

This guy is pure gold. He's just done us an enormous favor. What he's demonstrated, in considerable detail, is that Robert Fletcher's "literary agencies" haven't previously had on hand, in the office, the most basic information any agent would need in order to sell manuscripts to publishing houses. If they did, they wouldn't be having an inexperienced outsider recompile it for them from scratch for seventeen bucks an hour.

They have not been acting as agents. He's just proved it.

The other reason to be nice to him is that Fletcher has screwed him over, too. He thinks he's in line for significant commissions if he makes sales. Fletcher & Co. can't have told him, at the time they were offering him this gig, that poetry doesn't sell.
 
Last edited:

triceretops

Banned
Flounced
Joined
Feb 12, 2005
Messages
14,060
Reaction score
2,755
Location
In a van down by the river
Website
guerrillawarfareforwriters.blogspot.com
That's a good point, Hapi...provided this individual is not some cooked up fabrication of Bobby's doing to deliberately try to show some type of status. Seeing all of the corners and scams Fletcher's got going on, I find it almost impossible to believe that he'd pay this employeee that rate and hang a bonus out there of that amount with the express purpose of REALLY finding editor/buyers for the poetry books that Fletcher knows damn well won't sell. He's been doing this too long, and I think he's just tapped into the lucrative market of hopeful poetry writers.

What do you want to bet that the next incarnation won't be the "Memoire Lit Agency" or the "Diary Lit Agency" ?????

Tri
 

HapiSofi

Hagiographically Advantaged
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
2,093
Reaction score
676
Whether it's Bobby or an employee, that's a real process being described there, and it's one that ought never need to be undertaken by a literary agency that's supposedly been in business for years.
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
HapiSofi said:
Uncle Jim, that was a spectacular takedown, and yet I believe there's a very significant point you missed.

What this fellow is describing is the lengthy process of putting together a list of houses, acquiring editors, what kind of work they're looking for, etc., starting from absolute ground zero. He's working from publicly available general resources.

What this means is that Fletcher's agencies haven't previously had any of that information on hand.

I touched on that briefly when I said:

What agent uses Writer's Market or other public sources as their primary means of finding markets?

and:

Are you trying to say that the "agents" at your agency don't know any editors personally?

This fellow certainly gave us a lot of material. All of it adds up to the fact that Fletcher's agencies are shams and scams.
 
Last edited:

HapiSofi

Hagiographically Advantaged
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
2,093
Reaction score
676
James D. Macdonald said:
All of it adds up to the fact that Fletcher's agencies are shams and scams.
Are shams and scams, and have never been anything else, in all the years they've so far been in business.
 

bhb

I'm glad I checked the cretins out at NYLA first before sending them anything. When you send out 50 queries & get 49 rejections, you tend to jump at any favorable response. Unfortunately NYLA is a crap scam. It is so dispiriting.

My question is this: has ANYONE in this forum written a book, sent out queries--COLD--with no connections, received a favorable response, and actually had their book published? Or at least gotten an agent out of the process?

When you go to the bookstore and see Dennis Rodman has three books out, it's hard not to get depressed about the whole process.
 

JerseyGirl1962

I heart Malamutes! :-)
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 17, 2005
Messages
861
Reaction score
119
Location
Waaay West of NYC
bhb,

Firstly, :welcome:.

Secondly, don't get depressed.

Dennis Rodman is a celebrity, thus he's already well known to the public. You and I are not (I'm not at the "getting an agent" stage as yet, though).

If you've had 49 rejections, that's telling you something; either your query letter isn't hooking in the agents or your ms. isn't. Have you checked out the Share Your Work forum here? It might be a good idea to have eyes other than yours look at what you've got. I belong to an online critique group, and it has helped me quite a bit: I've had to rethink my current WIP, and I think it's gotten much better than when I originally wrote it.

And, yes, if you google James Macdonald's name or Victoria Strauss' name (among others on AW), you'll find that they've written quite a number of commercially-published books between them. And remember that they were once first-time novelists, too.

Get cracking - and good luck! :)

~Nancy
 

James D. Macdonald

Your Genial Uncle
Absolute Sage
VPX
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 11, 2005
Messages
25,582
Reaction score
3,785
Location
New Hampshire
Website
madhousemanor.wordpress.com
bhb said:
IMy question is this: has ANYONE in this forum written a book, sent out queries--COLD--with no connections, received a favorable response, and actually had their book published? Or at least gotten an agent out of the process?

The answer is: Yes, many of the folks here have.

I'm one of them.

Don't even think about the celebrity books -- they're playing in a different ball game, in a different stadium, than we are.
 

sherryfine

Registered
Joined
Apr 9, 2006
Messages
16
Reaction score
0
Company reply

Dear Message Board Citizens:

The company has asked me to tell you, in my own words, what I do and to let
you know just one aspect of what they do to help writers sell their work.

I work with Sherry Fine, our director of acquisitions, and I am using her
login for speed and efficiency with this post. One caveat, I'm in phone
sales, so if there are grammar or spelling errors in this post, please
realize that you are the writer, and that's your job to write 100%
correctly, not mine.

My job is to constantly expand the company's relationship of buyers. As you
know buyers in large companies change jobs and titles on a regular basis.
I've found that about 25%, that's 1/4 names that you can find in Writers
Market, or various public sources are INCORRECT.

So, my job is to live on the phone and email. I am paid to call buyers for
our authors and for our database of contacts.

Basically what I do is take a manuscript and a potential list of 30 buyers,
and get on the phone and qualify the list. I call, I make sure that we have
the right buyer's name, I check spelling and address, and most importantly,
I confirm what they are 'Looking For Now'. When I find a qualified buyer
with a need, I immediately communicate that to the Agents, and they
aggressively go into our roster of authors to find matches for the buyer.

Our materials are very well received by the buyers. Our buyers have learned
that we posess one of the most qualified groups of authors in the industry.
They know that all of our authors have been formally critiqued and edited.
Our buyers know that they can trust what we send them. Our buyers know that
we have filtered out the hobbyists from the authors that will do what it
takes to succeed.

Yes, we tell our authors that they have to reach industry standards.
Doesn't every agency do that in one way or another? I can tell you from
personal experience how frustrating it is to hear from a buyer that the work
we are trying to sell isn't as good a the competing works they are looking
at. So, if anything, our agency is becoming MORE demanding that our authors
take their work as far as they can from a quality perspective.

So, I hope that I have helped you see one aspect of an Agents job. The
company spends a lot of money paying me to do nothing but find buyers and
qualify them. And when I read this ongoing thread with all these bad words,
written by people that have only sour grapes to say, I just wanted to let
you know that "it ain't so".

Also, I can assure you that this company isn't a scam. I've known the
principals for years and they do the best they can for their authors. They
also pay their bills on a regular basis and they are beginning to acquire
other companies in the industry.

Here's a question.. if a literary agency buys a publishing company so that
they can publish or partner books they believe in, is that a conflict of
interest?
========================================
I can tell you right now that the company is participating in a new business
model. We're promoting a joint venture where we have put up $2500 in
partnership with the author and the publisher to get the book out the door.
That's unique! And that's how much we believe in what we are doing. The ad
is in the PMA newsletter and has been for 4 months.
A copy of the ad can be seen using this link.
http://www.theliteraryagencygroup.com/pma-literaryagencyad.pdf
This really is important for you to think about. We think that we are the
ONLY LITERARY AGENCY that has stepped up to put our own money behind
certain authors that we represent. If you can find any other agency that
has done this please let me know. This, to me, is brilliant, out of the box
thinking, that shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that our company is behind
our authors.

=======================================


Furthermore, all this talk about who owns what is rubbish. This is
business, and it's a lot like a Darwinian evolution. You either grow and
prosper, or you go out of business and you die.

If we can sell your work, we do. If we can't, then we will tell you why we
think it isn't selling. Usually this means more work, and really, that's
what most of the whining on these boards is about.

So, in conclusion, the company is real, they've paid me a regular salary for
years, and we're putting our heart and soul (and our money) behind our
authors.

Well, that's all the time I have for this post. Best to you and your
writing career. I don't have the time to monitor this post so
unfortunately, all the carping that will occur will be ignored. I have a
real job to get back to.


RKForever
 

MadScientistMatt

Empirical Storm Trooper
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Mar 30, 2005
Messages
1,692
Reaction score
252
Location
near Atlanta, Georgia
Website
madscientistmatt.blogspot.com
Ray,

That is such an obvious cut and paste job that I can still smell the glue on it.

May I suggest you try and come up with some new material? A good starting point would be a list of books that your agency has actually sold to legitimate, advance and royalty paying publishers. You've been working there a couple years - surely you ought to know of a dozen sales or more.
 

JerseyGirl1962

I heart Malamutes! :-)
Kind Benefactor
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Jun 17, 2005
Messages
861
Reaction score
119
Location
Waaay West of NYC
Oy...here, too.

I guess today is Spam AW Day for Sherry/RK Forever/Bobby/Whomever. And they can't even bother to make changes from their earlier spam.
Pardon me while I snooze. :sleepy:

~Nancy
 

Lucy_Lou

Poets literary agency - scam

I just wanted to leave a message to say thanks to everyone for posting all this information about this agency, and what a scam it is.

I was really happy when I received a positive response from them, but at the same time, very dubious!

They replied very quickly saying they liked my work. Then in less than two days said they loved my poetry (I'd only sent them three poems!) and that they thought they could sell it, I also recieved the contract and critique agency address on sunday afternoon.

I was very suspicious about this agency, and thought that it didnt quite ring true, so I went looking on google, and I'm very happy to have found this forum, which confirmed my suspicions.

So thankyou to all for letting me know exactly what this agency is like, before I thought about wasting $70-80 on a critique!
 

HapiSofi

Hagiographically Advantaged
Super Member
Registered
Joined
Feb 16, 2005
Messages
2,093
Reaction score
676
Good on you, Lucy, and thanks for letting us know.
 

Litman24

Thank you

Thank you for these threads. Being a new author trying to find a good home for my stories I am definantly taking this to heart.
 

GaryBuglass

Registered
Joined
Oct 21, 2006
Messages
11
Reaction score
0
I can't believe this is the latest scam from Robert "give us your money" Fletcher.

A literary agency for poems? How can they be getting away with this??

I fell for the SCREENPLAY AGENCY scam and unfortunately lost out on $95 for a critique because I genuinely believed they were legitimate.

How wrong I was. The only thing I'd pay for now is five minutes alone in a room with Bobby Fletcher!! :rant: