It is a well-known fact that men are extremely
inventive and horrible at the same time. There are many shrewd ways to steal
and cheat some of the criminals use. Some of them are so skillful that could
get round any law. There’s no exception it seems for any kind of business,
branch and job. Including publishing, of course…
I cannot say I am the ultimate expert in all the good
and bad sides of the long and hard process of books’ birth. Yet, my experience
could save any new author a lot of anger, money or frustration. If you’ve
written a book and are desperately trying to find a publisher, you’ll
definitely come across some “ladies” and “gentlemen” who will “like” your
manuscript so much that they will immediately offer you their services of
“literary agents”. But when you agree to sign a contract, it will “turn out”
that your nice work needs a lot of “editing”… Then, an offer will follow to
edit your book in exchange of some money (not too much, compared to other
similar but real services), so that it could be really “ready” for the market.
These guys will just take/steal your money and do
nothing of their real job, searching and finding a publisher and then earning
their percentage of the sold books (about 10 % usually). They will not just
steal your money (after their “editing” your manuscript won’t be ready for the
market), but your time too. As while they are lying to you that they are
editing your work and after that are offering it to many publishers, you could search
for and find some real offers from real literary agents and publishers…
I know I shouldn’t post anything offensive for anyone
(and use no bad/foul language, though in this case I would really like to), yet
I have to share my personal experience with such a lady. A few years ago,
Jillanne Kimble, the so called “literary agent”, offered me to represent one of
my books (Tale Of The Rock Pieces), but insisted that she had to edit it first,
in exchange of some money, of course. As I’m not a native American or
Englishman, I knew my work was not perfect, so I signed a contract for editing
and then representing of my book with this “lady”… It was a big mistake… Then,
I had to wait for nine months to finally receive an “edited” copy of my
manuscript and to be really surprised to see that Mrs. Kimble had just put some
commas and altered a couple (literally) of words. When I asked her (so many
times) what was happening with representing of my work to publishers, she sent
a response that so far no one was interested in my book. Then, when I asked her
to let me know to which exactly publishers she was offering my manuscript, she
just sent and answer: “They are a lot…” Well, finally I realized I was cheated
in the most shameless way. I found some good sites with good, useful tips for
authors, like writersbeware.org/com and talked to some friends all over the
world who were more experienced than me in such matters and send an e-mail to
my “literary agent” to let her know that we must put an end to our deal as she
was not doing anything of her obligations…
Be aware of such persons, dear authors! If you need
editing, use the services of editors, not “literary agents” who try to cheat
you and just steal your money, though everything will seem legal. Or try to
learn to write better, following grammatical rules, proper punctuation, etc, so
that you won’t need any editing, though it seems a really hard task…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yw3a5n00FI,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qUA8Avl7ew,
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