Jeff Bezos | The Daily Show | Comedy Central

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WHY didn’t I know about this?!

This is FABULOUS! 

Agent Bruhaha/20 worst agent list

Well, Miss Snark is really MAD! But she’s not the only one. the writing community is taking up arms to defend some of their own. It seems there’s a reportedly bad scam artist “agent” named Barbara Bauer that made enough noise she got a well-thought of and reliable writer’s information site, Absolute Write, shut down. Why? Because they had a page with The 20 Worst Agents List.

The page began with this note:

Below is a list of the 20 agents about which Writer Beware has received the greatest number of advisories/complaints during the past several years.

None of these agents has a significant track record of sales to commercial (advance-paying) publishers, and most have virtually no documented and verified sales at all (many sales claimed by these agents turn out to be vanity publishers). All charge clients before a sale is made, whether directly, by charging fees such as reading or administrative fees, or indirectly, for “editing services.”

Writer Beware suggests that writers searching for agents avoid questionable agents, and instead query agents who have actual track records of sales to commercial publishing houses.

The list of agents were as follows:

* The Abacus Group Literary Agency
* Allred and Allred Literary Agents (refers clients to “book doctor” Victor West of Pacific Literary Services)
* Capital Literary Agency (formerly American Literary Agents of Washington, Inc.)
* Barbara Bauer Literary Agency
* Benedict & Associates (also d/b/a B.A. Literary Agency)
* Sherwood Broome, Inc.
* Desert Rose Literary Agency
* Arthur Fleming Associates
* Finesse Literary Agency (Karen Carr)
* Brock Gannon Literary Agency
* Harris Literary Agency
* The Literary Agency Group, which includes the following:
Children’s Literary Agency
Christian Literary Agency
New York Literary Agency
Poets Literary Agency
The Screenplay Agency
Stylus Literary Agency (formerly ST Literary Agency)
Writers Literary & Publishing Services Company (the editing arm of the above-mentioned agencies)
* Martin-McLean Literary Associates
* Mocknick Productions Literary Agency, Inc.
* B.K. Nelson, Inc.
* The Robins Agency (Cris Robins)
* Michele Rooney Literary Agency (also d/b/a Creative Literary Agency and Simply Nonfiction)
* Southeast Literary Agency
* Mark Sullivan Associates
* West Coast Literary Associates (also d/b/a California Literary Services)

Here’s another good resource to read about finding an agent.

If you have some time and some Tylenol…

You might be interested in reading Anna Louise Genoese’s blog about P&Ls and how books make (or don’t) money: part the first: the mass market original complete failure.

It sure is Monday

Okay. Got my red PT in the shop (Some guy lost a ladder on the freeway and I ran over it. Lovely.) and some other errands run. My fave soap is on, but I can hardly keep my eyes open because I stayed up last night until I finished Linda Castillo’s Dead Reckoning, and then had to get up a couple of hours later to meet an early morning appointment. Idiot. I should have put the book down, it would still be there today. But it was so GOOD.

Agent 007 has an interesting outlook on Frey-gate. GalleyCat tells a little bit about the after the Oprah show carnage on Oxygen.

If you want to know what the inside of a floppy disc looks like, Ballpoint Wren has an obliging dog named Mojo that’s been kind enough to let us in on the secret.

Keely at Keely’s Faery Good Advice now has an e-mail list for advice for the love-lorn.

For another shot of inspiration, I’ve re-read Suzanne McMinn’s article about The Importance of Dreaming Big.

Britta Coleman, author of Potter Springs, seems to be on the way to a busy 2006! If you can, catch one of her workshops, they’re FANTASTIC!

Another One of Those Getting Published “Miracle” Stories

It’s kind of neat. Miss Snark posted this Story about Philip Beard, author of DEAR ZOE.

Note to self: think of some quirky, imaginative thing to go about getting youself in print, so you’ll have a neat story to tell after you sell.

Personally, I wouldn’t have the wherewithal to come up with the $ to self-publish. Or even think about ALMOST self-publishing.

Isn’t it interesting,the serendipity of being in the right place at the right time? Growing up, I was fascinated with the stories of movie stars being “discovered” sitting at the counter of a soda fountain in a drugstore selling cosmetics at a department store, or tending bar. How cool, I thought. And later, the story about John Grisham selling his self-published tome out of the trunk of his car.

It all seems so effortless, though I’m sure the people above would disagree.

Philip Beard says in his backstory article:

” …in the end I was faced with the prospect of starting work on a third novel without any faith that it would find a home. I couldn’t do it. Knowing that others had found success with their third or fourth books didn’t help. I felt lost, directionless, paralyzed by the first real failure of my life…I spent the spring and summer performing mindless tasks: I worked for my younger brother (the ultimate self-humiliation), finishing the new wood paneling in his basement, getting slightly looped on polyurethane; I went to the gym, got my body in shape, got the yard in shape; I spent too much time watching the war in Iraq on CNN, too much time on the internet; I cleaned and alphabetized all 800 beer cans from the childhood collection that had been rusting in my parents’ attic for 25 years; I wore out two pairs of sneakers walking the dog.”

That section resonated within me more than anything I’d read lately, aside from the Bible passages I’ve read here and there. I mean, there I was, right there in someone else’s story. We’d been raised that we can accomplish anything we set ourselves to. In response, I set my mind to things and they’ve happened for me. But this getting published hurdle is one I haven’t cleared yet. With every rejection letter I feel failure, like a spoiled child who’s never been spanked finally getting a good whack on the behind. In front of a crowd. All my friends and family know of my dream, and believe in me. Even my clients at my day job. And each time someone asks me how the writing’s coming along, and if I’ve had any good news, I have to say that no, I haven’t had any success. And it smarts. Nicks the old pride worse than a dull, rusty razor on legs that haven’t been shaved in a month.

So, what about my writing? Well, let’s see how much I’m willing to admit to… Instead of writing, I immerse myself in blogs. Instead of writing, I scour and re-scour my favorite news sites for any new headlines. Instead of writing, I play a word game on Yahoo. Instead of writing, I *GASP* clean house! That my friends, is how low I’ve sunk. Why couldn’t I at least have gotten my body in shape like Philip Beard?

I read this little tidbit of wisdom that goes something like this: It’s only a failure if we don’t learn something from the experience. Or does it go more like it only failure if we don’t get back out there and try again? Both cliche-like phrases seem to point to the same moral, hold the same truth.

I know it’s time to get out the writing music and shake the crumbs out of my keyboard (How can it hold so many?)