Sherry isn't Fine

My search for a literary agent continues and as I surf the net for the one who thinks he/she is right for me, I keep running into the URLs for sites set up by someone who calls herself Sherry Fine. These websites are designed to relieve unsuspecting would-be authors of $60 to $90.

The most recent find is http://agentliterary.info/ , a page that Google sends you to if you conduct a search on "agent literary." Sherry's no dummy. She knows where to find desperate and innocent marks for her game of bait and switch.

Three of the five sites you will find when you click on this offering are poorly disguised clones of each other. Click on "Literary Agency Seeks Writers" and your browser will take you to www.wlwritersagency.com. Click on "Screenplay Literary Agency Seeks Talent," and you will end up at www.wlscreenplayagency.com. "New Literary Agency -- Childrens Books" will take you to www.WLChildrensAgency.com.

I wonder if Sherry is fooling enough writers to make her scam worthwhile? If anyone has been a victim of Ms. Fine's unethical enterprise and has a story to tell, I hope you will share it with us on our forum. In the meantime, if WL LIterary Agency, WL Literary Agency and Marketing Companym WL Childrens Agency or any similar sounding venture catches your eye, reboot your computer to get the cooties out of it and keep on looking for a legitimate literary agent.

Getting Published

Paul Simon sang about 50 ways to leave your lover. If instead of a song, Simon's work was a book manuscript, how many people do you think would have a chance to read it? One of the most difficult tasks for any unpublished writer is getting his work published. While there are more ways than ever before to get your writing read, it seems there are more roadblocks to accomplishing that goal.

The traditional route to publication means finding a literary agent to represent you to the publishing companies. It's more difficult to sign a contract with an agent than it is to contract herpes from a virgin. Evidence of this is the collection of rejection emails I have begun to amass since I have been actively marketing The Ghosts of November. Originally self-published nine years ago, I wanted to go down the traditional trail this time around. Self-publishing, while expedient, is not very satisfying. I think it will be much more fulfilling to actually sell the book to a publishing house. Then all you have to do is edit and review and approve and then wait for the baby to be born. That's when the real work starts though, marketing.

If the quest to obtain a literary agent fails, the motivated writer can always pitch his work to small presses. That takes some effort and no small amount of postage (most small presses do not take electronic submissions), not to mention the trees that dedicate their lives to turning your work into hard copies. But there are a multitude of small presses around and that will be my next strategy should I be unable to convince an agent to represent me.

My wife, Rebecca Bibbs, is toying with the idea of self-publishing her novel, The Nubian Codex. Since she had two editors who wanted to see her work when she attended the 2007 Algonkian Pitch Session, I discouraged that method of publishing. For me its a matter of "Been there, done that," for her its a matter of getting the best bang for the bucks and I have got to believe just being chosen by two editors at Algonkian is a sign from the heavens that she is destined to find a publisher.

Of course there is always the e-book route. That's really a last resort in my estimation. Unless your name is Stephen King, obscurity is bound to become your friend if you choose this method of getting published.

So I am giving it until the end of the month for an incredibly discerning literary agent to realize the uniqueness and marketability of my work and send me a contract. Then small presses, expect some packages from Indianapolis to be arriving in your mail.

My Reply to Ms. Fine's Reply

I decided to go ahead and reply to Ms. Fine. Let's see where this leads to. There may be a book, or at least a magazine article in this.

Here is the reply to the reply:

Ms Fine,

I am sure I can keep sales up, especially if I am able to find an agent who can light a fire under a publisher to get the book out before November 2008. Currently, I work in Nigeria West Africa, 28 days on and 28 days off, which gives me about a month every other month to market. Fortunately, my contract will be up the summer of 2008 and if the book gets published I plan to market it full time for the first six months to year. I have made a ton of money overseas so can afford to take time off, which I planned to do anyway, if I don't retire from that line of work and start writing full time.

I do well on radio talk shows and will get an ad in Radio & Television Interview magazine and I also have a database of media and bookstores, particularly black bookstores where this book will do well.

My wife is a journalist/author who at this very moment is pitching her novel at the Algonkian Writers Conference in NYC. I just returned from the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in Colorado Springs and return to Africa tomorrow. Since I only had three weeks off this time, that only gave us one weekend together, but we both are very invested in the writing process. As I said in my e-mail, I do have two other projects I am prepared to begin.

If you need any other information, feel free to ask. WL does not seem to be like most literary agencies I am familiar with. Does it work along the same lines as a traditional agency?

Thanks for your prompt reply to my query. I am looking forward to finding an agent so we can begin the process of pitching to a publisher.

Sincerely,

Jeff Brailey

Sherry Fine - VP of Acquisitions <Selfpubmanuscript@wlwritersagency.com> wrote:

4000 sales is good/great.. can you keep that going?

Beware of False Agents

Warning to unagented writers: Some purported agents are not what they say they are. Take the WRITERS LITERARY AGENCY for example,

Its website says it is an agency and it looks like an agency.

http://www.wlwritersagency.com

A person who calls herself "Sherry Fine - VP of Acquisitions" sent me a hopeful email the day after I sent my query. Her reply and the submission form from her website I used to send my query on follows:

From: "Sherry Fine - VP of Acquisitions" Add to Address Book Add Mobile Alert
To: wordworks2001@yahoo.com
Subject: RE: WL Lit Self-Pub Form Submission
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:11:10 -0400

4000 sales is good/great.. can you keep that going?

Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by
(wordworks2001@yahoo.com) on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 at 20:26:02

-----
FormSource: CLA

FormDate: 4/25/2007

Name: Jeff Brailey

How Did You Hear of Us: Google

Title of Work: The Ghosts of November

Length of Work: 65,000 words

Marketing Focus: Blacks, especially in California and the midwest,
veterans and military, academicians in the areas of religion, sociology,
psychology, people in the business of death, people in law enforcement

Who Published and When: originally self-published 1998. Revised with
50% new material 2007.

How Many Copies: 4000, 4800+ sold

Marketing Done: The best marketing was radio talk shows. also spoke at
seminars/meetings and did signings at book stores and conventions

NYP-Bio: Jeff Brailey is a retired career soldier who served 20 years
as a medic in the U.S. Army. He served as public affairs specialist to Army
units to which he was assigned from 1972 to 1988. Since his retirement 18
years ago from the armed forces, he has served as a child protective services
specialist in Guadalupe County, Texas, and as a safety officer on oil
drilling rigs and construction barges in the Gulf of Mexico, Bahrain
and off the coast of Nigeria, West Africa. Jeff also has been the chief
operating officer of a skilled home health agency, women’s health boutique and
medical clinic, advertising copywriter for a large automobile dealership,
evidence photographer for a company that provides security to companies with
labor problems, and telemarketer.

He also was a homeless derelict for almost six years. This was not an
experiment to obtain color for a news story, Jeff was the genuine
article. In 2004, he overcame a gambling addiction and in 2005, began working as
a safety consultant in Nigeria, West Africa. He is the only person he
knows who went from living on the streets to earning a six-figure income in a
period of less than two years.

Despite the roller coaster quality of his life, Jeff Brailey has always
been a writer. He has been a stringer for more than 20 years, his news and
feature stories appearing in nearly a dozen newspapers, including the
Sunday Oklahoman, Lawton Constitution, and Panama Star Herald in Panama
City, Panama. In 1999, while homeless, he penned a monthly column for
the San Antonio Express-News.

I have plans for two more nonfiction books

If you studied Sherry Fine's website and you are familiar with typical literary agency websites, two glaring differences smack you in the face, if not the first time you look at it, the second. First, there is no listing and bio of agents, author clients or published books. Second, there is no street address or telephone number given for the agency. That made me do a Google search on Ms. Fine. The ressults were interesting. The most telling was at MAN BYTES HOLLYWOOD -- <>.

http://www.davidanaxagoras.com/2006/01/30/she-never-met-a-logline-she-didnt-like/

Now, I am not going to say Sherry Fine is a scammer and fraud, but she certainly appears to be. Has anyone else had any dealings with her our one of her apparently fraudulent agencies?