How to Avoid Literary Agency Scams

Literary agencies are, for the most part, legitimate businesses run by dedicated professionals, but every once in a while, you run across a bad apple. A literary agency -- more specifically, your literary agent -- is supposed to find your a publisher for your book and help you to negotiate the best possible contract. Once you've written a book, you're more likely to achieve success in publication if you work through a literary agency.

In their eagerness to find representation, many new writers overlook the fact that some literary agencies aren't out for the author's best interests. Over the last several years, several different literary agency scams have cropped up, and they can be hard to spot until you start talking paperwork and money. Most literary agency scams involve making money off the writer without ever even attempting to sell the book.

One of the most common literary agency scams is the one involving an upfront fee. When you are offered representation by a legitimate literary agent, he or she will sell your book without any investment from you (except, on rare occasion, for expenses). The agent only gets paid when he or she places your book with a publisher, and even then only takes 10% or 15% off the top of everything you earn.

As soon as a literary agency mentions a fee, you should run in the other direction because, in all likelihood, it's a scam. It might seem reasonable that an agent would want some sort of investment from the author, but that is not the industry standard and you can get much better service without having to pay. Most of these types of literary agencies don't actually sell any books, anyway, because they will agree to represent even the most poorly written of books in order to make that money up front.