Thursday, October 11, 2007

Rooney Rooney, stale baloney

So I told MR I was aware of her rep, had an agent already, and to take a hike. She sent back this:

Hi Charles,
Fantastic news -- we've just revised our literary agency contract to offer a phenomenal 9 percent commission rate to our most valued clients. I am delighted to be sending you a new literary agency contract with these fabulous terms as a separate e-mail.
Please print out your contract, sign it and fax it back to me at (248) 737-4665.
It is a pleasure to be working with you. Have a lovely day.

So what is this, an auto response? It has nothing whatever to do with the email I sent her. This is comical but also scary when you remember the newbie writers who get sucked into her web.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Refresh my memory, Charles.
How does she operate?

Thanks.

Best,
eric

Charles Deemer said...

She makes her money with the small advances she asks for to cover postage etc. This actually has become somewhat standard even among legit agents ... thus, the agent handling my mystery novel some time back, at a most reputable NYC agency, asked for such an advance because I had no track record in the genre; but my current agent did not. But with MR, she has never sold a book that anyone can document (and she's been on the net for a decade) and most think she doesn't even market them, just pockets the advances. She plays a numbers game. If you get 100 eager newbie writers to give you $50 to cover expenses, you've got 5 grand. With the net, her database must be hundreds of thousands of writers and wannabe writers. Every six months or so she changes the name of her business.