I've seen an increase in both warnings about these kinds of scams and cautionary tales by those who've been burned. I'm glad people are raising awareness, but I worry that this is just one more datapoint toward the overall erosion of online trust.

It seems like the only way to really combat this is through closed / semi-closed trusted networks, but those tend to become dominated by personalities and difficult for newcomers to break into. The reduced trust in "outside" voices then leads to echo chambers and groupthink. I think we're already starting to see some of this in the kinds of books being put out by the big publishing houses; I don't have hard numbers (and maybe I'm just getting old and cynical) but a lot of recent titles feel extremely generic.

There's a subplot in Neil Stephenson's Fall (or Dodge in Hell) where media and other networks are so saturated with false, meaningless, clickbaity, or otherwise negative-value content that they become either less than worthless, or require paid "filters" to extract actual value. I'm getting a sense of being close to that point already and I don't know what the right move is from here to reduce the fracturing of my wider social circles.

I particularly like this part from the final thoughts:

"solicitation is one of the first and most common signs of a scam these days"

This is true about most scams these days. So much so that I have been advising non-technical friends and family to stop directly responding to any communication you did not initiate. Instead ask yourself, "how would I go about addressing or confirming this with the supposed source if I hadn't received a message about it?" Also helps with avoiding the encouragement of marketers.

pretty much the only things that are really important are the last two points

>A real agency is highly unlikely to email or phone you out of the blue with an offer of representation or a claim that a traditional publisher is interested in your work (real agents don’t pre-shop manuscripts for authors they don’t represent).

>A real agency will not require you to pay anything or buy anything as a condition of representation or publication. Other than the agent’s commission, there should never be a cost associated with rights acquisition.

highly unlikely is politespeak for never going to happen unless your self published work is making tens of thousands of sales already.

This is abut literary agencies, but the fake business scam is growing and can be in any industry.

Interesting info. But neither this, nor the previous post linked from it, explain what exactly the money scam is. I guess the main audience is supposed to know already.

This type of scams prey on the ego of the target. In the attention economy everyone wants to project an aura of expertise. Someone interested in your expertise is just about the perfect bait. Literary agents, publishers, VCs, sponsorships, etc.

As someone who was in the query trenches not too long ago, I feel like this website paints an overly rosy picture of what a typical agent website looks like.

The fact is that a shocking number of agent websites are awful. These are legitimate agents. Some of them have surprising numbers of best-sellers behind their names. Their websites still suck.

Why?

Because they're agents, not programmers. They don't have the time or the inclination to do this kind of thing, and frankly the incentives don't require them to get better.

While we're here, let me also point out that there are no qualifications and no certification associated with being an agent. None whatsoever. Any of us here could put up a website and start taking submissions. That doesn't mean we'd be good at it, but the line between "agent" and "not agent" is shockingly thin.

Don't believe me? Here's an alphabetically sorted list of (probably? mostly?) real agents. You can go check out their websites yourself:

https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/find-agentseditors/agent-...

I was upset enough about this situation at one point that I wrote a whole essay about it, along with a website template to show them how to do better. But then I thought better of it and decided it would be better not to burn my reputation in the industry, even if their web design skills leave me wanting to put my eyes out.

Bottom line: I absolutely agree that an agent should never cold email you (unless you are already very successful, in which case hopefully you have better sources of advice than an HN thread). They should absolutely never charge you money. And you should be very careful with referrals they give you if you're not very confident they're legit (or frankly, even if they are).

But if their websites suck: well, sorry, that's sort of how the industry goes. (Unless you never want to work with a boutique agent, ever.)

These people must read a lot of Dan Brown books:

I am Damon Green, a leading literary agent...

Post needs [2024].

Probably not all the latest fakes, not any longer.

So what kind of people creates these scam sites?

What are some real agencies?