Pseudo Agents and Phony Critiques

The odds are stacked against getting a book published, especially if you have never had one published before. I did a little research and pretty quickly learned that in order to really have a shot you need an agent. So I started sending out “query letters” to different agents who were accepting new clients. I sent one query to a group of agents in New York City. I received a reply within a day saying that they were interested in reading more, and to send them the whole manuscript, which I did.

A couple of days later I received an email saying that they would like to represent me and an attached contract. I signed the contract feeling like I was only months away from being a published author.

The next email was from my personal agent saying that in order to really market my work, I needed to have a professional critique done. 

A professional critique is supposed to be an unbiased assessment of the work that will evaluate its marketability, style and editing. It just so happened that my agent worked with an editing firm that would give me a really helpful professional critique for $300.

This is where the story gets embarrassing. I paid the three hundred for the critique. (When you have a dream you are willing to spend a little, and what’s $300 when you have a potential bestseller on your hands?)  A few day later I got an email back from the professional, the gist of the critique was: this work is good for the current adult fiction market, but you used way too many dashes. Truth be told I do love the dash - but am not always sure where to use it – so I err on the side – of using it a bunch. The dash part seemed relevant to my actual work - I felt like the rest may have been copied and pasted from other critiques.

My agent followed up with an email saying that it was good news that the book was good for the current market, but bad news the manuscript needed a line by line edit before she could really pitch it. But, even in the bad news there was good news, she could refer me to really good professional editors who could edit my work for between $1000 and $2000.

I’m happy to report I didn’t pay that amount. Instead I personally went to work editing the manuscript declaring death to the dashes – in spite of my great love for them.