If you don’t already know it, the refugee forums are up and running. No, they’re not pretty, and no, it’s not the forums from AW prior to the takedown, but they’ll do for now. 
Also, Jenna Glatzer, owner/operator of Absolute Write, has made a plea for donations.
Birol offered a brief update:
Today, as the clock ticked past 10AM in the Central Time Zone, JC Hosting Company missed their third deadline for turning over our (AW s) data to Jenna.
Gee, how nice.
All because Barbara Bauer targeted Absolute Write.
Oh, and this is old news, but still, if you haven’t read it yet, there’s an amusing little tidbit out there where Barbara Bauer threatens to sue for One Billion Dollars for doing nothing more than posting her name on a forum.
And for good measure, here, once again, is SFWA’s list of top twenty worst agents that they know of. Because this cannot be posted too many times.
Below is a list of the 20 literary agencies about which Writer Beware has received the greatest number of advisories/complaints over the past several years.
None of these agencies has a significant track record of sales to commercial (advance-paying) publishers, and most have virtually no documented and verified sales at all (book placements claimed by some of these agencies turn out to be “sales” to vanity publishers).
All charge clients before a sale is made–whether directly, by levying fees such as reading or administrative fees, or indirectly, for editing or other adjunct services.
Writer Beware recommends that writers avoid questionable literary agencies, and instead query agencies that have verifiable track records of sales to commercial publishing houses.
Note that while the 20 agencies listed here account for the bulk of the complaints we receive, they’re just the tip of the iceberg. Writer Beware has files on nearly 400 questionable agencies, and we learn about a new one every few weeks.
- The Abacus Group Literary Agency
- Allred and Allred Literary Agents (refers clients to “book doctor” Victor West of Pacific Literary Services)
- Barbara Bauer Literary Agency
- Benedict Associates (also d/b/a B.A. Literary Agency)
- Sherwood Broome, Inc.
- Capital Literary Agency (formerly American Literary Agents of Washington, Inc.)
- Desert Rose Literary Agency
- Arthur Fleming Associates
- Finesse Literary Agency (Karen Carr)
- Brock Gannon Literary Agency
- Harris Literary Agency
- The Literary Agency Group, which includes the following:
- Children’s Literary Agency
- Christian Literary Agency
- New York Literary Agency
- Poets Literary Agency
- The Screenplay Agency
- Stylus Literary Agency (formerly ST Literary Agency, formerly Sydra-Techniques)
- Writers Literary & Publishing Services Company (the editing arm of the above-mentioned agencies)
- Martin-McLean Literary Associates
- Mocknick Productions Literary Agency, Inc.
- B.K. Nelson, Inc.
- The Robins Agency (Cris Robins)
- Michele Rooney Literary Agency (also d/b/a Creative Literary Agency, Simply Nonfiction, and Michele Glance Rooney Literary Agency)
- Southeast Literary Agency
- Mark Sullivan Associates
- West Coast Literary Associates (also d/b/a California Literary Services)
Similar Posts:
- Even more sites talking about the AbsoluteWrite Takedown
- The Top Twenty Worst Agents
- The whole kerfuffle started with…
- Barbara Bauer issues literary awards
- Barbara Bauer and the (very very many ) blog posts about her
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Another hearty Thank You!