This Crazy Writing Life: When Publishing Throws You A Curve Ball—Again—And The Scammers Circle Above

By Steven Womack

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We plan; God laughs.

In last month’s episode of This Crazy Writing Life, I told you the long, epic saga of a novel that my writing partner, Wayne McDaniel, and I wrote nearly a decade ago; a book called Pearson Place. The novel is based on/inspired by a true-life fact: Pearson Place is real.

Located in Queens, it’s a four-story warehouse that takes up an entire city block. This massive warehouse in the middle of one of Queens’s most industrial areas is the repository of every piece of evidence collected in every investigation of every crime by the New York City Police Department going back decades.

The stuff in there gobsmacks the imagination. Every illegal drug ever synthesized or grown; every weapon you could ever imagine using in a crime, ranging from the most modern high-tech anti-tank weapons to medieval maces and lances… Stolen electronics, illegal pornography. High profile crimes like evidence from the Central Park Jogger case. If it’s evidence associated with a crime, it wound up in Pearson Place.

In 1992, Donald Trump’s then-girlfriend Marla Maples’s publicist stole over two hundred pairs of Marla’s very expensive heels and had sex with them. He was charged with theft, found guilty, and his conviction overturned in 1994. He was retried and found guilty again in 1999. Needless to say, Marla—by then Mrs. Donald Trump—didn’t wanted the abused shoes back and they’re still in an evidence locker at Pearson Place. Wayne’s seen them and described them as icky.

Or as Wayne referred to them in the manuscript to Pearson Place: Mrs. Trump’s Humped Pumps…

Anyway, Pearson Place is the story of a single mother who’s an NYPD cop with a special needs toddler. She’s broke, desperate, looking for any way to make an extra buck. She takes on extra shifts guarding Pearson Place. Then she discovers she’s terminally ill. Even more desperate now to leave a legacy for her kid, she decides to pull off the heist of the century by ripping off the NYPD warehouse she’s supposed to be guarding.

Chaos ensues…

Last month, I described how after years of passes, rejections, and radio silence in response to our queries, we found an editor at an established prestigious house who loved the book and wanted to buy it. Everything’s done by committee, though, and there was one holdout on the acquisition team. She tried everything, including having Wayne and me do a rewrite, before finally giving up.

This took just over a year to resolve itself.

Frustrated beyond belief, Wayne and I decided to serialize the novel on Substack. We broke the manuscript up into digestible hunks, created a Substack account, and were writing supplemental material to go with it.

Then, out of nowhere (as happens so often in publishing), I got an email from a very successful writer and close friend whom I’ve known for decades, literally since she published her first novel in 1987. She read my column, said the book sounded interesting. Were we sure we wanted to go the Substack route?

It may be the only route left, I answered.

Let me talk to my editor, she said. Maybe she’ll take a look at it.

A couple of days later, an email from my friend’s editor landed in my inbox. She would love to read Pearson Place. Send it on.

So the Substack project is, for the time being, on hold.  I’ve been in this business too long to be anything but cautiously hopeful. But this book’s going to see the light of day, one way or another, even if—as Major Kong said in Dr. Strangelove—it harelips everybody on Bear Creek.

There are two publishing life lessons to be taken away here: 1) in publishing, you never know when the next curve ball’s gonna come at you, and sometimes it’s a good curveball; and 2) more than anything else, publishing is a people business.

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Speaking of people, there’s some real bad guys out there these days. Take Sherry J. Valentine, for instance. She sent me the following email on January 27th:

Hi Steven,

Blood Plot is deliciously dangerous, the kind of thriller that blurs the line between ambition and obsession until the distinction disappears entirely.

The premise alone is irresistible: a critically praised novelist no one reads decides to give audiences exactly what they crave, only to discover that authenticity has a terrifying cost. Watching Michael Schiftmann cross from observation into participation, and then into addiction, creates a chilling psychological descent that feels both satirical and deeply unsettling. It’s smart, twisted, and disturbingly plausible.

At Book and Banter Book Club, our readers are drawn to suspense that interrogates creativity, morality, and fame, stories that ask uncomfortable questions about what success demands and how far someone might go to achieve it. Blood Plot is exactly the kind of novel that sparks intense discussion, ethical debate, and “just one more chapter” nights.

We’d love to feature Blood Plot as an upcoming spotlight read, purchasing copies for our members and centering a full month of conversation around its themes and characters. A spotlight feature includes:

• A dedicated month-long focus, exploring Michael’s transformation, the cost of ambition, and the novel’s sharp commentary on the publishing world
• Organic reader buzz, with reactions, quotes, and insights shared across our club discussions and social spaces
• Author discovery, introducing readers to your broader body of work and award-winning career

Book and Banter exists to turn bold thrillers into shared experiences, stories readers don’t just finish, but dissect, debate, and recommend.

If you’re open to collaborating, we’d love to talk about bringing Blood Plot to our readers and giving it the thoughtful spotlight it deserves.

Warm regards,
Book and Banter Book Club

Now what, you might ask, is so objectionable about such a flattering email and an offer to help promote a book that, God knows, could use every little bit of help it can get?

Well, friends, let me tell you…

It’s a scam, a complete AI-generated con designed to lure unsuspecting, desperate-for-attention writers (which includes all of us) into a scheme to separate us from as much cash as possible. Once you’ve been around a while and have found enough of these missives in your inbox (I get them several times a week), you begin to develop your very own Spidey sense. The flattering text about my novel is clearly AI-generated. No one really writes like that, even if they’re real and really do love your stuff. There’s something about it that’s too slick, like a TV preacher or something.

And the emails are always from some generic mass-market server. In Ms. Valentine’s case, the incoming came from a Gmail box.

To make this even slicker and more insidious, there actually is an organization of readers and book clubs that share and discuss their favorite reads. Only it’s not the Book and Banter Book Club; it’s the Books and Banter Book Club.

Pretty clever, huh? Almost got that one past me.

A couple of Google searches revealed all this. Plus, I searched for Sherry J. Valentine and while there are lots of Sherry J. Valentines out there, not one of them had any association with the fake Book and Banter Book Club or the real Books and Banter Book Club. There’s also no mention of her on the real book club’s website.

So what’s the takeaway here? As I mentioned in the very first episode of This Crazy Writing Life nearly two years ago, writers have been prey for centuries. In our desperate longing for validation, affirmation, and the inevitable fame and fortune we all deserve, we’re often blind to those whose motives may not be as noble as ours. From the Famous Writers School of the Sixties and Seventies to the contemporary companies who will “publish” your novel and distribute it for a mere thirty-five grand, writers are seen by many as sheep to be sheared.

How do we protect ourselves? As Matty Walker said in Larry Kasdan’s magnificent Body Heat: Knowledge is power. Read the trades, scour the websites, especially SFWA’s fabulous website Writer Beware. It highlights specific scammers and con artists, exposing them by name.

And always remember the adage that’s as true in life as well as publishing: if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. A little dose of cynicism never hurt anybody.

That’s enough for now. As always, thanks for playing along. See you next month.

Oh, and Ms. Valentine? Just for S&Gs, I answered her email.

So far, crickets…

Agents- You Don’t Need Them

By Dale T. Phillips

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In the past, literary agents were sometimes useful and necessary for selling a manuscript to a publisher, and as an author representative, negotiating a better deal for the author for the sale of the book rights. Unsolicited, un-agented manuscripts were often sent to the publishing house. These were called over the transom (the crossbar above a door), because in the olden days, some were literally pushed through the window portion over the transom in the hopes that someone would read them. They would be dumped into a slush pile, and good luck to anything that broke out of that oubliette. Once in a great while, somebody would scan some of the manuscripts in the pile and find a pearl in that mountain of clamshells (not even oyster), and a miracle occurred, and the book got published. Extremely low odds, but it didn’t stop the flow. Hope springs eternal in the hearts of writers. 

In the latter part of the twentieth century, the publishing houses churned in a frenzy of consolidation and mergers. The people taking them over were interested in profits more than literature, and things changed dramatically. Many people who had been in the business for the love of books went away (voluntarily or just cut), and the ones remaining had to do more with much less. One thing that got outsourced was the discovery of buyable manuscripts. Many publishers announced they would not accept unsolicited manuscripts. Some still did, even though they advertised the opposite. They just didn’t want to deal with what they considered were piles of junk. So they pushed the work of editors and screeners onto literary agents, who would take on the burden of sifting through submissions for the needle in the haystack, the sellable manuscript. Agents became the gatekeepers to the Big Leagues- if you didn’t have an agent, you couldn’t even get someone to read your work. Agents were convenient for traditional publishing, because they’d recommend manuscripts that had some merit. If an agent sent nothing but duds, they wouldn’t be around long.

Generalization follows. Agents screen by what they think will sell to the handful of editors they have contact with. And instead of reading actual manuscripts to start, they rely on the query letter from hopeful authors. A (usually) one-page letter is a summary of what the book is about. It can be scanned rapidly, and usually discarded. Their reasoning is that if a writer cannot write a good query, the manuscript isn’t likely to be good. So now New Author must spend a lot of time composing the Perfect Query, all to hunt for the elusive Great Agent, who will take them on, to find the Perfect Publisher. Trouble is, the Great Agents are all booked up, and few are taking on new clients. Guess where that leaves New Author? Going through listing of potential agents to query, studying what kind of book they prefer to represent, and firing off a batch of queries to the selected group. Why in batches? Because the agents then usually take their sweet time about responding, if they respond at all. It can be days, but is more often weeks or months before the author hears back. And the response is usually “Thanks, but it’s not for us.”

How does one find a good agent that will take them on? At this point, it’s a matter of rare good fortune. While there are excellent agents, there are some who are just awful, and a portion who are downright toxic or even criminal. Some famous authors have struck deals with well-bespoken top agents, only to discover horrendous abuses. See the horror stories of Laura Resnick and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Sometimes the agents wouldn’t bother notifying the author of additional potential deals. A bad decision by an agent can be costly. And that’s just the honest ones! But new writers are so desperate to get an agent (a process that can often take years) that they’ll sign with the first one who indicates interest. It can be a catastrophic mistake. 

The problem is that anyone can say they’re an agent, hang out an agent shingle tomorrow, run an ad or two, and within a few weeks, probably have hundreds of submissions, because there are so many people hungry for traditional publishing that they’ll sign with anyone who’ll take them. They’ll be taken, all right, usually to the cleaners. 

Agents need no certification or education, no degree, no proof of ability, no license, no standards. It’s all voluntary. In many cases, they give legal advice on complex contracts (which benefit themselves)- in other words, practicing law without a law license, which is actually a crime. Thousands of authors hand over their careers and money to absolute strangers, with little or no vetting other than they saw a listing somewhere. And then a few emails and a phone call or two. “They seemed nice, and eager to work with me.”

The publishing houses mostly send the money due the author for advances and royalties to the agent/agency. When does the author get paid? At the whim of the person holding the money. Imagine if your employer sent your paycheck to your bank, who then decided when and how much to give you of the money you’d earned! 

It’s always a good practice to be in charge of your own finances. If you do decide to sign with an agent, try to work it so the payments from the publishing house go to you first, or to each their share. After all, the agent is supposed to be working for you. Then you pay the agent. Unusual, but not unheard of. 

Other problems with agents are that if you decide to part ways, you might still have to pay them forever for any of your books they represented, or even any you sold elsewhere while you were signed with them. Yup, you could wind up forking over your 15%, even twenty years after you got rid of them. Worse than alimony. And if they sold anything of a series, they may try to get a cut of any future things you sell from that series, even after you’re no longer working together. Dean Wesley Smith (with over 40 years of experience) says writers don’t need agents anymore. He says it’s like giving fifteen percent of your house value to the person who cuts your lawn. 

Many authors say they love their agent. Some authors don’t want to talk about bad experiences with agents, for fear they’ll be blacklisted, because the Manhattan book world is a tiny bubble. And it’s possible an author might not even know for a long time they’re being badmouthed in the industry, and why doors are closed in their face. But many more will tell of the hell they went through with agents. One well-known example had an author finding out only years later that their agent had died! 

If you want to work with an agent, be careful. Have any contract with the agent and with a publisher additionally vetted by qualified, licensed Intellectual Property attorneys, not just agents who say they know what they’re doing. In the new world of publishing, agents are far less useful than they used to be. With all the changes, it’s getting tougher for them to make a decent living as well. Not having an agent means not having to give up a good chunk of profits, which are slim enough. 

However, if you want to meet agents, writer conferences are the best places, because many agents go there to find new clients, and expect to get pitched. Some agents even schedule pitch sessions at these conferences, where a prospective writer has a few minutes to pitch the agent on a book proposal. Many writers get asked for part or all of a manuscript, based on those few minutes. At least the agent will give it a chance. 

If you do this, have a killer tagline to catch their interest. Follow with a few sentences similar to a description of other books the agent has done, or top-sellers. Think high-concept: for example, Gone Girl crossed with Silence of the Lambs, that sort of thing. Keep it simple, exciting, and show you know the marketplace and what type of book that agent represents. Most have their likes and dislikes available on their website, so do your homework first. Some give precise guidelines for how to pitch them. Don’t think your manuscript is so wonderful that a strictly children’s author representative will suddenly want your adult science fiction novel (yes, this kind of idiocy still happens). But if your book is like others the agent has represented, say so. 

Your pitch could go something like this: 

“Hello. I’m [author name], and my novel, A Time for Tea, is an eighty-thousand-word cozy mystery about a blind librarian who solves crimes in her small Welsh village. It’s similar in tone to Murder by the Sea, which I see from your website you represented. This is my first novel, although I’ve had mystery stories published in [credits].” 

This pitch shows the author has done their homework, and in many cases, the agent would want to hear more. The conversation might end with the agent asking for a partial manuscript, maybe the first fifty pages or so. I’ve seen this happen so many times at conferences, and the writer comes out of the session stunned, starry-eyed, and grinning from ear-to-ear. It’s wonderful to see dreams come true, so give them the moment and don’t harangue them with lectures about what other paths they might want to think about. If they’re happy, let them live their dreams. Of course, if someone asks for your advice, wait a bit and then give them the truth as you see it. Just don’t volunteer to be a buzzkill or dream-crusher, and remember that timing is everything. 

Remember that you don’t need anyone’s permission to publish, nor do you have to wait years to be chosen by gatekeepers. You can publish independently while you pursue a traditional path if you want, becoming a hybrid author, or any way that makes you happy. And if you achieve outstanding success as an independent, the traditional publishers will then want you even more.

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Dale T. Phillips has published novels, story collections, non-fiction, and over 80 short stories. Stephen King was Dale's college writing teacher, and since then, Dale has found time to appear on stage, television, radio, in an independent feature film, and compete on Jeopardy (losing in a spectacular fashion). He's a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Sisters in Crime.