Over the past week, I’ve had several messages from writers about agents. Each writer thought an agent would be the answer to their woes.

If only that were so.

Pay attention: a bad agent will kill your career. Ask any professional writer for their “bad agent” horror stories, and stand well back when they unleash their rage.

Big tip: wait until someone offers you money for your book, and then get an agent. Agents make money from your sales. If you don’t have any sales, guess what kind of “agent” you get?

I don’t mean this post to sound as if I’m down on agents, I’m not. Most agents are professional, hard-working people, who do their best for their writers. As in any group, there are incompetents and bad apples.

If you’re a new writer, it’s impossible for you to get a good agent unless you’ve already sold a book, or are close to selling.

Focus on your writing — you have complete control over that — and not on details, like agents. Once you write a good book which someone wants to publish, you’ll get a good agent, not before.

I get really, really tired of writing about writing scams — I used to cover them extensively on my writing blog, but there are so many I can’t keep track. (Writer Beware does a good job of alerting writers to scammers.)

Publishers pay YOU, you don’t pay them

This should go without saying, but if you’re a new writer, remember: THEY PAY YOU — you don’t PAY anyone to publish your work.

One particular scammer has turned into an industry on his own. Making Light: Robert Fletcher, Literary Scammer, Part II says about this devil:

“One of the chief points against Fletcher-the-Agent (New York Literary Agency, Writer’s Literary Agency, Children’s Literary Agency, Poets Literary Agency, etc. etc.) was that he demonstrably couldn’t sell books to publishers. But if he owned a publisher….

The difference between Strategic Book Publishing and Eloquent Books is this: Strategic Book Publishing pretends to be a ‘traditional’ publisher—no fees to the author—provided the author agrees to buy five copies per week at full retail price. Eloquent Books, on the other hand, pretends to be a ‘joint venture’ publisher, where the author and the publisher each put up half of the cost. But since Eloquent Books authors typically send Fletcher (under one or another of his names) a thousand bucks plus in advance, it’s clear that they’re paying the whole freight plus a nice profit for Fletcher.”

He’s one among many scammers. You can avoid them all, if you remember this one, very simple point: publishers pay you. You don’t pay them. Nor do you pay agents.

Oops… the perils of bestsellerdom. You know you’ve hit the big time when you get sued.

Stephenie Meyer’s publisher denies ‘Breaking Dawn’ plagiarism claim | EW.com reports:

“Author Stephenie Meyer has been accused of plagiarizing small portions of Breaking Dawn, the fourth book in her Twilight series, from a novel called The Nocturne by Jordan Scott. “

Interesting snippet: “she (Jordan Scott) regularly posted passages and chapters on her web site, www.jordanscott.com”.

Does this mean you should forgo blogging to build your platform as you write your book?

NO. Blog your book — it’s the easiest way to build your platform.