Forum: Author Hangout

I got an email from someone claiming to be from Bookends Literary Agency. The name on the email even matched one of their senior literary agents. I believe they found me on LinkedIn based on what they put in the email. I knew it wasn't from Bookends because the email server was gmail.com, not the domain of the Agency.

I played along to find out what their scam was. I even sent them the first 3 chapters of a novel that's already published. That's when I found out what the scam is.

They gave me weak feedback on the 3 chapters and suggested I contact an editor they work with who will fix my manuscript so that it could be submitted to Bookends. That's when I called it quits. That "editor" must be impersonating the literary agent and I'm sure he charges to "fix up" a manuscript but doesn't have any relationship with the literary agency.

I forwarded the original email to Bookends.

Yea, that's a known scam. I get those once every week or 2 from varying publishers. From what I've read the scam is to either get you to pay up and then vanish, or get you to pay up, run it through AI and send back AI fixes. (usually its take the money and vanish)

Keep in mind, this scam isn't from something like a vanity publisher. They claim to be a legit agent at a legit literary agency. Even when you call them on it, they say go to the literary agency's site and check out "their" bio.

Of course their email address is a dead giveaway. It's not from the real literary agency's mail server. It's a gmail account.