Part VI
The Pikes Peak writer’s conference we attended was in April, 2004. In June, Sharene and I married and honeymooned in Florida.
As is usual, when returning to any job, there were miles and miles of emails to work through. One particular email was from a client informing us a group trying to make trouble for us. One of her critique partners mentioned that her agency (us) was now “Not Recommended” by Preditors and Editors.
Since I didn’t know who Preditors and Editors were, I called her. From our conversation I learned there were these “writer advocacy groups” and somehow we were now on their radar for charging fees. It seemed that any agency charging fees of any kind were taking advantage of unsuspecting clients and thus were labeled as scammer. This was true even though reimbursing is not a fee but technically repayment of money loaned.
Puritanical outrage is an awesome thing to behold.
What a wonderful thing to come home to after a week of wedded bliss. Anyone can open a used car lot and sell flood damaged cars but asking people to repay money spent for copying and postage considered awful? When you order an item doesn’t the company you buy from make you pay postage and shipping charges? Do they defer that charge until you feel like paying it? Of course not.
Who is setting the rules here? Does a Web site run by an individual dictate how legitimate businesses should conduct business or does the industry govern itself? Agents have a governing body in the AAR and the AAR states that asking clients repay costs incurred in copying and shipping documents is okay. What gives anyone the right to make rules that counter this? Life is so funny.
Bullies now have a cause? What’s hilarious is their cause is protecting adults who never asked for their protection in the first place. If this whole idea hadn’t been so lame-brained I’d have laughed. In fact I did laugh and immediately swept it from my mind as too dumb to even consider. Bully protection. Ha-ha. Surely this person couldn’t be taken serious. Surely authors wouldn’t get caught up in witch hunts run by a bullies. The day is gone when the bully with the fastest gun ran the town. Authors are too intelligent to fall for that, aren’t they? Surely they would know that we were only asking that money we spent be repaid. It’s not a fee. But the internet at that time was the wild west. There is no one controlling the town so the fastest mouth wins.
Two days later, I called an author whose manuscript I’d been interested in representing. She answered and as soon as I announced who I was, she hung up on me. What the fuck?
Later that day, I got an email from her saying she was removing her work from consideration—no reason, just removing it.
Queries slowed from a rush to a trickle. It seems I was wrong. Authors believed this crap.
War had been declared and we were now the enemy.
I’ve always been a conspiracy theorist. I don’t know why, I just am. I guess I became one the day a president I loved was shot and killed for no reason except his nation, and the world, loved him.
It seemed very odd that not two months ago I had sat on a panel with two bitches, one of whom had accused me of robbing my clients. And here we are on the “bully radar.” Coincidence? I think not.
The Gatekeepers Diary 