Saturday, March 31, 2007

Author Advocates Sued by Alleged Literary Agent

You might remember a couple months ago I posted about the IILAA. A short lived website and "association" of self described "independent literary agencies" consisting of a number of persons who also happened to be found on the SFWA Bewares Top 20 Worst Agents list.

And before that, there was the AW shut down precipitated by cartoony threats to the AW hosting company (amongst other things - certainly not the entire story) by one alleged literary agent in particular. The alleged agent in question believes there is a huge conspiracy afoot and pod-casts about it. Forums like Absolute Write are in cahoots (although the alleged agent misuses the term "dragoon" for them, questioning, in my mind, the benefits of alleged agent's PhD education?) with Google and in the pay of the big agencies and publishers to make sure that the poor independent alleged agents are silenced.

Well, that alleged agent has gone and filed a real lawsuit (I wonder if she's asking for a billion dollars in damages). You can learn more about it from:

P.N. Elrod (be sure to click on the "Trial of Agent B" link)

Neil Gaiman

SFWA announcement

Of course the defendants themselves can't discuss the case, but there is some discussion in general on Absolute Write about it.

Bar...uh, the alleged literary agent, has threatened lawsuits, or tried to have other actions taken against author advocates and web forums before. Read this post in the Writer's Weekly forum, this one at P.N. Elrod's LJ (half way down the page are quotes of actual threats made by the literary agent) and this one from Teresa Nielson Hayden of Making Light.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That sounds like Bar ... the alleged literary agent ... and the kind of action she would take.

I am not a psychic, but I would imagine she is going to find a fierce fight in this if she is really going after a real lawsuit.

I wish the defendants the best, and I look forward to the plaintiff learning just how foolhardy it is to file suit when she probably has no leg to stand on.


Sean D. Schaffer