Has anyone else had dealings with The Fedd Agency in Austin, TX?

[Guest]

I ran into something today that I hadn't before. It was a reputable literary agent who was interested in helping me self publish by doing the marketing, social media, layout and pairing me with an illustrator etc. It was a pay to publish deal but seems like what is happening in a lot of other industries.

The pitch was once I get enough sales through their method of self publishing, this well known agent can bring my proven record to publishing houses and they will be more likely to publish my works further. Thoughts?

Has anyone else had dealings with The Fedd Agency in Austin, TX?

[Kendra]

A friend of mine got an email from a reputable agent making a similar offer.

We looked up the agent on Query Tracker and she was, indeed, legit with a number of successful titles published.

Then, we went to her website. The url was just slightly different from the email my friend received. He sent an email to her using the address on her website.

The agent confirmed scammers were pretending to be her. (I was impressed she took the time to respond!)

1. Agents don’t query writers.
2. Writers don’t pay agents.
3. Be skeptical and check Writer Beware!

[Lois]

This does not describe the services of a ‘reputable literary agent’. You may decide to go this route for your own reasons, but know that they are already misrepresenting themselves.

[Nicole]

When googling the agency, it seems they have some well known people they represent. Tim tebow, dude perfect. It looks like what they offer you is author services (cover, editing etc), but let you self publish your work (keeping your rights and royalties). I don’t know if that’s a route I would take, considering you can do those things yourself for most likely less money.

[Bill]

Any....any....'publisher' which will simply print, market, advertise and sell....subject only to a deposit/contribution....your hard worked 'oeuvre', has little faith in your creativity. Thr advice from the Writers & Artists Yearbook and others is to keep away from 'vanity publishers'.

[Lynn]

Agents are hurting because of the boom in self-publishing. They have to find a way to make money. What they are proposing is not actually the same as self publishing where you hire an editor and a cover designer, format your book, and upload it to Amazon, all without a middleman. What they are offering is the same as going with a vanity press. You pay them for all those services. If your intention was to go with a vanity press, then you might as well choose this one.

[Stephanie]

So here's how this works. This "agent" reaches out to a ton of people like this. Gets all of you to pay a bunch. Puts a small portion of that money into sales, pockets the rest as their main income. The sales are not their main income. It's just icing on their cake if they end up lucky, which they rarely do because of the low effort into sales. If you look at their site, you can probably find a list of authors they represent and I'm betting most of those authors have 20 reviews or less. This agent is trained to market to authors to get them to pay, not readers because writers is where their money comes from. You need your money to come from readers, so it's really not a good match.

But you could instead take all that money you'd pay them and put it straight into marketing yourself. Then if you do get a good sales record and wanted to try traditional publishing, it's certainly a possible road. There are quite a few hybrid authors who did that. However, if you are making good sales on your own, you may want to stick to self pub since you keep a higher percent of the royalties

[Terry]

If you have a proven track record with sales, why do you need an agent? Just go direct to the publisher and save yourself 20%. Publishers are actually looking for breakout self-published authors, more so than going to agents in many cases.

[Jeff]

This “reputable literary agent” is trying to take you for the proverbial “ride.”
Cut off all contact immediately.

[Richard]

You lost me at 'pay to publish...'