Hi Matt, just seen your Q to me, sorry.
I have an agent, The Rebecca Pratt Agency. Was tough and she's my fourth!
Agent 1: Useless bloke in Portsmouth who sent wrong MSS to publishers and didn't follow through. He now works in a bakery in France.
Agent 2: A woman in Scotland. Seemed okay but disappeared. I contacted her landlord who said he entered the house to find her personal belongings gone but hundreds of parcels, addressed to her, mostly tied up with string. He opened some - all manuscripts from aspiring novelists. She took no fees from the few I contacted. I've googled her name now and then but no sign. Worthy of a mystery story in itself!
Agent 3: This was the now infamous Christopher Hill of Hill & Hill Literary Agents. I met him and he paid for a nice meal in Edinburgh, said he used to work for Penguin and answered all my questions authoritavely. I contacted another of his clients, who was a Sheriff in the US, and we compared his feedback, especially when he said HarperCollins, Crown etc were offering us 5 figure advances. It was a sham. He didn't take any money from most of us and only pennies for photocopying from others, but none of the publishers had received anything from him. Police investigated here in the UK and the FBI were involved. It didn't go to court. He needs help. see
http://accrispin.blogspot.co.uk/2006/09/victoria-strauss-hill-hill-literary.html although it was wrong for Victoria Strauss to call it a scam as such.
Agent 4: My current one.
It's a minefield out there!
