Happy Holidays from LitMatch!

We'd just like to take a moment to wish all of our friends and users a happy holiday! Thank you for all your support and kind words, and best wishes for a happy and productive new year!

Sincerely,

Kris and Christopher Hawkins
LitMatch.net

New Feature: Statistics Upgrade 1

We’ve recently launched the first in a series of planned upgrades to our statistics package. Up ‘til now, we’ve been focused on making the site as useful as possible for the individual user tracking submissions in our system. But now that we have a strong base of submission information to draw from, we’re proud to be able to add these statistics to our ever-growing set of literary agent research tools and offer them to our registered and unregistered users alike!

This upgrade covers all the basics, breaking down the responses for both agencies and individual agents, with separate stats for email and postal mail responses. The average, fastest and slowest responses are displayed for each category. In addition, you can easily find out how many submissions result in rejections (both personal and form rejections), requests for materials, and offers of representation.

We're especially excited about this release because we were able to launch it a full month early. Initially, it was planned for January because that's when we thought we'd have a useable number of submissions recorded in our system to make the stats meaningful. But, thanks to the support and productivity of our users, we're able to leave this particular present under the tree just in time for the holidays.

As always, we’re committed to providing the most relevant and meaningful statistics to help you in your search for representation. More reporting upgrades are planned for the near future, with some in development, and some already finished, waiting for the next threshold in our submission counts to make them relevant and useful. You can help us get there by spreading the word about LitMatch to your friends and colleagues in the writing community.

Thank you for your support and best wishes for a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year!

Sincerely,

Chris Hawkins
LitMatch.net

Safe Submitting, Part 2: Avoiding Agent Scams

Last time, I wrote about how to protect your writing from theft and loss. Unfortunately, that’s only part of the equation. Even if you’ve taken steps to copyright your work and keep it safe from thieves, you can still fall victim to unscrupulous people. Some of them masquerade as literary agents, but make their livings preying on the enthusiasm of writers and exploiting the competitive nature of the publishing business.

Don’t be too alarmed, though. The vast majority of literary agents are fine, upstanding professionals. And the scammers are often easy to spot if you know what to look for. Here are some guidelines and warning signs you can use to keep yourself safe:

Spotting a Scam Agent
Legitimate agents make money ONLY if their clients make money. Period. That means that legitimate agents don’t charge you to represent your book. So-called agents who charge reading fees seldom have the industry contacts necessary to make a professional sale. And even if they do, they don’t have as much incentive to sell your project because they already have your money in their pocket. Avoid these “agents” at all costs.

Second, legitimate agents don’t have to advertise. Whether it’s a Google ad or a classified in the back of a writers’ magazine, if an agent is spending money to find clients, they’re definitely not for you. (And as an aside, we’ve taken steps to make sure that the worst such offenders don’t appear in the ads hosted on LitMatch. However, the nature of Google’s ad system makes it possible for them to sometimes sneak in. If you come across a potential scammer in our advertising, please email us and we will take steps to block them.)

Third, be wary of agents who recommend additional services at a cost to you. If an agent says that they’d like to represent your book, but only after it goes through an editing process you’ll have to pay for, chances are good he’s in cahoots (that’s right, I just used the word cahoots) with the editor he’s recommending. If this happens, run away and don’t look back.

Finally, do your research before you submit. Scammers don’t work in a vacuum, and their actions usually leave a trail. There are a number of websites that track questionable activities in the literary world, including the SFWA’s Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors. And while we at LitMatch take pains to keep the scammers out of our listings, if you should ever spot one we’ve missed, let us know so we can take them out.

Now, be careful out there, and as always, get back to writing.

Chris Hawkins
LitMatch.net

Safe Submitting, Part 1: Protecting Your Work

As a writer, your work is one of your most cherished possessions. You nurture it. You polish it. You pour months, if not years, of your life into it. Letting go if it long enough to try to get it published is scary enough, but if you stop to think about the people out there who make their livings preying on the dreams of writers, it can get downright terrifying.

But it doesn’t have to be. The truth is that the majority of people in the writing business are relatively honest and on the up-and-up. But you should still take steps to protect yourself against the unscrupulous minority that’s determined to take advantage of the unsuspecting and the uninformed.

The first step in protecting your work is establishing ownership. The most common, and without a doubt the best, way of doing this is by filing the finished work with the U.S. Copyright Office (or your nation’s equivalent). There are many services out there that will handle this for you for a nominal fee, but the fact is that you don’t really need them. Copyrighting an unpublished work is as simple as filling out a one-page form and sending a copy of your book to the copyright office.

You may be tempted to save yourself the filing cost ($45 at the time of this writing), and use a shortcut often referred to as a “poor man’s copyright”. This involves sealing your work in an envelope and mailing it to yourself, with the postmark establishing the date of completion. The problem with this is that it can be easily faked by sending an unsealed envelope, and isn’t likely to stand up if you ever need to rely on it in court. That $45 may seem like a lot of money to a struggling artist, but the cost is well worth the protection you receive. Consider it an investment in your own peace of mind.

Second, limit your risk by sharing the work only with those you trust, as well as legitimate agents and publishers (more on what makes a legitimate agent in our next installment). Posting your newly-finished book on your blog or website makes it easier to steal and may even hurt your chances of eventually getting it published. If you still want to post your work online, make sure it’s accompanied by a clear statement of copyright. If you’re going to share your work in this way, registration is a must.

Finally, theft isn’t the only thing that can threaten your manuscript. Many of you are just a hard drive crash or a misplaced USB drive away from losing your work forever (trust me on this; I speak from experience). So, be sure to back up all your files, preferably on a permanent medium, like a CD, and make sure you have a printed copy in a safe place in case all else fails.

Next time, we’ll talk about how to protect yourself from scam agents and other predators. In the meantime, get back to writing.

Christopher Hawkins
LitMatch.net