Nathan Bransford - The Forums

In case you haven't heard, the internet went BOOM yesterday after a self-published author posted a blog claiming a VERY BIG agent had contacted her and sold her manuscript literally overnight. Many people believed it -- we hear "overnight" success stories all the time. But it turns out that this author was being duped by someone who had impersonated Writers House agent Jodi Reamer (who represents Stephenie Meyer, John Green, Ally Condie, and many other bestselling authors) and was sending false offers of representation and/or claiming to have sold self-published manuscripts.

You can read more about the situation here on GalleyCat.

I wanted to bring this up, because I think many aspiring authors can fall into this kind of trap, and it's always important to remember 1) stories that sound too good to be true probably are, and 2) we must always, always, always verify that an agent offering representation is legitimate. How many of us dream of a well-known agent plucking us off the Internet and telling us they're going to make all our dreams come true? We have high hopes, and we have to be careful not to be lured by scammers.

Thanks for the heads-up, Steph!

Here's a longer post on the situation, including some of the fake emails.

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2011/07/c ... -hoax.html

Thanks for posting that, hektorkarl. I just saw that, as well. What a crappy thing to do.

Yeah, extremely cruel...