In December of 2005, I Googled “agents looking for new authors” and ran across the NY Literary Agency (NYLA) listing. I sent them my query letter right away, and within a couple of days, I heard back from them. They wanted me to e-mail them my manuscript, so I did. (I was excited. I’d heard that getting an agent was going to be rough, but maybe I was having beginner’s luck.)

NYLA’s next correspondence included a contract attachment. It seemed to me as though it was a pretty standard agreement with a 30-day “out” clause, so I signed it and sent it back. Mind you, I’d never even spoken to anyone at the firm at this point. All of our business was conducted via e-mail.

In January, I received another e-mail from them, this one telling me I needed to have a critique of my manuscript performed before we could proceed any further with the process. They mentioned that there was a company they worked with on a regular basis that would give me a discount. It would only cost me $80 to get the critique.

I agreed to the plan and authorized a payment of $80 from my Paypal account. I was then instructed to send them my synopsis for the critique process. Since I don't have one, and I’d already told them this, I sent them my query letter instead. A week later, the critique arrived in my inbox. Roughly 90% of the critique was related to my “synopsis” (which I don’t have and never sent). Instead of writing to me and saying that what I’d sent them was not a synopsis, they actually critiqued my query letter as though it were a synopsis.

The gist of the resulting critique was that my synopsis needed work. And that my manuscript needed some editing work, and that I had these options:

1) I could go through one of their editing firms, which would charge me a mere $149.99 for a partial editing (leaving me to edit the rest myself).

2) I could obtain an editing service to go over the work on a line-by-line basis and fix it.

3) I could obtain a writing coach to provide feedback and assist me with editing my work.

4) I could try again to fix it myself.

Okay, so I could have “tried again” to fix it, except I was given no clear indication of where to begin. What needed work? They never said. Since I’d never heard of “partial editing,” I e-mailed them back to find out what it meant. I got no response. I e-mailed them again. Again, there was no response. 

I spent the next two weeks editing my book, then sent it to my niece, who is an English major. In February, satisfied that I’d edited my manuscript successfully, I sent my second draft to NYLA. I immediately received a response telling me it would take them two weeks to review it. That was on a Friday. On the following Monday (only one business day later), I received another e-mail stating that after reviewing my work, NYLA had determined that it needed still more work.

Again, the criticism was vague. The agent did not indicate what my manuscript needed precisely, just that it needed “more work.” Again they suggested that I contact one of their editing firms. Again they mentioned the $149.99 fee for a “partial editing” and they added that since I didn’t “pay" to have my book edited, I wasn’t out anything. Huh? I had never told them that it was my niece from Colorado who actually edited my book. How did they know I hadn't paid to have it edited? And here I was: Still at a loss as to what “partial editing” meant, as it still hadn’t been explained to me what this editing service was that they wanted me to pay for.

At last it dawned on me: I was getting screwed, and nobody was buying me dinner. A few calls to independent editing firms such as The Editorial Department validated my suspicions. The verdict was in: This odd behavior on the part of NYLA was not the norm for reputable literary agencies.