On Friday, I wrote a post titled "There's a Scam Artist Born Every Day." I was responding to a post I'd seen at Miss Snark's about the International Independent Literary Agents Association (IILAA).
Six of the nine agents listed as members of the IILAA just happen to be members of the infamous list created by Writers Beware and titled "Twenty Worst Literary Agencies."
Today Barbara Bauer (Best known of the twenty worst agents) went after Miss Snark in a podcast. Miss Snark responded with a challenge.
This is not the first time the two have tangled. You can check my blog for 5/25/06 for a play-by-play of their first round.
Just for grins, thinking of Babs on Friday, I checked Google for her name. Barbara's own website was listed first, but followed by dozens of warnings about her and her business practices.
I also suggested on Friday that writers post warnings on their blogs about IILAA in order to force the warnings to the top of the search engine rankings and make certain that any newbie writer googling the so-called association would immediately see those warnings.
I just went back and checked IILAA on Google. Of the first nine listings, two are the IILAA and Desert Rose (another of the twenty worst agencies). However, five of the top nine are warnings. The other two listings are unrelated.
Then, I went and checked on Barbara Bauer's Google ranking. Remember--she was the first listing when I googled her name on Friday.
Oh, joy!!! Today Babs is #3 on the rankings for her own name. Of the other eight, six are warnings, one is her listing over at Wikipedia (which she probably wrote herself, but which has since been edited by discriminating editors) and one is unrelated.
Nice job, writers. Keep it up. If the writing community warns newbie writers against unscrupulous scam artists, we will be doing a public service.
Just for fun, you might want to read another of my old posts. See my blog for 12/8/05 titled "Anatomy of a Scam," telling the tale of a crook who defrauded 200 writers of $700,000.
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8 comments:
At about 6:45 MST or so, I went over and looked again at IILAA's website, and the pages had been taken down and replaced with nothing more than a highly unprofessional rant and a literal "kiss my ass" complete with pic. I just checked a few minutes ago (around 7:30 MST) and that rant has now been replaced with a "I'm working on the site" message.
Hopefully, any new site that pops up will get the same response from writers and agents and editors alike, and we can shut it down, too.
Hot damn!!! Sometimes the angels do win.
We just have to keep on them, that's all. They'll eventually go find more receptive waters outside of publishing.
There is now an article on Miss Snark on Wikipedia. She definitely did not write it.
You may want to edit and improve the article.
Writer Beware is a scam. Their lawyer was a fraud who got kicked out in Illinois for cheating Steinbeck's family
Miss Snark is dead. She died when Ann Crispin died. Ann Crispin died in 2013 and so did miss snark!!!
The fraudulent Miss Snark literary agency scam perpetrated by Janet reid, Kristen Nelson and so many other so-called legitimate agencies died when Ann Crispin died in 2013. Good riddance!
Still waiting for publicly traded Penguin Publishing to come clean about the true identity of "Maya Reynolds" and why they allow their authors to cyber bully and harass others without dropping their titles from the Penguin list. Miss Snark, and all the other personas of AC Crispin were the product of a sick mind, literally.
Good riddance!
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