Bad Agent Alert and Advice Against Scammers

 I began writing eleven years ago with the dream of becoming a traditionally published author. I was met with rejection for years until ending up with a publisher. This didn't work out so I switched to self publishing. It was within the first week or two of 2025 that everything changed. At least I believed it did!

I was introduced to a freelance literary agent by someone impersonating an author. The agent did more than represent authors. She did marketing and promotion. This lead to a book trailer for my novella The Discarded Knight and an email campaign. I was then emotionally manipulated from that point on. The payments began to add up. I told the agent I couldn't pay more, but received hints no more services would be provided without payment. This was all before signing with her.

I know how a relationship is supposed to go between an agent and author. Money flows to the author and the agent gets paid only when the author does. I was foolish enough to believe the rules were different with a freelance agent. Its hard to explain.

Time progressed to submitting to publishers. I know now how agents do this and the person pretending to be one was going about it the wrong way. I quickly terminated the contract only to be threatened soon after. This agent is now on a watchlist. Her name is Beatrice Sampson. She runs Beatrice Literary Haven.

This person threatened to come to my home and place of work. She bullied me with the possibility of arrest. I did nothing wrong. I took steps to protect myself and severed ties with Beatrice.

Here is what I learned from this experience.

Agents must have an online presence.

Freelance agents are scammers.

Anyone publishing professional using someone else's PayPal account to receive payment is no good. If you plan to run a business you should have your own account.

People make mistakes with their sentence structure and grammar. In this case when speaking with a publishing professional those mistakes shouldn't be consistent and obvious. They are in profession made up of writing and books.

No travel is required to negotiate a book deal. As a general rule of thumb most business in publishing can be done by email or Zoom.

If you do not know what a publishing professional looks like or sounds like then run.