Do Not Query Big Score Productions

I suppose I should have posted this a long time ago, but late is better than never...

Big Score Productions was listed in a few past editions of Guide to Literary Agents. Somewhere in the past year (well after the 2008 edition hit shelves), Big Score started charging a $50 fee before reading submitted writing.

Don't query them. I took them out of the new edition, which is now in bookstores.

Concerning bad agencies

Once in a blue moon, I receive a complaint about an agency and it usually goes something like this: "Such and such agency won't return my calls!" I log the complaint and move on, but nothing much ever happens. The policy is that after 2-3 legitimate complaints, we start snooping around and making phone calls, and take them out of the database - but we almost never get even two troubling complaints about the same agency.

But about once a year, we receive about 5-20 about one bad one that snuck its way in. Big Score is one of those. Of course, you should never pay any upfront fees just so that your work is read or considered. No way, Jose.

One way to avoid this is to get a subscription to WritersMarket.com, rather than buying any print editions. As soon as we find out about any change to any publication or agent, we update the online database and it is changed immediately. It's very convenient. Plus, the online database has more than 6,000 listings for everything - not just agents.

Concerning this post's cadence

I just finished reading Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, which is a frighteningly hilarious collection of moments centered around sex, beer and the rock-and-roll lifetstyle. I am trying not to take on his strange alpha-male, short sentence cadence, though it is difficult. You ever get around that British friend or Southern friend and you find yourself taking on their patterns of speech and possibly even a bit of an accent? I'm fighting that now. Sorry if I lose the battle...