Eager to Read Your Pride and Joy--for a Fee

Gayle Herman-Zegar, a Santa Monica attorney who quit work for a year to write a mystery novel, was excited three months ago when she finished the job. Friends told her that “The Poison Pen,” an intrigue set in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, was deliciously depraved, maybe as deliciously depraved as books by best-selling authors Sidney Sheldon or Judith Krantz. At 250,000 words it certainly was as long.

Herman-Zegar, 27, began looking for a literary agent. A vice president in a large Hollywood agency, one that represents screenwriters, actors and directors, suggested she contact the Scott Meredith Agency in New York.

Megabuck Successes

Herman-Zegar telephoned and told a staff member about “The Poison Pen.” A few days later she received a note signed by Meredith himself saying “ . . . we’d certainly be interested in considering your mystery novel for possible representation.”

Included with the note was a flyer detailing Meredith’s megabuck successes in selling books by Norman Mailer, Carl Sagan, Arthur C. Clarke and others. There also was a brochure saying the agency charges unpublished writers a fee when it considers their manuscripts.

“There are many fine writers who never arrive because of poor market sense or because nobody ever gets around to straightening out the technical flaws in their stuff,” the brochure said by way of explaining the fee, “and if newer writers could be sifted through and the promising people groomed (Meredith’s emphasis) for major sales, it would easily be worthwhile.”

The brochure also said, “If reading indicates various errors in technique, and that the material you have submitted is irreparably unsalable, we’ll tell you why, frankly and in detail, so that you may avoid those errors in the future and make sure your new work is salable.”

Meredith’s minimum fee--for short stories and magazine articles--is $200. Novels under 100,000 words run $250. A manuscript the length of “The Poison Pen” costs $400.

“It was a lot of money,” Herman-Zegar said, “but it sounded like I’d get a lot for it. They say they’re going to stay with you, revise, work with you.”

In August she sent off the manuscript and $400. Two weeks later she received a critique signed by Meredith saying that the novel was not “remotely salable.” Although the critique was eight pages long, Herman-Zegar said she felt cheated. One long section contained general suggestions on writing taken from a book by Meredith. Another section read like a literature teacher’s class notes, listing books that Herman-Zegar might study to improve her craft.

‘A Partial Handle’

When the critique talked directly about her manuscript, there were inconsistencies. At one point it said, “ ‘The Poison Pen’ is very impressive, it’s deeply felt and you’ve managed to capture some of the entertainment industry’s milieu with force and verisimilitude.” But later the letter stated, “You’ve got only a partial handle on the whole music scene; I’d like to say that it’s credible and believable but the background here is so sketchy as to have little force. . . . “

The critique also said “ . . . this novel is somewhat in excess of 200,000 words and that is way, way above the optimum for a first novel by a complete unknown such as yourself.”

“I told them how long it was on the phone and in a note before I sent it in,” Herman-Zegar said. “If it was too long for a first novelist to be published, why didn’t they tell me that before taking the $400?”

A few weeks later she happened across an article about the Meredith Agency’s reading fee practice in the Sept. 15-22 issue of the New Republic. The article quoted excerpts of critiques sent to writers who, like Herman-Zegar, had their work deemed unsalable. One report began, “This long, ambitious novel of the ‘Merchant Marine’ is so interesting, so complex, such a jumble of the good, the bad, the indifferent, the audacious, the brilliant, the inept, the workable, the unworkable that I barely know where to start. . . . “

‘Poison Pen’ Report

The report on “The Poison Pen” began, “There’s a great deal to say about this long, ambitious novel full of anguish, coincidence, contrivance and blood, darkness and susceptibility. . . . “

Herman-Zegar said she now felt more cheated than before.

“I don’t even know now if they read it,” she complained. “So much of the critique is a form letter with the same adjectives as the New Republic article, I wonder if someone didn’t just skim a few parts and plug in comments to make it sound like they read it.”

In a telephone interview, Meredith said that “The Poison Pen” was read by not one but three staff members. He had no recollection of the book, but said three readings is the policy of the agency. Meredith defended his fee-for-consideration service as a boon to new writers rather than a way for his agency to make money from them.

“You have to understand that more and more publishers won’t read scripts that come over the transom at all,” he said. “Agents who don’t charges fees won’t read them either. This gives new writers a chance.”

‘A Break-Even Thing’

Meredith said he had no idea of the ratio between manuscripts that his agency rejects outright and those that received the coveted grooming for major sales. He also said he had no idea whether the reading fee service was a money-maker for the agency.

“I keep asking our accountant that, and he says he thinks it’s about a break-even thing. It’s hard to tell, because it’s mixed up with our other work.”

Meredith said his office gives fee-readings to about 100 manuscripts a week, or 5,200 a year. By comparison, he said that in the agency’s 1985 fiscal year it made 900 sales for previously unpublished writers. Most of the sales were of articles and short stories, not books, he added.

Meredith said that five employees do fee-readings full time, and that several others help with the service part time. If one takes $250 as an average fee, the service grosses about $780,000 a year for the Meredith Agency. A 1981 article in Forbes magazine said the agency’s gross income from reading fees was $800,000 a year, a figure that Meredith claims the author “made up.”

The agent has been criticized for buying names and addresses of would-be writers from literary magazines at 10 cents apiece to build a marketing list for his reading-fee service. He said it is true that the agency buys lists of fledgling writers, but defended the practice by saying, “I would hope that anything in this agency is aggressively marketed.”

Meredith was the first agent to hold a literary auction--sending a manuscript to several publishers at once and inviting them to bid on it. The practice helped drive up the size of advances received by authors. He also was the first to charge fees and has been doing it for more than 30 years.

Benefits for Writers

Some other agents have taken up the practice, but estimates of its acceptance vary. “Literary Agents in North America,” a book by Publishers Weekly, says that 80% of agencies charge fees of one sort or another to writers. However, the listings of “Literary Market Place,” standard reference of the publishing industry, show only about one in eight agents offering a read-for-fee service.

Meredith said that his reading-fee service benefits writers as much as himself. Other agents, however, disagreed.

“It’s a racket,” H. N. Swanson said of reading fees. “Legitimate agents don’t do it.”

“It changes your job,” Fred Hill said. “You’re no longer an agent representing writers. You’re selling them a service.”

Sandra Dijkstra is an agent in Del Mar who charges what she terms “evaluation fees.” They are $150 to evaluate a proposal for a nonfiction book and $175 to $275 for a novel, depending on length. Dijkstra said she began the practice not long after establishing her agency in 1981.

Deluged by Manuscripts

“When you’re a new agency, you get solicited by the great, unwashed mass of unknown writers. I found I was deluged by manuscripts of, let us say, diverse quality, and I felt very bad giving a one-line no for an answer. So I spent a lot of time critiquing writers’ work. My accountant said, ‘Why are you doing this for free? Doctors don’t and lawyers don’t.’ I realized I was giving professional advice and that I was in a position to do it.”

Dijkstra said she asks writers first to send a query letter and sample chapter of their work. If the material is “obviously bad,” she said she declines to see any more, even for a fee.