"solicitation is one of the first and most common signs of a scam these days"
This is true about most scams these days. So much so that I have been advising non-technical friends and family to stop directly responding to any communication you did not initiate. Instead ask yourself, "how would I go about addressing or confirming this with the supposed source if I hadn't received a message about it?" Also helps with avoiding the encouragement of marketers.
It seems like the only way to really combat this is through closed / semi-closed trusted networks, but those tend to become dominated by personalities and difficult for newcomers to break into. The reduced trust in "outside" voices then leads to echo chambers and groupthink. I think we're already starting to see some of this in the kinds of books being put out by the big publishing houses; I don't have hard numbers (and maybe I'm just getting old and cynical) but a lot of recent titles feel extremely generic.
There's a subplot in Neil Stephenson's Fall (or Dodge in Hell) where media and other networks are so saturated with false, meaningless, clickbaity, or otherwise negative-value content that they become either less than worthless, or require paid "filters" to extract actual value. I'm getting a sense of being close to that point already and I don't know what the right move is from here to reduce the fracturing of my wider social circles.
What online trust? Internet has always been a prominent source for the most scamy content. You should never trust anything blindly, that is today as valid as it was 30 years ago.
> It seems like the only way to really combat this is through closed / semi-closed trusted networks,
Those are open to other levels of scam and abuse. This is not a problem of being open or closed, but whether one has the ability to evaluate their business-partners. And in that regard, open communication has proved itself to be a reliable source of information and to root out scams.
How so? The linked article has plenty of ways that are available to outsiders that aren't "in" with the "right crowd":
Most or all of these will appear on its website:
The names and biographies of member agents
A client list
Verifiable book sales, in the form of book covers, announcements, news releases, and the like
Clear submission guidelines
Information on agency history–when it was founded, by whom, etc.
A real agency will have at least some internet footprint beyond its website (listings on sites like Publishers Marketplace and QueryTracker, sales announcements, mentions in the trade press, references to clients and sales, and the like). Ditto for the individual agents.
A real agency is highly unlikely to email or phone you out of the blue with an offer of representation or a claim that a traditional publisher is interested in your work (real agents don’t pre-shop manuscripts for authors they don’t represent).
A real agency will not require you to pay anything or buy anything as a condition of representation or publication. Other than the agent’s commission, there should never be a cost associated with rights acquisition.This is the only way. The cost of spinning up a new identity on the web (with supporting documents, pictures, etc) is near zero now. There's only 3 or 4 things to really vet people, and those can be faked with more effort.
The only real way to vet someone nowadays is IRL, and that requires non-trivial effort but provides most guarantees you'd want in new participants in an online community.
> I'm getting a sense of being close to that point already and I don't know what the right move is from here to reduce the fracturing of my wider social circles.
I have this feeling too. My guess is that social circles will be less fluid and dynamic. Traditional centers of trust will become more important.
It pains me that this feels true as someone chronically online and used to find great use from the internet, but online-only has more failure modes now. There's still ways to do it though.
Now that the internet is available to the entire world, including basically anyone with a pulse, that feature is entirely gone.
>A real agency is highly unlikely to email or phone you out of the blue with an offer of representation or a claim that a traditional publisher is interested in your work (real agents don’t pre-shop manuscripts for authors they don’t represent).
>A real agency will not require you to pay anything or buy anything as a condition of representation or publication. Other than the agent’s commission, there should never be a cost associated with rights acquisition.
highly unlikely is politespeak for never going to happen unless your self published work is making tens of thousands of sales already.
But generally yes, an agent is not going to contact you randomly.
The fact is that a shocking number of agent websites are awful. These are legitimate agents. Some of them have surprising numbers of best-sellers behind their names. Their websites still suck.
Why?
Because they're agents, not programmers. They don't have the time or the inclination to do this kind of thing, and frankly the incentives don't require them to get better.
While we're here, let me also point out that there are no qualifications and no certification associated with being an agent. None whatsoever. Any of us here could put up a website and start taking submissions. That doesn't mean we'd be good at it, but the line between "agent" and "not agent" is shockingly thin.
Don't believe me? Here's an alphabetically sorted list of (probably? mostly?) real agents. You can go check out their websites yourself:
https://www.manuscriptwishlist.com/find-agentseditors/agent-...
I was upset enough about this situation at one point that I wrote a whole essay about it, along with a website template to show them how to do better. But then I thought better of it and decided it would be better not to burn my reputation in the industry, even if their web design skills leave me wanting to put my eyes out.
Bottom line: I absolutely agree that an agent should never cold email you (unless you are already very successful, in which case hopefully you have better sources of advice than an HN thread). They should absolutely never charge you money. And you should be very careful with referrals they give you if you're not very confident they're legit (or frankly, even if they are).
But if their websites suck: well, sorry, that's sort of how the industry goes. (Unless you never want to work with a boutique agent, ever.)
This really shouldn't be an excuse in 2025. Tools like webflow and wix exist now. If you said "designer" it might have some truth, but you can find plenty of freelance web designers who will do it so cheaply that probably even a single book deal could cover it.
When I was a naïve young person we did something similar, paying a bit for our track to be on a CD. I've no illusions now, but I still joke I'm a published musician.
And there are still plenty of ways to become an author if you want. I have a guilty pleasure of LitRPG books, which are generally terrible and riddled with problem authors, but there's a cadre of writers who are making good money.
They write in a serialized format like Dickens used to. Chapter by chapter, release it for free on RoyalRoad, get traction. Then they package a book up for Kindle Unlimited, take the old chapters off RR apart from some taster chapters, and start a Patreon for advanced access to new chapters.
There's one series which is absolute trash, Defiance of the Fall, where he's admitted he's dragging the story out as he's making so much money.
As such it is actually easy to catch out the scammer.
These fake agencies obviously give no advance, then push you to buy services related to supposed publishing of your book. 5k this, 10k for that, we're almost ready, just another 15k for xyz and we'll totally pay you that 350k for you book!
I am Damon Green, a leading literary agent...
Probably not all the latest fakes, not any longer.