“Everyone has to start somewhere.”

This is the justification used by countless aspiring writers for signing with an agent who a) has no relevant professional credentials, b) has no track record of sales (sometimes after many years in business), c) has a website/contract/correspondence laced with mis-spellings and grammatical errors, or d) all of the above.

Just as every published writer was once an unpublished writer, this reasoning goes, just as every surgeon was once a medical student and every master carpenter was once a kid playing with a plastic hammer, every agent was once a non-agent. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Well, sure. But you don’t just wake up one day and decide you’re a surgeon. You don’t buy yourself a box of woodworking tools and call yourself a carpenter. You don’t graduate from college and immediately apply for a job as a senior editor. You need training. Knowledge. Relevant professional experience.

If you’re thinking this is pretty obvious, I agree. To do a skilled job, you need job skills. Duh.

The trouble is, huge numbers of new writers seem to feel that literary agents are exempt from this basic principle. All a new agent really needs, they think, is a website, some determination, and a can-do attitude. So what if the agent doesn’t know the ropes? She can learn them on the job. So what if her spelling’s a little erratic? Anyone can make a mistake. So what if it takes her a while to make a sale? Everyone has to start somewhere.

But it doesn’t work that way. Agenting isn’t like selling Avon products. You can’t just grow into the job with enthusiasm and a good work ethic. Agenting is a highly skilled profession that requires a range of specialized expertise (such as an understanding of rights and contract terms), negotiating savvy, a deep knowledge of the publishing industry, and personal contacts (since publishing is still very much a deals-over-lunch business). These are not skills that are easily acquired outside the publishing industry itself--which is why most successful agents have either worked in publishing in some capacity, or trained at a reputable agency. Nor are skills acquired in other professions--advertising, say, or sales--necessarily transferable. Publishing is a universe unto itself. The sort of selling and negotiating that goes on between agents and editors doesn’t much resemble the selling and negotiating that happens in the business world.

People who come to agenting from non-publishing-related fields rarely manage to make a go of it. I’m not just making a generalization here. Documentation gathered by Writer Beware over the past eight years bears me out. We have scores of files on inexperienced agents who gave up after a couple of years of fruitless trying. We have scores more on amateur agents who turned to fee-charging or editing schemes in order to keep their non-manuscript-selling agencies afloat. Many writers think that scam agents are their greatest danger, but amateur agents--who actually outnumber the scammers by a good percentage--are just as bad.

I’m not really sure why so many writers have a tough time believing this--why they think that anyone, experienced or not, can hang out a shingle as an agent and have as much chance of success as someone who has been an in-house editor for twenty years. Hey, if it were that easy, why would you need an agent at all? Possibly they don’t grasp the level of expert skill involved. Or maybe it’s because, apart from college creative writing programs, there’s no formal training for writers. Anyone can be a writer; why shouldn’t it be the same for agents?

In many cases, of course, it’s because the agent tells the writer what he most desperately wants to hear--that he’s talented, that his manuscript will sell. These are powerful promises, especially to someone who has experienced a lot of rejection. And if the agent is a failed novelist who turned to agenting because she thought she could do a better job than all the nasty agents who sent her form rejection letters, or a retired grade-school teacher who took up agenting because he thought it would be a pleasant home business and in three years of agenting has yet to make a sale, what’s going to be the more powerful motivator for the writer--the practical considerations of job experience, or the ego-boost of recognition, with all the dreams of success it invokes? Will the writer say This agent doesn’t have the skill to sell my manuscript? Or will he swallow the dream, and tell himself Everyone has to start somewhere?

So think twice before approaching new agents who don’t have an industry background. Avoid agents who’ve been in business for years and are still struggling to establish a track record. Run far and fast from agents who make spelling mistakes or grammatical errors or haven’t bothered to proof their websites. These agents started somewhere--but where they are isn't anyplace you want to be.

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Excerpted with permission from Writer Beware's blog, maintained by Victoria Strauss and Ann Crispin. Writer Beware is the public face of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's Committee on Writing Scams. Like many genre-focused professional writers' groups, SFWA is concerned not just with issues that affect professional authors, but with the problems and pitfalls that face aspiring writers. The Committee on Writing Scams, and the Writer Beware website, founded in 1998, reflect that concern.

Although SFWA is a US-based organization of science fiction and fantasy writers, the Committee's efforts aren't limited by country or genre. We've designed the Writer Beware website so it can be used by any writer, regardless of subject, style, genre, or nationality.

I was born in Exeter, New Hampshire. My father, a university professor, was very successful in obtaining research grants and guest professorships, and during my childhood and adolescence we traveled almost as much as a military family, never staying in one place for more than a couple of years at a time. In addition to several U.S. states, I've lived in Ireland, England, and Germany, and traveled throughout Europe.

I graduated from Vassar College with a degree in Comparative Religion--which didn't do much to help me find a conventional job, but did satisfy my fascination with world belief systems, an interest that enduringly informs my writing. After that I supported my writing habit through a variety of mostly ill-paid and often odd

positions, winding up eventually as the financial manager of a not-for-profit corporation (a very strange place for a “D” math student to find herself!). A few years ago I happily left the world of salaries and offices behind to begin writing full-time, a decision which has made me a good deal poorer but a great deal happier.

I enthusiastically wrote stories and poems as a child, but for some reason it never occurred to me I could make a career of it (even though my mother is a published novelist). I began my first novel, The Lady of Rhuddesmere, essentially as an excuse to take a year off between high school and college. But some deeper instinct must have guided me, because by the end of the first chapter I was hooked, and before the book was halfway done I knew that writing was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Nearly ten years later, thanks to the efforts of my dedicated agent, Lady was finally published. Two more young adult fantasies followed: Worldstone and Guardian of the Hills. Though I enjoy writing for young people, I've always wanted to work in adult fiction, so I embarked upon The Arm of the Stone and its sequel, The Garden of the Stone. My next two books will comprise a duology; the first is called The Burning Land. I'm currently at work on the second, which as yet is untitled.

I live in Amherst, Massachusetts, with my wonderful husband Rob (who doesn't understand my need to write, but fully supports it), and two cats. In my spare time I'm an avid gardener, a voracious and eclectic reader, an enthusiastic hiker, a dedicated movie buff, and a frequent attender of craft shows. I also write the occasional freelance article and book review.

My professional affiliations include the Author's Guild, NovelistsInc, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, where I'm a member of the Writing Scams Committee. Along with other intrepid scam hunters, I help wage a vigorous campaign against the huge variety of literary schemes and scams that prey on writers. As part of that effort, I created and maintain Writer Beware, a compendium of warnings about literary fraud.