BigScore Productions Required a $50 fee to read letter of inquiry. Lancaster Pennsylvania

This is a report, not a rebuttal. I found BigScore Productions in The Agent's Directory (Rachel Vader), so I presumed that they were a reputable agency. However, this email from them (below) made me wonder, and reading your report made me downright suspicious of BigScore.

I am a new author, and I had read that agents who charge reading fees were not to be trusted. As you can see, they deny that the fee is a reading fee. Well, it may not be a reading fee for reading one's manuscript, but it is certainly a fee to read one's letter of inquiry. If I could make $50 for every email I read, I'd quit my job right now and read email full-time.

Thank you for maintaining your useful and informative web site.

Here's what they sent me:

Dear Writer
Thank you for your email submission to BigScore Productions.

Due to the thousands of submissions we receive each year, your submission (a complete proposal) will now only be reviewed if you pay a small $50 Processing Fee. This fee covers a reviewer's time, credit card and handling fees. It is not a reading or editing fee, and does not guarantee representation. We are not doing this to make money. If we do not hear from you, your email will be unread and deleted.

Just as with almost all editors and agents today, BigScore does not have time to give careful consideration to unsolicited manuscripts. These have increased dramatically with the advent of the internet, the tightening of publishers' lists, and the necessity of having to have an agent. Even many published writers are now faced with having to find representation to get their work seen.

It used to be that writers would have to spend some money to print, bind, and mail their proposals out. Now with the internet it costs nothing to send tens, if not hundreds, out at a time. Agents and publishers are swamped. I've heard it said that at any one time there are as many as two million book proposals floating around. The key, like in most things in life, is to get someone's attention.

We actively consider manuscripts that are referred to us by our own authors and the editors we work with. This always leaves us wondering what potential bestsellers we may be missing in the many unsolicited manuscripts we receive. So we decided the best option would be to give you the writer the chance to know your work is being looked at.

The BigScore submission review will not be a full manuscript critique. We will only respond with a short personal paragraph on why we want to further consider your work, at no additional cost to you, or why we are passing on your work. Please go to www.bigscoreproductions.com and learn about our successes if you have not done so already.

BigScore is not interested in looking at poetry.

Here are a few of the many positive responses we have received from those who paid the BigScore Processing Fee:

Thank you for your $10,000 review of my work. Looks like I owe you $9,950. May the Good Lord bless and keep you. Tom

Thank you for your response; I appreciate any and all critiques, yours were quite incisive and to the point. Rachel

My point is that you took the time to read my sample chapters and then went beyond the call of duty to write me the greatest feedback I've yet to receive. You actually taught me some very important lessons that will help make my book a better product. Robert

David A. Robie, Agent

BigScore Productions

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(I deleted the instructions for payment via PayPal or credit card. -- Walter C)
This RipOff Report is sent by Walter C from Memphis, TN.

Alias
Memphis, Tennessee
U.S.A.