(no subject)

As you've probably noticed by now, the meme de jour in the writing-orientated section of the blogosphere is scam literary agent Barbara Bauer's latest attempt to intimidate and silence those who discuss her business ethics or lack thereof. The moral of this story is "do not meddle in the affairs of geeks, for they are unsubtle and will Googlebomb you". Trying to take down a very popular site used by thousands of people who are or who wish to learn to be capable of influencing others by the use of language is a really bad move. When a number of those people are long time netheads who know how to spread the word, and are armour-plated against take-down attempts directed at them in turn, it is suicidal stupidity. There are now hundreds of blogs with links to the Writer Beware list of the twenty worst literary agents, the one on which Barbara Bauer's name is featured. Nice going, Barbara.

To add to this little tale of woe, it would appear that the webhost owner may have had an ulterior motive in caving so quickly to Bauer's threats. She's decided to bring her own writers' forum website back up, one that might find Absolute Write competition. This is, of course, entirely unconnected with her decision to pull Absolute Write on an hour's notice. I'm deliberately not linking at this point, but you can find the gory details in the Making Light coverage.

There's no reason to doubt that Barbara Bauer did threaten her, as Bauer has a track record of making such threats. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, part of Barbara Bauer's response to the initial posting of the writer Beware list of the twenty worst literary agents was to try to get Tor editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden sacked by making a false accusation that tnh had libelled her on a Tor company website. She has also sent threatening communications to at least one other writers' forum in the past, and has harrassed bloggers who posted the list when it made its first appearance. She's going to be kept very busy this time around.

I'm still annoyed. I've never posted on Absolute Write myself, as far as I can recall, but I've lurked there for years and I have found much useful information in the forums. It was, and with any luck will be, a valuable resource for the writing community.

That list in full as posted to Absolute Write is under the cut, just in case you've missed it so far. Besides, we might as well add to the woes of the other nineteen scammers on that list. :->

( 20 worst agents )