Agency Demise

Another recent start-up agency has closed its doors. Vrattos Literary Agency is no more.

Back in 2004, owners John and Francesca were attending conferences, in league with some heavy hitters from New York and L.A., but their location in little Sebastopol, CA was apparently a great hindrance. Hard to make connections with the major publishers if you're not in NYC and don't have the connections pre-made when starting an agency, even if you've located in the Sonoma Valley wine country.

Ms. Vrattos's claim to fame was the fact that she had run a literary referral company, linking would-be authors with agents and editors. She worked for a time at Penguin, but it's hard to judge the level of involvement from a blurb on a website. Just as one can't say why she gave up the referral business and switched to agenting. I'm tempted to say that she failed in both endeavors, but that's pure speculation. She has written a couple of novels, but they are only available as an e-book, which should tell us something about her abilities to sell manuscripts to royalty paying publishers.

Her husband was a published author, although putting out a cookbook hardly prepares one for the rough and tumble of an agent's life. Even his twenty years in marketing and sales were of no use, but then, if he was not selling and marketing to publishers, his experience would be inconsequential. Ever the trooper, Mr. Vrattos was often seen at writer's conferences on the Left Coast, in search of talent, but he must have come up empty too many times. No sales, no income, no money, no business.

The best they could do was three sales, all to Andrews McMeel Publishing, and that over the course of their two-three year existence. As for the authors whose works were being shopped, it's back to square one for them in the search for an agent. There was no scam here at all. It was a case of the inept and the incompetent putting up a shingle and starting up a company without the necessary knowledge to pull it off. If you're looking at a start-up agency, it's best to check the owner's credentials first, to see if they're playing out of their league.