You may remember that the New Age Literary Agency called me back in February, and left a message offering to represent me and to showcase my book to “book investors” at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. So I called them back the next day and I posted the video of my conversation with them. It was a lot of fun and exposed the utter stupidity of their scam.
Although they claim to be a literary agents, they don’t actually sell books to publishers… or to anybody. Their job seems to be to attract some nebulous creature they call “a book investor” to take interest in an author’s novel…and their big way of doing that is to show your book off, at a cost of hundreds of dollars, at their booth. That, of course, is their real business… getting desperate, uninformed authors to cough up hundreds of dollars to have their book on a table at a booth that nobody visits.
New Age shared their booth with their sister company Book Trance Media, who claim to be “experienced marketing professionals,” which you’d never know from the amateurish posters in their booth or the half-hearted presentation of books by their poor clients. Booktrance is, of course, on Writer Beware‘s list of fake literary agencies and fraudulent marketing firms. But the firm is aptly named. You’d have to be in a trance to give any money to these scammers.
The New Age Literary Agency booth seems to exist purely as a prop they can show in photos to potential victims to legitimaze their scam, perhaps to gain some credibility with aspiring authors who probably don’t know that *anybody* can rent a booth at the Festival. The staff seemed to spend lots of time on Saturday taking pictures of themselves, dressed in New Age logo polos, in front of the booth.
Beyond that, the purpose of the booth isn’t clear. It is staffed by people who don’t know anything about the agency or the marketing firm…or even about the self-published books that they were displaying, mostly just a single copy of each title, which they offered for free to passersby (with handwritten signs taped to the booth — demonstrating the sheer marketing brilliance that Book Trance is celebrated for).
Suckers who paid even more got to have a signing hosted at the booth… I saw a couple of those and it was pathetic. The staff taped balloons to the booth, took photos with the authors, and that was that. Not a single book investor in sight. But hey, the suckers got to feel like authors for an hour…at an exorbinant price.
My brother Tod Goldberg and I stopped by the New Age/Book Trance booth on Sunday morning, presenting ourselves as authors looking for new representation. The video is below… but it’s not fun or amusing…it’s more sad and pathetic. These people didn’t really know why they were there or what they were supposed to be doing. Nobody at the head office in the Philippines prepared them with a script of what to say if anybody beside one of their suckers showed up. The staff couldn’t answer any of the questions we had…and when they tried, their answers made no sense. Instead, they referred us to a stack of business cards for their “Senior Literary Agents” none of whom, of course, was at the Festival.
As literary scams go, this is one of the lamest that I’ve ever encountered.
Hilarious. thanks so much for this. I knew already when I got their email today, but it was nice to confirm and get a good laugh at the same time.
Well it’s 2026 now and I got the email to exhibit with them at this year’s Festival of Books. I was ready to hand over the early reg price of $800, but decided to do some research first.
Now I know why the first conversation with them was so vague. I self published several years ago and now looking for exposure. Guess this was the wrong choice. Many thanks for this post. I’m a below poverty level senior who has no money to waste. The video saved my butt.
You are exactly their target prey — self-published authors, particularly seniors who may not be as familiar with the proliferation of pubishing-related scams. Do not pay to have ANYONE to “present,” “pitch,” or “highlight” your book at any Writers Festivals. They are all scams.
Thank you for documenting this! It’s a whole other level of obstacles us indie authors have to deal with and we need all the help we can get.
I got an email and text message from them today – had to do a double take because it didn’t come from a gmail account. They’ve upped their game, I guess. Since it’s not my first rodeo, I didn’t bother replying – I just filed the message in my scam folder and blocked their number.
I get dozens of emails a day with new fangled LLM slop from literary agents, famous authors who want to talk shop with me, bookclub curators, library buyers, digital marketers, and seo experts – it’s sickening.