Hi guys

An actor who reads my column sent me an email askign about agency guides and how they are not updated, as they claim. Having not searched for an agent in many years, I am not up on the guide scene and wanted your input. Here is an excerpt from her email, talking about 2 particular guides. I know someone posted about Ross Reports recently as well. I'd love to know from you guys if you have found that these or other agency guides are as outdated as she claims. What do you do to locate agency addresses/info. Do you have examples to share from hopelessly outdated guides? I want to write about this for an upcoming column and would love specific thoughts and examples. Let's reveal the situation!!

Here's the excerpt:


"For many years ( 9 ) have used the two Agency Guides provided - one by Wolfe and one by Acting World Books Publications - both of which say they are updated monthly ..

Neither of them are !!! ! ! !!!!

I've been shocked to find the same info 9 years ago in my 2008 publications !!!!

The same phone nbrs / addresses .. Some of the companies currently listed even don't exist any more - yet they are listed !!!!

These agency guides are a BIG SCAM !!!

How easy it would be to just call each one and verify their address , phone nbr , email .. if not sheer existence ..

These two main agency guides SAY they do just that , but here's from an actress who has actually stayed in the business for 9 years ( w/o an agent ) .. and found to her amazment otherwise .

Let me show you some of the errors I've noted -

1. These agency guides both LIST : ' Writers & Artists Group '
But - THIS CO. DON'T EXIST ANYMORE as a separate entity !!!!!!

If you go online , you can find-out that PARADIGM bought WRITERS & ARTISTS GROUP INTERNATIONAL - but if you look
in ' THE AGENCIES ' by AWB Publications , they have W&A listed ..STILL !!!!!!!!!! ??????????????!!! It's address , needs , phone nbr .. Any actor reading this would submit ( like I did ) and wonder why their
submission was returned ..

They don't exist anymore .. well , their address has changed , and their name now is ' Paradigm ' as well . But there they are listed in these "updated" guides as ' Writers & Artists Group ' .. ?"



She goes on to list many more examples, but I'd like your input!!!

ACting World Book's
<I>"The Agencies"</I>
Agency book was very good when Lawrence Parke
ran it.
He was also a contributor to this BBS.

As with Ross Reports I got The Agencies every month.

But after Mr Parke died The Agencies went down the tubes. The gramatical and spelling errors drove me crazy. It finally caused me NOT to renew my subscription.

The best way to update mailing lists is to mail to them. For a fee the USPS will send you back the new addresses. Or you can telphone the nixes to get new addresses whcih is what Inow do.

If there are spelling ewrrors in my message it is only beause Back Stage won't allow my spelling checker to function.

hey jackie, i have to agree with ray and rita.

i found the agencies to have MANY spelling errors, and was very unclear. the punctuation used often made it quite difficult to figure out who worked in which department, and it lists known scams (which doesn't help the business at all...)

i've had mail returned, but i don't send out large batches at a time. usually, if i remember correctly, the post office will mail-forward for 3 months if you fill out the form, which i would assume agencies would want to do, not necessarily for the hoards of actor headshots they'll be recieving but for the other business purpouses.

so my feeling is that if mail is being sent back to me for someone no longer being at an address, it must be well past those 3 months, or 6 months, whatever it is, and mail is no longer forwarded. which means that the guide would have to be severely outdated.

but i am really bad about doing agency submissions, so i'm not necessarily the best person to chime in here.

quote:

Originally posted by Ray and Rita:
ACting World Book's
"The Agencies"
Agency book was very good when Lawrence Parke
ran it.He was also a contributor to this BBS.

Yeah, I miss him.

It's not only the agency guides.

The acting school guides as well. Some phone numbers have been copied over and over again and haven't been correct for years.

One of the two major acting school guides ("updated quarterly") still lists Eric Morris as working out of a theater in Hollywood. And the other guide has never heard of Howard Fine.

Is this a scam, or sheer laziness?

I'm going to guess laziness. LOVE the EXAMPLES! Keep them coming!!! Also, are the Hendricks guides in NY as bad as some of these others?

quote:

Originally posted by Jackie:
I'm going to guess laziness. LOVE the EXAMPLES! Keep them coming!!! Also, are the Hendricks guides in NY as bad as some of these others?

Ross Reports at one time had an agent at 250 W 57 Street listed who had died many months before. Mail kept coming back with no new address, and I was paying US PO extra for [at that time] "Address Correction Requested".

I went in person and door was unlocked, office was empty of everything, no furniture, not even a paper clip in sight.

Yet they remained in Ross Reports for a while.

Another agent [Charles Ryan], US PO sent me info showing where the mail was really going to. He had closed office and mail was going to his home in Kew Gardens.

Whenever I do a mailing, I double check any directory addresses and phone numbers on IMDbPro. I also check the agency's web site, if they have one. If the info is different, I call to confirm which address is correct and who is in charge of the dept. I'm submitting to.

quote:

Originally posted by Ray and Rita:

quote:

Originally posted by Jackie:
I'm going to guess laziness. LOVE the EXAMPLES! Keep them coming!!! Also, are the Hendricks guides in NY as bad as some of these others?

Ross Reports at one time had an agent at 250 W 57 Street listed who had died many months before.

Maybe they tried to bring him back to life by sheer stubbornness to erase his entry.

But, of course, there are other explanations, but all less likely...

Wow! Really? I like The Agencies guide. I only buy one every three or four years when I'm looking for an agent. But I've gotten all of my agents based on the info in the Agencies Guide.

I know at least some of the stuff is updated because all the agents are saved in my mailing list and every time I re-submit I have to make changes in addresses, names and contact people.

I'm submitting right now and got 3 interviews with some pretty solid agents. I've never had so many choices, so I actually called the editor of The Agencies to get more info on the agents. He called me back the next day and shared his personal insight.

I guess everybody's got their own experiences.

That's good to hear, Cappy96--Makes me more hopeful.