Would not recommend Wendy Sherman. I used to be represented by her. I grew up in a really toxic family with a narcissistic mother, so I was accustomed to people close to me making denigrating and hurtful comments and I didn't think a thing of it. Today, I realize that Wendy made countless mean-spirited and insensitive comments to me, many of them body-shaming in nature. She casually made one cruel comment that stuck with me for life. A few summers ago, I went to a professional training and the trainer asked the group to share about a time when professional feedback we received nudged us to make ourselves smaller and less confident; I told the group the story about the needlessly vicious comment Wendy made to me and how that shaped how I showed up in the world for a decade.

Wendy made several professional mistakes in the course of my book's sale and publication. Specifically, there was a thorny challenge when my book was published. Wendy said she'd handle it, and she made the problem a much bigger problem where I was assigned blame that did not belong to me. At the time, an author friend of mine commented to me, "It sounds like your agent threw you under the bus." She did. While she successfully brokered my book deal, she didn't deliver any value beyond that.

When Wendy is nice to you, she makes you feel 10 feet tall, but her rude comments are a death by 10,000 papercuts.

Query 4/2/25
82k Contemporary Fiction

Non-Fiction
Emailed Query 2/24/2025

Email Query: 7-1-24
Follow-up Query: 1-29-25

94K Historical Fiction

Pitch (at conf) with first 5 pages: 11/15/24
Revise & Resub Full Request: 11/15/24


80k word upmarket