Hey all, could use some opinions.
A few years ago, I was querying around my difficult-to-place project and an agent jumped all out at me saying PLEASE SEND I WANT TO REP THIS. She even attached a contract if memory serves, and it got my antennae up because she wanted 20% instead of the standard 15%. So I went one level further in my research of her, and WHOA. Odd bird -- she'd actually been a legit editor at one of the Big Five before starting her own agency, appeared at some conferences, and then gone off the deep end screwing her clients. Seemed like a case where she didn't capitalize adequately before going out on her own and was drowning financially and claimed to be repping people she actually wasn't, and I can't remember what else... maybe even didn't pay in a timely manner. I corresponded with one of her former clients and he advised me to stay away.
She disappeared for a couple of years and now she's reinvented herself under another name. I looked at her website and sure enough, what she says she's looking for is exactly my project, which I had shelved.
I'm tempted to email her and remind her of our history and tell her frankly why I never responded to her offer and ask her what's up. If she's ready to come clean about her past and say she made some mistakes and she wants back in the game, I'd be half tempted to go forward with her. Of course I'd ask her which editors she thinks she can work with given her history. I'm not sure whether she burned herself in the industry, but if so, I'd ask how she's going to fix that.
What do you think? If she admits she blew it but she wants a second chance, would you go for it? (If she's defensive and says she did nothing wrong, that will be that -- I talked to that former client of hers and there's no legit defense of what she did.)
N.B. I know the project is good, because I had a very prestigious agent a few years before her, but he quit the biz and my project fell through the cracks. Miserable experience. I just started re-querying and two agents have the full right now -- out of a bazillion queries.