Victoria Strauss's Writer Beware column (mirrored on SFWA) digs into Quill Shift Literary Agency - a model that mixes crowdsourced reads, crowdfunding, and "we'll test the market before we submit" promises. She argues that isn't how standard agent incentives work, and it gets messy if the agency takes a cut of money fans kicked in.
She compares funding an agency via IndieGoGo-style campaigns to older "we fixed publishing" experiments that didn't age well. Bottom line for writers: if someone's playing a nonstandard game, get sales, commissions, and expenses in writing before you send the manuscript.
(Shortened and summarised to avoid devaluing the source)