firstwriter.com's database of literary agents includes details of 779 English language literary agencies that don't charge reading fees. The database is continually updated: there have been 31 listings added or updated in the last month. With over a dozen different ways to narrow your search you can find the right literary agent for your book, fast.
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Kaplan Stahler’s Cindy Mintz has been named head of TV Literary at the boutique agency. In her new role, Mintz will oversee a department of five agents.
Mintz joined Kaplan Stahler in 2013 after a brief stint at Abrams Artists Agency, where she was instrumental in launching their TV literary department. Prior to Abrams, she spent 15 years as a TV packaging agent at ICM Partners.
Multimedia publisher OWN IT! has launched a literary agency arm, signing author Courttia Newland as its first client.
Billed as a “storytelling lifestyle brand” spearheaded by founder Crystal Mahey-Morgan, the company already operates as a book publisher, a record label and an events arm. Mahey-Morgan will be OWN IT!’s main agent, helping to “diversify how it works with storytellers to include literary representation”. The company is currently negotiating with several sub-agents about a foreign rights partnership, according to a spokesperson for the organisation.
Mahey-Morgan's previous contract negotiation experience includes a year at PFD as well as a three-year stint in the contracts department at Penguin Random House between 2008 and 2012. She described setting up a literary agency as "an obvious next step for OWN IT!"
Talent agency ICM Partners has promoted three to agents.
ICM upped Celestine Au and Madeline Feder to agents in the talent department, and Viviane Telio to agent in the motion picture literary department.
Au started at ICM in 2015, spending two years as a talent department assistant before being promoted to talent department coordinator last year. Au was recognized as one of Variety’s 10 Assistants to Watch in 2017 and is part of Time’s Up Next Gen. She was born in Hong Kong and raised in Shanghai before moving to the U.S. to attend UCLA, where she completed 12 internships and graduated with a degree in communication studies. She is fluent in Mandarin and has traveled to China with ICM agents, acting as an interpreter, and helping the team close deals and sign clients.
The children’s book publishing world has been roiling for the past week over the disclosure that Danielle Smith, the principal of Lupine Grove Creative, an agency specializing in children’s and YA authors, acted more like a literary grifter than a literary agent. Since Smith emailed a letter to her clients on July 24, confessing that recently she had “not handled a situation as well as I should have” and thus was dissolving the agency effective immediately, 19 former clients have reached out to PW, sharing tales of a pattern of malfeasance that has shaken their confidence and adversely affected their careers.
According to some former clients, she claimed to have had offers in hand that didn’t exist, such as, one author requesting anonymity disclosed, a $50,000 two-book deal. She informed others that editors had expressed interest in their submissions, but subsequently told them that either the editors had then lost interest or had outright rejected those submissions. Clients also complained about Smith’s refusal to communicate with them honestly and in a timely fashion, as well as the lack of transparency, including a reluctance to render submission lists to them upon request. A few clients allege that she even forged emails from editors and passed this correspondence along to them.
Articles
Frank Hotchkiss recently acquired an agent using firstwriter.com's database of literary agencies. We asked him about his writing, and how he found success.
firstwriter.com
For as long as there have been writers eager to get published, there have been con artists ready to prey upon them for a quick buck. Nowadays, the internet is rife with phony literary agencies offering writers false hope in return for a small (or not-so-small) sum of money. In this article I'll look at some of the ways you can spot a dodgy agency, and avoid your time, money, and aspirations being abused. While none of the points below guarantee by themselves that an agency is dubious, together they can make a compelling case, and they should all make you tread a little more cautiously.
Charles Heaton Allen recently acquired a literary agent using firstwriter.com's database of literary agents. We asked him about his writing, and how he found success.
Charlie Carroll recently signed a deal with the esteemed Paterson Marsh literary agency, as a result of searching firstwriter.com's database of over 850 literary agents. We asked him about his writing, and how he found success.
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