How we support you to get a Literary Agent.
The importance of a literary agent in one’s writing career cannot be underestimated. The role of a good agent is to sell your book to publishers (both in your home territory and in foreign territories), to negotiate contracts on your behalf, to sell rights to your books (for example film rights) and to ensure that your writing career is well managed and on track.
However, many writers often find that it’s as difficult to find a good agent as it is to discover a signed first edition of Ulysses in Waterstones!
Here at The Writing Coach, we understand that many of our writers would love to follow the traditional publishing route. We know, too, how hard that route can sometimes seem, so it’s our role to help you to reach the highest standards with your work and when it is ready, to present your writing professionally and with flair – so that the many literary agents we collaborate with can immediately get a sense of your work and where it fits in the marketplace. We want the agents that we work with to ‘get’ your work and it is our role to champion our clients, when they are ready for submission.
Carolyn Kirby, Author
“After nearly ten years of writing, I felt that I had progressed as far as I could without being published. If this novel could not secure representation, I wasn’t sure I had the heart to start another. At this point Jacqui suggested several new agents for me to try. One of them was entirely new to me. It seemed miraculous when his agency made me an offer of representation almost as soon as I had sent him my book. Rights were then sold both in the UK and US and the novel, now titled The Conviction of Cora Burns was published in March 2019. So many people who have helped me on this journey, but Jacqui Lofthouse is at the head of my list.”
Jacqui Lofthouse and Jacqueline Smith work closely with our dedicated submissions manager Laura Wilkinson to choose the right agents for our clients. Many literary agents look to us as a trusted source, which means that your work – when it is ready – rises to the top of the pile and is seriously considered. It’s not unusual for us to get a call from an agent who says ‘please can I have that author’s telephone number today!’
It’s important to say that this service is not available to brand new clients and is not guaranteed for all of our clients. We offer a submissions service but only when your mentor says that your work is fully ready. We also offer detailed advice on submissions to all members of The Literary Community.
Whilst we can’t guarantee that we can secure you an agent, what we can do is to use our connections and our reputation in the literary world to help your manuscript stand out and get noticed. We will do our best to help you by-pass what’s commonly known as ‘the slush pile’ – where unsolicited manuscript submissions can linger for too long in the literary wildnerness. We can help you to get your manuscript read faster by the right people.
It’s important to note that choosing this service does not mean that your book will find an agent. What we do promise is that we will do our utmost to give your submission to individual agents the best possible chance. We also have an agent choosing service and we offer help writing your pitch letter and synopsis.
If you are interested in making connections with agents, do also watch out for our annual ‘Getting Published Day’ (June 15th 2024) where you can meet agents in person in an intimate setting and you can also meet literary agents in The Literary Community as we regularly invite them as guest speakers.
We also offer advice on working with small publishers and self-publishing. Most importantly, we want to see your book out in the world, reaching readers and making an impact!
