Call your Agent: How to Become a Successful Literary Agent

Luigi Bonomi read English Literature at University College London and at Dartmouth College in the USA. After working as a bookseller, in 1986 he joined the publishers Macdonald Futura as a children’s book editor. Subsequently he worked for Harlequin/Mills & Boon and Penguin Books, where he was an editorial director. In 1997 he became a literary agent, joining Sheil Land Associates, where he worked for eight years before setting up LBA in 2005. He has been personally responsible for discovering and launching the careers of many bestselling authors working on adult fiction, non-fiction and children’s fiction and many of his authors have become Sunday Times bestsellers and have gone on to win awards for their writing. These include fiction authors such as Susan Lewis, and Simon Scarrow; children’s authors Ben Miller and Lucy Strange, and several academics writing popular science and general non-fiction such as Professors Guy Leschziner and Alice Roberts.  In 2010 he was awarded the prestigious title of Literary Agent of the Year. 

Maria Cardona Serra (Menorca, 1986) started her career at the Schavelzon Agency in 2010 and joined the Pontas Agency in 2014. There, she worked as a foreign rights as well as a primary agent selling domestic and translation rights directly in most markets, including the UK and the US as well as Europe. She has been involved in international bestsellers such as Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan and This Too Shall Pass by Milena Busquets. Her authors include Avni Doshi, finalist of the 2020 Booker Prize and the 2022 PEN Hemingway Award, Elena Medel, winner of the Umbral Award for Best Book of the Year, Shubhangi Swarup, shortlisted for the 2020 JCB Prize, and Lambda Fellow Javier Fuentes, amongst others.

Maria Cardona has a BA in Translation and Interpreting and a BA in Linguistics, both from the Pompeu Fabra University, and a Masters in Publishing (IDEC). She is a 2015 Frankfurt Fellow, a 2021 Taipei Rights Workshop Fellow and a 2022 Torino Book Fair Fellow. She lives in Barcelona. 

Richard Charkin is a former president of the IPA and the UK PA and for 11 years was executive director of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. He has held senior posts at major publishing houses, including Macmillan, Oxford University Press, Current Science Group, and Reed Elsevier. He is a former president of The Book Society and non-executive director of Institute of Physics Publishing. He is currently a board member of Bloomsbury China’s Beijing joint venture with China Youth Press, a member of the International Advisory Board of the Frankfurt Book Fair, Bonnier Books UK’s Advisory Board and is a senior adviser to nkoda.com. He is a non-executive director of Liverpool University Press, and Cricket Properties Ltd as well as founding his own business, Mensch Publishing. 

Lora Fountain was born in the US but has dual American and Irish nationality. After living in London and Barcelona, she moved to France in 1985, and founded the agency in 1987, as a translation rights agency representing publishers and agencies from all over the English-speaking world, and a few selected agents and publishers from Spanish-speaking countries. They sell rights primarily to the French market but also to Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch, and Latin American publishers.  

Loyd Grossman is an entrepreneur, author and broadcaster, well-known for presenting TV programmes including MasterChef, Through the Keyhole and Behind the Headlines. He has a lifelong interest in history, the arts and heritage, receiving a PhD from the University of Cambridge and serving on the board of a number of cultural institutions including English Heritage, the British School at Rome and the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association. He is Chairman of The Royal Parks, President of The Arts Society and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. In June 2015 he was appointed CBE in recognition of his services to Heritage. Loyd’s previous work includes the major study Benjamin West and the Struggle to be Modern (Merrell Publishers, 2015). 

Jamie started his career at a chain of Scottish booksellers, then work in a variety of roles in editorial and marketing before becoming MD of Hodder & Stoughton in 2004, then CEO of Hodder & Stoughton, headline, John Murray Press and Quercus. He has acquired and managed global brand authors including Stephen King, John Grisham, David Nicholls, Jodi Picoult, Mike Gayle and Sophie Hannah and the biggest non-fiction books including Alex Ferguson, Delicious Ella, Gordon Ramsay, Matthew Syed and Rolf Dobelli. He has also acquired and managed numerous businesses, including Quercus Editions Limited, Nicholas Brealey Publishing and Jessica Kingsley Publishers. He was Trade Publishing Director and a Board member of Hachette UK. This year he left corporate publishing to launch an independent - Bedford Square Publishers. 

Seonaid MacLeod is Senior Contracts Manager at Hachette Children’s Group in the UK, with a focus on contracts with Agents, Authors and Illustrators. She has been in publishing for 10 years, working in Contracts and IP and Licensing for Mainstream Publishing (commercial non-fiction), Pearson English (Education), and Hachette since early 2021 . She also worked for 3 years at the Publishers Association, leading industry campaigns and publisher relations. She recently completed a Graduate Diploma in Law, following on from a PGDip in UK, EU and US Copyright Law.  

Rosalind Ramsay started scouting in June 1996 after working as a translation rights agent at Andrew Nurnberg Associates and Rogers Coleridge and White Ltd. Ros is the founder and Managing Director of RR Scouting Ltd.

 

Urpu Strellman (b. 1979) has worked in publishing for over 17 years, longest as an editor and a publishing manager. In the beginning of 2017, she started to head Helsinki Literary Agency, a joint venture of four Finnish publishing houses. For years she has also been teaching editing, writing and popularization of science at the University of Helsinki. In addition to some articles, she has co-authored “The Nonfiction Writer’s Book” and a guide for writing with influence, and translated some books from English and Swedish to Finnish.