Call your Agent: How to Become a Successful Literary Agent

Stephanie Barrouillet is a foreign rights agent with over twenty years’ experience in selling rights and children’s book and comics publishing.  After an M.A. in Children’s Literature, Stephanie Barrouillet started working for Walker Books Ltd in London in 1999 where she gained extensive knowledge in the field. In 2011 she joined Kinneret Zmora Bitan Dvir Publishing to promote Hebrew children’s books internationally and in 2014 she decided to found her own agency, S.B.Rights Agency, to help other publishers overcome language and culture barriers and to promote unique titles globally. There are many publishers in smaller markets with exciting titles but that do not have the ability or the experience to let the world ‘discover’ these gems. S.B.Rights Agency also organises seminars though Publishers’ Association to teach publishers the basic skills to sell rights successfully.

Stephanie likes to see herself as a matchmaker – someone who can match the right book with the right publishing house. S.B.Rights Agency currently represents children’s book and comics/graphic novel publishers from Poland, Estonia, South Africa, Korea, Turkey, Israel, Germany, Sweden, Bulgaria, Spain and Brazil. 

Jason Bartholomew is a co-founder and an Agent at The bks Agency. He is also the CEO of Midas.

Originally from America, Jason Bartholomew spent ten years working in New York publishing, primarily for Hachette Book Group USA. He moved to Hachette UK in 2008 where he was the Rights Director across Hodder & Stoughton, Headline Publishing Group, Quercus Books, and John Murray Press.

In addition to the Rights Director role, in 2015, Jason became the Publishing Director of Quercus US in New York. At Quercus US, Jason helped publish authors including Peter May, David Attenborough, Pierre LeMaitre, Timur Vermes, Damien Lewis, Louise O’Neill, and John Connolly.

He completed a Masters in Business Administration at Imperial College London in 2017. 

Benas Berantas is the first and currently the only independent rights agent from Lithuania, working with books for young readers. He graduated from Publishing at Vilnius University with first-class degree and worked as a Rights Executive and Senior Acquisitions Editor at a leading Lithuanian children's publishing house Nieko rimto for five years.
In 2017 Benas established himself as a rights agent with the goal to promote awarded and notable Lithuanian children’s authors and illustrators abroad and to create opportunities for their books to reach new audiences worldwide. For this reason the Book Smugglers Agency has been founded. During 4 years of activity it has become the main contact for books from Lithuania and has a rights catalog of more than 100 titles available from seven major Lithuanian publishers, as well as independent authors. The agency also brings exceptional books for translation from languages other than English to Lithuania. 

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. 

Isobel Gahan is an Associate Agent at Curtis Brown and has worked alongside agent Stephanie Thwaites and her list of clients since 2017, including bestselling children’s authors Francesca Simon and Tom Fletcher, acclaimed poet Grace Nichols and the literary estates of A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard. She has a background in children’s publishing and is building her own list across picture books, middle grade, YA and graphic novels. She particularly loves fantasy and sci-fi and looks for strong and distinctive writerly voices that will draw her into a world – whether mythical or our own. In 2020 she was long-listed for the Trailblazer award. 

Born in 1995, Kardelen Genc graduated from Istanbul University Faculty of Communication with a BA degree of Public Relations and Advertising. She studied Journalism in Vilnius during her exchange year. She has been working as a co- agent for foreign fiction titles at Kalem Agency for 4,5 years now. She is also working the festival curator at Istanbul International Literature Festival.

Besides her publishing activities, she’s currently writing critics for online literary magazines andtranslating fiction titles from English to Turkish. 

Karolina is a literary scout for Spanish and Catalan literature, covering general adult trade fiction/non-fiction, children, YA literature, and comics. She is also a translator. 

Her job consists of developing relations with Agents and Editors, discovering the hottest new manuscripts before anyone else does. I prepare reader's reports and recommendations. I attend the most important book fairs.

Karolina’s collaboration with clients is based on regular communication to keep up with their needs and provide them with the tailor-made services. In addition to her knowledge of the book market, she relies on my experience and intuition.

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.

Author Ambassador for BBPlus 2022, Michèle is the author of many critically acclaimed novels, including Daughters of the House, which was shortlisted for the Booker in 1992. Her memoir, Negative Capability, an exploration of feelings of failure, but also of the redeeming power of female friendship, was published in 2020 to huge acclaim. She is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres. 

Tom, an American living in the UK,  is the managing editor of The Bookseller, the book trade’s magazine in the UK. He is a self confessed book stats wizard. His debut novel, The Esquimaux  was published by Silvetail UK.  His agent is Charlie Campbell at CCLA. 

Stephanie is the Children’s and YA agent at Curtis Brown where she has worked for 12 years. She works closely with her authors, often providing detailed feedback on their manuscripts, sometimes over several drafts, before submitting their work to publishers. She believes one of the most thrilling parts of working as an agent is discovering talent and nurturing new writers. She also enjoys talking to her more established authors about their work and figuring out solutions to sticky situations both within and outside of the story! She regularly speaks to writing groups and creative-writing courses about agenting and children’s publishing, and she chairs the Children’s Agents Group.