Skip to Content

Television 'hungry for writers' content'

13 August 2018

‘Television is suddenly hungry for writers' content because long-form television is much closer to novels than anything else. A lot of people invested in short stories, things you can read on your phone, all very interesting but putting the technology first. Actually what we've seen is authors like Hanya Yanagihara and Donna Tartt - very long novels (being successful). So something is going on in reading which is much more analogous to long-form television - immersive reading and immersive watching. So there's this hunger for writerly content and story writing skills, which is great for an agency like us who don't do anything but writers...

Personality matters in agenting... I think the personality of the agent informs the way they do the job in a way that can't possibly be true any more in publishing, in the way it was when it was Carmen Callil, Tom Maschler, George Weidenfeld were active - now publishers are part of a corporate entity.'

Clare Alexander of the London literary agency Aitken Alexander AssociatesAccepts fiction and non-fiction. No plays or scripts. in the Bookseller