BookBrunch - How the Andrew Lownie agency places its authors

Submissions flood
From those 20,000 submissions each year, we'll pick maybe 20 authors. This isn't a simple or cheap process, but we take submissions very seriously, from the standpoint of how we can make them work, rather than why we should reject them. Every single submission is read by the agency and a response sent, with perhaps two proposals or manuscripts a day sent for further readings by external experts. These reports do not come cheap and constitute the agency's biggest annual bill. Quite often this development process can go through a dozen readings over a period of years; but it's time well spent, as the more polished the proposal, the easier it is to sell.

Once we have our ducks in a row, we need to attract the interest of publishers. Every book is pitched by phone, or more often, a personalised email to a dozen appropriate editors, and if they don't respond by either declining or calling it in, they are politely chased. The agency also sends out a newsletter to some 4,000 subscribers, with links through to the website entries, the first weekend of every month, giving agency news for the previous month, details of books sold in all territories, a pitch for all books on current submission, links to articles on the website, and links to books to be published that month. Many editors don't subscribe, so it's individually emailed to them a week later asking if there is anything they would like to call in.