Literary Agents

Shulgraine86

Hi there,

I'm in the process of sending some work to literary agents and have had a few bounce backs.

I cannot seem to contact Prizemankinsella Literary Agents via email or by phone.

Does anyone out there know if they are still in business? It doesn't seem so...

Thanks

Shane

smcgiff

'And we are focussed on giving our authors the success they deserve for the work they have done. Therefore we will be there whenever you need us for advice and support.'

Perhaps they should focus on their spelling.

These are a new agency on me. A new agency might be Naïve enough to accept email submissions but I guess they would get overwhelmed very quickly. Emails with attachments could very easily swamp their email server and that is why you are getting a bounce back. This doesn't answer why they're not answering the phone though.

pickarooney

smcgiff wrote: »

'And we are focussed on giving our authors the success they deserve for the work they have done. Therefore we will be there whenever you need us for advice and support.'

Perhaps they should focus on their spelling.

There's nothing wrong with their spelling there, sorry.

smcgiff

pickarooney wrote: »

There's nothing wrong with their spelling there, sorry.

Yeah - just me - I really shouldn't try and highlight other people's spelling! It never ends well :o:o

Memnoch

The bit that I'm not keen on is 20% commission on all sales outside Ireland. So if they get you a British publisher, that's 20% also?

If it was 20% outside UK and Ireland, that would be fine. In this context you'd almost be better of going for a British agent unless your book was catering specifically to an Irish market.

IgnatiusJ

There seems to be only seven or eight literary agents in Ireland, and unfortunately very few of them seem to be taking on new clients. It is the same situation in Britain, where even one-person agencies are being overwhelmed by up to ten new submissions every day.

It seems that you need an agent to have even the remotest hope of getting a publishing deal, but the only way to get an agent is to have a contact who is already signed.

It's a pretty depressing time to be a first time author, in my opinion.

Shulgraine86

Thanks for all the info guys. Yep, it sure looks like the number of agents/publishers in Ireland are limited alright. But that's not too discouraging. What is troublesome is finding a home for fiction. The large chunk of Irish publishers are only after instructional, theological or historical submissions. Fair enough, but what of creativity?

For those interested, I have failed to contact the Prizemankinsella Irish branch totally. The English strand of their company claims that they are not accepting submissions so for anyone thinking of submitting I assume that one is a closed door.

Many agents in Ireland are on their holidays! Until the end of May apparently, so submissions can resume in July or so.

Thanks again,

Shane

Eftboren

Hi all. I notice, to my dismay, that not only are they any publishers in Ireland interested in historical fantasy/fiction other than 'Irish folklore', that there are no literary agents in our country interested either. HELP PLEASE...or its of across the water...east and west to search for them.

EileenG

Something like 80% of all books sold are non-fiction, but 80% of books written are fiction. Which is why it's much easier to find agents interested in non-fiction! They don't care about creativity, they want to sell enough books to make a profit.

20% on foreign sales is normal.

I have to say, translations rights is literally money for nothing. You have to sweat and slave over the original book to get it right and feel you've earned every penny, but getting a big cheque because a book is being translated into Italian or Japanese is gravy. No work required.

Irish writers have no problems with English agents.

Most agents are happy to get submissions as e-mails. Easy to delete the unwanted ones.