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We are matchmakers for writers & publishers, and we look at our relationships with our clients in the same way: We’re looking for long-term relationships, not one-night stands. Because of this, it is important that we are compatible with our authors—their personalities as well as their work—so here’s a taste of what we like (THIS MEANS YOU SHOULD READ THIS IF YOU WANT TO QUERY US):
Turn-ons:
- innovation and the ambition to evolve, inspire, and create something that is completely new to the market
- beautiful illustration that stands on its own
- strong characters
- a new take on an old myth, legend, or character
- looking at the same old universal issues from a completely new angle
- quirkiness
- eccentricities
- realistic dialogue
- people who know their market and don’t simply say “everyone will like this”
- dark urban fantasy & magic(al) realism
- ya with an edge
- graphic novels that need both the art and the words to tell their story and are breathtaking in both ways
- nonfiction that we would actually buy and read ourselves
FOR SOME REAL LIFE EXAMPLES WE SUGGEST YOU LOOK AT:
Graphics:
Maus by Art Spiegelman
Therefore, Repent! by Jim Munroe; Salgood Sam
Pop Gun War by Farel Dalrymple
the Scott Pilgrim series by Bryan Lee O’Malley
The Three Shadows by Cyril Pedrosa
Blankets by Craig Thompson
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
Cancer Vixen by Marisa Acocella Marchetto
The Color of Earth by Dong Hwa Kim
Alan’s War by Emmanuel Guibert
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
books written & illustrated by Brom (check out the ones done by Abrams Image)
Fiction:
The Somnambulist & The Domino Men by Jonathan Barnes
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick
Zora Neale Hurston
Sherman Alexie
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Jasper Fforde
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
Stephen King
Karin Slaughter
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
James Baldwin
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
YA:
the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer (We know you read it too; just admit it.)
the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray
anything (and by that we mean all her stuff; “anything” is not a title) by Cecil Castelluci
13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher
Uglies/Pretties series by Scott Westerfeld & Rodrigo Corral
Frank Beddor’s Looking Glass Wars trilogy
Wake by Lisa McMann
Nonfiction:
Beautiful books like Beyond by Michael Benson
The Making of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler
Scott McCloud
Douglas Wolk
Malcolm Gladwell
Book Lust by Nancy Pearl
Ruined by Reading by Lynne Sharon Schwartz
Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
Righting the Mother Tongue by David Wolman
Monster of Florence (more our taste as far as true crime than, for instance, In Cold Blood, which we appreciate the craft of, but we may not have acquired)
The Year of Yes by Maria Dahvana Headley
Generalities:
To get a better idea of our general aesthetics when it comes to taste (take that into account; this is reading, looking at, & watching, not representing), just to get a better sense of who we are, some of current favorite things are:
Eddie Izzard
John Irving
Dexter
Kelly Link (Only because she mainly does short stories and we don’t rep short stories does she go here; her writing rocks.)
Ender’s Game (Oh, we love it, but sci-fi is not our expertise.)
Battlestar Galactica
House (You got sarcasm? Then you can keep up with us.)
Frida Kahlo
Bones
Fitzgerald’s short stories
P.G. Wodehouse’s short stories
Roberto Bolaño
Turn-offs:
- high fantasy
- worlds where there is a “new” language
- genre fiction that offers nothing out of the ordinary
- westerns
- sci-fi (Well, not when we read; as we say above, we love Orson Scott Card, but for representation purposes, it’s a no-go.)
- needing to use italics or bold to get your point across
- when the plot is good but the execution is bad
- when the dialogue is hilarious but there’s no plot to speak of
- clichés
- your run-of-the-mill romances
- books completely void of strong female characters
- violence or sex purely for shock value
- comparisons to bestselling authors or books; something makes you unique, and that is what we want to know about
We’d give you real-life examples for this too, but we think that would be mean.
