Agency Trip to New York
If literary agents seek to sell North American rights for their authors they need to make trips to New York to meet American publishers. When I started as an agent, twenty-one years ago, it was core to the job. And a great perk. I'd lived in Manhattan years before but in a different career working for international news agency Reuters. I'd loved much about the city back then — but I left briskly, owing to a tragedy in the family. It left me with traces of affection for the city and its folk.
Becoming a literary agent in 2003 meant I had a reason to get back. Who doesn't want to see their authors' books well published in America? It's a huge market, many multiples of the UK (let alone Ireland). There's big deals to be done, buzz generated, bestsellers created. In short: agent heaven. I did those things. Trust me, when early on my author was number five on the New York Times bestseller list with 350,000 copies sold, this aspiring agent was a happy bunny. I sold plenty.
But over time, I saw that engaging American readers with international fiction and non-fiction was getting harder. The US publishers were buying less from UK agents. The whole project was also a time-suck. Sure, I could know key editors at big American imprints. But I couldn't be attuned to nuances of individual taste on top of every editor's career jump as I am about publishers in London and Dublin. So we did what most UK agencies do and built partnerships with agents in New York. Instead of selling our author's books directly to US publishers and taking 20% commission on deals, we identified first-class US sub-agents to handle the North American rights and took 10% commission each. With the right sub-agent, you're confident that you've got someone who's in touch with all the publishers and has their respect. There’s a smaller commission for the agent but greater assurance you're maximising the opportunity for your author.
Over the past decade, I still went to New York every few years to attune my head to American reading taste and check in with key contacts. But I wanted to be more directly connected to American publishing. Like the little undertaker guy says to Marlon Brando in the opening moments of The Godfather, "I believe in America." If we can break an author there into the mainstream market for fiction or non-fiction, it's the big time for everyone.
Go back a year ago: my new young agent colleague, Edwina de Charnacé, has found thrilling new writing in Korea. She's spending lots of time there hunting through the exciting parade of fiction being published. Edwina speaks Korean and has roots there. In recent years, readers across Europe and America have begun to explore Korean writing. The international explosion of K-Drama underpins this. There's a subtle dimension here. Streamers like Netflix are hyper-aware of the new viewing habit they call 'double screening' where viewers watch their phone while they watch their TV dramas. You can't double screen K-Drama if you aren't fluent in Korean. You have to read the subtitles. You must read the screen.1 The watcher is more engrossed than they are with English language escapist stories. Their minds are READING while watching. Whatever the psychological impact, we're seeing New Adults (readers 18-30 years old) buying lots of Korean fiction. In fact, they're generally more open to foreign language writers. It's a significant shift. I love seeing new adults escaping the confines of their national culture. A shout out to BookTok here: TikTok book fans are pressing their followers to look ever more widely. Edwina saw this whilst also noticing that few foreign publishers or agents have been investing the enormous amount of time needed to examine everything being published in Korea.
Fast-forward to the present: Edwina has unearthed a serious number of Korean gems and sold them to grateful UK publishers. She's on a roll. We're here bringing a wider range of Korean fiction to US publishers than anyone has ever shown them. We had three days of back-to-back meetings with US publishers last week. Of course, I was pitching upcoming titles by our Irish and British authors. That went fine, as it does. But when Edwina has the floor and lays out her wares, the editors sit forward in their chairs and get sparky. I love seeing that, almost as much as I enjoy admiring the articulacy and canniness of my young colleague who, after college, started her career just three years ago. Isn't wise energy a beautiful thing?
Hear from Edwina and Ivan about their time meeting US publishers:
[ENDS]
Ivan acknowledges that American dubbing for these TV shows does exist but according to friends, colleagues and The Internet, most people prefer to watch K-Drama with sub-titles. Which does something to restore our faith in humanity.