{"id":31811,"date":"2025-09-20T00:14:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T00:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/31811\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T00:14:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T00:14:07","slug":"books-are-my-business-literary-agent-jade-kavanagh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/31811\/","title":{"rendered":"Books are my business: Literary agent Jade Kavanagh"},"content":{"rendered":"
Jade Kavanagh is a literary agent with the Darley Anderson Agency and Associates, based in London.<\/p>\n
I loved reading my entire childhood, and then as a teenager, I rebelled and stopped.<\/p>\n
When I went to university and studied English literature, it was such a blessing, because I discovered books all over again.<\/p>\n
I stayed on for my masters, then I had this insane idea that it would be easy to get into publishing. I did different internships, and then found my way into this agency.<\/p>\n
What does your role involve?<\/p>\n
I represent authors in the same way actors have agents. I read their work, take it on, represent it, and then sell it to publishers, and that can look like so many different things.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n I handle the US and the UK for my authors, and then we have a rights team who try and sell the rights internationally for foreign translation.\n <\/p>\n
My day to day is always different. So I\u2019ll be reading submissions, taking people on, doing editorial work, trying to sell a book \u2014 pitching, networking, negotiating the deal, doing the contract, on to publication, all the way through that, and afterwards, the whole career of a writer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I make sure that I have an author\u2019s best interests at heart always.<\/p>\n
What do you like most about it?<\/p>\n
Falling in love with a book and then being a small part of that journey, facilitating the author to get their book read by people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I was on an editorial call once with an author and she was asked: \u201cwhat does success look like to you?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said \u201cthis call where we are talking about my characters as though they\u2019re real people, that\u2019s success\u201d. In that moment, I thought this is why I do the job.<\/p>\n
What do you like least about it?<\/p>\n
Letting people down or people\u2019s books not selling.<\/p>\n
There are so many reasons why a book won\u2019t sell, and it\u2019s often nothing to do with the book. Because if I\u2019ve enjoyed it as a reader, and my team enjoys it as a reader, I think it will sell.<\/p>\n
The hardest thing to explain to an author is that their book is brilliant, but it\u2019s just not selling right now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n So much of the job is strategy and getting the book to be the best it possibly can be.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
You need a talented author, you need an amazing plot, you need all these things, but you also need luck.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sometimes it just doesn\u2019t happen, and that can be really heartbreaking.<\/p>\n
But the beauty of the agency I work for, and the way we do things, is that we sign authors for their career, so it\u2019s always onwards and upwards.<\/p>\n
Three desert island books<\/p>\n
My favourite book ever is Dracula by Bram Stoker. I\u2019ve got five different editions and I\u2019ve read it countless times.<\/p>\n
The first time I read it, I was on the train home from uni, it was pitch black and raining, and I was reading the bit where Jonathan Harker is on his way to the castle. I had to close the book because I was too scared to read it.<\/p>\n
When I was a kid, I had a huge collection of Milly-Molly-Mandy stories by Joyce Lankester Brisley. I read it so much it was worn out.<\/p>\n
During lockdown, because it was such a horrible, insane time, I was looking for something comforting to read, and I bought it again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was the comforting idea of this little girl in this perfect little countryside village with her thatched roof cottage, I just love it.<\/p>\n
For my third one, I would go with my favourite author ever, Nora Roberts \u2014 her romantic suspense books are brilliant. I would find it really hard to pick, but I would take the Cousins O\u2019Dwyer Trilogy.<\/p>\n