Christian Jennings, whose Bosnia’s Million Bones has just been published, explains how to obtain exemption from US withholding tax.

Everybody knows that they make films about Italian postmen. Il Postino, the love story set on the Italian islands of Procida and Salina, is proof of this. But I’m not sure they have yet set a film inside an Italian post-office. I reflected on this in Turin this year, one afternoon of burning summer heat, as I sat waiting to dispatch to the United States a heavy sheaf of paperwork directed to their Inland Revenue Service. The post office in Italy can be a lengthy process – you take a ticket and queue – and it gave me time to work out in my head the ultimate guide to getting an American tax number. For it was this purpose that the paperwork in my hands, with the address on the envelope addressed to somewhere in Texas, was intended.

One day, you may receive an email from Andrew telling you that an American publisher or publishers wants to buy the rights to your book. You will have every cause to celebrate. Shortly after accepting a publishers’ offer, however, it is likely that you will receive an email either from Andrew or the publisher telling you that, to avoid a heavy 30% tax payable to the US Inland Revenue on advance monies and royalties earned in the United States, you will need to get something called a U.S IRS ITIN.

This stands for a United States Inland Revenue Service Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. What it does, simply, is to make sure that you as a British author can receive the requisite tax status in the United States to ensure you are exempt from paying tax of 30% on your books’ proceeds in America. It is actually quite easy to get, requires a bit of time and patience, but is formulaic, and all you have to do is follow these steps. Every possible provision has been thought of in the following memo, and includes updates and changes to IRS policy made in early 2013, and help and advice for authors living inside and outside the UK.

A. Why do I have to get it? The answer is you don’t, but without it, you will lose 30% of your monies earned from your book in the US to their Inland Revenue.

B. What happens first? Well, let’s assume a US publisher has bought your book for an advance of $30,000, and you are immediately due, on signature of contact, 33%, or $10,000. And you don’t yet have an ITIN number. What will happen is that the publishers will offer to pay Andrew 70% of this sum – ie. $7,000 – and keep $3,000 back, on hold, until you get an ITIN number and send it to them, proving your right to exemption from US tax. Once you have your ITIN number and send it and the requisite form to them, the balance of monies withheld for tax is sent to Andrew.

C. Why would they do this? The Inland Revenue specifies that unless a ‘non-resident alien claiming tax treaty benefits with an ITIN’ provides proof of such status, 30% of their income from their book must be held back by the publishers until the author provides the latter with an ITIN and the necessary form proving tax exemption. This is based upon the relevant tax treaties signed between the U.S and Great Britain : but don’t worry. Getting the ITIN is relatively straightforward.

D. So what should I do? The answer is simple : Delta India November. Do It Now. Don’t procrastinate this, as it does take time, it won’t do itself, and each day you don’t do it is one day more you are away from your money. Fear not - the IRS are helpful and efficient.

E. What should I do next? Simple – do it properly, and if in doubt, consult. I speak not as a draconian Sergeant-Major, but from experience. Sending my W7 form off to America before Christmas 2012, from Sarajevo in Bosnia, I failed to triple-check the small print that said that accompanying identification documents must be certified in such a way by such a person or institution. Off I sent it, and I can only imagine that in an IRS warehouse in San Antonio or South Dakota or somewhere, my first application form is still sitting. Or it’s in a bin. Meaning I had to do it again.

F. What happens if I don’t do it straightaway, but leave it for a few months? Well, if you haven’t provided your US publisher with an ITIN number to recoup the 30% of funds owed to you, that they’ve kept back for tax, by the end of the given US financial year in which the money was due to you, the money will go to the IRS. Then it really is bureaucratic and difficult to get back, and you don’t want to go there.

G. So where do I start? Simple. The internet. Go to www.irs.org, and look for two forms called W8-BEN and W7. Download them and print a few times each. You’ll need a couple for practice. Print the guidelines to filling them in, too. Read the latter. Don’t immediately burst into tears. It’s OK. This guide is here to help.

H. Which one do I do first? W7 first, because you can’t fill in W8-BEN without having an ITIN number, and you can’t get this without filling in W7, which gets you the tax number. W8 is the form which declares you exempt from US tax, and W7 is the form that gets you the tax number required to prove this exemption.

I. Where on earth do I start? Damn good question. I’d suggest boiling the kettle, making a coffee, or opening a bottle of anything.

J. And then? Fill in form W7 as follows, in clear, non joined-up, completely legible capital letters, preferably in back or blue.

a. Tick Box ‘a.’ You are a non-resident alien required to obtain an ITIN to claim tax treaty benefits b. Ignore boxes b,c,d,e,f,g c. Tick box ‘h.’ Enter the words ‘EXCEPTION 1.’ d. Under ‘Additional information for a and f. Enter treaty country’ put “United Kingdom.” And under “and treaty article number” enter “ARTICLE 12. BOOK ROYALTIES.” e. Then fill in the name boxes at 1a. Ignore 1b. f. Then at Section 2 fill in ‘Applicant’s mailing address.’ Make sure this is an address that you are living at, so you can receive your ITIN number.
g. Ignore ‘Foreign (non-US) address.’ Leave blank. h. Fill in as follows “09/01/1970” for 1st September 1970. Print United Kingdom in full. Under ‘City and state or province’ put the information exactly as it appears on your passport.For a UK passport, put either a county, say Hampshire, or a town, say Carlisle. i. Using your skill and judgement, fill in (5). The boxes marked ‘Male’ or ‘Female.’
j. Probably make another cup of tea now, put some more ice and gin in the gin and tonic, or make fresh coffee. This is a tricky section. Brace yourself. k. 6a. United Kingdom, printed in capitals. 6b. Put in your UK tax number here, if you want, and if you have it. Not obligatory 6c. Best leave blank, unless you have a visa for a visit to the U.S for purposes other than tourism, in which case specify 6d. A UK passport is the only stand-alone document accepted here, so the easiest thing to do is to use the details from it. So just tick the box marked ‘passport’ and leave the others blank. Put ‘UK Govt.’ in the ‘Issued by…’ box for your passport, and include its number and expiry date.
6e. Tick ‘No/Do Not Know.’ 6f. Skip. After ‘TIN or EIN’ put ‘N/A.’ 6g. See the W7 instructions – this is for people already in the US so almost certainly not applicable to you.

Then sign, put the date, with month first, day second, year third – ie. 11/24/2013 – and enter a working mobile phone or landline where you can be reached. That is the W7 form now filled-in.

The quest for the ITIN can now go down two paths. The most important bit of paperwork you will need is a copy of your passport, certified, which will provide identification of you to the IRS. If you live in the UK, the best way to do this is to visit the US Inland Revenue office at the U.S Embassy in London. The officials there will check your documentation, and that you have filled in your forms correctly, will certify your ID documents, and mail your forms and paperwork to the US. Check on the US Embassy website for opening times, get there as early as possible, and be prepared for rigid security. See other advice articles for specific embassy details.

If you live abroad, and cannot return back to the UK for whatever reason to visit the American embassy in London, you need to get a copy of your passport certified by its ‘issuing authority.’ This is really important. This means a representative abroad of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Which means the consular and visa section of any British Embassy. It does not mean a British lawyer, barrister or solicitor living and working abroad who is authorized by the British Embassy or other bodies in said country – be it Italy, Thailand, Switzerland, Paraguay – to legally validate or approve British documents issued by a government agency in the UK

The IRS won’t, unfortunately, accept this. It would be great if they did, but they don’t. It has to be done by a British Embassy. So, depending on where you live, check with the consular and visa section of your local embassy, and see if this is a service they will provide. Although most embassies will happily provide this – the British FCO abroad is very efficient and helpful – some bigger UK embassies are so busy with other consular matters that they may not be able to do it. But they can direct you to ones that can.

The next step is almost as important. To prove to the IRS that you will be earning money in the United States from which you are trying to claim exemption from tax, you need to prove this to them. So you need a letter from your publishers that states clearly that in the coming or current calendar year, you, the author, will be receiving payments set against royalties, from which you will need tax exemption. No mights, or maybes, or possibly, or conditionally – it has to be definitive. So, let’s take a clear example. You should ask your publishers to present you with a letter you can print – a scan is best, as you get an original – in which they state that you, as author X, who has written book Y, under contract / ISBN ZZZ for them, will receive advance and or royalty payments in 1/2/3 installments in the calendar years/s 2013 / 2014 etc. And that they are providing this letter so that you can use it, along with the publishers’ contract, to gain exemption from US tax on any payments resulting from it.

Next, you should print the pages from your publishers’ contract which contain your, the agent’s and the publishers agreement details, and the sums of money involved in the various advance installments. These are normally the first 2-3 pages. Then also print the final page, which is the one containing the signatures of your publishers and Andrew Lownie as your representative.

It’s also an idea to put in a photocopy of the data page of your UK passport for reference, and a photocopy of the certification, but this is optional. Include a sheet of A4 paper with the various forms, on which you list what you are sending to the Inland Revenue address, which is written in their guidelines. It’s the one in Austin, Texas. So your check list should include : Completed W7 form, UK passport certification, publishers’ contract, signed letter from publishers, a clear note of your address and mobile number and email, and a line of thanks at the bottom. Take this to the post office wherever you are, and send it recorded or registered delivery. Don’t send any original documents – the passport certification suffices. If you want to send it by DHL or other courier, there is a separate address for this.

Send it. Then wait. Some people get their ITIN after a month, some six weeks. I waited nearly ten. But it arrived. When it does, simply fill in the W-8 BEN form, and send it to the US publishers, cc-ing it to Andrew.

In Box 6 of part 1 on the form, put your ITIN here, clearly marked. In part II, in section 9 just put ‘United Kingdom.’ In section 10 put article ’12,’ to claim a ‘30%’ of withholding on ‘Book Royalties.’ And at the bottom add a line like ‘Author claiming withheld monies on book royalties.’ Then sign it, and date it – month, day, year – and put ‘Individual’ on the line which says ‘Capacity in which acting.’

Good luck!

With thanks to John and Celia Lee, Neil McKenna, Christopher Moran, Louisa Treger, Adrian Weale, Ian Graham and other clients of the Andrew Lownie Agency who have provided advice on his website on this seemingly-complex process. Advice articles written by some of them, from experience, can be found on the website, from 2004 to the present.

Fifteen of the agency’s ghost writers say who they would like to ghost.

Lynne Barrett-Lee

To London, to a ghost party, hosted by the legendary Andrew Lownie and, as might be expected when in a room full of ghost writers, talk naturally turns to our dream dates.

Dates as in ghost writing gigs, obviously. As in people we harbour secret yearnings to interrogate (teasing ‘stuff’ out, to use the professional terminology) the better to climb in and inhabit them for a while. And there’s no contest for my personal number 1 slot: Andy Murray. And though you might think my choice is less to do with professional interest than it is to do with his sporting, ahem, assets, you’d be wrong. In fact, Andy Murray bears an uncanny resemblance to my second born son - looks and temperament - which means I have followed him from the off for essentially organic reasons, so such suggestions are, frankly, a bit hmm. Actually, I’d love to ghost him because I like him. I also admire him, and am intrigued by what makes him tick, as I am by anyone so single-minded and driven. I also think, crucially - for this is the successful ghostwriter’s USP - that I could do a great job of capturing his voice.

But it’s not to be. Because what do I find when I emerge onto the streets of Westminster post-party, trailing ectoplasm with a top-note of phosphorescence? That - damn and darn it - he’s already been done. So, while I wait for him to live some new material for the sequel, which other notables would it give me joy to be? Here, in no particular order, are my hit list…

1. Jude Law. He’s been much in the news lately, hasn’t he? What with his Dom Hemingway movie - for which he inflated impressively - and his current run as Henry V. He strikes me as a fascinating man. He’s chosen film roles with care, stays committed to London and the theatre, and, though he could be insufferable – so many excessively pretty people are, aren’t they? – I suspect he’s probably not. There is something genuine and intelligent and endearing about him. And he’s also lived a bit. Okay, a big bit. And been judged for it. A heady mix for a crusading ghost.

2. Jamie Oliver. Ramsay’s already done one and Michel’s road to success has probably been as smooth as one of his rouxs (see what I did there?) but as far as I know, no-one’s yet tackled Saint Jamie. And what’s not to like? He would be a dream to commit to narrative as IMHO (as they probably no longer say on twitter) there’s so much more going on than the exterior probably suggests. If you prick him (with a sustainably sourced bamboo skewer or sim.) my contention is that he will bleed. And I would love the chance to prick those that see doing so as sport. See also tall poppies and, possibly, Paul Hollywood.

3. Baroness Susan Greenfield is a natural choice, too, as I am passionate about women who do science. My sister is a heavy-hitting prof herself, in California, but as I can’t ghost her (that would just be too weird) the uber-talented, in-yer-face, take-no-prisoners Baroness would be a privilege to ghost, as she’s such an inspiring female role model. Plus we passed each other in the centre of Oxford a few months back, both rocking very similar – and tres flamboyant - winter coats. Reason enough, surely? I think so.

4. By the same feminist token, Lady Gaga. Though there’s obviously a chance she’d want her autobiography to take the form of a small, well-curated outbuilding, say, or large mechanical model of an antelope-iguana hybrid in the Heath Robinson tradition, if it’s a book she’s after, I’d love to be the one to ghost it. There is something about this pop star that lifts her out of the media firmament and places her firmly in a category I like to refer to as ‘intelligent, articulate, self-possessed, generous, warm, politically savvy and great company down the pub.’ Again, reason enough.

5. A.N.Explorer. I’m open to suggestions here, though am mindful that if you do a bit of decent exploring, generous book deals tend to be all over you like a rash, which means I might get trampled underneath the stampede. So if you plan on doing some exploring at some point soon, might I present my credentials in advance? One being that I’ve already been in the jungle with the incomparable Marina Chapman (The Girl with No Name; you’ll find it on this very website) and two being that I have also climbed and summited Kilimanjaro, so your toileting anecdotes hold no fears for me.

Louise Chapman

My passion is for the extraordinary stories of ordinary people. I want to ghost mass-market, compelling real-life stories. I am happy to work with anyone who has a fascinating tale to tell whether it be of triumph over adversity, self-made success or taking an unusual path in life. My preferred projects would have an inspirational or eye-opening element. I would also be interested in working with a field expert to write a personal development or self-help book, perhaps relating to health, career, parenting or relationships.

Deborah Crewe

I love working with politicians - and indeed others in public life - with strong views and powerful personalities. I like to think that I enable these fascinating individuals to put across their arguments and narratives in ways that are engaging for the outsider, fascinating to the insider, and in a voice that is plainly theirs. I get a big kick out of writing for unusual and inspiring women - ex-offenders, private detectives, vets, comedians, you name it - who are too busy leading their amazing lives and juggling all their responsibilities to have the time to write it all down themselves. I would relish the opportunity to collaborate on a book about pregnancy and birth: it’s no longer one of my pastimes, but it remains a strong interest.

Nadene Ghouri

For me it is all about ordinary people who have lived through extraordinary times, strange happenings or traumatic events. Memoir tells us something about the triumph of tragedy and the beauty of the human spirit. It is these stories I want to capture most. As a journalist I was well-known for my ability to emphasise with people who have suffered trauma and that’s what I want to be known for as a ghost.

That’s not to say celebrity doesn’t interest me - it does and it matters. I’d love to get my teeth into a celebrity subject who has really lived a life and has something vital to say.

My 2014 wish list: • The recently rescued ‘slaves’ in the South London Maoist cult. • The 19-year-old deaf mute victim of Ilyas Ashar, jailed for trafficking her to the UK and locking her in the cellar as his sex slave. • Coral Jones, the mother of April Jones.
• Joanna Majic, a former escort who dated recently jailed paedophile Ian Watkins from the band Lost Prophets She spent four years gathering evidence and trying to warn police about him. • Nabeela Rehman, the other little Pakistani girl but the one the West would rather forget. She recently addressed the US congress on Drone attacks after her house was bombed and her grandmother killed. • Soloman, a 20-year-old former child soldier from the Lord’s Resistance Army. I met him in a Ugandan war rehabilitation centre earlier this year just after he’d been rescued. He asked me how he could tell the world about the other children who are still kidnapped. I’d love to help him write his book so he can. • Jemima Khan, an unlucky in love heiress but most certainly no airhead. • Kevin Hyland, head of the Met’s human trafficking unit. • Any Paralympian.

Lisa Higgins

I’m looking for rock and roll stories. I want to ghost memoirs for the most adventurous personalities within the music, TV and film industries and having been a showbiz journalist for ten years, I know how to handle even the biggest ego. Not a lot of stars have the freedom or time to express themselves nowadays with all the PR constraints and rise of gossip press. So I’m looking for someone who can trust me and open up. My ideal subject would be a rock star, or a comedian - someone with crazy anecdotes and a life of unbelievable highs and lows. The joy of ghosting is getting to spend time with someone who is not afraid to share his or her real thoughts and values away from the superficial image fame procures.

I also want unique real life stories of surprising character - tales against adversity, especially women, and local community heroes. Anyone with some fire in their soul that I can be inspired by and inspire others through.

And David Bowie, of course.

Shannon Kyle

Having written for most genres, including celebrity, nostalgia, and misery memoirs my dream list would involve my own interests too. I’m fascinated by anything and everything from the 1960’s so I’d jump at the chance of writing for any big names from that decade. The wives behind the men of the time especially, putting Yoko Ono and Bianca Jagger at the top of my list.

As a huge Beatles fan, Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr would be my absolute dream subjects. The only Beatle to write his own autobiography is George Harrison and reference to the band barely made a footnote. To me, (and I’m sure every other fan) it seems a shame none of the Beatles have given a firsthand insight into what the middle of their unique hurricane was like.. but with two Beatles left, I live in hope.

Much of my writing as a journalist for the women’s weekly market is about giving a voice to women who’re barely heard by society but so often it’s the so-called quiet people, the ‘nobodies’ in the background who have the biggest stories to tell. The idea of doing an inside story perhaps of a secretary of a big company or someone whose been caught up in a scandal purely by accident is appealing too.

I’m a feminist at heart, and any interesting women who don’t fit a particular stereotype inspire me. Angelina Jolie, has lived an incredible life and I’d love to hear the stories behind her humanitarian work. I think Katy Perry’s personal journey from her deeply religious sheltered childhood to pop superstar is awesome. I’d also love to hear Wendi Deng’s side of the story within the Murdoch marriage, or what drove Rebecca Adlington from winning gold to jungle life. Sitting down and listening to someone’s captivating life events, whoever is telling it, makes ghosting one of the best job’s in the world.

David Long

Having ghosted biographies for a major dynastic landowner and a world champion sportsman, written a children’s book for a composer, business survival guides for an internet squillionaire and two large corporate histories, my 30 years as a journalist have enabled me to take on a diverse range of different assignments.

I welcome approaches from anyone with an interesting life and a willingness to put aside the time needed to produce the best possible book, with favourite clients those who have something genuine to impart rather than just wanting their name on a book. They have a point of view but recognise they lack whatever it takes to sit alone at a desk for hours laying it out. All but one admit to having enjoyed the opportunity to bounce thoughts and ideas off someone else who can then order them and present them in a way which is engaging.

At the same time I count myself privileged to spend so much time with people who – ordinarily – don’t speak to journalists or grant them only a few hurried sound bites between meetings. I’m happy tackling anything which sounds interesting but my ideal for 2014 would be a successful entrepreneur prepared to discuss his or her business failures honestly, and to explore the lessons which were learned and the ways in which these can be applied elsewhere.

Teena Lyons

Not long ago I had an amusing exchange with a delightful elderly lady who wanted me to pen some ghost stories. I explained that while I write all sorts of books across various different genres, I don’t really specialise in short stories from the afterlife. I am not that sort of ghostwriter.

I was reminded of this conversation when asked for my ghostly aspirations for 2014. You see, my problem is nearly all the people I am most intrigued by died long ago. Names that spring to mind are Richard III (how does he feel about that whole car park thing?), James Spangler (what is it like to sweat over inventing a product, only to see your cousin William Hoover turn it into a household name?), or Clemens and August Brenninkmijer (because who isn’t intrigued by secretive dynasties like the C&A chain?). I really would have to be a ghostwriter if I wanted to get to the bottom of their stories.

If, however, my wish was granted and I had to choose just one, I’d definitely pick Wilfred Owen. In 2014, the World War One centenary, there are so many things he could tell us. Although, as a nation, we are so good at remembering, it is only by hearing a story first hand that we can truly understand and learn from the horrors of the time. There’s not much I wouldn’t give to tell that ghost’s story.

Katharine Quarmby

I’ve spent most of my writing life looking at worlds behind invisible walls - the real lives of Roma, Gypsies and Travellers, disabled people and, at the moment, a ghostly insight into a hidden Arab community in our midst, from a woman’s point of view. But other groups of people live behind invisible walls. Take, for instance, footballers’ wives, who have to put on a mask - both physical and emotional - every time they go out and brave tabloid exposure. So I’d be interested in ghosting an insight from behind the celebrity bars - with no holes barred. I think that the skills I’ve developed, talking to what politicians call ‘hard to reach’ communities could be applied to anyone - or even a group - that knows that the image they present to the world is very different to the person hiding behind.

Hannah Renier

We’re all in denial about something. Sometimes our strengths, but more often the other stuff. A rogue’s account of events is fun to write. A book ‘by’ the Co-Op’s ex-chairman would be a breeze; or the troubled Mayor of Toronto. Lord Lucan! – it’s time to sell your book.

The best stories emerge from between the lines. A ghost isn’t a journalist. With subjects like these, she collaborates in laying their half-truths and omissions before the world, in their voice, with just the merest hint of irony. (He’d write it himself but doesn’t have time. Of course he would.)We’re not supposed to probe forensically like journalists. Nor are we PRs. Fortunately if the ghost likes the subject enough, she’ll question him until he sounds like a human being rather than a bit of a tosser. That’s for her own sake – it’d be a dull old read without conflict.Think of the result as a portrait. If it’s just a likeness, it’s dull. You stare at a good portrait photograph or painting and learn something. I start the interviews dispassionately and almost always end up empathising. I know I do, because I have found myself omitting everything from vile prejudice to confessions of murder. In historical biography, positive bias is even more likely; I’ve uncovered endearing qualities in some shocking villains. No worries there, though. The historian I write for takes the blame, as well as the credit.

Neil Simpson

I’m holding out for a hero in 2014 – after hugely enjoying writing with a host of fire fighters, doctors, police and other emergency services staff in the past few years. Celebrities are very welcome too – I started out ghosting celebrity lives and still love the chance to tell their stories. But real-life stars can actually be far more exciting. I like telling real time tales about high drama and low comedy in the workplace. And if you or your client have already published their life story and fancies a shot at fiction get in touch. It can be a rom com, a thriller or anything in between. You supply the setting and the characters, I’ll aim to add great dialogue and pull it together in a fantastic plot. Publishing is tough at the moment – but ghosting is still one of the best jobs around.

Nicola Stow

For me, it’s all about the drama. I love ghosting for ordinary people who have led intriguing and colourful lives – people with powerful voices who immediately capture my imagination with fascinating stories I know would make cracking, commercial books… tales that prompt you to say: “You couldn’t make it up.”

I’m also interested in ghosting memoirs for people who have overcome traumatic ordeals. One such person who springs to mind is Britain’s youngest mum, Tressa Middleton. She hit the headlines in 2006 when, after being raped by her brother, fell pregnant at 11.

True crime is another genre that fascinates me. And after writing a gangster’s autobiography I would like to find a subject who’s worked on the right side of the law. Maybe former Scotland Yard Flying Squad chief John O’Connor is ready to reveal all?

I’m yet to tackle a celebrity memoir, so this is something I would also be keen to do. A troubled soap star would be a likely candidate. One who has fantastic commercial potential is Coronation Street actor, Michael Le Vell, who was recently cleared of child rape. However, as per usual in my hunt for possible subjects, I discovered he may already have a lucrative book deal lined up. The question is, will he write the book himself? Or will he require a ghost?

Clifford Thurlow

Every book requires the reinvention of the wheel. We are always starting again. That’s what makes life so interesting. I have ghosted celebrity, mis-mems and military memoirs and would like to combine the three genres with a soccer player: the tactics of a world cup managed like a military campaign, the suffering and depression of a £5 million a year sportsman and the fame and notoriety that comes from manipulating a leather ball across the manicured turf of a football pitch. Soccer memoirs all read the same. That’s why reinvention is required. The way Beckham could bend a ball and Rooney can make a pass, run 60 yards and end up with the return ball back on his toe is pure maths, three-dimensional chess, astral calculus. We know all about their hamstrings and metatarsals. What about the brain stuff: instinct, sixth sense, impulse, emotional intelligence? That’s what interests me and that’s the soccer memoir that will tumble from the shelves like a prima-donna No 9 diving in the penalty box .

Mei Trow

To all of us our own story is fascinating. The problem is that not everybody sees it that way and we all have our favourites. In the celebrity-dominated culture that we have no escape from, there seems to be an endless voracious appetite for kiss-and-tell. If the celeb concerned is a footballer, a film star, a prominent clergyman or a leading politician, so much the better. And no doubt ghost writers are queuing up around the block.

Every celebrity has a story to tell, but of course they cannot always write it effectively – and that’s where the ghost steps in (almost the title of a Will Hay classic film). Who is the celebrity for whom I should most like to ghost? There are two of them, both dead. One, in this 50th anniversary year, is Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin of JFK. The other is Lord Lucan, the vanishing act par excellence. If I could get inside the head of either of these men, I would be a happy bunny or contented pig or any other complacent animal you care to name.

Katy Weitz

I have always been fascinated by secret worlds and the stories that interest me most are those that shine a light into areas of life which have previously been kept hidden from public view. In these closed off environments – whether they are prisons, locked cellars, children’s homes or cults – the bizarre can become normalized and behaviours which we would usually consider strange, outrageous or downright criminal can, over time, start to look routine. Humdrum, even.

In these contexts I am always intrigued by the question of how the human mind adapts and learns to cope with extreme pressure. It makes me wonder, how would I cope? What would I do? And I know that the reader will reflect in the same way. In truth, I don’t think any of us can really know what we would do in certain situations. We like to think we would survive with our minds and hearts intact, but not everyone can or does. Those who do usually have extraordinary stories to tell and though they may be forever marked and changed by their experiences, they have something very rich and enlightening to share with the world. I am always humbled and grateful to be given the chance to help someone with such a story achieve that aim.

In the agency’s annual feature, forty-three editors outline the sort of books they are hoping to commission this year.

Hugh Andrew, Managing Director, Birlinn

It would be too obvious to say that the next few years will just be about ‘war’ books but nevertheless there are many areas that relate to the war where good books are needed. Next year we will be publishing on war art as it relates to Scotland and this seems to me to intersect neatly with producing beautiful gift books. This Xmas was a very good one for us with regard to good quality non-fiction and I would like to see our list develop here with books which have that ‘must have’ look and feel. It was obvious too that if a book was stunning enough then price was not an object. Yale’s £60 book on the Arts and Crafts movement sold out very quickly as did the beautiful new book on Eric Ravilious. This is an area where paper still has an overwhelming advantage over e. As traditional review coverage becomes ever harder in a market where the newspaper is in a seeming death spiral then it becomes more and more important for the publisher to produce a book which becomes a ‘must have’ in terms of production quality and almost canonical feel.

Tom Avery, Senior Editor, William Heinemann

We are very lucky to have recently taken on a number of young, extremely talented (and largely British) non-fiction writers, working on a diverse range of projects – on architecture and linguistics, twentieth-century history and technology, the Pre-Raphaelites and politics. It is a group I would like to grow in 2014. Subject and form are less important to me than originality and ambition, although I’d love to commission a big, satisfying biography, and to find a writer ready to fill the void left by the late, great Tony Judt, whose magnificent uncollected essays we’ll be publishing in the autumn.

In fiction, I’m on the lookout for any work that captures the texture of our times, and for anything funny. A combination of the two would be perfect.

Hugh Barker, Commissioning Editor, Constable & Robinson

I mainly focus on gift and humour titles, so obviously I’m looking for ideas that make me laugh or surprise me, and that will stand out in a crowded market. My best selling recent title has been We’re Going on a Bar Hunt, a humorous parody, an idea which originally arrived via my colleague James Gurbutt - one of the authors was writing thrillers for him and he thought I might have fun with it. Quirky or eclectic non-fiction titles can also fit my list – for instance I’ve just published David Long’s Bizarre London, and will soon publish Take Care Son, a touching cartoon account of the dementia suffered by cartoonist Tony Husband’s father.

I need a personal understanding of the appeal of subjects I publish, but in purely commercial terms, I also need to be convinced there is a clear demographic that the book will appeal to, and that the title has the potential to sell across different trade channels. Some books can succeed by selling predominantly through bookshops, even in a shrinking market - but it is better if you can also imagine them selling in gift shops, supermarkets, museums and garden centres or wherever, or can see a strong reason why the book will sell online and as an e book as well as in a trade print edition. I also try to focus on books that will have some longevity – it’s easy to focus on the short term prospects of a title, but in the end all strong publishing companies rely on their backlist and I am happiest when I see books I publish continuing to sell over a number of years.

Mark Booth, Publisher , Coronet

I think that this year editors will be looking for all the same things they always look for – a cute and very clear new concept, writing that fizzes on the page, a startling new voice and original use of language, a book that give you pleasure and information you can’t get anywhere else …but a book that fits clearly into a genre that has supported recent best sellers. However , in addition, their focus will be on ‘discoverability’. Because the high street is in such a poor way and the range of on-line promos is so limited, publishers’ power to get books in front of people is pretty limited at the moment, so publicity is key. Publishers’ publicity departments are as ever overstretched, which means that editors will tend to favour projects that already have momentum. So if an author is already famous, that’s a big help. If an author has a wide range of contacts in the media, that helps too. If you can engage journalists, newspapers, radio and TV channels so you are able to say they are already interested in featuring you and your story, that’s good. If you don’t have a substantial online presence, develop one before submitting your script. Research other writers, editors, agents, media outlets who share your interests and bond with them. Be part of a school of thought or taste. To be a commercial proposition, it’s no longer enough – if it ever was - for a book to be good book.

Sam Carter, Editorial Director, Biteback Publishing and the Robson Press

On the back of a very strong finish to 2013 Biteback Publishing and the Robson Press has an ambitious programme for 2014 and beyond. Alongside developing our current authors, and an imaginative forays into rapid response publishing (one of the strengths of a lean independent), we are actively commissioning new titles across both lists. On the Biteback side we’re after high-profile political books of all hues: our great strength in this field shown by the spectacular performance of Damian McBride’s genuinely revelatory Power Trip, elbowing aside some of the usual cookery and celeb suspects to make it onto the Sunday Times bestseller list. We’re also interested in stand-out candidates in the field of espionage, big-think books and original writing that addresses some aspect of the modern world that confounds us all in its strangeness. The Robson Press continues strongly in its eclectic coverage of celebrity memoirs, sport, literary biographies and narrative non-fiction.

Sara Cywinski, Commissioning Editor, Ebury Press

I’m specifically on the lookout for outstanding real-life memoirs – ordinary people’s stories that strike a chord, like the very brave and inspiring author of the bestseller Girl A. But I’m also going to be keeping a very close eye on popular culture. This year I’ll be looking for the next big celebrity talent or legend in the business, like 2013 bestsellers Harry Redknapp and Sir David Jason (or Ron Burgundy). Underpinning all of this is a mission to connect readers of all kinds with an author they can identify with. As such, I also want to commission books that will connect readers with real passions – books written by experts or amateurs who have a real love for their subject. I hope to continue commissioning books with these two clear visions in mind and look forward to seeing what 2014 has in store.

Trevor Davies, Editorial Director, Octopus Publishing Group

The categories on my list are diverse – covering sports, pets, reference, puzzle books, popular culture and even a few humour titles – but with any proposal I’m after a good, clear hook. Something that is intriguing and appealing to both buyer and consumer. It could be a fresh, innovative approach to a traditional subject, such as the Infographic Guides we’re producing, or a subject that can be seen as a growing trend. Given our strength in foreign sales, if a proposal demonstrated broad international appeal, with perhaps an eye to a series, it’s invariably more appealing. However, I will look at UK- and US-only titles if there is a proven appetite for the subject matter.

In terms of areas: in sport, cycling seems to go from strength to strength. Military history also seems to be working well for us and with the centenary of the First World War this subject area should have a golden era. Recently, I’ve been seeing a lot more humour proposals than ever before. This is a very hit-and-miss area, which can be extremely successful, but I’m only keen if there’s an established on-line following.

In 2014, I’m looking to develop our popular science and history output. The challenge here is to produce commercially-minded illustrated titles for an international audience. OPG has also broadened its commissioning in popular culture with some exciting brand tie ins. The US is a key market for this area and the design and production values are all important.

Trevor Dolby, Publisher, Preface, Random House

The retail end of publishing continued to change apace last year: Waterstones still in flux, Amazon now part of a national agenda, the number of independents reducing. Not all gloom by any means, but there is certainly a feeling of having to run twice as fast to get to the same place. For my part Preface had a good year publishing fewer books but making more of them. The Tommy Cooper franchise – not glamorous but lucrative – continues with the fifth book from the archive selling 30,000 copies in the autumn making well over half a million for the collection over five years. Ben Kane goes from strength-to-strength with another Sunday Times Bestseller. We added to our successful cookery list with Comptoir Libanais and Michael Caines at Home and the backlist making terrific a contribution. Quality – as Arsene Wenger is fond of saying – is of course the key and William Cook’s One Leg Too Few was applauded to the echo and chosen by many in their books of the year.

For 2014 I’ll gratefully echo thoughts from my fellow editors and suggest quite simply good writing, a story well told with clarity and purpose from a fresh or hitherto unexplored perspective. And I’m looking for authors not books. Writers who take the occupation of writing very seriously. This year I have a new and exciting history author in Henry Hemming who has written a fascinating, pacy and smart biography of Geoffrey Pike the extraordinary zelig-like character of the 20th century; a third book from rapidly up-and-coming military historian Peter Caddick-Adams on the Ardennes campaign which is being published simultaneously and to great fanfare by the eminent editor Tim Bent at OUP in the States; the estate, friends and family of Douglas Adams have very kindly opened their arms to Jem Roberts to write a new account of Douglas and the story of Hitchhiker; and we have, amongst much else, three new terrific cookbooks: Hunan– which Giles Coren believes is ‘the best Chinese restaurant in the world’ (and it’s just round the corner for Random House, which is nice) – Mother India in Glasgow and Comptoir Express. So what am I looking for in the future? Send me your best in all non-fiction categories and I’ll give you a quick response.

Andrew Dunn, Editorial Director, Frances Lincoln

Here at Frances Lincoln we aim to publish beautiful and intelligent non-fiction, where the combination of text and illustrations is more than the sum of its parts. Broadly speaking, our areas of expertise are Gardens, Heritage and the Outdoors, and we can do well with both inspirational and practical books. Our topics and authors are often British, but we are particularly looking for books which we can sell to our network of co-edition publishers, who count on us for expert authors, high editorial standards and elegant design. Helen Griffin is our editorial director for Gardens and Gardening. I acquire books for our Heritage list (particularly books about writers, buildings and London) and for our Outdoors list (particularly books for families). We have done well with food books with a sense of place, or which connect to our publishing for families and gardeners. Nicki Davis is now acquiring titles for us on art and design, craft and fashion.

Parisa Ebrahimi, Editor, Chatto & Windus

Chatto’s iconoclastic non-fiction list is in rude health. Last year began with Stephen Grosz’s bestselling The Examined Life, a book with a clear-eyed take on its subject and gracefully written. This year we’ve just published Samantha Ellis’ How to be a Heroine– a brilliantly bookish memoir which I’m sure will inspire many more like it, and – excitingly – this autumn a new food writer will be joining the list.

Our books aren’t afraid to blur boundaries, expand horizons or rewrite genres. That is to say, I want inventive and surprising routes into my non-fiction. I would welcome writers who follow their obsessions: whether in a life lived, a journey made, or simply by observing the world at the bottom of their garden.

I’d love to publish more nature and travel writing of the kind Chatto has always cherished: with genuine love for the subject and an emphasis on crystalline prose, as exemplified by Gavin Francis’ Empire Antarctica, winner of Scottish Book of the Year, and as Richard Kerridge will do with reptiles in Cold Blood this spring.

Louise Haines, Publishing Director, Fourth Estate

Non-fiction continues to be as polarised as ever: it is winner-takes-all, as in every genre of publishing. But there are still great books to buy. I am looking for brilliant new writers for strong subjects with fresh approaches, who can , if possible, already have some media platform to build on. As to areas for non-fiction, it can be something unusual and quirky such as a beautifully written description of a passing way of life that people feel instantly nostalgic for (this was a book I lost at auction recently) or just the right subject at the right time by an expert in the areas like when we published Robert Lustig’s book on sugar - just before sugar became a massive news story. Food has been in a publishing bubble as the top few food books can perform so very well, so I am actually being cautious with them though still actively acquiring. I am looking for great pop science, memoir, women’s non-fiction, health and writerly books on art. We have such a wide, eclectic list that I am keen to keep that way.

Mike Harpley, Senior Commissioning Editor, Oneworld

2013 was a bumper year for our non-fiction. We had tremendous success with both the Christmas hit The Blunders of our Governments by Anthony King and Sir Ivor Crewe and The Particle at the End of the Universe by Sean Carroll that won the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books. In short, we’re looking for more of the same. We want intelligent non-fiction with strong commercial potential by leading authors that have an engaging voice and a good publicity platform. Whether it be economics, politics, philosophy, history, business, popular culture, science, or psychology, I’m after idea-led books that will drive debate in years to come. I’m a sucker for a logical, well argued work that convinces you as much as it entertains. So, this year I’m particularly looking forward to Breadline Britain by Stewart Lansley and Joanna Mack, which explores the return of mass poverty to the UK, and is certain to be widely discussed as the next general election approaches.

Laura Hassan, editor, Guardian Books

‘I’m looking for the same things as you are when you pull a book off the shelf – to be entertained, surprised, challenged or comforted with a good story.

I commission 15 books a year. I love narrative non-fiction with current affairs at its heart (Nothing to Envy is one of my favourite books, hats off to Granta), first class investigative journalism (we’re proud of Undercover and The Snowden Files), gutsy thinking (I’m lucky to be publishing Jenni Murray and Polly Toynbee this year), brain-stretching ideas in science and economics, lively sports voices, beautifully written insider accounts (I’d wish I’d published Direct Red: A Surgeon’s Story), nature writing and cookery. And then there are the books you couldn’t have anticipated you’d adore. Those books that make you see the world anew or stir a curiosity you didn’t know you had. I’m thinking of books like Atlas of Remote Islands or Just My Type. I press both books on friend after friend and would be delighted to find something as special in my inbox.

Guardian Faber is a new imprint which is a partnership between the publisher and the newspaper. As an author you receive all the conventional benefits of working with a prestigious and nimble independent publisher plus all the marketing heft and platform of the Guardian. In a world where the influence of review pages and bookshops is shrinking I can’t impress upon you how much this helps.

Duncan Heath, Editorial Director, Icon Books

We are an ideas-driven publisher and we love to publish books that have the character and authority of their author stamped on them. If that means a contrarian or provocative perspective, so much the better, but at the very least we like our books to take a fresh look at their subjects. To that end, I welcome any projects that aim at a broader than average readership for their genre.

Our recent successes with Mark Forsyth’s The Etymologicon and The Elements of Eloquence, James Davies’ Cracked, and Gretchen Reynolds’ The First 20 Minutes show that you can achieve wide readerships for ostensibly niche interests (etymology, rhetoric, psychiatry, and the science of exercise, in these cases) if the content and the way it’s presented are appealing enough.

Having said that, we are open to books of any type within non-fiction, and will consider all of them on their merits. Popular science with a clear relevance to everyday life is a particular favourite of ours, as is popular history and military history with an unusual twist. Sport, humour, popular psychology, current affairs and biography are also on the shopping list.

Kate Hewson, Commissioning Editor, Icon Books

One of the best things about working at Icon is how wide our list is. We’re solely a non-fiction publisher, but we publish everything from self-help and humour, through to popular science like James Davies’ Cracked and language books like Mark Forsyth’s The Elements of Eloquence. What brings this diverse list together is the fact that all our books are ideas-driven, so while we’re not prescriptive about what we will and won’t look at, what really makes something jump out to us is having a unique perspective or a controversial view, or simply a great idea or a very strong voice. As a small publishing house we work extremely closely with our authors to develop their ideas, and in return, our authors are people that readers can trust to be experts in their field. Our usual yearly shopping list includes popular science, military history, sport, psychology, philosophy and current affairs – always with commercial and international potential – and I’m also looking to increase our publishing output in the areas of popular history, lifestyle, business and gift books.

Lisa Highton, Publisher, Two Roads (John Murray Press)

I publish a dozen books a year across fiction and non-fiction; in either category I love a strong, compelling story. Our mantra is ‘stories, places, voices, lives’ and we’re always on the lookout for distinctive narrative, often from an individual’s perspective. I’m interested in the human story behind events, those untold stories of (extra)ordinary lives. They’re books with heart, without being sentimental. As a committed reader myself, I hope our books appeal to other readers and, of course, book groups but really I just want to be able to press a book into someone’s hands and say ‘ you must read this’.

This spring we’re publishing Where Memories Go by Sally Magnusson a memoir of her mother’s dementia, a novel about Robert Louis Stevenson by Nancy Horan and the fiction debut of Kirsty Wark, The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle– all wildly different but each beautifully written.

Books I admire:
Call The Midwife, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Love, Nina, Gillespie & I, The Secret Life of Bletchley Park

Leo Hollis, editor, Verso

In the UK, politics is going to be dominated by the forthcoming election. Each party is going to be jockeying for ideological clarity and scoring points. Yet this must not disguise real issues at hand: housing, welfare, cost of living, immigration, crime and inequality. These are the topics that I am going to be looking at. In addition, with recent news from Manchester the demand for heterodox economics – or post-crash economics – is increasing. This is no longer the preserve of bankers, as everyone sees that they got it so wrong last time. Other global concerns include the revitalisation of femininism, in particular intersectionality; as well as the role of science and technology is transforming our social relationships. Verso is still committed to bringing the most critical and important voices from around the world- in 2014 we have books from Nepal, France, Italy, Latin America, China, Sri Lanka, Russia amongst others. This commitment to an international perspective will be at the heart of our commissioning, exploring areas such as politics, philosophy, aesthetics as well as history, front line reportage and current affairs.

Stephanie Jackson, Publishing Director, Octopus Publishing Group

As ever I’m looking for current, relevant, cool, fabulous, ahead-of-the-curve and engaging illustrated book opportunities with the potential to break out, extend existing platforms and grow brands and talent. My list is a mix of lifestyle subjects, but the biggest focus is food and drink – and the resulting health and diet categories. Credibility, authenticity, an established audience and something unique and/or characterful that we can build on are critical. International appeal/exposure is a big plus. We place a high value not only on brilliant content (which is a given) but also on the package and the aesthetic (which vary considerably with each project), working with our authors and brands to transform their endeavours into accessible and desirable books in all formats. Look to Octopus for a collaborative approach that will take your message to a new audience and delight your existing audience with something new.

Mike Jones, Publishing Director, Non-fiction , Simon & Schuster

In 2013 S&S UK’s non-fiction list saw strong success with books such as new author Iain Martin’s Making it Happen, a controversial and well-written account of the collapse of RBS, The Long Shadow, the new book from esteemed historian David Reynolds about the impact of World War One on the 20th century, Cold by Ranulph Fiennes, his history of exploration of the coldest places on earth, as well as popular autobiography from June Brown and Amanda Holden.

For 2014 and beyond we will continue to look for a range of well-written and commercial titles crossing all genres, including our growing sports list. I’ll be particularly looking for brilliant new writing and originality in the area of history, current affairs, and books of big ideas. We are of course an international company, and with the UK trade always posing challenges, we are going to be particularly interested in acquiring titles which have an international reach and appeal. In 2014 we publish Hillary Clinton’s new memoir, here in the UK but also in the English language around the world, and being able to coordinate marketing, publicity and sales initiatives will be key to its success.

Brenda Kimber, Editorial Director, Transworld

I publish a diverse, eclectic mix of non-fiction – from diet and health to memoir, psychology, self-help, spirituality and cookery. I’m looking for distinctive voices and projects which will not only fire my imagination, but genuinely engage, entertain and inspire audiences. Having published a number of non-fiction Irish bestsellers, I have a strong interest in this market and would like to hear of new, innovative projects from Ireland.

My recent acquisitions include Vicki Edgson’s 14-day lifeplan, Vital Energy, Dr Patricia Farris and Brooke Alpert’s The Sugar Detox, H.H. The Dalai Lama’s The Wisdom of Compassion, Thich Nhat Hahn’s Peace of Mind, Danny Ellis’s bestselling memoir, The Boy at the Gate, and Food Network star Ina Garten’s latest No.1 bestseller, Foolproof.

Hannah Knowles, Commissioning Editor, Octopus Publishing Group

Broadly speaking, I’m looking for illustrated popular culture titles with global appeal. More specifically, it’s books with a bit of an edge or an alternative take on culture that tend to catch my eye. I watch out for any proposals or ideas that sound intriguing or fun, but with an obvious commercial spark. Books that tap into enduring trends appeal, as do books about any general culture topic (music, street art, BASE jumping, you name it…) by people who live and breathe the subject, and can write with passion.

Georgina Laycock, Publisher, John Murray

2013 was a very good year. It’s been great to see books I commissioned for Penguin doing so well, especially Cerys Matthews’ Hook, Line and Singer and Keri Smith’s Wreck This Journal . And at John Murray it’s been a complete treat to work with three of my heroes – Ben Schott, Michael Rosen and Gyles Brandreth: we’ve had an Amazon No. 1 and the first book ever to be serialised by Private Eye.

It’s also been really exciting to be part of a young publishing division with such enthusiasm for non-fiction. In the last few months I’ve bought an insider’s guide to working at Google, a biography of ideas of Alexander von Humboldt, and a history of racing through the stories of 25 exceptional horses. I am looking for fresh voices, expert viewpoints and ideas-driven writing – and authors that we can build into the non-fiction stars of the future, particularly in the areas of science and nature. Two titles I’m particularly looking forward to publishing in 2014 are Radio 4’s Tweet of the Day in April and What If from Randall Munroe, of cult site XKCD, which is going to redefine the way we all see science, in September but I am still looking for books for this year… (Books I wish I’d published this year include The Life Examined, Quiet and Under Another Sky )

Rupert Lancaster, Non-fiction Publisher, Hodder & Stoughton

My hopes, wishes and dreams for 2014? You can’t escape the fact that it’s getting harder to sell serious quantities of serious non-fiction. You also can’t escape the fact that we should be able to tell/engage/ensnare the readers of this stuff directly, through the wonders of the digital world. So I want to make sure I address that this year with the help of my digitally enhanced colleagues, rather than just pay lip service to the idea. There’s a huge buzz from matching authors and subjects, so I want to do more of it - last year we commissioned Boris Johnson on Churchill, Tracy Borman on Thomas Cromwell and Ran Fiennes on Agincourt. And always acquiring world rights has to be the way to go so that we’re not dependent on the UK hard copy or digital market.

History –I hope there are still bestselling World War 2 stories to tell – this may be the last moment that generation is well enough to go on BBC Breakfast and make people rush out (ie go online immediately) to buy their books. Current affairs - we’re going through a fascinating period in British/European/world politics and I’d like to find someone to really get inside that world. Travel – I know we know everything about everywhere, but surely someone can do something new? Science – Brian Cox has done it, what about some others? True crime – there’s a lot of it (crime) about, but why does so much of the writing about it have to be indifferent? Memoirs – who do people care about?

And we live in a multi-cultural society, but does our non-fiction publishing really reflect that?

Anne Lawrance, Senior Commissioning Editor, Piatkus

2013 has been a strong year for Piatkus non-fiction. We’ve continued to establish ourselves as a market leader in Mindfulness with titles by Professor Mark Williams, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Vidyamala Burch and Danny Penman selling strongly, and there will be more on the subject to come. I’m particularly interested in mental health and will continue to be on the lookout for practical and approachable health, self-help and popular psychology titles that people can use to improve their daily lives, and that doctors and therapists can confidently recommend to their patients and clients.

Andrew Lockett, Publishing Director, Duckworth

As an independent active over three centuries (established 1898) Duckworth like to focus on titles where flexibility and personal attention can make a difference. We regularly work with our US counterpart Peter Mayer’s Overlook Press who operate under a similar philosophy, likewise proudly eclectic. Recent bestsellers range from Max Brooks’s World War Z to Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near.

In non-fiction popular science (especially futuristic), current affairs, history and popular culture are mainstays and we have well developed programmes in American, Jewish and Russian topics. I’d like to see titles in these areas with a strong narrative voice that are not scared to pose the big questions and look at the big picture. Memoirs, whether contemporary or historical, remain interesting for us and I’d love to see ambitious books in areas of language, cultural histories of countries and regions (not always the obvious ones) and psychology. I’ve elsewhere described myself as ‘omnicurious’ and like to see titles with a similar mentality in content and presentation that combine a coherent pitch with an adventurous approach to subject boundaries. Controversial knowledge, the unexplained and humour (a good example being Henry Beard and Christopher Cerf’s delightfully executed Encyclopedia Paranoiaca in 2013) we like too. Being one of the oldest independent publishing companies we have a weakness for very British nostalgia, recently reviving Heath Robinson.

Juliet Mabey, Publisher, Oneworld

Oneworld specializes in very well-written, accessible non-fiction, by experts for a broad audience. This can range from big idea books by academics like Sean Carroll, whose The Particle at the End of the Universe by won this year’s Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books, and Professor Anthony King and Sir Ivor Crewe, whose The Blunders of our Governments was to be found on many a Best Book of the Year list last year, to fascinating, well-researched investigative books by journalists like Marc Bennetts (Kicking the Kremlin) and Mary Roach (Gulp, Packing for Mars). All our non-fiction titles have in common strong writing and solid research, and an ability to offer readers a new way into a subject and/or a fresh way of looking at it. That said, I also have quite quirky tastes, and have just signed up a cultural history of food by polymath John Oldale that is as well-researched and informative as it is entertaining. I know it is going to be a real education working with him.

Charlotte Macdonald, Editor, Constable

2013 was a great year for Constable, and 2014 looks to be even better. My highlight of this year will be Dearest Jane, the Roger Mortimer biography by his daughter Jane, which combines letters, humour, family memoir and history all in one characterful bundle. Last year I admired books like Viking’s Love, Nina, and Canongate’s Letters of Note, which were both published superbly, and made for wonderful reading.

My own particular interests lie in family memoir, epistolary collections, personality memoirs and quirky humour titles. This year I hope to acquire some really good quality military history, written with a strong narrative voice, and a new angle on its subject. The anniversary will drive many people to this area, but I want to find the hidden gems which deserve publication. I’m also open to ideas which originate online, whether it be a successful blog which has the potential for more, or a hilarious twitter account which could be successfully shaped into a humour title. Finally, I’d love to find more female voices in non-fiction, whether it be akin to Hadley Freeman’s Be Awesome, or our own Jo Walton’s What Makes This Book So Great, which reassesses SF/F classics.

Iain MacGregor, Publisher , Aurum Press

I can’t really better what my esteemed colleagues have already reiterated about why we publish non fiction, or what makes me different from them. Fundamentally we are all looking for the same thing, success! At Aurum Press we have a tradition of taking non-fiction proposals in sport, history, music, etc. and even if they are crumbs left on the literary table, we’ll polish them, value them and make them shine. I am lucky to have inherited a list that encapsulates this policy with the paperback release of Richard Asquith’s genre defining Feet In The Clouds, still selling strongly after a decade of the hardback being released. Equally Sinclair McKay goes from strength to strength post-Secret Life of Bletchley Park with an upcoming blockbuster on the ordinary people who risked everything to rescue troops at Dunkirk. We’re always searching for the zeitgeist-winning narrative, and this summer brings the one book all scots must read prior to saying aye/ nay for their freedom from deadly-dull Westminster - Bannockburn 1314 - Scotland’s First Battle For Independence by Angus Konstam. Obviously, as publisher I won’t tell you what side of the fence I’ll jump from!

Jim Martin, Publisher , Bloomsbury Sigma

After a period of gestation, 2014 is the year that Bloomsbury’s popular science imprint Sigma really takes off, with our first two titles, Jules Howard’s Sex on Earth and Sue Armstrong’s p53: The Gene that Cracked the Cancer Code hitting the bookshops in November. So exciting times ahead. In the meantime I’ll be continuing to commission new Sigma titles – highly readable narrative works from across the sciences, from evolutionary biology to psychology, astronomy to engineering, climatology to robotics, and all points in between, leaving no scientific stone unturned. First–time authors are as welcome as seasoned pros, so long as they have serious writing flair, a decent dollop of ambition and a story to tell that will make me go ‘wow’.

Anna Marx, Senior Commissioning Editor, John Blake

This year has produced its challenges, and we, like everyone else, have had to continue to adapt to the changing demands of book buyers. But, as a small company, we’re proud of our ability to be reactive and to take chances, and our fast turnaround means we continue to produce books with commercial clout. Take, for example, our wartime memoir Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell?, which was a Sunday Times bestseller in November.

As ever, we are looking for inspirational true life stories, particularly those that provide a unique angle or illuminate a news story. Forget You Had a Daughter, the harrowing story of a woman wrongly jailed for drug smuggling, was one of last year’s successes. Nostalgic memoir, too, continues to work well for us, and our Girls With Balls, the history of the first female football team, was very well reviewed.

This year, we’re also looking to expand on our range of popular reference titles across our other imprints; a unique and light-hearted language- or history-based book would be a great find. And, of course, celebrities continue to attract our attention, so we will be actively seeking out those with inspirational life stories.

With a background in humour, I’m also on the lookout for quirky projects, whether they take the form of a hilarious parody, or offer a more interactive, illustrative approach.

As with all book publishing, timing is paramount, so in 2014 we shall continue to keep our fingers on the pulse, attempting to not only react to, but pre-empt, trends, seek out the more captivating news stories, and to punch well above our weight.

Richard Milbank, Publishing Director, Non-fiction, Head of Zeus

Last year saw Head of Zeus release its first full programme of non-fiction. For a fairly small and young organization, we published an ambitious array of books between January and December 2013, embracing titles in fields as diverse as current affairs and contemporary ideas, ancient, medieval and modern history, classical civilisation, biography, sport, film, plus a small number of more informal gift titles. Our 2014 programme will include further titles in all of these categories, plus first forays into military history, high-end historical crime and mystery, literary history, and nature and landscape writing. We are just twenty-odd people in one small office in Clerkenwell, but we have wide horizons in our sights.

And of course, we want to see commercial, outstanding, original and well-written non-fiction proposals in all of the areas cited above (as well as in the fields of popular philosophy and popular science). Most of all, we want our non-fiction to marry a mission to inform with a desire to entertain: Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae
 are our watchwords (the clue lies in the wise but rather friendly owl that adorns the spines of our books…).

But rather than living in hope that the perfectly formed proposal will drop unbidden into our Inboxes (though of course we love it on those rare occasions when it actually happens…), Head of Zeus are commissioning into particular series and subjects, attaching targeted authors to concepts that excite us. These series do not lock us into a strategic straitjacket but rather lend shape and purpose to our acquisitional activity: we want to be agents of our own strategic destiny rather than assuming by default that our publishing programmes will emerge - accidentally - from submissions from agents. And that means talking to agents rather than waiting for them to send stuff. Head of Zeus intend to do a lot of talking to agents over the coming months. We are looking forward to those conversations, as well as - of course - to receiving from agents some irresistible bolts from the blue.

Drummond Moir, Editorial Director, Sceptre

I’m fortunate enough to publish both literary fiction and smart, upmarket non-fiction at Sceptre. In terms of the latter, I try to keep an open mind about genres, as so many recent standout titles have offered either a twist on a classic ‘category’ or a blend of different ones. I’ll always get excited about something that sheds new light on the way we think and behave, particularly if it hits that sweet spot between ‘psychology’ and ‘business’. We have done very well with this type of book recently, one example being Rolf Dobelli’s bestselling The Art of Thinking Clearly, which enjoyed many weeks on last year’s bestseller lists. Another of Sceptre’s standout 2013 non-fiction titles was as moving and powerful as it was distinctive and unusual: Naoki Higashida’s number 1 bestseller The Reason I Jump: One Boy’s Voice from the Silence of Autism.

I’m also drawn to histories that offer a radical new perspective on the past; to memoirs both haunting and hilarious; unflinching reportage; clever humour titles (such as Steven Poole’s lacerating treasury of modern office jargon, Who Touched Base in My Thought Shower?); cutting-edge popular science, and (sorry) pretty much everything in between, providing the writing is fantastic, the author’s passion infectious, and the ideas exciting. Something that has international appeal will always be particularly welcome, and I’m very open to books that would benefit from being published quickly.

Toby Mundy, Publisher, Atlantic Books

Our industry seems to revolve around the Original and the Proven and the independent end of it, where Atlantic Books lives, of necessity must pursue originality. In that sense, I hope we’ll know it when we see it. More specifically, I’m always interested in smart books containing big ideas, whether they be focused on politics, philosophy or economics. I’m also interested in psychology and up-market self-help and would like to publish some good popular science again. I’m always interested in non-fiction that reads like fiction, those often genre-defying works that describe true adventures from beginning to end. I’d particularly like to publish a few more narratives about business. We haven’t by any means given up on history and biography, though the book trade is disinclined to take much stock risk on work in this area, which makes it harder to publish successfully. Finally, I’d like us to return to publishing one or two humour books each year. I think we should inject a little more fun into the list.

Roland Philipps, Managing Director, John Murray

I would like to publish strongly told books about important and interesting subjects, whether historical (as with The Kings Grave last year) or about the modern world ( Big Data, The New Digital Age ). As with fiction, the storytelling is more than ever crucial in a world with so many possible other ways of being entertained or getting information. We’ve also found in a tricky UK trade for all but the big British subjects that appeal to export markets can be a bonus, particularly in the area of business-related books.

Martin Redfern, Editorial Director, William Collins

The newly revived William Collins imprint got off to flying start in 2013. The year began with Richard Davenport-Hines’s dazzling reconstruction of the Profumo Scandal, An English Affair, and ended on a high with Max Hastings’s Catastrophe, the bestselling history book of the year. We are firing on all cylinders, and as well as lovingly nurturing our established stable of authors, we are always on the lookout for fresh, original, deeply researched writing across a broad spectrum of non-fiction areas, in particular history, politics and natural history.

My own interests encompass politics, biography, ‘smart’ non-fiction and campaigning books that make a real difference and have the power to change lives. I’m also developing a new series of illustrated books by high-profile UK writers, but also aimed at the international market. Above all I’m looking for top-quality writing, with award-winning potential, but of course a PR platform helps.

Joel Rickett, Publisher of Viking & Portfolio Penguin

More than ever, I’m hoping to find big stories this year: books that make a real impact, whether they are wildly original or reinvent an established space. I like authors who have something to say: in a funny way, both Morrissey and Zlatan Ibrahimovic show that not everyone needs to love you for your book to reach a huge audience. On the page I want a glimpse of something extraordinary – physical, psychological, financial – that might just change the way you think about yourself and the world. Or make you gasp and laugh (easier said than done).

Nobody can be sure where such stories will come from. But certainly we’d like to keep ahead in Viking’s most fertile recent areas, including smart thinking (led by the unstoppable Quiet), film tie-ins (Argo and now The Sting Man/American Hustle), and sport (we crashed the party with Swim, Bike, Run from the Brownlee brothers, The Numbers Game, and the inimitable Zlatan). And of course we’re keen as ever for stellar life stories – where the scale of the author’s profile is matched by both storytelling and substance.

On the Portfolio side, we’re still hunting for more business and personal development authors, from gripping memoirs (see Tamara Mellon’s glorious In My Shoes) to ideas (The Curve) to inspiration (Brene Brown’s Daring Greatly) to practical stuff (The Lean Startup just keeps on going). But the bar is high: Portfolio authors have tested platforms and profiles, and their books resonate as soon as you hear the title.

Sarah Rigby, Senior Editor, Hutchinson,

For Hutchinson’s narrative non-fiction list, I’m looking for smart, entertaining and erudite books lead by the author’s passion, whatever the subject. Exciting acquisitions for me in 2013 included bestseller Lindy Woodhead’s biography of Kate Meyrick, the most notorious night club owner in 1920s London; Rob Cowen’s Common Ground, a future classic of nature writing; Shopgirls, a wonderful history of life behind the counter; Marc Morris’s magisterial biography of King John for the 800-year anniversary of Magna Carta; a global tour of the ancient world by author and broadcaster Michael Scott; and Playing Big, which in the wake of Lean In will give women the practical tools they need to get their voices heard in the workplace and beyond. Hurrah to that.

I’m hoping that my acquisitions in 2014 will be similarly wide-ranging, particularly in history and biography. I’d like to see more writers being inventive with structure, voice or approach, who are finding unexpected ways of telling the stories of a life (or part of a life) and of our history. There’s a lot of opportunity for authors in these areas moving away from cradle-to-grave or chronological doorstoppers. I’m a big fan of quirky histories, such as those by Simon Garfield and Bee Wilson.

I’ll be continuing to approach writers directly to match them with ideas we’ve generated in-house. Two Christmas offerings for this year and next have been conjured this way and it’s satisfying to be making things happen rather than waiting for something to fall into my inbox. Hutchinson also have a small line of gift books, such as Rob Ryan’s The Invisible Kingdom, that are all about celebrating what can be done with some paper and ink, so I’m on the lookout for some beautiful gifty/narrative foodie titles too: think Consider the Fork, The Flavour Thesaurus or The Edible Atlas.

Richard Roper, Editor, Headline Non-Fiction

Christmas is still a recent memory, but I am already looking to commission Gift & Humour titles that catch people’s imagination and make the perfect present for Christmas 2014. I was delighted to snap up two books that came from online projects: Football Clichés– based on Adam Hurrey’s funny and insightful blog, and a Guide to Great Britishness from a brilliant twitter parody of Prince Charles. An author with a platform is so important when it comes to this area – it can be the reason we do or don’t decide to pursue a project.

For Gift & Humour in 2013 nothing quite hit the heights of Fifty Sheds of Grey. Grammar and language books have been really popular over the last couple of years, mainly down to Mark Forsyth’s excellent Etymologicon and Horologicon, and Headline published a well reviewed little book by a former BBC House Style Author called Many A True Word.

I will be on the lookout for another cracking book on language, anything that catches the zeitgeist and of course the perennially popular animal books.

Nicky Ross, Editorial Director, Lifestyle , Hodder & Stoughton

I look after illustrated lifestyle books at Hodder & Stoughton along with Sarah Hammond and we publish everything from cookery and craft to gardening and health. I’d say our speciality at Hodder is transforming expert personalities into best-selling authors. My existing authors include Gordon Ramsay, Tommi Miers, Gino d’Acampo and Kirstie Allsopp, but we’re also looking for new talent who are starting to get a name for themselves and who have real commercial potential that we can work with for the long term. By working with a select number of established and emerging authors we can ensure that each book gets the attention it deserves and which is so essential to making it a success these days. Our books are often related to a television series or with authors who have a television profile.

Rory Scarfe,. Editorial Director, Non-fiction, Harper Collins

I am looking for the biggest names in sport and those people who have great stories to tell – our recent Mike Tyson autobiography being a perfect example. I am also interested in big names in the entertainment world – TV& film, music, theatre – again storytelling is a focus, but also those names who have a dedicated following (ideally British). Beyond that, I focus on soft business books, with an emphasis on management gurus such as Jack Welch and Ken Blanchard, and then most broadly I am interested to look at almost anything – pop science, history, crime, biography – that has commercial potential.

Carole Tonkinson, Publisher,Harper Non-Fiction

My focus for HarperNonfiction is books that will backlist. I’d say what I am looking for breaks down into two categories: instructional self-improvement (parenting, diet, health, career) and narrative (inspirational memoir, nostalgia). We’re in this business for the long-game and thanks to digital, we can now publish a broad catalogue with niche areas for people around the world, forever. It’s thrilling to see classic titles from our Thorsons list, finding new leases of life and areas in which we were pioneers (special diet cookery, Iyengar yoga) are now finding new generations of readers.

I’m planning a re-launch of our Thorsons list in January 2015 and so I am very much looking for the best in health, wellness, lifestyle, diet, relationships and parenting on an ongoing basis. Thorsons books are broadly instructional self help: perennial content of outstanding quality and I’d love to publish some category-defining parenting, similar to the wonderful Steve Biddulph.

In terms of narrative, which we publish on our HarperElement List, we’ve always been dedicated to inspirational memoir . We are thrilled to publish the exceptional work of Cathy Glass and Casey Watson, both authors with repeating stories and growing fan bases around the world. We’re building their audiences and experimenting with shorter works in e. It would be terrific to see more of those on the list. I’ve also got my eye out for more inspirational stories in the vein of Paulo Coelho, whose Alchemist is still the jewel of our backlist.

In terms of the more tv-based properties, I am hugely lucky to edit and publish Lorraine Pascale and other fantastic cooks whose tv platform is really important to our list. We keep an eye on pop culture, of course, too and 1Direction, commissioned by Natalie Jerome on our team, continues to go from strength to strength.

In sport, it’s about the fantastic stories and brilliant writing. We were fortunate enough to publish Andre Agassi’s iconic autobiography and it looks as if Mike Tyson will follow the same route, racking up more sales over time. In these areas where advances are especially high, we can’t be choosy enough because the market is extremely unpredictable. Quality will out, though, and that’s what it boils down to for us. We want to publish the best nonfiction there is.

Anna Valentine, Publishing Director, Harper Non-Fiction

As an editor, you have to – and excuse the nod to my Welsh roots – ‘begin at the beginning’. Start where every reader/consumer does – the very building blocks of great commercial content: a brilliant story, brilliantly-told. No matter what genre, no matter what audience/consumer you’re trying to reach, storytelling is King. It is not enough to put out a book and think of it as a ‘product’, another component in an ever-growing portfolio of assets. It has to deliver on everything a great piece of content should – fiction, non-fiction, children’s alike – escapism, plot, characterisation, narrative, delivery of information.

At Harper NonFiction we’ve had a brilliant year – with memoirs by Mike Tyson, One Direction and John Bishop all featuring in the Sunday Times bestseller lists and delighting fans and critics alike. Of course they appeal to very different audiences and buying habits, but all have been published to the highest-possible standard while delivering on the central principle above: they’re brilliant, unique stories, well-told. This year I’m looking for more of the same – fresh voices and those ground-breaking, once-in-a-lifetime narratives, ideally told by authors with a platform from which to build sales.

In an era when everyone can be a writer, discoverability remains an ever-increasing threat, and the ability to reach, build and grow a community of engaged readers will undeniably determine our future as ‘traditional publishers’. After all, ‘disintermediation’ is the new buzz word and we’re being rightly tasked with proving where we add value at every stage in the publishing process. Something I’ve enjoyed demonstrating to self-published diet author Jacqueline Whitehart – whose Intermittent Fasting diet books we’ve launched to global audiences in multiple languages while simultaneously delivering growth in her already-established UK market. This has proven to be a very gratifying experience and I’ll continue to look to the self-published space to discover new talent and build on already-existing communities of readers, as well as acquiring authors/brands that have the potential to take-off internationally.

The non-fiction market has proved robust this year, showing a slower rate of decline than the overall physical TCM market. Biography and autobiography remains the biggest non-fiction category with flat value sales year-on-year, but that’s not to say this genre is safe. This year in particular has shown that readers are looking to familiar faces, stars with longevity, and I’ll be looking for more ‘legends’ of this nature. Speaking of the familiar, our nostalgia list is thriving with a debut by 1970s midwife Sarah Beeson OBE publishing this spring, followed by a compelling, heart-warming tale of life at the Butlin’s camps by Neil Hanson and Lynne Russell, authors of the Sunday Times bestseller The Sweethearts. As ever, these are unique stories, brilliant researched and executed, stories that translate well to print and ebook sales, and I look forward to growing this list in the year to come.

Rosie Virgo, Managing Director, John Blake

We continue to find the most inspiring and exciting true life stories which will have the greatest chance of commercial success. 2013 proved to be a very exciting year with hugely diverse titles. Do The Birds Still Sing In Hell? – the astonishing true story of a British prisoner of war who continually broke out of his camp to see his German lover reached No. 7 in the Sunday Times best-selling and No. 2 in the Kindle charts. The autobiographies of George Cole and Chloe Sims enjoyed huge success along with our show business biographies and true crime.

2014 is set to be another really exciting year with titles that are receiving massive amounts of media attention. Newspaper serialisations have already been secured on a number of our February and March titles including: Saving Susie-Belle: Rescued from the horrors of a puppy farm, one dog’s uplifting story;Screw the Fairytale : A Modern Girl’s Guide to Sex and Love; The Playground Mafia– a wonderfully amusing guide to observing, identifying and managing playground mums and the occasional dad and the jewel in the crown Mandela: My Prisoner, My Friend. This is the story of Christo Brand who as a nineteen year old raw recruit to the South African prison service was sent to Robben Island to guard Nelson Mandela. A deep bond was formed between the two men and until the passing of Mandela last month the two men remained close. Indeed, Mandela asked to see Christo, now fifty-three, when he knew he would soon die. Mandela wanted to say goodbye . Of all the people important in his life from world leaders and showbiz stars to fellow anti-apartheid heroes, it was his long-time prison warder that he wanted to see. This title has already sold in every corner of the world and promises to be an international bestseller.

Susanna Wadeson, Publishing Director for Eden Project Books and Expert Books. Commissions for Doubleday UK and Bantam Press

First off, I look for a strong title, a coherent proposal, and at least one and preferably two, three or more sample chapters with an author biography that pinpoints exactly why a reader would trust the author and care what they have to say. Our reps and account managers may have 30 seconds or less to sell a book to retailers. That means that for a book to have a chance to succeed it needs a powerful one line pitch that clearly identifies subject and target market.

My list is eclectic: my books range from fiction to memoir, history, current affairs, popular science, food and drink; I like it that way. If there is a common thread it is that they are written with passion, precision and a sense of humour. We all hope non-fiction will deliver new information; to picque my interest it will also be well-written, authoritative, and in some way it will startle me. I like strong narrative and the human story.

My background is in illustrated publishing so while budgets are ever tight, I love a project that offers the opportunity to be creative with the finished book. And I want to publish books that I know I’ll be happy to talk about all the time with some hope of sparking interest.

Otherwise I suspect any subject trends are more a reflection of what comes up than any conscious choice on my part. At the start of 2014 my focus seems to be memoir: I’m obsessing about Mireille Guiliano’s inescapably charming French Women Don’t Get Facelifts, full of personal experience and anecdote; the paperback of Edward Stourton’s Cruel Crossing: the story of those who escaped Hitler across the Pyrenees inspired by his own pilgrimage and based on interviews with relatives and primary sources; Meadowland, John Lewis-Stempel’s exquisite account of a year observing the life of the flora and fauna in an English meadow, and an incredibly exciting new writer called Abbie Ross whose debut, the childhood memoir Hippy Dinners is both witty and wonderful and was just irresistible.

Twenty-one American editors explain the books they want to buy in 2014.

Stephanie Bowen , Senior Editor , Sourcebooks Inc

Though the majority of my list is adult nonfiction, I am one of those editors fortunate enough to have the opportunity to acquire both nonfiction and fiction. At Sourcebooks, we have a wonderfully diverse nonfiction list with particular strengths in history, memoir smart practical nonfiction with a unique hook and accessible action plan, quirky reference and inspirational gifty books, and some current affairs/women’s affairs.

I’d love to find more inspirational nonfiction for women in the vein of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. Beyond that, I am always looking for fresh new voices in these categories and for stories, perspectives, and ideas people haven’t heard before. In nonfiction these days, a unique concept and a compelling voice are more crucial than ever. As cliché as it may sound, there are so many distractions for readers that books must capture their interest right away and keep them captivated. A strong author platform helps too, but the story and voice matter most.

This year, I’m looking forward to publishing a number of fun and exciting titles in this vein, including Shooting Stars: My Unexpected Life Photographing Hollywood’s Most Famous (the inside scoop on Hollywood by one of the only female paparazzi), former Washington Post investigative reporter Brian Krebs’ Spam Nation (a stunning exposé of the forces behind the global email spam epidemic and its dire consequences for consumers like you and me), and a terrific culinary history of American food from the Native Americans to today from Libby O’Connell, the Chief Historian at the History Channel.

On the fiction side, I am continuing to build a select list of titles. Historical fiction set in an unusual time period or place and strong commercial women’s fiction/book club fiction particularly interest me. Our fiction imprint, Landmark, has had a number of successes this past year, including a #1 Indie Next pick, The Paris Architect. I’m looking forward to creating more great opportunities for our authors in nonfiction and fiction in 2014!

Amy Cherry, Vice President & Senior Editor, W. W. Norton

I continue to believe in readers and books, in whatever format, and nothing in 2013 threatened that belief. I welcome big-idea books with a broad reach, but they are rare to come by. In their place, I’ve been trying to find those sweet books that are wonderfully written and bring light on a scarce-told topic. Alysia Abbott’s Fairyland, a memoir of growing up with a single gay dad in the heady 1970s in San Francisco, spoke to the issue of gay families, while being a poignant literary read. Just optioned by Zoetrope (Sofia Coppola), I’m looking forward to its paperback publication. I’m finding my interest increasing in books that mesh history and science—they seem to enlighten both the period and the foundations of our current scientific knowledge–and hope to bring in several during the year ahead. And, finally, I’m delighted with the success of Lucy Lethbridge’s Servants, a social history that gives depth to the lives of these generally unsung people.

Dan Crissman, Senior Editor, The Overlook Press

Independent for more than forty years, Overlook publishes an eclectic list — everything from history and narrative nonfiction to young adult novels and hardboiled thrillers. I concentrate mainly on the non-fiction side, with an emphasis on history, science, and current events. This past year I acquired and edited History Will Prove Us Right, a vigorous defense of the Warren Commission report on the Kennedy assassination by Howard P. Willens, and The Secret Lives of Sports Fans, an examination of the science behind fandom by Radiolab contributor Eric Simons.

I also dabbled in fiction, editing the final volume in Peter Quinn’s Fintan Dunne trilogy, Dry Bones. This coming year we’ll be publishing Standard Deviations, a new look at all the ways statistics mislead us by economics professor Gary Smith, as well as History Lessons, a memoir about reconstructing a forgotten childhood in 1960s New Orleans by historian Clifton Crais.

For 2014, I’m particularly keen on building up our history list; military and ancient history have worked well for us in the past, but I’d like to branch out into topics like religion, economics, cultural studies, and business history. On the science side, books that look at past discoveries in a new way or explore the implications of new technology for our future are always welcome. On a more personal note, I’ve become increasingly obsessed with all things culinary as of late and would love to acquire some books about food, gardening, and beer & wine. Overlook also has a longstanding co-publishing partnership with Duckworth in the UK, so books that have transatlantic appeal are especially of interest.

Eamon Dolan ,VP, Editorial Director, Eamon Dolan Books

I publish some fiction, though I focus mostly on non-fiction in the genres of current affairs, science, psychology, history, biography, memoir, and sports. But, when I’m assessing a project, I think less about genre than I do about energy and intent. I want books with momentum which comes from both a propulsive narrative and an author’s desire to convince us of something. Every book I publish is underpinned by an argument, whether overt or covert. This is important to me because argument indicates and conveys passion. (Also, argument is itself a form of narrative, and helps in structural terms.) And I don’t need to agree with an author; I just need the author to make his or her points cogently enough to withstand a skeptic’s scrutiny. More than anything else, I want to publish books that change people’s minds, whether by disproving some piece of conventional wisdom, or by alerting them to possibilities they didn’t realize were available to them. In my opinion, books are better than any other medium at altering our world-view, and that’s what I hope my books will do.

Claiborne Hancock, Publisher , Pegasus Books

2013 was an exciting and dynamic year for Pegasus. We increased our number of new hard covers, especially in nonfiction categories such as history and science. E book sales continue to give us a significant boost and continues to be a factor in our acquisition process, but the primary spark for our sales remains traditional publicity combined with digital coverage. When I look for new titles for our list, I am searching for books that are intelligent and say something new; obviously, it’s always an advantage when an author has a strong platform to help with creative ways to reach our readers.

In the past year, our most successful titles were The Norman Conquest by Marc Morris, The Girl with No Name by Marina Chapman and Vanessa James, Earth by Timothy Good, and The Stranger by Camilla Lackberg. All of these books gave Pegasus a great opportunity to reach both digital and traditional media, be it print reviews, television, or radio interviews. Moving into 2014, I am looking to continue this trend in publishing quality nonfiction that finds its core readership through our extensive media efforts.

Lara Heimert, Publisher, Basic Books

When we buy books at Basic, we’re always looking for three things: a big topic, an expert author, and new research. Most of our authors are academics, but we also have journalists and politicians on our list. Basic has a strong mission-driven culture – we want to publish books that push knowledge forward. I think that can sound confining at first blush, but that mandate can encompass a really broad array of different kinds of books. I published Timothy Snyder’s bestselling Bloodlands, a major new account of twentieth century Europe, and I also published the bestsellers Dog Sense and Cat Sense by John Bradshaw, a brilliant anthrozoologist. This fall we had great success with the paperback of Bee Wilson’s Consider the Fork, a history of how we cook, and also with Ed Frenkel’s Love and Math, a memoir by one of America’s most exceptional mathematicians. None of which is to say that the quality of the writing isn’t important to me, or to Basic – it is – but we’re definitely playing the long game here. We want to publish the books that change the field – the books we’ll be publishing in new editions thirty years hence.

Brent Howard, Senior Editor, New American Library

I’m always hunting for ambitious, smart, well-written narrative nonfiction, from energetic authors. At NAL, I acquire more on the commercial side than the purely academic, thus I’m usually drawn to familiar subjects that are made new again by fresh research, a unique approach, and excellent writing. I’m looking for history, military, biography, sports and science.

Outside of my list, I love in-depth biographies like Jean Edward Smith’s Eisenhower in War and Peace; stories of disasters, like Timothy Egan’s The Big Burn; and histories of the American West, like James Donovan’s A Terrible Glory.

Just a few of my 2014 titles gives a nice overview of what I connect with: John C. McManus’s revealing new work on Omaha Beach, The Dead and Those About to Die; Tim McGrath’s stirring narrative on the Continental Navy during the Revolutionary War, Give Me a Fast Ship; the late John S.D. Eisenhower’s final book, a biography of William Tecumseh Sherman titled American General; and Karen Masterson’s The Malaria Project, on America’s secret scientific research project to find a cure for malaria during WWII.

Michelle Howry, Senior Editor, Touchstone / Simon & Schuster

I work exclusively on non-fiction, with about half my list consisting of narrative non-fiction (science, history, pop culture, memoir) and the other half more prescriptive, practical non-fiction (diet, health, self-help, a little parenting). On the narrative side of things, I had some nice success last year with a book called The Girls of Atomic City , a “hidden” (or at least, little known) story about women in a secret government town during World War II who helped build the atomic bomb … only they didn’t know it at the time. It really straddled the history and popular science audiences nicely, and I’d love to find more books like this.

Coming up this year, I am looking forward to publishing some more fun titles also in this narrative vein, including Mother Nature Is Trying To Kill You (a lively romp through the dark side of the natural world) and Champagne Supernovas (the story of how fashion was completely revolutionized in the 1990s by three maverick personalities – Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, and Alexander McQueen).

I’m also looking forward to continuing to find great brands and personalities for the more prescriptive side of my list. I’m working on a new book by the best-selling Forks Over Knives plant-based diet team, as well as a new book in our bestselling Atkins diet series ( The New Atkins Made Easy) in 2014. On the practical side, so much of it is about platform and publicity, but I’m occasionally able to take a chance on a more niche prescriptive title if I can really prove that the audience is there .

Emi Ikkanda, Associate Editor, Henry Holt & Company

I love the feeling of seeing the world differently after finishing a book. My favorites allow me to go on a journey, discover a lost chapter in history, or explore hidden worlds. For my list at Holt, I actively pursue nonfiction narratives, humorous or moving memoirs, and reportage projects that explore subcultures, multiculturalism, race, science, war, history, adventure, food, or the arts. I also seek out upmarket voice-driven fiction, particularly novels with strong multicultural, historical, noir, slipstream, or folktale elements. I am also always drawn to emotionally rich stories that center on family secrets, loss, disappearances, or unusual friendships or marriages.

Looking ahead to 2015, I am excited about publishing Time Magazine contributor Carla Power’s forthcoming book If The Oceans Were Ink, an eye-opening memoir built around the year the secular journalist spent studying the Koran with her longtime friend, the renowned Islamic scholar Mohammad Akram Nadwi. And of course, as always, for this coming year I look forward to growing my list at Holt with acquisitions in fiction or nonfiction.

Serena Jones, Senior Editor, Holt

I edit and acquire a broad range of narrative non-fiction but I especially I love working with writers who’ve uncovered a little-known story or provide a new perspective on a seemingly exhausted subject. I’m most interested in up-market true crime, current events, reported memoir, cultural narrative, science, politics, and adventure. My favorite recent titles include The Secretary, a book by journalist Kim Ghattas about her travels around the world with Secretary Hillary Clinton, and a fantastic book of investigative journalism by Pulitzer Prize-winner Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner about the Great Recession called Reckless Endangerment. I like passionate writers and love how being an editor is a never-ending education—I’m always learning something new from my authors. I would love to find the next Going Clear, Into Thin Air, or Wild.

Peter Joseph, Executive Editor, Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin’s Press

My list is about evenly split between fiction and non-fiction. In fiction, I’m looking for literary novels, historical fiction, and mysteries or thrillers. I’m especially interested in novels with a speculative, fantastical, or unusual, hooky premise. “High concept,” you might say. In non-fiction, I’m acquiring narrative, memoir, biography, history, science, nature, pop culture, music, and humor. I’ve published several books about animals – on military working dogs, interspecies animal adoptions, and troubled elephant hers – in the past few years, and I’m looking for more in that vein this year. I’d also like to see more about music, whether memoirs, biographies, or narrative histories with a broad appeal.

Rob Kirkpatrick, Senior Editor, Thomas Dunne Books/ St. Martin’s Press

The majority of my list is non-fiction narrative–Biography/Memoir, Sports, History, Music/Pop Culture. I seek stories that will catch people by surprise, like Kent Hartman’s book The Wrecking Crew: The Inside Story of Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Best-Kept Secret. As memoirs are emerging as one of my specialties, I see myself drawn to fascinating stories that have added angles to push them over the top. We’ve already seen great preorder spikes several months out from publication for our forthcoming memoir from Bryan Bishop called Shrinkage: Manhood, Marriage, and the Tumor that Tried to Kill Me

Next year I look forward to publishing a memoir from decorated gymnast Shannon Miller. As it happens, both authors are cancer survivors with moving stories, and they also bring a lot to the table with their platforms—as, respectively, sidekick on the record-breaking Adam Carolla podcast, and an Olympic medalist many times over.

I also have a thing for books that capture the spirit of the times in unique ways. My author Dan Epstein, who’s been dubbed the authority on 1970s baseball, scored a cult hit for us called Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging ‘70s, and this year he’s back in the box with the aptly titled Stars and Strikes, on baseball and America during the Bicentennial year. Similarly, I just bought a book on popular music in the seminal year of 1965, which presents us with the opportunity to publish it for the 50th anniversary. I’m also publishing a definitive biography of U2, courtesy of agent Andrew Lownie.

And although I’m more of a car guy myself, I’ve had good luck with books on underground biker culture, such as Prodigal Father, Pagan Son and Vagos, Mongols, and Outlaws. Oh, and I’ve also published a few novels, such as the incredibly well-reviewed Fractures this past fall. I’m fairly wide-ranging, and overall I simply look for projects I think will be fun and which I feel I could position well for our forces here.

Alex Littlefield, Senior Editor, Basic Books

Basic Books excels in publishing “serious nonfiction”: books by top scholars, journalists, and other experts who are drawing on new research in order to put forth bold, provocative ideas. What I love most about this approach is its flexibility: while Basic has a long and distinguished tradition of publishing in the areas of history, politics, and science, our list can accommodate a wide range of other topics, from food to pets to design.

I’ve enjoyed exploring the outer limits of Basic’s publishing model—with a history of Dadaism and an exploration of our obsession with meat, to name a few—but I’m also committed to expanding our core politics and economics lists. I’m especially interested in the subjects of foreign policy, international development, income inequality, defense and security, intelligence, and military studies. This year I’ll be publishing (among others) Nick Lloyd’s Hundred Days, about the campaign that won World War I; Nazila Fathi’s The Lonely War, an insider’s account of the last thirty years of Iranian history; and Neill Lochery’s Brazil, a history of Brazil’s emergence as a modern economic superpower during World War II. Each of these books contains a powerful new argument that I hope will change the way readers look at the world—exactly the sort of creative vision that I’ll be continuing to look for in new projects, both in 2014 and beyond.

Alessandra Lusardi – Senior Editor, Rizzoli Ex Libris

I’m in a unique position at Rizzoli, the venerated illustrated publisher, in that I am the only editor here dedicated solely to building the Ex Libris imprint, our list of non-illustrated titles. Rizzoli is known for gorgeously produced books in the categories of art, fashion, design, culture, food, and travel, and my happy charge is to find the nonfiction narratives in these same categories that will spark the interest and passion of our readers and take them deeper into the topics they love. It’s a great position to be in—I have the room to pursue a wide variety of projects, and do it at a house where my list truly stands out. And at a time when physical books must fight ever harder for relevance, Rizzoli’s creativity and quality when it comes to production is an incredible asset. (Four-color inserts and designed endpapers are not automatically off the table—Imagine!)

Some recent and upcoming highlights include Umberto Eco’s lavish and illuminating The Book of Legendary Lands; The Consolations of the Forest, an engrossing and gorgeously told memoir by the prize-winning French travel writer Sylvain Tesson, about his time living alone in a cabin on the Siberian taiga; The Gardener of Versailles, by the Head Gardener at the Palace, about life and the seasons on the grounds of this magnificent place; The Photographer and the President, which examines the life and legacy of Abraham Lincoln through the lens (no pun intended) of the nascent medium of photography and explores how he used it to further his political goals; and a beautifully packaged and irresistible re-issue of the Cecil Beaton classic The Glass of Fashion.

Kate Napolitano, Associate Editor, Plume Books

I’m someone who loves examining culture from all angles—what makes people tick, how trends burst and wane, why we act the way we do—and that varied interest manifests itself in the types of books I publish. My list is mostly comprised of non-fiction, particularly in the categories of memoir, humor, pop culture, women’s interest, music, film, pop sociology and history. Voice-driven books, whether it’s a collection of humorous essays, or a narrative history with a fresh twist, always pique my interest.

I’m keen on anything that sheds light on interesting subcultures, examines new trends, or shares an unusual perspective on a well-trod topic, as well the types of books that can clearly target a particular demographic (be it twentysomething urbanites, or erudite film buffs, or spelling bee champions, or what have you). Plume also has a thriving sub-category of clever visual books, and I’d love to do more in that area. Lastly, I’m a sucker for narrative non-fiction, the type that reads like a novel that you can’t put down—my greatest aspiration is to find the next Born to Run.

Recently published books include Don’t Worry, It Gets Worse by Alida Nugent, a humorous yet heartfelt look at being an overeducated, underpaid twentysomething, praised by Cosmo, Publishers Weekly, and the New York Post, among others; and 100 Diagrams that Changed the World by Scott Christianson, a visually compelling history of diagrams that have shaped culture.

Upcoming, I’m excited to publish Mistakes I Made at Work, a collection of interviews with high-achieving women like J. Courtney Sullivan, Judith Warner, Rachel Simmons, about how they succeeded because they learned from their mistakes, which has received a pre-pub endorsement from media powerhouse Arianna Huffington; How to Grow Up by Michelle Tea, a punk rock memoir about how to mature without selling out; and Hey, Mcfly!, a look back at the beloved Back to the Future movie series, to be published in coordination with the 30th anniversary of the first film.

John Parsley, Executive Editor, Little, Brown and Company

I feel it’s true to say I’m looking for the same kinds of books in 2014 that I always have—books that I can’t stop talking about by authors who make me feel that way. The kinds of books I acquire cover a range of nonfiction—science, nature, and technology; sports; music; business; history; humor; biography (of people, groups of people, places, and things).

In 2014, the first five books I have coming give a good sense: journalist Annie Jacobsen’s Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists To America ; NY Yankee Mariano Rivera’s autobiography, The Closer ; Walter Borneman’s look at the American Revolution’s first months, American Spring ; Roland Lazenby’s grand biography of Michael Jordan; and Sam Kean’s The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons , a history of the brain as told though notable illnesses, accidents, and injuries (phantom limb, the truly frightening “alien hand,” bullet wounds, viruses that eat memories, a notable lancing in a joust, and more).

Another way to put what I’m looking for: really great writing by authors who are or have become experts in their subject. I love learning by accident—reading popular science and getting smarter while the pages fly; or reading narrative history and falling hard into people and their stories. I love definitive stories, whether they’re by the person who experienced them or by a writer who is as close to the story as anyone else on Earth.

Daniela Rapp, Editor, St. Martin’s Press

My somewhat eclectic list ranges from up-market fiction and dark mysteries all the way to serious narrative non-fiction, with the occasional animal or humor book thrown in. What I’d love to see in 2014 is a lot more fiction –books that make me want to stay up too late, books that appeal to my escapist demands on literature, books that make my heart race, and books that hook me emotionally and intellectually. I am aware that this is not exactly a scientific approach, but, in the words of Justice Potter Stewart: “I know it when I see it.” I love a good story, so plot is very important to me.

In non-fiction, I’d like to see provocative proposals in the pop science and history genres, as well as the odd adventure/outdoors book. If a book can teach me something new, or can make me see the world in a new way, I am very likely to be interested in adding it to my list.

Michael Szczerban,, Editor, Simon & Schuster

I’m looking for fiction for male readers, both literary and commercial, as well as non-fiction on technology, culture, science, food, business, and adventure. My background is in computer science, and I am particularly interested in the way our culture and commerce are being affected by technology. I love a book’s narrative pulse and am drawn to strong voices and the writers whose passion and curiosity are abundantly present on the page. And it never hurts to have a sense of humor.

Geoff Shandler, Editorial Director, Little, Brown

I bought a lot of very wonderful, very serious books in 2013, and I hope to buy more of the same in 2014. (When my wife was looking at my Netflix queue recently, she asked, somewhat exasperated, “Where are the comedies?”) I’m always going to be after the “big” stuff—last year I helped publish Malcolm Gladwell’s David and Goliath, the fourth book of his I’ve edited, and bought the next book by Jared Diamond, for example.

Very ambitious history is always welcome, though most of what I’m going to chase will have a large American component/focus. Investigative reporting, attempts to look for the invisible architecture of the world, the truth as seen from the left—all attractive. As for biographies, they tend to be of already famous people, not the “most fascinating person you’ve never heard of.”

But, that said, this year I’d love to acquire two or three books that wink and take the long way round to get to an unpredictable destination. I’d be totally stoked to find something that is fundamentally epistemological in its narrative ambitions, a book like Emmanuel Carrère’s classic The Adversary that seems like a true crime tale (even though you know the murderer from the flap copy) but is really investigating the nature of confidence.

I think poets might get there in a way that traditional journalists might not; Imagine if, say, Alice Oswald wrote about a Dartmoor murder? (Or any crime, anywhere?) I’d happily sign up a chunk of the Faber poetry list if they wanted to write non-fiction on virtually any topic but memoir. (Espionage, anyone?)

I’d love some capers, too—books with schemers and oddballs yet with real stakes, such as was the case in Argo and American Hustle. (Those two in mind, why is it so hard to find and publish a successful Hollywood book? I’ve gotten very into Ross Macdonald this year, so seedy SoCal is on my mind…)

Wish I could figure out how to do more books that involve the mountains—where is the In Search of Captain Zero for skiing? Ditto for the Caribbean. And I can think of a good handful of exciting writers, some newish, some not so, that have me very curious as to what they’ll do next: Lavie Tidhar, Bradley Garrett, David Kilcullen, Javier Cercas, Ben Ramalingam, Rachel Lichtenstein…many, many more. Who can make the leap—and in what direction? It’s a good time to be a reader, and editor!

Jeff Shreve, Assistant Editor, WW Norton

I want books that will change their readers—that will teach them more about the world, and the individuals and nations that alter it. More specifically, I’m interested in popular science, reportage, history, and memoir with an investigative or adventurous angle. A few examples might help: I loved working on Scott C. Johnson’s The Wolf and the Watchman—a war reporter’s memoir about his personal and professional collisions with his CIA father—and was overjoyed when it was longlisted for the National Book Awards last year.

This year, I’m excited to publish a collection of George F. Kennan’s diaries, coming out in February, which outlines the famed Cold War diplomat’s many, many years at the forefront of U.S. history. I have a strong affinity for books that cover particularly turbulent periods of history (Thirteen Days, Mao’s Great Famine, and The Guns of August spring immediately to mind), and The Kennan Diaries definitely fits the bill.

But perhaps my biggest hope—dare I say “dream”?—for this year is to find the wittiest, most engaging, most merrily obsessed science writers ever. Think Mary Roach and Bill Bryson and you’ve got it just about right. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Charles Wheelan on his whimsical, and NYT bestselling, Naked Statistics (the partner to his earlier Naked Economics), and I would jump at the chance to sign more authors like him.

So there it is: investigative instincts, unmatched expertise, a sense of wonder, a sharp wit—I’ll take one or all in a writer, as long as they send me out into the world with my neurons firing.

Nicole Sohl, Associate Editor, St Martin’s Press

Since joining the Macmillan family, I have had the pleasure of working with Tom Dunne on titles as diverse as November 22 1963, a compendium of personal reflections on JFK’s assassination from average citizens and celebrities alike, and The Misfortunates, a frank, tender, and darkly hilarious story of a boy growing up in a family of alcoholics.

I am actively acquiring edgy, character driven fiction, much like The Misfortunates , and non-fiction projects that delve into modern American issues, like Confessions of an Ivy League Frat Boy , the sex-, drugs- and alcohol-fueled account of an ex Sigma Alpha Epsilon brother who blew the whistle on his frat’s inhumane hazing practices and debauched modus operandi.

A huge fan of both Ursula K. Le Guin and David Mitchell, I’d also love to edit quality speculative fiction for a mainstream audience.

Beginning in November 2013, I have transitioned into the Macmillan Entertainment department and am actively seeking character-driven material with television and film potential.

Katherine Armstrong
Editor (crime) - Faber

My remit is to commission contemporary, commercial crime and thrillers and I’ve been lucky in finding two fantastic up and coming authors to publish in 2014. James Carol – whose ‘Jefferson Winter’ series will launch with Broken Dolls on 16th January – has a very intriguing main character, an ex-FBI profiler who is the son of one of America’s most notorious serial killers. We are publishing book two, Smoke and Mirrors, in the autumn but will be launching an e-book only novella series in spring about Jefferson Winter’s FBI years. I’m also very excited to be publishing debut author K. T. Medina’s White Crocodile, featuring a compelling female lead character in Tess Hardy, who is working for a mine clearance charity in Cambodia where young single mothers are going missing and others are being found dead. This is an atmospheric thriller that really brings out the heat and colour of Cambodia and the undercurrents of tension and violence that still exist between the past and the present.

What am I looking for in 2014? I have a bijou list at the moment, which I’m looking to grow. I’m hoping to take on more domestically-set (UK/Ireland), as well as US-set, crime thrillers – either series or standalone. I’m looking specifically, though not exclusively, for female authors and/or female central characters.

It’s very hard to specify what you’re looking for as an editor as you really do know it when you see it! It’s about connecting with the narrative and the characters and wanting to follow them on their journey. I’m looking for writing that hooks me and makes me want to turn the page. I love books that I can jump into and then realise that two hours have gone by and I’m still gripped. In crime fiction it seems that everything has already been done but it’s about bringing something new to the genre and putting a different twist on it. I am a huge fan of Alafair Burke and Laura Lippman and I’m thrilled that Faber are now publishing them. Non-Faber writers who I love to read include John Dunning, Linda Castillo, R. J. Ellory, Julia Keller, Fred Vargas, Janet Evanovich and Ian Rankin etc. I love US thrillers as well as UK and European crime/thrillers and I particularly like discovering other, more local, up and coming writers like Claire McGowan, Anya Lipska, Brian McGilloway, Tom Wood, Imogen Robertson and Julia Crouch.

Claire Baldwin
Associate Publisher, Fiction - Headline Publishing Group

I continue to commission a wide range of commercial to upmarket, literary fiction and my list mirrors my varied taste. From rich, absorbing historicals with a darker edge, to magical, fantasy worlds such as Deborah Harkness’s very special, bestselling A Discovery of Witches and Shadow of Night, I am drawn to epic stories, as well as startling, unique voices. Talent I’m really looking forward to publishing this year are Katherine Clements and her stunning historical debut The Crimson Ribbon, which is already garnering fantastic endorsements, as well as Tom Vowler’s new novel That Dark Remembered Day, another hard-hitting psychological suspense following his acclaimed debut What Lies Within. Lyndsay Faye will be treating her readers to a new Timothy Wilde story, once again brilliantly recreating the gritty underworld of nineteenth-century New York. And I’m definitely not the only one who is excited about Deborah Harkness’s highly anticipated final book in the All Souls trilogy, The Book of Life, hitting the shelves in July! I would love to discover more fiction that has the stand-out qualities these do. Novels with intriguing, thought-provoking hooks, stories with heart, or that get my heart racing, and books that might have particular appeal for our international markets. The landscape of publishing and bookselling has evolved rapidly in the last few years as we all know, and it will be interesting to see how these changes develop in 2014. The main thing is that exceptional storytelling continues to thrive, in whatever format it takes and, as ever, it will be about keeping a fresh and open mind in the way we commission and publish.

Cassie Browne
Editor – The Borough Press

At HarperFiction we’re bucking the industry trend of looking towards the increasingly commercial, as 2014 is the year we go live with a new literary fiction imprint, The Borough Press.

This is a project Katie Espiner was working on before she went on maternity leave, and is very dear to her heart. The Borough Press – the name referencing the area of London where HarperCollins will be relocating to next year – will sit within HarperFiction, but with its own separate and distinct identity.

We see the new imprint as establishing a wonderful platform which can present the strength of Katie’s list in the best possible way; and her vision for the imprint is that it will showcase the very best of today’s literary fiction, bringing it to the biggest possible readership, with the first books to be published under the imprint this January.

Borough couldn’t have got off to a stronger start, because as well as being the new home of industry heavy-hitters Tracy Chevalier, Lionel Shriver and Louisa Young, just as we were poised to launch this month, one of our very first paperback titles – The Shock of the Fall by debut author Nathan Filer – picked up the Costa First Novel Award.

As an editor, it’s always hard to describe exactly what you’re looking for, as it’s only when reading you know. But what unites our books is intelligent and yet supremely readable prose, and characters you really want to spend time with. I always try to think of the reading experience for the person who hands over their hard-earned money – would they feel they’d had the good end of a deal, and would they want to recommend this book to a friend? If this conviction is present, then we’re open to most sorts of literary writing. However, as we have two dazzling WW1 novels this year it’s unlikely we’d want to revisit that area, although I’d definitely be open to a cracking comic novel or an upmarket love story. But above all, what I think we are really looking for is a writing voice that stands out and shows brilliant potential, which we can hope to establish and grow here at Borough.

Our part of HarperFiction also includes the Historical section, where we publish greats such as Bernard Cornwell, Wilbur Smith and Harry Sidebottom. So if somebody has the sort of historical novelist who could be grown into one of the returning stalwarts of the future, then please step forward!

Sophie Buchan
Commissioning Editor - Weidenfeld & Nicolson

I commission literary fiction on the Weidenfeld & Nicolson list. Part of the fun – and challenge – of publishing literary fiction is that we have no idea which unlikely-sounding book is going to break out. And which novel with the perfect pitch is going to sink without a trace. All we can do is buy what we love.

Essentially, I’m looking for authors I’d like to talk about. My own authors aside, I talk most about Nicola Barker, Edward St Aubyn, Tom McCarthy, Joe Dunthorne and Gwendoline Riley. I’m looking for novels which have genuine ambition; novels which demand second readings and aren’t afraid to do something different. I’m particularly drawn to humour – preferably dark – and to unusual settings, with recent acquisitions set in rural Tanzania and the North Korea of Kim Jong-il. And hopefully, this year, I’ll be true to my roots and finally commission a Scot.

Helen Garnons-Williams
Editorial Director for Fiction - Bloomsbury

Last year, in this survey, I wrote that I was looking for novels that were surprising and trailblazing, and I was lucky to have a number of them come across my desk in 2013. With When Mr Dog Bites –a novel narrated by a teenager with Tourette’s – Terms & Conditions, the story of a contract lawyer who, belatedly (touchingly, comically) tries to rewrite the terms of his own life – The Wives of Los Alamos – told in the collective first person, about the women who have, until now, only been a footnote to the creation of atom bomb – and The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing – the story of a family divided across generations and cultures, wrestling with its future and its past – our 2014 debuts are novels that all, in their very different ways, surprised and challenged and delighted me.

It is reassuring to know that great storytelling and distinctive voices are out there, and that, whatever the trends in publishing and reading, these qualities do not go out of fashion. As the range of books above shows, it seems a little redundant to try and put my finger on the kinds of novel I am looking for, but they do all nonetheless share an emotional resonance and, in my view, are books that force, or cajole, or tease, or enchant you into changing the way you look at the world.

I think we all continue to watch with a combination of excitement and trepidation the shifts in this increasingly electronic and global market, in which the ‘big books’ have become enormous and the ‘smaller’ ones often struggle with the challenge of ‘discoverability’. The Goldfinch, and The Luminaries, (in the slipstream of Bring up the Bodies) would suggest there is a renewed appetite for epic, immersive, weighty novels – as long as they maintain their narrative verve and are beautifully, deftly told. But on the other hand, The Testament of Mary, Cynan Jones’s The Dig and George Saunders’ astonishing story collection Tenth of December are timely reminders that size doesn’t have to be everything.

Gillian Green
Publishing director, fiction – Ebury

I’m the publishing director for fiction at Ebury, acquiring fiction for our Ebury Press imprint as well as overseeing our SF/Fantasy list on Del Rey and our romance and erotica titles on Black Lace and Rouge.

At Ebury we publish a wide variety of commercial fiction, with the exception of YA and kids books. However, what I’m really interested in finding for our Ebury Press list in 2014 are cross-genre titles and reading group fiction with broad appeal. I want big stories beautifully told with unforgettable hooks. To buy a book I need to fall in love with it; it has to be a manuscript that I can’t put down, and - when I do - I have to want to tell someone – everyone – about it. Though if you can also pitch your story to me in a killer one-liner so much the better!

If you are writing genre fiction the thing that’s going to attract my attention – or that of our Del Rey Editorial Director Michael Rowley – is bringing your own twist to that genre, whether that’s with a clever concept or conceit or a freshness of voice. We want ‘genre plus’ fiction – the very best of its kind.

The books I’m most excited by on our list this year are Rowan Coleman’s heartbreaking beautiful novel THE MEMORY BOOK; as well as THE MARTIAN (Killer one liner: Robinson Crusoe on Mars!). I also can’t wait for Caitlin Moran’s debut adult novel HOW TO BUILD A GIRL, and Danny Wallace’s second novel WHO IS TOM DITTO? is as smart as it is funny.

As a reader and editor my tastes are fairly eclectic but in the last year or so the books that I have really loved – and would have loved to have published - include: GONE GIRL by Gillian Flynn, Lauren Beukes’ THE SHINING GIRLS, Jo Baker’s LONGBOURNE, Maggie O’Farrell’s INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE, Matt Haig’s THE HUMANS and THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE by Neil Gaiman.

Alison Hennessey
Senior Crime Editor – Harvill Secker

I commission crime and thrillers for Harvill Secker, both in the English language and in translation, which in practice means anything from a straightforward police procedural to a literary thriller with shades of Donna Tartt or a compelling coming-of-age story. I’m lucky enough to be starting 2014 publishing a book I feel incredibly passionate about; Long Way Home, the crime debut by a brilliant young British writer called Eva Dolan, exemplifies so many of the traits I look for in submissions - it’s immediately engaging, brilliantly written, cleverly plotted and it packs a real emotional punch. Eva’s book revolves around migrant workers in Peterborough, both legal and illegal, and feels so contemporary in the issues it explores and the light it casts on a world many of us will be unfamiliar with.

What would I like to be starting 2015 publishing? Having spent much of the Christmas break curled up reading while the rain fell outside, I’d love to find a big gothic mystery or a wonderfully atmospheric ghost story, especially a modern ghost story, and I’m also keen to find books that can marry two genres, so I’d be interested to find a thriller that has a sci-fi edge to it, for example. I read plenty of submissions that are perfectly good, but just not exceptional, and for a book to stand out in such a crowded marketplace (and for me to want to publish it) it needs to have something genuinely fresh and original about it, whether that’s the premise, the characters or the writing.

Anna Hogarty
Assistant Editor - Corvus

At Corvus, we’re looking for mainstream commercial fiction with an up-market feel. The type of story doesn’t matter – we commission across all genres, from crime and thriller, science fiction and fantasy to historical, reading group and women’s fiction. What does matter is the way the story is told – we’re looking for novels with a clear pitch and a strong hook that draws the reader in and won’t let go.

I would love to find something magical this year, something that transports me to another place or time. For me, stepping out of my world and into another is what reading is all about, and it would be great to add a novel in the vein of The Snow Child or The Night Circus to Corvus’ list.

I am also looking for historical fiction. The novels that capture my imagination in this area have strong protagonists you can connect with from the first page, and sparkling prose that brings the past convincingly to life. We will be publishing Treason’s Daughter this summer – a beautifully crafted coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of the English Civil War – and hope to acquire a similarly fresh and absorbing historical voice this year.

Andrew Lockett
Publishing Director - Duckworth Publishers

Sophisticated, clever literary fiction with a purpose and, for a house with such a venerable literary name, some might be surprised to know the doors are very much open for quality crime, thrillers to complement Duckworth titles by Charles McCarry and Robert Littell and science fiction of the right kind. Horror intrigues too but perhaps the correct word might be gothic, where something beyond the obvious genre template could be tempting.

Juliet Mabey
Publisher - Oneworld Publications

I buy more fiction than non-fiction these days as we focus on really consolidating our growing fiction list, which I launched in 2009. I love brilliant writing and a really strong voice, so was completely devastated not to secure two stand-out novels in the last couple of years, Burial Rights by Hannah Kent and The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton, both of which showcase stunning writing and an incredibly deft command of the story, completely immersing you in another world. I am especially drawn to novels that take readers to a different time, culture or place, or deal with important ideas and issues. I was therefore really thrilled to publish Joseph Boyden’s critically acclaimed epic novel The Orenda last Autumn, which plunges the reader into the 17th century Canadian wilderness during the earliest contact between the First Nations and French missionaries, set against violent tribal warfare. A more light-hearted example of a novel that takes you on an incredible journey is The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert, set amid the gothic amusements, scandalous burlesques and flim-flam men of the Omaha World Fair at the end of the nineteenth century, which is publishing this Spring and already touted to make the author a household name at last.

I am particularly keen to publish literary novels across a wide range of languages and cultures, and have recently bought World English rights to Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin, a brilliant Russian novel set in medieval times for all lovers of The Name of the Rose, which won two of the biggest literary awards in Russia last year. This year I am publishing a translation of the Hebrew novel The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron, described by one reviewer as “probably the best political novel to be written in Israel”, and The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly by Korean bestselling author Sun-Mi Hwang, which has been compared to E. B. White’s Charlotte’s Web and Richard Bach’s Jonathan Livingston Seagull, as well as two novels translated from the Persian, with Italian, Norwegian, Russian and Chinese novels following in 2015.

Francesca Main
Editorial Director – Picador

This year, as ever, I will be looking for distinctive, unforgettable fiction that has the potential to ignite word of mouth and inspire passion in a wide range of readers. My list at Picador is focused but diverse – I look for novels that combine great writing with great storytelling at the point where literary and commercial fiction overlap. This is where I’m happiest as a reader – torn between wanting to stay up all night to finish a book and trying to savour every word.

In 2013 I published a number of debut novels including Lottie Moggach’s Kiss Me First, Emma Chapman’s How To Be a Good Wife, Rebecca Wait’s The View on the Way Down and Sarah Butler’s Ten Things I’ve Learnt About Love. This year, I’m excited to have more extraordinary debuts, including The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton and Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler, as well as Naomi Wood’s Mrs Hemingway, Ellen Feldman’s The Unwitting and Mark Watson’s Hotel Alpha – a novel accompanied by 100 online stories.

These novels are wide-ranging in style, setting and subject but have vivid characters, powerful themes, emotional resonance and an inimitable voice in common. I’m looking for books that share these qualities and would be particularly excited to find something original and surprising in my submissions pile this year, whether that’s a bold or ingenious premise, a character unlike any I’ve encountered on the page or a book that lends itself to being published in an especially creative way. And I’d love to read an exceptionally funny novel, which is a rarer thing than it should be. Above all, I hope to be moved, gripped and inspired by the fiction that lands on my desk this year.

Anne Meadows
Junior Editor - Granta & Portobello Books

Last year our authors won three of the top UK literary fiction prizes, with Eleanor Catton taking the Man Booker for her novel The Luminaries, AM Homes winning the Women’s Prize for May We Be Forgiven and Claire Vaye Watkins winning the Dylan Thomas Prize for her short story collection Battleborn. What these very different books have in common is their ambition and intelligence – these are engaging, thrilling reads from brilliant storytellers who are not afraid to do something new. So, this year, I’ll be looking to acquire work from writers who share this courage – those who believe that fiction is the best form we have to share our messy, joyful, troubling experiences of being human and that its brilliance lies in its continued evolution. The form of the novel is made to be broken; I hope that 2014 will bring a whole host of writers who are brave enough to break it.

Drummond Moir
Editorial Director – Sceptre

I’m fortunate enough to publish both literary fiction and smart, upmarket non-fiction at Sceptre. With my literary fiction hat on, I tend to go for novels that combine immaculate prose with drama, that offer both a distinctive signature and a compulsive, emotionally powerful narrative. There’s much I’m looking forward to fiction-wise in the coming 12-18 months, such as publishing Ned Beauman’s fantastic and thrilling new novel Glow in May, as well as a debut that has taken Scandinavia by storm, Fredrik Backman’s heart-breaking and hilarious A Man Called Ove in July. I’m also thrilled to have acquired New Zealand poet Anna Smaill’s The Chimes, a stunning novel set in a world where music has replaced the written word, and to be publishing Sceptre’s first ever poetry collection, Kevin Powers’ Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting. I should also list some of the standout ones-that-got-away, but for reasons of space I’ll just mention one: Matthew Thomas’s We Are Not Ourselves, a New York epic about a family’s experience of Alzheimer’s that is both desperately moving and completely life-affirming.

Sophie Orme
Editor - Mantle

Maria Rejt’s Mantle imprint at Pan Macmillan focuses on publishing high quality books with broad appeal. It features the very best in crime, thriller, general and literary fiction and narrative non-fiction from major established bestsellers to the very best debuts. Our list includes C. J. Sansom, Kate Morton, Elizabeth Jane Howard and Charlotte Mendelson; as well as genre-leading crime and thriller writers such as M. R. Hall, Benjamin Black, Scott Turow and Malcolm Mackay. We also have a fast-growing list of authors in translation, including Andrea Camilleri, Håkan Nesser and Korean bestseller Jung-myung Lee; and in non-fiction, we published Blaine Harden’s internationally bestselling memoir Escape From Camp 14. While the scope of books under the Mantle umbrella is broad, however, our books are often about ‘the outsider’.

On a personal level, I love to read literary novels with broad appeal and/or an epic feel; compelling, voice-driven historical fiction and stand-out, upmarket thrillers. I love reading group fiction with a strong hook; literary thrillers/chillers and books with unreliable narrators, vivid and unusual settings, dark and enthralling characters and strong twists. Sarah Waters is a firm favourite, as is Kate Atkinson. It would also be wonderful to acquire another unputdownable memoir for the list. My favourite last year was Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe. The warmth in Nina’s voice was irresistible – and its books like these that you will find yourself recommending to everyone you know.

Lauren Parsons
Commissioning editor - Legend Press

I am the Commissioning Editor at Legend Press and we focus on publishing mainstream literary and commercial fiction. We are passionate about championing new and high-profile authors and I try to ensure the list is fresh, diverse and provides something different for a variety of readers. We publish a range of titles from suspenseful female crime to quirky cult novels. I think it’s really important that each title brings something different to the forefront, and that no two books are too similar.

We are one of the few publishers to still accept unsolicited mail alongside agented and foreign submissions and while it’s difficult to keep up with the sheer volume of manuscripts we receive on a daily basis, there is nothing better than unearthing that hidden gem. For example Nutmeg by Maria Goodin, a beautiful female fiction title that came to us through this route and went on to be sold in to several territories with widespread national coverage. Or The Woman Before Me by Ruth Dugdall, winner of the Luke Bitmead Bursary and now our bestselling novel.

I suppose I am looking for what every Editor looks for – fantastic writing with an absorbing plot. I want the characters to stay with me long after a finish reading. I want to feel moved, compelled, enchanted and surprised. It’s a very difficult job and I don’t envy writers at all!

With such a diverse list it’s difficult to say exactly what we are looking for, but as long as it’s fits within the contemporary fiction category, I suppose the most important elements are authenticity, talent and originality. With these fundamental components, the book is sure to stand out from the rest and demand attention.

Sigrid Rausing
Publisher of Granta and acting Editor of Granta Magazine

I am always looking for the best literary fiction and non-fiction submissions for the magazine, from established names or new writers. Granta pieces have to be interesting, revealing, profound, and well-written, whether they are fiction or non-fiction. We welcome excerpts of books published by others, as well as pieces that may at a later stage develop into books that we publish ourselves. I always welcome pitches for reportage pieces too.

For Granta books I am looking for writing of the same quality as for the magazine, fiction and non-fiction. Granta focuses on fiction, memoir, travel writing, and nature writing; Portobello’s main focus is fiction in translation and current affairs non-fiction, often with a social justice angle.

Mark Richards
Editorial director - John Murray

Please see my entry last year for general caveats, etc. But with that out of the way, here are a couple of thoughts I’ve had about the fiction that’s crossed my desk this year.

1) I really think novels should be in the third person, unless there’s a very good reason for them not to be. Too many debut novelists, it seems to me, think that the first person is easier than the third. It’s not: it’s significantly more difficult to tell a story when the narrator is within that story, and doesn’t have the advantage of omniscience.

2) Relatedly: can we bring back the third-person narrator? I read a lot of novels where there’s a lot of statement – about what’s happening or what a character’s thinking – and not a lot of texture to that statement; no sense of the novel itself having an opinion on the events it relates. Perhaps it’s the long reach of Hemingway, but whatever it is, the effect is often deadly – it’s forgoing one of the great generators of irony and comedy in novels.

Sarah Rigby
Senior Editor, Hutchinson, Penguin Random House

As ever, brilliant storytellers with distinctive, imaginative, original voices are what I’m looking for this year. Hutchinson has some amazing American fiction on the list for 2015 – the new Amor Towles; Sloane Crosley’s first novel, The Clasp; and Sophie McManus’s debut, The Brightest Day, a portrait of an old New York family. So what I’d really love to find during 2014 is a British novelist writing with the kind of emotional depth and storytelling verve that fills Carys Bray’s A Song for Issy Bradley, which we’re publishing in June.

I’m publishing two fantastic debuts this year, The Last Boat Home and The Kept, where the icy chill of the Norwegian coast and Lake Erie, respectively, sweeps through the room as you’re reading. I love fiction where the setting is as much a presence as the characters, and so novels with that kind of intensity of atmosphere and landscape –urban or rural – are definitely on my wish list. I’m also on the lookout for a new historical novelist in the vein of Sarah Waters or Jessie Burton, with lots of glowing detail. Like much of literary London, I’m currently obsessed with The Luminaries, so if any agent has a novel of that kind of brilliance and inventiveness in their bottom drawer, that would be most welcome!

Sarah Savitt
Editor - Faber & Faber

I’m always on the hunt for original and memorable storytelling that has the potential to reach lots of readers. The two areas I’m concentrating on at the moment are accessible literary fiction and smart psychological thrillers.

The debut novel Y by Marjorie Celona, which I published last year and was featured on the Waterstones 11 list, is a great example of the former: a distinctive voice twinned with a great hook (a girl who was abandoned a few hours after her birth goes in search of her mother). I also published two acclaimed psychological thrillers last year, Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty and The Cry by Helen FitzGerald - both edgy and original page-turners. I’d love to find more writers of this calibre.

Novels I particularly enjoyed reading last year from other publishers included The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud – what a fierce, fearless and provocative voice – and Sisterland by Curtis Sittenfeld, who is such a master of observation and family dynamics.

Ruth Tross
Editor - Mulholland Books

I publish crime and thrillers that range from the police procedural to the high-concept – in 2013 my authors included Marcia Clark, Sabine Durrant, Kate Rhodes, Warren Ellis and Max Barry. I’m always on the lookout for new talent I can launch at the highest level. I suspect this will be repeated by everyone else on this page, but great writing and characterisation are key. Beyond that, I love new detective series that have a fresh angle in either character, setting or theme (preferably all three!); and books with a concept that can’t help but enthral you (like The Shining Girls, which I didn’t publish but loved, because how can you resist a time-travelling serial killer?). I’m looking for more standalone psychological suspense in the SJ Watson or Gillian Flynn mould; cross-genre twists along the lines of Lauren Beukes or James Oswald; and I also love really dark murder mysteries, in the style of Mo Hayder or Sharon Bolton. Confidence and originality are particularly important these days: as readers turn increasingly to digital in this genre, it’s crucial to grab your prospective reader with a concept. The book might be the most compelling thing ever written, but unless someone picks it up based on the idea, how will they know? Publishers have to be experts at getting the hook across in the blurb, the cover and the marketing so that people are tempted; but it all starts with the writer’s clear purpose and idea. When I’m grabbed by a book, that’s what grabs me: the sense that this novel knows exactly what it’s doing and where it’s going, and that I’m going to enjoy the ride.

Susanna Wadeson
Publishing Director for Eden Project Books and Expert Books. Commissions for Doubleday UK and Bantam Press.

What I would like most to arrive on my desk is a first novel that I can fall in love with. A book that makes me laugh or cry and preferably does both, from an author at the start of their career. Debut or not I look for lots of heart, a distinctive voice and taut writing that veers to the literary but with a strong hook – as ever that one line pitch that reels you in – a gripping story, and themes that provoke and make you think. Rachel Joyce’s Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry was an extraordinary gift – that Rachel is so lovely and so prolific – we publish her very different but equally brilliant second novel Perfect this spring and The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy is coming in the autumn – is a dream come true. And as I write I am massively excited about Phil Hogan’s A Pleasure and a Calling. Think Patricia Highsmith’s Mr Ripley, or perhaps John Fowles’ The Collector. Brilliantly creepy and compelling.

Ed Wood
Senior Editor for men’s commercial fiction – Sphere

A lot of people ask what men’s commercial fiction is: in short, it’s anything mass market that appeals to a male audience. Simple as that.

To me, men’s commercial fiction should be bold and thrilling, with the ability to cross boundaries. It can also take many forms, from tales of guns and guts to witty stories of modern male life.

For me, concept is really important. I see a lot of books with very similar ideas, so when an original high-concept thriller or male-centred suspense novel with a fantastic twist appears, that gets me excited. Genre books that bring a fresh narrative voice or an imaginative spin are core to what I’m looking for, whether they are historical adventure, tough-guy thrillers or mainstream books with an SF, fantasy or horror twist (who wouldn’t want to find the next Neil Gaiman?). And there should be heart and wit too: so few books address what it means to be a boy growing into a man, or manage to marry this to a strong hook. Finally, I am a sucker for anything that feels cinematic, with a brisk pace and ambition.

Rukhsana Yasmin
Commissioning editor - The Westbourne Press and Telegram

Goosebumps. That’s how I know that this manuscript I am reading must be shared, read and enjoyed by others. All the books I have published to date have given me goosebumps. Passion goes a long way in publishing.

I am lucky to have a broad brief: Non-fiction for The Westbourne Press; literary fiction for Telegram. All of us editors acquiring and commissioning are looking for that clichéd, ‘gem’, amongst the rubble and I am no different. I started acquiring three years ago, first at Profile/Serpent’s Tail and now at The Westbourne Press and Telegram – both imprints of Saqi Books. We have quite an international outlook here so books of interest are: current affairs, geopolitics, history, essays, poetry, art and popular science – although I haven’t yet acquired one (not for want of trying). My background is physics and I am keen to get my hands on a science book that truly takes my breath away, like Michael Brooks 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, the soon to be published Eugenia Cheng’s Cakes, Custard and Category Theory and Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension by Matt Parker.

Non-fiction books I have published include: London’s Overthrow by China Miéville, Zealot by Reza Aslan, and Invisible by Hsiao-hung Pai (made into a Channel Four documentary, Sex: My British Job). For me, non-fiction has to have a distinct voice, be clear, compelling, intelligent and never be overwritten or dry. The narrative is just as important here as it is in fiction.

My fiction taste is varied and ranges from literary thrillers, delectable translations, quirky and off-beat novellas and generally speaking, books that echo for weeks and months after you have finished reading them. Vauxhall by Gabriel Gbadamosi gave me goosebumps, Office Girl by the very cool Joe Meno made me smile throughout and I’m still smiling when I think of it. No Sex in the City by Randa Abdel-Fattah was a new twist on an old genre – Muslim chick-lit that made me howl with laughter. Fiction has to convincingly take me somewhere else, the writing has to jump off the page and consume me.

Parisa Ebrahimi
Editor, Chatto & Windus

2014 showcases some strong fiction from Chatto novelists Laura Beatty, Neel Mukherjee and Sadie Jones, but also impressive new talent such as Anna Whitwham’s Boxer Handsome: a bold, ballsy debut about boxing. I would like to see more British fiction debuts that are a bit wayward and test the threshold of what a Chatto book should feel like. I’m interested in the unusual and exceptional: in subject matter and style. I’m not averse to the provocative either.

And lastly, if there are any young Anglo-Iranian novelists out there who are not writing about the Revolution or Iran’s ‘jasmine-scented’ past – I want to hear from you.

Donna Hillyer
Editorial Director: Harlequin (UK) Ltd

My role as Editorial Director of Harlequin UK is a very varied one, as I work across all imprints and series, most notably: Mira (commercial fiction: e.g. women’s, crime and thriller, historical); Mira Ink (Young Adult and New Adult); M&B Single Title (think longer-length commercial ‘romantic fiction’); Carina (digital-first) and the various series of Mills & Book category romance.

Alongside overseeing the imprints, I am also acquiring, and am looking for originality and a clear hook to the story (being able to sum it up and pitch it in a couple of sentences is key) – gripping stories that make you want to tell others about them (good writing and well-told story are givens!). I love it when I read something and think, what a great idea – I can’t believe that’s not been done before!

I’m particularly looking for home-grown talent in the areas of women’s fiction (e.g. issue-led fiction), romantic fiction (the hook is key), and crime and thriller (open to all kinds) – voices with the potential to become the brand-name authors of the future. Examples of books I acquired in 2013, my first year at Harlequin, include Since You’ve Been Gone by Anouska Knight (a warm emotional read, about a young widow learning to love again), How to Lose Weight and Alienate People by Ollie Quain (a hilarious and bitingly witty novel based on our obsession with image), and 3 whodunnits by Robert Thorogood, the writer and creator of the hit BBC crime series, ‘Death in Paradise’, which are set in the same world and around the same characters.

Andrew Lownie, the best-selling literary agent in the world according to Publishers Marketplace, and recently short-listed for The Bookseller UK literary agent of the year, explains how the agency goes about selling its authors.

There are three elements to selling books to publishers. An agency needs to have saleable books in the first place, the proposals need to be the best they can be and one needs to know the right editors to approach and not give up too easily.

The agency spends a lot of time and effort on the website, as it’s a crucial tool in presenting the public face of the agency, in attracting potential authors and in selling rights. The website runs to several thousand pages with individual pages for each author - with a photo and link to their own website - and each book with the jacket cover, a précis of the book, review extracts and the rights sold. There are also pages for latest news, current submissions, publishing tips, forthcoming releases, and much more.

Details of what books have been sold, important reviews, short-listings for prizes etc are posted on a daily basis in the news section. These postings are also carried over onto the agency’s Facebook pages and Twitter account which has some 7,000 followers. There are also commissioned articles, such as the popular annual feature ‘What Editors Want’, which tend to be picked up on social media. The result is we receive an enormous number of visits to the website – over 20,000 in January for example – and, as a consequence, some 500 submissions each week.

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 can we 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, then 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.

Both my fiction colleague David Haviland & I also make a point of meeting editors, especially the younger editors just starting out, for coffee, drinks or lunch on a regular basis to pitch ideas. It’s important to know and deal with a wide range of editors from every possible publishing house as one never knows where they might end up and what they might buy. It’s important, too, to be patient and not give up on editors who never buy from one - I sold my first book to one editor, whom I had known since university, almost thirty years after I first submitted to him. Finally, we make the general trade aware of our books by rights posting or announcing deals on Publishers Marketplace and this is particularly good at bringing in film and US enquiries from companies and editors unknown to us. That current buzzword ‘discoverability’ can also be applied to authors’ books before they are published and our aim, often using scouts, is to ensure as many people in publishing know about our books as early as possible.

The agency tends to submit in waves so that there is always scope to try new publishers in the light of the comments on why the proposal was turned down. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of revising the proposal or building the profile/platform of the author, sometimes it’s a matter of timing and withdrawing the proposal for a future date or new proposal. Often we will submit twenty times trying to find the right editor and I’ve occasionally sold a book to an editor who’d forgotten they’d already rejected it! With The Girl with No Name: the Incredible True Story of the Girl Raised by Monkeys by Marina Chapman, I persevered for five years of due diligence to make her case and five different ghosts worked on the book but it became an international bestseller sold to seventeen countries including separately to Australia, Canada and US. Daniel Tammet’s autism memoir Born on a Blue Day took as long and was even more successful selling to twenty five countries. I make the analogy to authors that sometimes one needs to kiss a lot of frogs before one meets one’s prince.

Authors don’t just come in on the ‘slush pile’. Both David & I network extensively by speaking and attending writer conferences and events, taking part in Guardian Masterclasses and the London Author Fair, using LinkedIn and Twitter to target interesting authors and approaching writers who have appeared in the media, though we never knowingly approach a writer whom we know to be already represented.

We also suggest projects to authors; a good example is Clare Mulley’s The Spy Who Loved about the SOE agent Christine Granville, now optioned to a Hollywood studio and sold in a range of countries. Recently I put an idea to an author of mine, which he researched with seed money I arranged through a national newspaper, and we now have a book to sell with a serial already tied to it. Naturally, we are always open to finding authors for book ideas put up by editors - especially since those ideas usually tend to be commissioned. Recently an editor said they wanted a teacher’s memoir from an inner city comprehensive and I duly worked through educational columnists to find someone.

I also make a point of approaching agents in other fields whether it is speaker agencies or those managing celebrities or sports stars. They can often do something for my authors and vice versa. Such partnerships have brought the memoirs of such reality stars as Sam Faiers, Kirk Norcross and Nanny Pat of ‘The Only Way is Essex’ and Spencer Matthews of ‘Made in Chelsea’. My own involvement in the Biographers Club and Biographers International Organisation has brought several successful writers to the agency.

Increasingly the agency has taken to ‘establishing’ a book by either selling it in another territory first – we’ve recently done this successfully in the US, Germany, Australia and South Africa – or through the agency imprint Thistle Publishing When, for example, no publisher was interested in Monica Porter’s ‘yummy-grand-mummy’ memoir Raven: My Year of Dating Dangerously, the agency published the book through its own imprint Thistle, sold a serial to the Mail on Sunday for a three-week run and used the interest to attract interest from foreign publishers and film companies.

Thistle, under the management of David Haviland, has now published some two hundred books over the last year - a mixture of agency backlist and frontlist – as well as several Thistle ‘shorts’. A good example is Guardian correspondent Shaun Walker’s Odessa Dreams: The Dark Heart of Ukraine’s Online Marriage Industry, published in conjunction with Amazon Kindle Singles, which is currently number one in Russian travel guides on Amazon! I’ve just signed an audio deal as a result of another Thistle ‘short’ in partnership with Kindle Singles - Katharine Quarmby’s account of her search for her birth father Blood & Water: An Anglo-Iranian Love Story. Indeed, a real focus in recent months, as part of the agency’s mission to develop as many revenue streams as possible for authors, has been to exploit unsold territorial and subsidiary rights in agency books and seek reversion when publishers are not exploiting those rights themselves.

The agency has always been responsive to the market. Having initially specialised in serious non-fiction, especially biography and history, the agency quickly also moved into memoirs, seeing that publishers’ commissioning policy was being shaped by the growing importance of the supermarkets. The result is the agency now represents many of the leading authors of inspirational memoir, including bestselling authors Cathy Glass and Casey Watson, and the success of these authors brings in other authors in the field. Given the importance of ghost writers to work with such authors, the agency developed a strong brand as an agency for ghost writers with their very own themed ‘ghosts’ party every Halloween. The agency now represents over thirty ghost writers who have their own dedicated section on the website. As a result, publishers will often approach the agency looking for ghosts where they have a project in need of some editorial help, and it means the agency can ‘package’ books in-house, linking agency authors with the right ghost giving greater control. Every two months, editors who commission books which require ghost writers, receive a ‘ghost newsletter’.

It isn’t easy selling books and there are no shortcuts to success – it’s taken me 30 years of agenting to get to where I am now - but if one is nimble, responsive, pleasant, prepared to think outside the box, reads proposals and manuscripts diligently, attends events and responds to every email, phone call and letter the deals will come. It’s important to be courteous - but also firm - and to always put the needs of the book first. Agenting requires imagination, flexibility, a thick skin to cope with constant rejection and hard work - both David and I work over 70-hour weeks and rarely take any holiday - but it is rewarding to feel that one has given a life to a writer’s prose and how the lives of both authors and readers can be changed by publication. Even, after over 1,500 deals, I take pleasure in every deal done and in the launching and nurturing of writers’ careers.

Christian Jennings, who is currently writing a book about the last year of WWII in northern Italy, entitled ‘If I Live to See the Dawn – At War on the Gothic Line 1944-’45.’, explains how to write a good non-fiction proposal for submission.

The acronym of the seven Ps, whose etymology is probably military, goes like this: Prior Preparation and Proper Planning Prevent Poor Performance. It could have been invented for aspiring authors who have a non-fiction story to tell, and want to write the best possible submissions proposal for it. This article explains a little about how to best present such a proposal, and is aimed at improving its chances in the very competitive publishing marketplace.

Here some simple mathematics may be of help. By his own estimation, Andrew Lownie looks at some 20,000 unsolicited submissions a year. After his initial assessment, he sends some eight of these per week to a reader – that’s about four hundred per year. A dozen authors per annum might then be taken on by the agency. Eight of these might see their books then published. Thus anything that can help aspiring non-fiction authors improve the content and presentation of their proposals can only be of help. But this article is also designed to be of assistance to authors who might already be published, and want to polish up their proposal before submitting it.

On his website Andrew specifies that non-fiction submissions proposals be submitted in the following format. Each section of it will be examined and explained subsequently.

A. 1 page mini-synopsis highlighting with bullet points what makes the book new and special with proposed word count and delivery date B. 1 page on qualifications to write the book C. 1 page with a few lines on the five most recent competing and comparable books giving author, title, publisher and date of publication together with a note on how the books relate to the author’s own book D. 1 page on sources used E. 1 page on any specialist marketing outlets such as websites, organisations or magazines F. A sample chapter

The Synopsis. This summarises what your story is, and says what’s new and special about it. You have one side of A4, so start with your title and sub-title. Titles are fantastically important. Remember all those great ones? From Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee, The Beautiful and the Damned, Even Cowgirls get the Blues, The Things they Carried, We were Soldiers Once and Young to Zero Dark Thirty, The Day of the Jackal and They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? A title is the first thing readers, editors and agents see. Use it to be colourful and imaginative and allusive, and then explain the book’s subject in a short, clear sub-title.

Then in one paragraph – eight lines perhaps – tell us what your book is about and why it’s new. What is it? A biography of Henry VIII’s secret eighth wife? An autobiography of your time as a doctor working for an embattled aid agency inside Syria? Recipes from a lost stately home? A history of tax? A reappraisal of Charles Darwin’s theories set against the history of DNA? The tale of one special forces and intelligence mission? One woman’s story of being fostered by orang utans in Borneo? Or a simple travelogue of fishing, of how to catch big Carp in ten countries across Europe?

Whatever the story is, the second paragraph is used to tell us a bit more about it, its author, its sources, and the most important points in the book. The best way to learn how to do this is to look at how other published authors have done it. Look at the ‘blurbs,’ as they are called, on the backs of books that have caught your eye in bookshops. Look at how other authors on Andrew’s website do it. One good example is the British biographer Clare Mulley – you can find her under ‘M’ on the Author/Book list. Look at how she summarises her basic theme in the blurb of The Women who Flew for Hitler. This is only twelve lines, yet it tells the potential agent, reader or publisher everything they need to know about the story and its subjects. And it does it engagingly, authoritatively and colourfully.

It has a punchy title, and a clear and explanatory sub-title. So why not take the same approach? Start with deciding your title, then a clear sub-title, then write out your story’s synopsis in no more than 300 words. If you can’t work out your title, nor briefly summarise your book’s central theme, it means you are probably unclear what or whom your proposed book is about. Do the synopsis again and again until it reads clearly, and includes mention of every aspect of the story that you think is exclusive, interesting, and marketable. Then summarise these in four or five clear, consecutive bullet points, which come after the synopsis paragraphs. A fictitious example might have them reading thus:

• The inside story of a British surgeon working secretly in Syria; • Told by a British aid doctor who’s been inside the country for three years; • Provides a first-hand account of the humanitarian and human rights disaster; • Tells how the lack of foreign intervention has left thousands of people in crisis;
• The author has also worked in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

We can all imagine the story, but this shows how to summarise it in five points. After these, at the bottom of the first page, suggest a reasonable book length, probably between 80-100,000 words. Also estimate realistically how long it will take you to write your work of non-fiction. Think about the latter carefully, balance your estimated speed of writing, research and output with your other commitments – a day job, a family, available time. To recap: all of the above should fill one side of A4 only, including the title and sub-title at the top, then 2-3 paragraphs, five bullet points, and the book’s proposed length and delivery date.

The Author Biography / your qualifications to write the book. This can be enjoyable to do. In a colourful, concise, well written and engaging way say who you are, what you do, and what you’ve done in life. Again, it should come to no more than one page, which forms page two of the proposal. Go on to give three or four reasons why you are best placed to write a book on your chosen subject, and why you want to. Keep it simple - strive to create and maintain the image of yourself as an interesting subject expert with something new to say. Lots of different people do lots of different things in life, or find different biographical subjects interesting. What is routine to one person may, properly presented, be of great interest to many others.

Explain your experience, qualifications and knowledge of and in the specific field. Think of the most interesting, new and marketable points about yourself and your book’s subject that most people, both within the field of specialization and without, might not know. Write succinctly and clearly about any prizes, successes, awards and triumphs you may have enjoyed or been awarded in connection with your area of expertise. Have you made any public speaking appearances? Lastly, mention any newspapers, magazines, TV and radio programmes and websites in the U.K and abroad to which you have contributed, and any past books you have written. Again – spend a happy couple of hours clicking on all the names on the Andrew Lownie Agency’s list of authors, and see how they describe themselves.

Competing and Comparable Titles. Again, straightforward. It’s page three. Firstly, go to your local branch of Waterstones or another bookshop, and just see what is being sold on the topic about which you are writing. Then go onto Amazon, which will tell you very clearly all the details of other books that have been, are being and will be published on and around your subject matter. Choose the five that are most recently published, or about to be published, by the most major publishers, and see if they are coming out in the United States as well. Remember, Andrew Lownie will be trying to sell your book in the U.S, in Commonwealth Territories like Canada and Australia, as well as translation rights in major book-buying countries such as Germany, Japan, Italy and Sweden. Lay out the competing titles like this: Title & Subtitle, name of author, month and year of publication in the U.K, name of publisher, and similar details in the U.S if applicable

Sources Used. Page four. Simply make a list of everywhere from which you are and will be getting the information that you will be putting in your book. Make a detailed list of each source, as in ‘The London Imperial War Museum archive, WWI Gallipoli exhibition,’ or ‘The Bodleian Library, Oxford, Charles Darwin archives,” or ‘The National Archives,’ or ‘Information gathered from interviews with the following experts….’ The more the merrier – if you know the available sources of information on a given topic, it suggests you know your subject.

Marketing, Websites and Magazines. Page five. Again, make a list of all and any outlets, bookshops, supermarket chains, websites, publications - electronic or hard copy - TV and radio stations, marketing forums, blogs or social media outlets that you can think of, which might be interested in stocking, distributing, advertising, circulating, promoting, reviewing, featuring or mentioning your book on publication. From your local highstreet bookshop to the website of, say, a large British aid agency with parallel interests to your book’s subject, from a personal website to sympathetic bloggers to your social media profile, every mention of the book is vital.

A Sample Chapter. Self-explanatory. Keep it to 4,000 – 5,500 words maximum, double spaced, 12 point, Times New Roman. Once the book proposal has hopefully passed first muster with Andrew Lownie, he will ask for a synopsis of each chapter in the book, usually written at about half a page of A4 each, or a page maximum. Remember – you’re trying to sell a book, so it’s all in the writing.

A last piece of advice: read the other articles on Andrew Lownie’s agency website, including those written by non-fiction editors from publishers in the U.K and the U.S, where they outline what they are looking for. Be prepared to re-write your proposal several times. Read the book review pages of national and regional newspapers, to see what kind of books get reviewed, and thus bought. Before you submit your proposal to Andrew Lownie ask a few friends and contacts to read it and comment, people you know who write and read a lot themselves, both professionally and for pleasure. Be clear as to exactly what your subject is, what you want to say about it, and why you want to write about it. And most importantly, aim to enjoy writing about it, and enjoy each step of trying to get it published.

Andrew Lownie gives examples from recent submissions of how not to address agents if one wants one’s work to be treated seriously.

You are the hottest hustler in the UK. Your reputation internationally proceeds you.

Well hello Mr. Andrew Lownie,

Hello, Mrs. Andrew Lownie,

Dear Mr. or Ms.,

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Andrew Lownie Literary,

The Consulting Editor, The Andrew Lownie Literary Agency Ltd, 36 Great Smita Street,

Publishing Agent,

Dear Fellows,

Good fortune

Dear Messrs.

hi, dude

Hi Thomas,

Dear Respectful One,

Hello!

Hello dearest one.

Dear Mr. Andrew,

Dear Potential Partner,

Hi There, Dear friend, Dear one:

Dear Honorable Literary Agent . At the outset an indomitable honor to be writing this email to you .

Respected Andrew lounie, the Literature agency Christian Greetings to you from Inidia. I am a brother and Evangelist,

It’d a be a privilege to be represented by you and your mesmerizing agency for my poetry books to the world’s gargantuan publishers - for print publication

Dear Honorable & Respected Literary Agent . At the outset a privilege to be writing this email to you . It’d a be an honor be represented by you and your triumphant Literary Agency to the world’s largest publishers , for my poetry books

Dear Honorable and Respected Literary Agent / Patron . Hope this email finds you in mesmerizing happiness and prosperity . At the outset , a triumphant privilege to be writing to you .

Andrew Lownie outlines the range of activities he is involved with in a ‘typical’ agency week.

Monday

A raft of submissions have come in overnight. One author writes, ‘At this time I respectfully request you unsheathe your sharpened red pen and engage me. In good faith that you are up for the challenge, let us dance.’ Afraid I’m not really up to such frenetic activity first thing on a Monday.

Other submissions include ‘a 130 page essay on Roberto Bolaño´s poetry’, the ‘historical origins and cultural significance of Jamaica’s national dish’, ‘a Short Social History of the Clitoris’ and something describing itself as ‘erotica-tinged space and techno-fantasy fiction’. A clever submission where Bible stories have been written as Cockney rhyming slang, in broad Yorkshire, in SMS Text, in Egyptian Hieroglyphics., for Toddlers etc. Difficult to assess and I suspect not something which will sustain reader interest.

Film enquiry from US and I pass it on to my film agent.

The monthly newsletter has gone out and various requests have come in for titles, especially from scouts, foreign agents and publishers. I send it on to various editors, serial buyers, film producers who I know don’t subscribe to the newsletter, or probably don’t read it if they do. I get a bounceback saying it was ‘blocked by MailMarshal: Because it may contain unacceptable language, or inappropriate material’. I wonder which bit of the newsletter this refers to.

Meeting with Daily Mail journalist to throw around ideas for a possible book.

Eleven pages of monthly stats for website visits for the previous month are in from Jing Dong who runs the website, and I share these with David Haviland. It shows visits are pretty constant – in some months a particular article will go viral and cause a spike in views. As usual, new visitors constitute about 80% of the hits and Twitter is the most important feed. We’ll look at the referral sources, how long visitors stay on the site and what they look at.

Give feedback to author on manuscript which I’ve read over the weekend.

Lunch with editor. He’s keener to discuss changes in publishing than the authors I’m pitching but still enjoyable.

Chase some film monies on behalf of an author.

Invitation from a university for the launch of their creative writing course anthology.

Liaise with editor on cover design for an inspirational memoir.

Receive a ‘warm invitation to you to participate in the 2nd Summit on Child Abuse & Human Trafficking’. Is this as participant or delegate I wonder, and how did they get my details?

Rework proposal with author in light of publisher’s feedback.

Meeting with ghost writer brought in by publisher to work on TV tie-in. She’s seeing several agents in a beauty parade. I give her biscuits with her coffee.

Reworked version of a diet book proposal from author which is ready to go and I pitch to various editors.

Discuss titles with author and his ghost. Publishers don’t like the original title and we don’t like their suggestion. Eventually we come up with something which is not ideal, but the author and publisher like it.

Sort out details of an audio deal.

Leave office at 6.00 to give talk to a writing group.

Tuesday

I go through the overnight submissions which include ‘a recipe book with Dadaist overtones, elements of satire, and a number of puns, and is a reaction to celebrity chef cookbooks in general’, ‘a Placenta Recipes Cook Book aimed at pregnant mothers and birth support workers/doulas/midwives’, ‘a critical verse by verse analysis of the gospel of John’, and ‘a picture book reading series, entitled Dandan The Drilling Man And His Drilling Caravan! This is a unique storyline that acquaints children and their parents with the Natural Gas / Oil drilling industry’.

Other submissions amidst the usual suspects of memoir and fiction include an illustrated humour book about the ukulele, a ‘simple, concise pocket sized directory of public toilets, supermarkets, pharmacies, laundry services, post offices and police stations in every district of the Eternal City’, a police memoir of catching a serial killer and something which categorises itself as ‘Young Adult/Substance Abuse/Political Fiction/Humor’. Not sure where the bookshops will put that.

Publisher rings and asks my view of an editor who applied for a job with him.

Meeting with ghost writer who has not had representation before. We discuss what I can do for her and how I market my ghost writers. I’m aware I have to be careful about taking on too many ghost writers and then not being able to find work for them.

One writer emails claiming to have found the agency from doing a google search for UK agents publishing erotic fiction / biographies - not a joint category I was aware I hitherto specialised in nor even existed.

Mid-morning post brings a book which editor wants sent on to one of my authors asking to give a jacket quote.

Invoice for a publication advance and chase an editor for a delivery payment.

The Publishers Lunch round-up of sales for the week arrives and I forward links to the agency authors whose deals have been announced.

Chase some editors for a submission whose deadline was Friday.

A not untypical turn down from an editor:‘I’ve just come out the acquisitions meeting and sadly I’m not emailing with good news. The sales team said that our list is quite full at the moment for real-life stories and that …’s story wasn’t stand-out enough to push in another title on the schedule. I massively disagree and there is a wealth of topical subjects found within her life story that it really is remarkable, but as they sell in to the supermarkets (and we would need the supermarkets support) I lost the fight and I’m incredibly disappointed. I think her book could be fantastic and wish her all the best. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to read the material.’

If it’s hard selling books to publishers, it’s equally difficult for the editor selling projects to their colleagues. The collegiate approach make sense but it does mean books that don’t tick all the boxes are having trouble finding publishers.

Author alerts me to forthcoming appearances on Australian & New Zealand radio so check with UK publisher that copies of book have arrived and available locally.

Someone has kindly but curiously endorsed me on LinkedIn for Poetry – a genre I neither represent nor write. I wonder how valid all my other endorsements are.

Forward some foreign royalty statements to author and to my royalties person Hazel Hill for checking.

Seek some contract advice on film contract from my contracts expert Stephen Aucutt.

Publisher turns down a biography: ‘I am afraid I don’t think we could make the figures work for this one. It is such a shame as it has been such an extraordinary life spanning the twentieth century.’

Nice review in Publishers Weekly for an author’s book which I add to website and agency’s social media.

Reader’s report back which I forward to the author.

US publisher chases about an offer they’ve made. I’m hoping for a better one elsewhere, stall him and nudge other editor. One appears to now be on holiday for next two weeks and after the deadline.

Forward news of a Dutch sale to author and Chinese royalty statement to another.

Bestseller lists for the week announced and gratifying to see several agency authors in top twenty.

To book launch for an author at a bookshop and then back to catch up on reading and emails.

Wednesday

A screenwriter from South Africa says they ‘would like to submit script personally’. Tell them email is probably easier for all concerned.

Other submissions include a ‘Self help guide to street performing’, an author who hopes ‘to create a niche for myself with historical Jewish warrior fiction’ and author asking ‘if I’m interested in representing gay erotic comics?’ I explain the list is eclectic but that’s not an area of agency expertise.

Other submissions include a ‘Field Guide to American Barns’, ‘a novel with a naturist theme’, a ‘200,000 word short story’, a submission from someone using the pen name Stephen Spielberg, two physics books from a professor in Bangladesh, an urban fantasy novel with a Christian slant, the offer of a 320,000 word travelogue set in South America which has been translated from the original Estonian version, a book charting the history of the great ocean liners, a memoir of an army officer in the Middle East in the 1960s-1980s and something which does sound intriguing: an account of ‘the very dark side of the Home Furnishings Industry’.

Sort out VAT payment for ghost who is not part of the publishing contract.

Author updates me on research on a biography after an introduction I gave him.

Lunch with editor, where I pitch a couple of authors, but he explains they have so many existing authors delivering a new book each year that there are very few gaps in the list.

Serial offer on title from The Sun. Try to push them up.

Discuss trying to fix some more speaking engagements for a business writer.

Update author on their submissions, even though I’ve forwarded rejections as they’ve come in.

Forward contract to author with my comments and seeking theirs.

Marsh Agency chase me for Romanian Certificate of Residency, which I forward to author.

Pitch a book on Royal Family to a dozen editors.

Nudge other editors who have not responded to an initial email pitch last week.

Forward a radio enquiry to an author to let them deal directly.

Meeting with author and freelance publicists brought in to promote her book. Put forward some ideas and pass on some contacts at literary festivals.

Finally agree clause with US publisher allowing author to offer new book once they have delivered rather than wait until the book is published.

Liaise with a freelance editor who an author has paid to polish his manuscript. I send her copies of my reader’s reports to brief her.

Liaise with another US publisher on Publisher Quit Claim for a film contract.

Author writes to say they are ‘Happy to be connected with a liked-minded Tweep!’ Me too.

Go to a presentation at a publishing house with other agents where they take us through their commissioning process. Very useful. If only authors realised how much care and time was taken in assessing submissions.

Thursday

The overnight submissions bring an author who has ‘written a good number of manuscripts – friction and non friction. I am yet to find a nice literary agent who could them published internationally’. I like the idea of ‘friction’ as a genre.

Other submissions include a memoir ‘Something Is Wrong With My Penis’, a ‘humorous coffee table cartoon book that cleverly and comically combines two popular themes; Penguins and Superheroes’ the offer of ‘the synopsis of a novel (300 pgs, in Portuguese) that maybe can interest you’ (I only wish I was like continental agents moving effortlessly from one language to another), ‘an Autobiography of the Universe’ and an email from my old friend crazypants1986.

There’s also an e mail saying ‘I have visited your company website, glad to know that you’re on the market for plastic/rubber mold and products’. I wonder which bit of the agency website suggests that?

Meeting at a film company who are interested in drawing on research by an author for biography. We dance around each other neither wanting to give much away.

Chase publishing royalties department who forgotten to pay VAT on recent royalty payment.

Invoice publisher with signature advance and return the signed contract.

Discuss various options with author after publisher tries to cancel contract on a memoir because a family member has decided to now withhold co-operation. We take legal advice and marshal our arguments to try and save the deal as book is about to be published.

Meeting with reference book author I’m taking on.

Send out proposal for reader’s report.

Seek advice from my accountants about new VAT rules on commission for British-based authors on monies from abroad.

Lunch with editor of the Bookseller where we discuss publishing changes and I give him some material for an article on the current publishers’ rights grab.

Accompany author writing on pregnancy to meeting with interested editor.

Answer series of email questions about pitching, the state of the market etc from a journalist putting together an article for a writing magazine

Chase yet again permissions department of a US publisher for overdue permission payment. The promised bank transfer has never materialised nor did the promised check. Saga has been going on since September.

Update from my Polish sub-agent on submissions. Reminds me to pitch some new possible books to my Asian sub-agents.

Meeting with film producer.

Go on to dinner of a literary dining club. Back to emails and reading manuscript which has just been delivered.

Friday

The overnight submissions include: a book about Israeli Cinema; another on ‘Holistic Microneedling’; ‘The Memoir of a Bi-Polar/Alcoholic/Superman/Ginger’; a ‘Southern Gothic novel with literary ambitions’; a 41 page romance/paranormal manuscript ‘of a woman who falls in love with a weresnake’; a proposal for a book on 19th Century Maltese Filigree Jewellery; an ‘African-American Romantic Vampire Thriller’ and ‘Confessions of a Las Vegas Hair Stylist’ which the author compares to Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Go into local school to talk to pupils about a career in publishing. Love doing so as it reminds me why I went into publishing over thirty years ago. A cluster of pupils at the end keen to discuss their creative writing. What a shame few schools encourage creative writing after the age of thirteen.

Pass on enquiry to an author from an historian researching 16th Century Spanish shipyards.

Send out some sample proposals to a new author to help him produce his own.

The mid-morning post brings ,alongside the customary scripts, contracts, payments, finished books etc an invitation addressed to ‘Dear Friends and Colleagues, It is our great pleasure to invite you to participate at the 2011 World Congress on Human Trafficking, Prostitution and Sex Work.’ Am I a friend or colleague and what exactly does participation mean? Has a disgruntled author or rival agent passed on my contact details?

A small publisher asks if I can sell film & US rights in their list. I look at a couple of their books but decide they are too marginal.

Send out statements and payments for authors which have come in from my foreign rights agency.

Lunch with editor cancelled at last moment as he’s busy. A relief as finding it especially hard to keep up with succession of telephone calls and emails this morning.

Serial contract from newspaper which I check and forward to author for signature.

Meeting with new author I’ve just taken on and her editor. The book will be a highly illustrated gift book and we discuss format, price and direct sales outlets.

My film agent brings me up to speed on contract negotiations for a film based on one of the agency’s biographies.

Fix an author tour with publishers for an author for next week. There’s a lot of juggling to coordinate editors’ availability with a sensible route around town.

Put forward some writers to the new editor of Newsweek who is looking for current affairs specialists.

US author emails some jacket endorsements he’s gathered.

An author kindly writes ‘You have published many memoirs, some of which I have enjoyed reading’.

It’s 7.00 pm. Time for a break but I’ll return to my desk to catch up on emails and finish the recently-delivered manuscript.

Saturday

The overnight submissions include: a book ‘aimed at the under-tens, this book hopes to introduce a whole new generation to the joys of alcohol abuse, chain-smoking, questionable morals and hanging out with a bunch of arseholes’; a novel ‘about killer babies’; a submission from someone describing themselves as ‘a literary phenomenon’; an autobiography of working life in the world of various IT departments; ‘a travel book with sausages as the common factor’ and a ‘one hundred and twenty word mystery following the adventures of four charming ex-battery hens as they discover a free-range life as pampered pets’; a ‘self-help book on alcohol misuse’ – presumably to prevent rather than encourage this; something which describes itself as an ‘Interactive Autobiography’; a submission which claims ‘I found your agency when I typed the genre of politically incorrect non-fiction, and since my book may be viewed as politically incorrect, I thought you might be the right agent for my work’ and a general email clearly sent to lot of agents. ‘The submission outline is generic and may not comply with your specific format. I appreciate your mandated requirements. For reasons I shall not include herein, I am unable to follow these at present, and so I fully understand and respect your rejection on this basis alone.’ I reject it. Time for filing and a bit more reading…

In a sequel to the website article ‘Ghostly Aspirations’, published last November, eight of the agency’s ghosts explain the sort of books they would like to work on.

Mandy Appleyard

Powerful storytelling is so often about struggle and triumph: about ordinary people forced into extraordinary circumstances. As an award-winning newspaper and magazine journalist of 30 years’ standing, I have learned a thing or two about empathy, understanding, and drawing the very best from someone who has decided to share their story – often unearthing surprising details and new angles along the way.

I feel privileged to be chosen to tell the stories of so many remarkable people, from the world’s most prolific surrogate mother to a woman jailed for manslaughter after the assisted death of her severely disabled son, from sportswomen to actors, often giving voice to the unheard or overlooked, sometimes to the famous. As a regular contributor to weekly and monthly magazines, I am drawn to record the lives of unusual and inspiring women, capturing their authentic voice and telling their remarkable stories in the most compelling of ways.

With a keen eye for the commercial aspects of writing as well as the creative, I am a skilled and experienced ghost writer who takes great pride in finding the very heart of someone’s story, and in crafting it into must-read prose.

Michael Carroll

As a journalist by trade I love to dig up what lies beneath a story or take something momentous and present a totally new angle on events. But the story does not have to be from the point of view of the great and the good. I’m fascinated by the idea of ordinary people thrown into incredible circumstances and doing their best to navigate the situation they are faced with. Whether it be a kidnapping, survival situation, a mysterious secret history or a money-making scheme, a tight, exciting and untold tale is what excites me. So if I think of my perfect person to ghost they would be the Other – an extraordinarily different person who has come forward to shed light on something captivating and previously unknown. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum they would be an Everyman / woman, thrust into a situation we would all be fascinated to hear about. However, if we look at ghostwriting as one of the world’s best excuses to spend time with people we admire, I would go for the novelists whose books I love to read and who happen to still be alive: William Gibson, Irving Welsh, Margaret Atwood. Or the spellbinding British comic-book grandmaster, Alan Moore, whose enigma I would love to unravel and slingshot somewhere un-thought of.

Jeremy Dronfield

I do most of my work at the junction where ghost writing meets co-authoring. When the author of a biography has done the research and sketched out the book, but struggles to bring out the qualities that would make it a good read, that’s where I come in. Sometimes doctoring the text is enough; more often I have to immerse myself in the subject’s life, and become a co-author (in ghostly obscurity if necessary). That’s when the job is at its most demanding and its most satisfying.

My current ghosted and co-authored projects include the story of Robert Trimble, a WW2 pilot who undertook a secret mission to rescue POWs on the Eastern Front; a biography of Moura Budberg, the Russian spy who fell in love with a British agent during the Revolution and was haunted for the rest of her life by the shattering betrayal she suffered; the life of Peter Watson, millionaire art patron and doyen of the gay scene in pre-war Paris, murdered in his bath by his jealous lover; and the incredibly moving life of James Barry, a Victorian military surgeon who was revealed after death to have been a woman, forced to disguise herself in order to pursue a career in medicine.

These extraordinary, little-known lives are rich in drama, adventure and poignancy. There are so many of these stories waiting to be told. I’m constantly on the lookout for them. There are two at the top of my wish-list. I’m charmed by the tale of Joseph Wright, the illiterate Yorkshire millhand who became a professor at Oxford University. Last biographed by his widow in 1932, this extraordinary man is known mainly for teaching Anglo-Saxon to the young JRR Tolkien, rather than for his amazing rise from illiterate poverty to the dreaming spires. And there’s the exhilarating life of merchant seaman Charles Lightoller – going down with the Titanic (and surviving) wasn’t the only, or even the most remarkable, of his life’s adventures.

Lives like that – obscure, strange and dramatic – are the kind I most like to write.

Caro Handley

It’s a joy to work with someone who will open up, be honest, tell it warts and all and trust that readers warm to, even prefer, a flawed character to glossy perfection. It can be hard work convincing celebrities of this, but sometimes they get it, and it always makes for a deeper, more satisfying read (and write). I like a challenge, whether it’s a celebrity who needs to scratch beneath the surface, or someone who may be scratchy on the surface but who has a tale to tell that is, in places, dark and who needs time, space, encouragement and trust to reach into the depths of their memories.

I love working with people who have courage and humour in equal amounts. It takes real courage to overcome a traumatic childhood and go on to help others. And to talk about it with humour and lack of self-pity. Mikey Walsh, who I worked with on Gypsy Boy, was of this mould, as was Sophie Andrews, author of Scarred, now running The Silver Line and Jenny Tomlin, author of Behind Closed Doors, whose flawless memory for detail (always such a bonus) created a brilliant evocation of the East End in the sixties. Who would I like to work with? People who have rich and complex stories to tell, who refused to give up, who fought back. Celebrities? I’d pick Bob Geldof, Barry Gibb – last of the brothers, Christine Lagarde (who knew she was a teenage synchronised swimmer), Sarah Lancashire, Kylie.

Kris Hollington

I look for people who can take the reader into secret worlds and unheard of situations. In recent months book projects on two elite crime squads and a treasure hunter extraordinaire have turned into a major BBC TV crime drama, a series of plays for Radio 4 and a worldwide hunt for lost art, so as far as I’m concerned, secret worlds are what the reading, watching and listening public want us ghosts to delve into.

Becky Howard

After spending most of my magazine career interviewing celebrities, I’ve long been fascinated by the person behind the façade – too often we’re only presented with the two-dimensional version of someone’s story, constrained by limited word counts and linear questioning. We all have a story, we all have quirks, sides to us that aren’t obvious on first appearances. Becoming well-known is something that changes your life and the way you are perceived by the world at large – and I’m endlessly drawn to discovering how this changes people at their core, as well as how they cope with it. Of course, the ‘big’ names that many writers, including myself would love to get behind would be strong female successes with dramatic life arcs – the likes of Nigella Lawson and Lorraine Pascale. But other famous names, such as actress Amanda Redman and feisty, outspoken popstar Lily Allen, really appeal. As a journalist, I would love to write the Rebekah Brooks story, once the phone hacking court case is over, but whatever the verdict, I expect that one day she’ll be penning some memoirs herself…

Tim Tate

“Y’unnerstan’ ?”

A forefinger – the size and shape of a solid Cuban cigar – jabbed uncomfortably into my ribs. “There’s no respect any more. Y’unnerstan’ me, Reporter Boy?”

The Kray Twins’ birthday party – location: a visibly weary nightclub in the equally run-down Kingsland High Road - was unquestionably strange. For a start neither Ronnie and Reggie were present: in 1984 they were half way through their respective 30 year sentences. But the representatives of their old firm who were (currently) at liberty to attend mixed cheerfully with the remnants of their one time sworn-rivals, the Richardson gang. Strange days indeed.

But it was the conversation which was most bizarre. This collection of ageing villains, each bearing the physical scars of a lifetime at the coal face of crime, wanted to talk about the state of the world. Or, more exactly, the state of their chosen profession. Modern crime, they repeatedly advised me, was a disgrace. The man with the emphatic forefinger was the product of London’s criminal aristocracy. He had earned his spurs with Billy Hill and Jack Spot – the godfathers of post-war protection rackets and illegal gambling – before graduating to the dominant Kray firm as the austerity years of the Fifties turned into the white heat of the Swinging Sixties. He had, I knew, a tale to tell. And he seemed enthusiastic to the point of insistence that I was just the journalist to help him. There was even the hint of a substantial wad of five pound notes ‘don’t ask no questions, Reporter Boy’) to ensure the process went smoothly.

Above all, though, I knew I had encountered the single most vital ingredient in the telling of any story: the voice. His was a vocabulary of its place and of its time in the world: a litany of spielers and dips, of brasses and grasses. I never saw the promised cash and never wrote the story. But our encounter has stayed with me and has shaped the way I approach the rough trade of ghost-writing.

The first question has to be ‘ is there a story here The second is that all-important element, the voice. For me to write with any authenticity I must not just climb inside my subject’s life but hear his (or her) voice more dominantly than I hear my own. In truth, it’s not much of a trick – more a question of simply listening until the cadence and the space between words forms its own unique pattern and defines the personality of the subject.

Still, it’s the process by which I’ve been able to ghost life stories as diverse as the young English girl sex-trafficked to the cesspool of 1990s Amsterdam and the recollections of a ladies maid in an aristocratic 1930s country house.Would the older and more experienced me have thought – as his younger, greener version did throughout that remarkable Kray Twins party – that the life of the gnarled and scarred villain, emphatically exploring the soft tissue of my rib cage, was a great book begging to be written ?

Actually, I’m not sure. Because the other great ghost-writing hurdle (at least for this ghost-writer) is honesty. Not your common or garden respect for the law – which my new acquaintance plainly held in low regard – but the willingness of the subject to observe, examine and then publish the very personal flaws and foibles which have helped dictate the course of a life. The mark of a good ghost – in the opinion of this one, at least is the ability to establish a relationship of complete honesty between the subject and the reader.

So who would I like to ghost ? The list is as wide and as open as my own undimmed curiosity. At one end of this spectrum there is Ratko Mladic, the unrepentant butcher of Bosnia presently on trial in The Hague. At the other is Nina Hartley, surviving queen of hard-core pornography, feminist campaigner and (oddly) a former nurse.Which leads me to the final thought. I abhor the chosen professions of both Mladic and Hartley, so why would I want to ghost their life stories ? Would my innate prejudice (we all have them) not colour my writing ? Well, no. Because I’ve come to the ultimate ghost-writing conclusion that the distance – emotional, physical and ethical – between a ghost and his (or her) subject ultimately makes for a better, more honest book than one written in a spirit of comfy concurrence. Maybe I should have snatched at the wad of dubious fivers and written the villain’s story after all.

Doug Wight

As a ghost writer you get the chance - for a few months at least - to live vicariously through the exploits of others. So, over the past few years, I have inhabited the mind of a Miami-based Colombian drug gang money launderer, an undercover cop and an eco warrior who doubled as a government spy. Aside from trying to capture the excitement of people who survive on their wits, what is equally challenging is the chance to explore the darker side of relationships and telling stories of courage in the face of extreme adversity. In that regard I’ve been privileged enough to work with a girl who lived with the ticking time bomb of a brain tumour, a Hollywood actress whose wings got burned and a daughter who survived horrendous violence at the hands of a mother from hell. My only aspiration is to tell moving stories of lives less ordinary, in whatever form they take.

Katy Weitz, one of Britain’s most successful ghosts, outlines a recent week in her life as a ghostwriter.

Monday Up at 4am to catch flight to Edinburgh to start interviewing Tressa Middleton for her memoir. I’ve been awake most of the night with my 4-year-old daughter who has chicken pox - not a great start. At Gatwick airport I hunker down in Garfunkel’s with a large coffee and reread our proposal. We’ve got four full days of interviewing lined up – it should be enough. We meet in a quiet corner of a hotel close to Tressa’s home at midday and finish up at around 5pm. I can barely keep my eyes open. At the B&B I get an email from my agent Andrew – he says the first part of the advance for this book should arrive in a week’s time. I take a call from a lady, Jennifer, who has read one of the books I ghosted, Little Drifters: Kathleen’s Story. She says it is very similar to her mother’s experiences. Her mum was in a Catholic orphanage in Ireland too and has battled depression ever since. They want to get her mum’s story published. Can I help? I ask her to send me something over to look at. Monday night – I transfer my digital recordings from the interviews to my computer and look over the social services reports Tressa has given me. It makes for difficult and depressing reading.

Tuesday Tressa is not a morning person so we’ve arranged to start interviewing at midday. It gives me a chance to catch up on some work. I write a piece for Andrew’s website on How We Work Together. The email from Jennifer arrives. It is beautiful, powerful and heartbreaking. We talk again and I ask for more material – I want to hear her side of the story. Meanwhile, I email Andrew for his advice. Interview with Tressa for the rest of the day. Harrowing and exhausting. She has brought me photos, letters and cards to look at – everything helps to build up a picture of her life. Amongst the papers, I find some of her pencil sketches – she’s a talented artist. At the end of the day I get an email from my editor at Ebury about our book Cellar Girl by Josefina Rivera – sales are spiking thanks to the release of the memoir by Ariel Castro victim MichelleKnight. We’re now selling nearly 300 ebooks a week. She also points out the lovely reviews on Amazon.

Wednesday Discuss new submission with Andrew – he agrees it sounds good but will there be interest? He emails a few editors to test the water. I walk up to an abandoned brickyard just outside of town. This forms the backdrop to a crucial scene in the book and I want to see it for myself. Mid-morning: Teena Lyons, who is writing a book about ghostwriting, interviews me on the phone. It feels strange at first being the subject of an interview but Teena is the consummate professional and immediately puts me at my ease. In fact, it’s rather nice to find out we have shared experiences. Tressa arrives at 12. 30pm and we get to work. Time flies past, as it always does during these sessions. At one stage, when she is telling me about signing the adoption papers for her little girl, I become very emotional. Tressa ends up comforting me. ‘But you lived it!’ I sniff, feeling embarrassed and silly. ‘Aye, and I’ve lived with it for a long time,’ she smiles. She is such a generous soul. Later in the afternoon we have confirmation from a handful of publishers that they are interested in seeing a proposal for Jennifer’s book. Andrew sends out the collaboration agreement. I speak to Jennifer and her mum Irene on the phone and they are both very excited. I am too – I love the start of the process. It’s so thrilling. The journey is often a long and difficult one but starting out is always an adventure. We arrange times for the initials interviews next week. The cover design for my new book The Devil on The Doorstep arrives – I’m gobsmacked. It is utterly brilliant. The author Annabelle Forest agrees the cover is fantastic. It’s great to see the book coming together now. Email the proofs to Andrew who has had film interest. Send my film treatment for Little Drifters to Film4 Productions. Well, you never know!

ThursdayCheck out of B&B. A novelist emails to see if I want to collaborate on her work. I’m flattered but sadly, I have to say no. Fiction isn’t my thing. Spend the rest of the day interviewing Tressa at a drop-in centre for recovering addicts. They are so welcoming and friendly and give us our own room to work in. We have a chance at the end of the day to be more reflective, to talk about her book and what kind of impact it may have on others. Still struggling for a title though – I suggest Girl Under Grey Skies but we agree it could be a little depressing. I want her to think about the artwork for the cover. She has real talent and it would be great if she could think up some designs herself. Saying goodbye is like leaving an old friend – lots of hugs. A train and bus takes me back to Edinburgh airport for a long delayed flight home. Get back at 1.30am.

Friday The documents for Jennifer’s book have arrived overnight so I start to look through these. It’s crucial to have all the proof and legal back up in place before starting any project. I transfer the last of my interviews with Tressa onto the computer then take the afternoon off to play with the kids in the paddling pool and enjoy the glorious sunshine.

Every relationship between an author and agent is different depending on the needs of the author and type of book. Here forty agency authors describe the relationship they have with Andrew Lownie and the agency.

Lynne Barrett-Lee

Those that know me well will also know that I am not much of a sports fan; I’m been known to ask which football team is wearing which ‘outfit’, which will probably tell you all you need to know on that subject. But there is no denying that sportspeople do give great quote. So while it’s self-evident that ‘talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships’ I make no apology for quoting basketball legend Michael Jordan in pointing it out again.

It’s easy, as a writer, to feel you’re the proverbial lone wolf. (And, by extension, as ghostwriters, perhaps ones that howl at the moon, too). We blather on about being outsiders often enough, don’t we? We’re also frequently found whining about the solitary nature of our calling, and are often to be found milking the whole ‘I suffer for my art!’ line for everything it’s worth. (And, yes, that screamer is definitely staying put.)

The truth is, however, that once we make the key leap from being unpublished to published, we need to become team players almost by default. Though the world always loves a good came-out-of-nowhere-to-dash-off-a-bestseller story, experience has shown me it’s a long game and a considered one. That it’s almost always a combination of the factors mentioned above that makes for a sustainable career.

Which, for me, equals having both a brilliant, perceptive agent and, by extension (because a brilliant agent opens those all-important doors) finding oneself in the company of great editors. Those crucial elements - not forgetting the whole publishing team behind them - that will translate the talent bit into sufficient commercial success that you can keep doing the thing you love doing best.

In my case – and I am a ghostwriter these days, for the most part – that sense of teamwork is integral to my working life. In the first place, Andrew does the stuff that, being a flibberty-jibberty author-woman, I neither want, nor are able, to do myself. And I’m not just talking about finding his way round a twenty page publishing contract either.

Everyone knows that a good agent takes care of business, allowing us delicate flowers to avoid the stress of trying to quantify our worth, but in the six years Andrew has represented both me and some twenty three books, and counting, his input has been so much more diverse than that. He is a fresh pair of eyes, a mine of market information, a champion of our right to have reasonable expectations and a mover and shaker par excellence.

And though I’m not sure this constitutes ‘best practice’ for either of our circadian rhythms, he almost always responds to emails as soon as they’re sent, whatever-o’clock it might happen to be, seven days out of seven, and however much rambling, self-absorbed sturm and drang they might contain. Is there any greater quality an author would want in an agent? I doubt it.

Nicholas Best

Only bad authors are completely certain of their talent. Good ones know that they misfire occasionally, especially if they’re trying something different. The first of many publishing obstacles is to get your new idea or manuscript past Andrew. If you can do that, you can be reasonably sure that he will manage to sell it somewhere in the end.

The next task is to draft a business proposal in sales and marketing language. It’s the bit I hate the most. My first publisher was a wonderful old boy who had published George Orwell in his youth. He had no time for sales and marketing proposals. He acted on instinct and hunch. I have never had a better publisher.

Nowadays, unfortunately, corporate executives need to cover their backs. If a book flops, it has to be everyone’s fault, not just theirs. That means a business proposal carefully crafted under Andrew’s guidance, something that the suits can circulate and discuss at acquisition meetings before arriving at a committee decision. Hunch and instinct no longer count for much, which is why there have been no George Orwells recently.

If the corporates go for it, you need Andrew to negotiate the terms, unless you know what percentage to ask for in a back-end split. All too often, they won’t go for it because they can’t see enough profit to cover their overheads. In that case, you can go round them now and publish on Amazon instead. A greatly reduced price online means that you can shift a lot more ‘demand-weighted units’ (Amazon-speak for books) at a much higher royalty.

I have recently reissued several of my out-of-print books on Amazon with Andrew’s help. I have been in the Amazon Top 100 for both fiction and non-fiction. My novella Point Lenana, too short to be published conventionally, was Kindle Singles’ No 1 fiction promotion at the end of May. None of that would have happened if I had been trying to do it without an agent.

Nessa Carey

Picture the scene. You already have a demanding full-time job and for some reason decide it would be a great idea to write a book as well. That’s the situation I created for myself, in one of those examples of being too delightfully ignorant of what I was taking on to understand how insane it was.

I just wanted to write a book on a subject about which I felt passionately, and which I felt hadn’t been covered by anyone else. I had no experience of “proper” publishing at all. My nearest brush in the past had been scientific papers, and the occasional seventy word paragraph for a wildlife magazine. Hardly an adequate preparation.

Having looked at a few agents’ websites I thought that Andrew’s looked the friendliest (and if I am honest, he also needed the fewest chapters in the first round) so I followed the instructions carefully and sent off my submission. I was delighted when he accepted me, and didn’t realise how fortunate I was to get an agent so quickly. I blithely assumed this must be how it always works. Where ignorance is bliss……..

I realised quickly how lucky I was to have this agent though. He led me very patiently through various re-writes in response to his readers’ comments and once we’d agreed on a final version Andrew lined up interviews with various publishers. I was delighted with the final deal. The publisher was just right for me. They were a small company, specialising in non-fiction, and able to give me a lot of help in really polishing the book. A US deal followed quickly.

I love that I don’t have to get involved in anything contractual, or financial negotiations. It’s all handled for me, so I just receive the offers and say yes or no. The same is true with publicity opportunities that are sent my way. Even the emails that remind me I haven’t done something are gentle enough that I am not paralysed with guilt on receiving them.

Three years on and again I decided it would be a great idea to write a book despite working full-time. Far fewer re-writes confirmed for me that my original decision of working with people who could help a first-time writer learn to do things well had really paid off.

Deborah Crewe

What is it like having an agent?

Well, first of all it’s extremely glamorous. It’s worth having an agent just to be able to casually drop him into conversation. For example:

‘How do you find work?’ ‘Well, sometimes my agent finds work for me.’ ‘Wow, you have an agent!’

Second, it allows me to quote endlessly (to myself, under my breath) the funniest film ever, Tootsie.

George Fields: Where do you come off sending me your roommate’s play for you to star in? I’m your agent, not your mother! I’m not supposed to find plays for you to star in - I’m supposed to field offers! And that’s what I do! Michael Dorsey: ‘Field offers?’ Who told you that, the Agent Fairy? That was a significant piece of work - I could’ve been terrific in that part. George Fields: Michael, nobody’s gonna do that play. Michael Dorsey: Why? George Fields: Because it’s a downer, that’s why. Because nobody wants to produce a play about a couple that moved back to Love Canal. Michael Dorsey: But that actually happened! George Fields: WHO GIVES A SHIT? Nobody wants to pay twenty dollars to watch people living next to chemical waste! They can see that in New Jersey!

I’ve never yet known Andrew to shout ‘WHO GIVES A SHIT’. But he will tell me straight up when I bring him an idea that is like watching people living next to chemical waste. I hugely value this honesty. Like pulling off a plaster fast, it hurts a little, but it saves a lot of time.

Third, having an agent opens doors. Andrew is a brand. And his brand values, I think, are hard work, strong relationships, and quality writing. That means he makes me revise and re-revise my proposal until it is as good as it can be. It means he knows which editors are going to love my proposal. It means those editors tend to take the time to read it, because it comes from Andrew. Yes, Andrew handles the negotiations and the contract and the money, and that is fantastic because it would be fiddly and a bit awkward to do it myself. But that, for me, is the least of it.

What is it like having an agent? It is like having my own personal coach, clairvoyant, fixer, gamer, cheerleader. It’s like having a trusty guide through a strange and daunting landscape.

Roger Crowley

I have worked with Andrew for over ten years and four history books. Over this period the relationship has evolved in line with my writing career. At the outset, Andrew read my proposal, had his judgement checked with an experienced outside reader and took it on. This involved pitching it to a range of UK and US publishers, taking me on a series of meetings with interested publishers and conducting effective auctions.

Since then I have worked with the same UK publisher (though two different US ones) and the manuscript discussion tends to be direct with the relevant editor. Andrew pitches each new proposal to the publishers and works to improve the deals. He tries to dissuade me from ideas for books which he feels are unlikely to be sufficiently commercial or ones that deviate from the area of history in which I have built some reputation. His overall strategy has been to encourage me to develop a coherent profile (brand?) as a writer of history, though I’m not always inclined to listen. He purses his lips at the mention of writing a novel…

Andrew also works hard with sub-agents to squeeze every last opportunity for the books out of the translation market. It’s a good to see a little more money coming in from Korea or Brazil several years after the book was first published. He handles potential film and TV rights (we live in hope), suggests speaking engagements, passes on contacts and opportunities that are filtered through him and arranges occasional shared meetings with the UK publisher. From time to time I also like to have a face to face catch-up with him specifically to talk about the history and book market generally and potential future writing strategies.

Helen Croydon

The experience of being a first-time-author with no agent and a second-time-author with an agent were very different.

During the publication process of my first book Sugar Daddy Diaries, with no agent behind me, I and was bumbling around blind in an industry I knew nothing about. Is it ok to object to the front cover if I don’t like it? Should I just accept editorial changes or does the editor have time and resources to discuss them with me in detail? Is it ok to call my publisher yet again with a question about publicity? The second time around, with the publication of Screw The Fairytale, Andrew was behind the deal and I had a central point of contact to direct questions to.

Then there’s all the deal making, negotiating and spotting new opportunities, which authors usually shy away from! Andrew has been sending the manuscript to foreign agencies, chasing TV deals, flagging up speaking opportunities at literary festivals and even suggesting ghost writing projects. Of course it’s then down to the author to act on it, but without an agent to give an initial heads-up, many avenues of opportunity in the literary world end up being missed.

Plus, there’s an extra person to tweet about and recommend my books and to give a warm speech introduction at my latest book launch.

Patrick Dillon

My writing career has been unusually varied, ranging from serious history for adults, through children’s writing to fiction. Andrew hasn’t only been able to able to achieve excellent deals for all these books. He’s offered brilliant advice in choosing and shaping proposals. The starting point is clarity about what a book’s trying to achieve, whatever its genre. Andrew is invaluable in those early conversations. Who’s the book for? What’s distinctive about it? He brings clear thinking to the discussion, along with marketing nous and unrivalled knowledge of the trade. There’s no point expending time on an idea that’s unlikely to take off.

The same clear thinking helps shape the proposal. Publishers receive dozens of pitches, and it’s essential that what we make it clear what the book’s about, where the market is, and why people will want to read it. Andrew achieves his extraordinary hit-rate because he makes sure every proposal does the idea justice. If that means covering every base, it’s worth it.

Choosing where to send the proposal is very much one for Andrew. Success depends on his contacts, and his knowledge of each commissioning editor’s interest. When editors start to bite, it’s the agency that negotiates, and turns initial interest into firm offer and contract. It cuts in again when the book’s done. Publishers can’t always offer the marketing support a writer needs. Andrew has been brilliant in suggesting publicists and helping with contacts.

So Andrew is really part of a book’s life from start to finish. Long-term relationships between authors and publishing houses seem to belong to the past. For me, that continuity comes from the agency instead. Wherever my interest has shifted, Andrew has been ceaselessly encouraging. When an idea is being conceived, or a proposal shaped, in selling books and making deals, in helping when the process falters, and then giving my books the best chance in a highly competitive market – his support has been essential

Jane Dismore

I’m the ‘new girl on the block’ as far as being signed up by an agent is concerned. These days, when it seems everyone in the world has discovered that best-selling book inside them, many publishers won’t look at an author who has approached them direct, preferring to have the filtering process done for them. Those publishers who do accept a direct approach sometimes appear to think that an author has nothing better to do than spend the next aeon waiting for a reply, at the same time discouraging multiple submissions. It can be deeply depressing.

Enter the agent. Even then, the process is not for the faint-hearted or self-delusional. But with someone like Andrew, at least you won’t have to wait very long for a response. He replies to emails with impressive speed. He knows the market. He will tell it as he sees it, make suggestions on your submission if it needs it, and fight for better terms than the publisher seems prepared to offer. My next book is due out in September 2014, and I know he’ll be there to negotiate serial rights and do all the magic tricks to ensure I get the best deal.

Jeremy Dronfield

I’m a ghostwriter, biographer and book-doctor. It sometimes happens that the author of a biography, a history, or any other kind of non-fiction, having done the research and sketched out the book, struggles to bring out the qualities that would make it commercially viable. With a biography, for example, there may be a failure to capture the narrative drama of the subject’s life or the complexities of their character in a way that will captivate publishers and readers.

If Andrew believes that there is potential for a commercial book, but it’s just not coming through, no matter how many revisions the author does, he brings me in. If all parties agree, and if I believe passionately in the book, I come on board.

Sometimes it’s just the writing that’s lacking. In that case my job is simply to ghost or doctor it for finesse and readability. But more often the project evolves into full co-authorship; I go deep into the primary material, helping with the direction of the story and the analysis of the subject, and pursuing fresh lines of research. This is when the job is most satisfying – when I bring together my dual backgrounds in fiction and academic research. With me involved, a book gets the imaginative, vivid writing you’d expect from fiction, combined with the rigour of scholarship.

My recent books include the story of Robert Trimble, a WW2 pilot who undertook a secret mission to rescue POWs on the Eastern Front; a biography of Moura Budberg, the Russian spy who fell in love with a British agent during the Revolution and was haunted for the rest of her life by the shattering betrayal she suffered; the life of Peter Watson, millionaire art patron and doyen of the gay scene of pre-war Paris, who was murdered in his bath by his jealous lover; and the incredibly moving life of James Barry, a Victorian surgeon who was revealed after death to have been a woman, forced to disguise herself in order to pursue a career in medicine.

I always develop a close bond with my co-authors, but Andrew remains a crucial presence throughout, from inception to placing with a publisher, right up to delivery and beyond, as linchpin between me, my co-author(s) and publisher.

Piu Eatwell

I discovered Andrew completely by chance. Knowing nobody in the publishing industry and with the vaguest idea for a book, I simply emailed the list of agents in the ‘Writers’ and Artists’ Handbook’, working through it alphabetically until I got bored at the letter ‘m.’ Thank goodness I didn’t give up at the letter ‘k’! Otherwise, the course of history….at least, my small personal corner of history….would have been irrevocably, and no doubt depressingly, different.

As it was, I was thrilled when an email bounced back almost immediately from Andrew, responding to my book idea with enthusiasm and a raft of helpful suggestions. The reply was so quick that – coupled with the fact of it being a late hour on a Saturday – I felt sure this must be a new agent, desperate for work. I was absolutely stunned on checking Andrew’s credentials, to find that he is in fact the leading agent for non-fiction. Over the subsequent years, I have come to expect – but never fail to appreciate – this phenomenal rapidity in response.

I am now two books down the line from that initial book, and find that my professional relationship with Andrew has developed apace. Of course, he ticks all the boxes that a top literary agent should: he checks all contracts with minute attention to detail, and immediately highlights any areas of concern in the small print; he chases unpaid bills; he reviews all book proposals and makes incisive comments, before they are sent out.

However, Andrew is much more than all of this. He is my first sounding board for any new book idea. Whatever the subject, he is bound to have read every single competing book in the field, know if anything else like it will be coming out in the future, and – on at least two occasions so far – has even acted as agent for the author who wrote the previous leading work on the subject. He also has an unfailing nose for the latest ‘new thing’ in any given genre, an instinctive feel for the market and for what publishers are looking for. If Andrew predicts that, say, murders with a European wartime backdrop are the next ‘big thing’ in historical true crime, then he will invariably be correct. Most of all, you know that if Andrew believes in your book, he will fight to the death to make it a success in the market. Which means that you, the writer, can make yourself a cup of tea, switch off the mobile phone, and do what you always wanted to do…..write books.

Duncan Falconer

I have written one auto-biography and nine novels. When I first decided to write a book it was without knowledge of any single part of the process. In Andrew, this was all resolved. He guided and supported me through each and every step. I was not a book businessman, nor did I particularly want to be. I had no interest in the process that followed the actual piecing together of words. It was a whole new world with so much mystery attached. Andrew secured me the publisher and the price for my work. He managed my expectations and helped me realise my value. He kept me informed of any opportunities related to my writing, including such things as a lecture tour on a cruise ship or appearing at appropriate book fairs.

My books have been published internationally thanks to his efforts and he continues to offer moral support and guidance on all things related to the promotion and exposure of my work. He also played a significant role in the selling of the film rights to my books. As a result, I’ve dropped off the book writing for a few years while I write movies, and Andrew is still there for me, keeping me informed, encouraging me, and letting me know just how wide the door remains open for when I’m ready to get back to books. To misquote the proverbial cliche, in the world of books, ‘I wouldn’t go anywhere without him’.

Eleanor Fitzsimons

It’s said that we live our lives in seven-year cycles. The physiological basis for this is the seven-year process by which we regenerate almost every cell in our bodies, becoming new in the process. A widely held belief that we also undergo fundamental spiritual and emotional changes at this interval grants us licence to shrug off our past and set out in a new direction.

I have a habit of reinventing myself. Having worked in the corporate world for many years, I veered away to write features and opinion pieces for newspapers and magazines. A passion for history sent me back to university. I had this notion to write a book about some of the women who have been overlooked. My involvement with Andrew turned this notion into a publishing deal.

I honestly didn’t know where to start but I had the good sense to send Andrew an unformed outline and a sample of my work. He responded that same day with vital words of encouragement and a template that transformed my notion into a commercially viable proposition. The feedback from him and from his readers was invaluable: professional, forthright and constructive. I felt reassured that anything sent to a publisher with my name on it would be scrutinized first. Andrew knows exactly what publishers want because he asks them.

Andrew responds promptly to every email I send, even the daft, angst-ridden ones. He encouraged me to enter for prestigious prizes, one of which I won. He opened doors that would have remained firmly locked had I knocked timidly on them. He secured a deal for me, scrutinized the contract, negotiated changes in my favour, and had the advance in my account in time for me to pay my spiraling research bill. I simply couldn’t do this without him.

Bobby Friedman

Andrew has an important role in almost all aspects of the writing process, from start to finish. For every idea I have that gets off the ground, there will have been countless others that have been forced to face up to the harsh scrutiny of Andrew’s opinion. With the benefit of Andrew’s eye for what works and what doesn’t, the bad ones get cast aside. Meanwhile, Andrew helps to come up with his own suggestions and works with me to improve promising proposals. This includes arranging meetings with editors to brainstorm particular ideas, often over a glass of wine.

I always leave the mechanics of negotiating a deal to Andrew. The fantastic thing is that I know Andrew will get a proposal to the right people for consideration. Often, I am amazed at how he manages to get a vital change into the contract, or persuades the publisher to go just that little bit higher.

When it comes to writing the book, Andrew is my first port of call for comments on the initial draft, providing a useful sounding board before I send the manuscript to the publishers. He is on hand to advise on all the issues that crop up, from negotiating a serial to any points of disagreement with the publisher.

When I give my advice to potential authors, one question that often follows is whether it’s worth giving up a proportion of your income to an agent, when he or she doesn’t have to sit down and slog at getting the words out onto the page. In my experience, an agent is cheap at the price: simply, I couldn’t do it without Andrew’s help and guidance.

Adrian Gilbert

For all but the biggest names an agent is essential in gaining the attention of the publishing world. Overwhelmed by a torrent of manuscripts from would-be authors, publishing editors have turned to agents to act as quality-control gatekeepers. Increasingly, editors will only accept submissions from agents, so that acquiring an agent is often the first step in getting your book published.

My own agent, Andrew Lownie, has certainly acted as a key to opening publishing doors, but he – like other agents – performs many more functions to help the beleaguered author. Being a writer is a lonely business, and simply knowing that someone else is batting for you can be a great consolation. A good agent will know far more about the publishing process than an author, and he or she can guide the author through the jungle of book contracts as well as suggesting further book ideas and any number of other revenue-developing ideas. Put simply: to get ahead, get an agent.

Cathy Glass

As a reasonably well known author I receive many emails from new authors, seeking advice on having their first book published. One question that frequently comes up is do they need a literary agent? I reply without hesitation that they do, and a good one. I then go on to explain: that while some publishers accept submissions direct from the author, most mainstream publishers do not. That the agent will know which publishers are most likely to be interested in their type of work, saving the author a lot of time and frustration from countless rejections. I explain that the agent will also negotiate the best possible contract for the author, at home and overseas, and then ensure royalties are paid on time, as well as optioning film rights. That they make suggestions for marketing and publicising the books as well as keeping an eye on distribution. A good agent will also give the author valuable feedback on their work, and keep them up to date with developments in the publishing world, leaving the author free to do what they do best – write.

Andrew and I have been working together for nearly ten years, he was my first agent, and I can say that I wouldn’t have enjoyed the success I have without him.

Ian Graham

When I was a magazine journalist in London a lifetime ago, I remember someone who held a senior position in the publishing company I worked for telling me he assumed that I wanted his job. He was visibly shocked when I told him I didn’t. It was seen as a criminal lack of ambition. But I didn’t aspire to be a manager, dividing my time between budgets, meetings and business lunches. I wanted to write and that was all. I wanted to write in the same way that someone might want to breathe.

The desire to write is a simple itch to scratch, because anyone can write. However, writing with the expectation of being published is an entirely different challenge. The business aspects of writing and publishing require a set of skills and knowledge that many writers don’t possess, or don’t care to possess. Creating ‘the product’ is just one part of the process. The product has to be commercially attractive, and writers often need advice on that. To sell it, publishers have to be approached by someone whose judgement they trust. Then there are contracts to be negotiated and percentages to be haggled over. There may be extraordinary people out there whose abilities stretch all the way from the solitude of the writing room to courting publishers and dealing with the small print on contracts, but I’m not one of them.

Literary agents free writers from the parts of the publishing business that get in the way of writing. My agent, Andrew Lownie, has given me invaluable advice on producing book proposals and making my books more commercial. He presents and promotes my work to publishers and deals with contracts. And every morning I say a little prayer that he will look both ways before he crosses the road!

Randall Hansen

The basis of any book, and particularly books aimed at both an academic and commercial market, is a long lonely slog in the archive and the library. Different authors have different relationships with their agents, but mine involves much close work with Andrew at the start of a book. I generally send Andrew an email with one or two ideas, and he lets me know if he thinks they have intellectual (and commercial) appeal. I follow up with a ten-twenty proposal which provides a summary of what the book’s content (or what I imagine the content will be, as a proposal precedes some research, and much changes in the writing). Andrew provides comments and criticism, and I revise. Andrew then sends the revised version to one-three anonymous readers who provide their views; I revise the proposal again in the light of their comments. The much-revised proposal then goes off the publishers. After much discussion, and if I’m lucky multiple bids, we move to contract. This is the most exciting part of the work; after it, the hard toil beings and some two years later there is a book in the shops.

For a commercial book to be picked up, there has to be a convergence of multiple interests – the agent, editor, the bean counters in marketing, and of course the author. For those reason, a commercial book is much more challenging than a traditional academic book (though such a book is challenging enough), as the latter, safe in the knowledge that library sales will cover the costs of publication and the pittance that passes for an advance, requires only editorial and peer support. Andrew really is instrumental in seeing this process through. It is in theory possible for authors to capture the interest of editors without an agent, but it’s extremely difficult. Equally importantly, whether they are great commercial successes or not, my books are simply better books because of the attention Andrew gives to them.

Catherine Hewitt

For a new author, an agent - a good agent - is, I believe, essential. In my own case, I came to Andrew’s agency with an idea and boundless enthusiasm. However, my background was academic. Writing biography for general readership was an entirely new domain. I knew I could write and research a thesis, but writing biography is so much more than that: it is a commercial business. This is where Andrew came in.

I feel sure I am not the only new author to enter the profession with much confusion and a plethora of questions. The most immediate of these are practical. Where do I begin? How many pages should a proposal be? How many books should I include in my competing literature section? Which ones? How long should the chapter summaries be? Then there was the invaluable editorial feedback on the proposal itself. Once the proposal was complete, Andrew’s good working relationships with editors was simply indispensable. With the agency on board, I had access to the people who could bridge the gap between me sitting writing at my computer and actually seeing my book on the shelf of a high-street bookshop. And the importance of having someone to turn to who understands and can negotiate the ins and outs of a publishing contract can hardly be overstated.

However, there is also, dare I say it, immense spiritual support to be gained from the agency; if Andrew takes you on, you can be sure that he believes in your work. An author can enjoy the quiet reassurance of knowing that the technicalities (the contract, negotiating, the rights, etc) are being dealt with by someone with experience and competence. Andrew makes this seem so effortless that it is all too easy to take for granted. As a writer, I want to focus on the creative business of writing. Andrew makes this possible.

One day, I receive an e-mail from Andrew with an attachment. He is in Frankfurt and has just spotted a book he thinks might be of relevance to my work. That’s useful, I think to myself. But then I remember - Andrew deals with scores of authors, editors and publishers every day. And yet he remembered what I was working on and took the trouble to keep me up to date of something new on the market. This personal attention is why I am with Andrew’s agency.

Kris Hollington

Andrew is Al to my Dr. Sam “Quantum Leap” Beckett (without the cigars and womanizing) and he makes sure I jump from one life to another with barely a pause for breath. And while I’m working away with the latest agency recruit, Andrew (also Genie to my Aladdin) is securing foreign, audio and film rights (amongst all the usual day-to-day goings-on of agency life) and sending me leads for other work (one such lead has just turned into an article for Newsweek).

Obi-Wan to my Skywalker, Andrew also checks proposals and advises on improvements before he takes them off to publishers for editorial scrutiny. Editors know that when they have a Lownie proposal, they have the book’s complete blueprint.

Every now and again I’ll come across someone who needs an agent – one co-author (a former CID detective) knew an air stewardess who wanted to write a book. It wasn’t one for me to ghost but of course I had no problem recommending the agency. Now after some agency magic, Cabin Fever: The sizzling secrets of a Virgin air hostess, by Mandy Smith (published by agency imprint Thistle) is in the bestseller charts.

It seems to me as though editors, talented and patient, are hard-pushed these days. They increasingly have to divide their time between greater numbers of books in various stages of production, not to mention battle their way through numerous ridiculous legal restrictions (my own bugbear). I’m certain they wish they could spend more time on the actual manuscript but moneysaving publishers have (in some cases) cut resources quite drastically. I do my best not to give them too much trouble.

In essence, the agency does a damn fine job and I never have to worry about contract details and negotiations; I know they’re in safe hands, leaving me to crack on with proposals, books and articles – to write. Like Marty McFly and “Doc” Brown, it’s the perfect partnership (you can’t always predict the future but you know you’re in for a fun ride).

Mary Hollingsworth

Andrew is not a nanny, more the wise pilot who uses his expertise to steer an author’s work into port. Apart from the practical tasks expected of an agent - negotiating with publishers, checking contracts, sorting royalties, and so on - he offers support at all stages of writing a book. Much depends on the proposal and he ensures that these are written in a way calculated to appeal. As an academic historian, I value his advice on what tooic might make a popular book, and on the best way to approach it. He is meticulous in his attention to detail and immensely hard-working, full of ideas and always ready to exploit new opportunities. Best of all, with Andrew you can expect a reply to your email within hours rather than days.

Christian Jennings

Writers do not seek too hard to be understood, often enjoying a vaguely mysterious elitism, and as a consequence, they often feel misunderstood. A famous Polish nineteenth-century novelist is reputed to have said that “my wife doesn’t understand that when I’m looking out of the window, I am actually working terribly hard.”

So any person who makes it their profession to represent, handle, look after, sell, market and deal with not just one, or ten or twenty writers, but two hundred, on a daily basis, must certainly understand them, what they do, what makes them tick and what they want. Andrew Lownie does this with remarkable success. His authors and his agency work well together for four principal reasons.

Firstly, both author and agent can cooperate in establishing just the right subject matter for each book, its commercial chances, and its optimum form of expression and structure.

Secondly, the agency formula for writing submissions proposals, and having them read by an agency reader, makes the author hone the marketing, publicity and editorial potential of a book long before it gets to an editor. When the time comes to submit it to publishers, Andrew’s canny, focused and up-to-the-minute industry knowledge of which editor where likes what kind of books, at which point, why, and for how much, means that the proposals’ chances in the marketplace are maximized.

Thirdly, Andrew is consistently informed of, and always breaking new ground in such areas as e-publishing, audio, TV and film rights.

Lastly, and other authors comment about it frequently, but Andrew’s speed of response to emails is such that his writers never feel too out on a limb. I remember one summer afternoon in Turin when I needed a scanned page from my latest book contract emailed over by Andrew, so I could forward it to the American tax service. The amount of time that elapsed from writing the email of request to Andrew, to receiving the email scan back in my inbox? Eight minutes.

Rachel Kelly

I have long thought the most influential people in life are early adopters. Andrew is an early adopter par excellence. He took a bet on me, a first-time writer, ahead of anyone else. Before I rang Andrew, I had tried approaching a couple of publishers on my own. I got nowhere. My letters weren’t acknowledged, my calls weren’t returned. I now realise that publishers rely on agents to pre-select the manuscripts they are going to read. It is an illusion that your submission will get plucked from a slush pile. It won’t. Don’t believe any publisher who tells you so. Publishers rely on agents to do the choosing for them, and rightly so.

Andrew worked with me ahead of submission to improve my book. He gave me invaluable editorial advice which most publishers neither have the time nor inclination to give. They understandably wish for a manuscript which needs little work. Andrew told me I had too many chapters – I had 32, most non-fiction books have around 18, and that each chapter is between 4,000 and 5,000 words. He told me I needed a new title. He told me how to write my submission and then improved it. And all of this before the book was even sold!

He accompanied me on our ‘publishing tour’, negotiated a deal with Hodder & Stoughton, changed several key elements of the contract, and has been a font of support and advice ever since. All of which I value hugely, but the thing I most value is that he made my book better than it would otherwise have been and thereby got me a publisher as good as Hodder. My dream of being a writer came true and it wouldn’t have happened without Andrew.

Shannon Kyle

If someone asks me if you need an agent to be a writer, I always reply: ‘No you don’t absolutely HAVE to.’ It’s very possible to publish online and I know of ghosts who sort publishing deals directly with publishing houses, independently with no agents involved. It can happen. But if you would like to progress your career further, have someone to bounce ideas off, give honest feedback and deal with all the minutiae of a publishing deal then having an agent is really a very good idea.

As a ghostwriter, sometimes a person will approach me with an book idea, either through word of mouth or my website and if I think it might have legs, I will run it past Andrew with a phone call or email. If we think a story will work the next step is to write a synopsis. The more thorough, gripping and easy to read it is, the harder it will be for a publisher to turn it down easily. On other occasions Andrew will hear of a project and if he thinks as writer I am a suitable fit he will pass on details and away we go again.

The next step is we all meet an interested publisher together to discuss the project and then offers are made. As a writer you have to place trust in your agent that the very best financial deal is being obtained. During the process if any problems arise, your agent speaks on your behalf and when the book is complete they cheer lead at the end.

Frank Ledwidge

I am the author of two books on our recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; I got lucky, quickly, with the responses of readers and reviewers to the books. But as they say you make your own luck, and mine was made when I was referred to Andrew by a friend. Anyone reading this will know, and those who don’t hopefully soon will, how hard it is to start out being published. It’s a bit like the selection courses they do in the military; you get to one checkpoint, exhausted but exhilarated at having achieved something significant only to be told ‘see that peak over there-the one on the other side of the valley, got it? OK, compose yourself; off you go!’ And off you go again. With Andrew, though, or indeed any first-class agent you’ve got someone running next to you helping with the navigation, as well as supplying hints as to how you might save some time and energy and do what you are doing better.

People reading this will have understood that for an author an agent is really essential; all the ‘Starting out as a writer’ books tell you that an agent is necessary. What is not so obvious is that any old agent will not be sufficient. You need someone who is savvy, wise whilst also being able to listen to your ideas and add some more. A good agent will say ‘That’s not going to work’, as well as ‘Good idea, get on it!’

You need to understand that beginning as a writer is also lonely; there’s no getting away from that. I don’t know how Andrew does it, but when you ring him up, you’re the focus; and the writing life looks far more doable after such a discussion than before it. From speaking to many authors who have the ‘necessary’ agent, rather than a ‘sufficient’ one, I know that this is what separates Andrew from the common run.

David Long

A good agent has always been crucial when it comes to dealing with the commercial side of a deal but increasingly these days having an agent is more or less essential for anyone hoping even to start a conversation with a big publisher, many of whom will no longer consider an author working on his or her own. More than this, however, anyone sitting alone in a room all day needs someone knowledgeable to share ideas with and to bounce ideas around before they go any further. Agents are ideally placed to know what might or might not sell, and better able than most writers to identify the right publisher for a particular project or - delicately - to suggest shelving the project entirely if its time has not yet come or has already gone. Like most authors I like to consider my books to be just that - my books - but eventually the truth dawns. A good book is always a collaborative project, and while an author will share many objectives with a publisher (assuming he has the right one) the value of this seems to emerge only once the manuscript is well underway. Personally I’ve always needed an ally onside long before this stage, and for nearly a decade Andrew has provided the support, the encouragement and the detailed industry knowledge which coming to authorship from 25 years of journalism I know I lack.

Sean Longden

As a writer I want to write: I don’t want to worry about when I’m going to be paid or think about what a publisher wants. Of course those are essential questions but it’s nice to have someone there to answer them for you.

When I come up with a new idea (and I’ve had many more ideas than I’ll ever write books) I want it to be fresh, vibrant and full of all manner ground-breaking material. I want it to be what I consider to be a great book. I can’t be constrained by looking along the shelves at Waterstones and thinking ‘How can I write one of these books?’ If I’d started my writing career by doing that I would never have been published. I need to think ‘These are all boring – I’m going to do something much better’.

Now, while that is good in theory, the real world is a very different place. It’s a place where publishers want writers to give them what they know they can sell, yet are also desperate for something new. And that’s where an agent comes in. I need someone to say ‘That’s a very good idea but what about throwing in X,Y or even Z, to make it more attractive to publishers’. The agent shouldn’t burst the bubble of joyous enthusiasm, felt by every writer who has that light bulb moment and announces their new book is going to be the biggest seller since the bible. Instead the agent is there to help mould the book, encourage the author to turn a flight of fancy into something every publisher will be fighting over. Does it always work? No, but when it does work, it’s a magnificent thing.

Perhaps the perfect agent should be somewhere between a sensuous muse, seducing all the best ideas out of a writer, and the world’s most honest accountant, making sure the writer has the time, space and – rather importantly - finance to come up great ideas.

Teena Lyons

In recent months I have interviewed dozens of other ghost writers for my forthcoming book Complete Guide to Ghostwriting. I found a surprisingly broad cross-section of views on everything from the best way to work with authors, to how to structure a working day and to what contributes to the success of a project, or otherwise. However, there is one aspect of the job where there was near unanimity: a feeling of dread over producing book proposals to present to publishers. Perhaps, if we all had our way, we’d pop in half a sheet of A4 saying something along the lines of: it is the best story you’ve never read, you’d be a fool not to buy it. And that is why we need agents.

Andrew has been my first and only agent, so I can’t speak for the industry as a whole, but the quality in him that is most important to me is the demand for perfection at the proposal stage. Having been brought up in a family where both parents had agents, I’ve always ‘got’ the idea that they take a percentage and negotiate a far better deal that you’d ever have secured yourself. That, to me is a given.

What I value is his judgement at the proposal stage. It has not been unusual for a book proposal to go back and forth between us a number of times. Each time, he will make insightful, astute suggestions that improve the final product. It is not easy to re-write, polish and hone a proposal, particularly when there is no guarantee that it will be picked up and I will be rewarded for my time. However, by going through this process, I am far more likely to succeed. Like anything worth having in life, it is tough, painful, occasionally frustrating, but the rewards are worth it.

Neil McKenna

If you want to be a writer then you need an agent. It’s a simple and inescapable truth. For all those stories of overlooked masterpieces picked from slush piles in publisher’s offices which go on to be world bestsellers, the truth is that for ordinary writers like me, having an agent is a massive advantage.

One of the hardest parts of the process of becoming a professional writer for me was finding an agent. I approached lots of agents. Half the time, I didn’t even get the courtesy of a reply. Once, when I spoke to the agent of a good friend of mine, I found the woman’s tone so hostile and terrifying, that I didn’t pursue it any further.

I came into Andrew’s orbit after reading a short article in ‘Writers’ News’, a magazine for amateur and aspiring writers, the gist of which was that Andrew Lownie was looking for writers with interesting non-fiction projects. I thought to myself, ‘I’m a writer – of sorts – and my project is interesting (or at least, I think it’s interesting)’, so I took the plunge and wrote to him.

Andrew wrote back almost immediately. We met and he took me on. It took Andrew the best part of four years or so to sell my book on Oscar Wilde. He was indefatigable in his efforts and carried on, long after I had resigned myself to not selling the book. It’s an illustration of what Andrew does for his authors. Without Andrew’s bulldog determination, my book on Oscar Wilde would not have seen the light of day. As it is, it’s still in print eleven years on.

Apart from dealing with and resolving the day-to-day complexities of contracts, overseas rights, e-book hassles, copyright infringements and byzantine royalty statements that make no sense, Andrew is importantly a key player in the creative side of my writing. He is a distinguished biographer in his own right which makes him almost unique agents because he knows what you’re trying to do creatively from the inside.

Andrew’s instincts are sure. He has a feel for the business of publishing and a feel for books and writing. I value his opinions enormously. Most importantly, I know he is on my side and that is a very comforting feeling when the going gets tough!

Clare Mulley

My first biography, The Woman Who Saved the Children, was a labour of love. When I started writing it I had little idea how publishing worked, or even how to structure the book. Fortunately Andrew did. Andrew, and his team of readers, helped to guide the development of the book, and then he secured my first publishing contract.

Since then he has hugely helped to develop my career. I am now ‘an award-winning biographer’ with my latest book, The Spy Who Loved, translated into three languages, out as an audio-book, and optioned by Universal Films. I review for The Spectator and History Today, write articles, give talks and, occasionally, appear on radio and TV. I could never have achieved this without Andrew.

Sometimes Andrew’s help is very simple; he gives a reliably fast reply to an emailed query about a contract or an interview. Sometimes his help is more profound. Knowing my interests, it was he who suggested the subject for my second book, Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the first woman to work for Britain as a special agent in WWII. At first I baulked at the idea – it felt like a blind date, and I wanted to find my own subject. But Andrew was right and it turned out to be a great honour, as well as a great adventure, to research and write Christine’s story.

Several of my writer-friends have agents who sound very lovely. They have long lunches together and talk about everything under the sun. Andrew is not like that. We do meet occasionally, and have been known to have lunch, but both of us are very busy. I have three children, and I don’t live in London. What I want and need is a very focused agent who is respected by the best editors and publishers in the UK and overseas; has excellent contacts in film and TV; a great team of readers who can comment on my developing book proposals; and the commitment to me that means I know they will respond to my queries promptly and wisely, and come up with new suggestions that I had not considered. Andrew provides all this, and I have learned to trust his judgment and value his advice immensely.

Susan Ottaway

Andrew has been representing me for three years – the best years of my writing career so far. My first book was published 20 years ago with the help of an already established author but, although I managed to find publishers for my subsequent work, it was an uphill struggle. I wanted to be a writer but found myself becoming more of a sales rep, selling my ideas and myself as an author without really knowing how best to present either. As an individual it was hard to get a deal of any kind, much less a good one.

Having an agent, especially an excellent one like Andrew, has changed everything. He not only listens to my enthusiastic ramblings, he makes suggestions for possible books and then discusses ways to present the ideas to their best advantage and even suggests research facilities and people to contact. He’s a hard task master when it comes to writing proposals and often rejects my first attempts but he is right in what he says and I can see that the version which eventually gains his approval is so much better than my original offering. He is always encouraging and constantly reinforces the good parts while seeking to improve those that are not so good so I never feel too disheartened. The number of books he places with publishers is amazing and yet, although he works so hard, I hardly ever have to wait for a reply to an e-mail or to talk to him on the phone and he is always helpful and friendly. I really feel that Andrew, however busy he might be, is more than an agent, he is a friend who is looking out for me and I feel privileged to be one of his authors.

Nick Pope

The first thing an author looks for – or should look for – in a literary agent, is good advice. Andrew Lownie is a published author himself, and having operated on both sides of the industry, has invaluable experience to pass along. At the early stage of the authorial process, in conjunction with a network of ‘readers’ who have expertise in just about every subject and genre you could imagine, Andrew will help with invaluable guidance on crafting a synopsis in such a way as to maximise the chances of getting a deal. More fundamentally, he’ll help with the delicate business of working out which ideas should be aggressively pursued, and which should be quietly dropped.

There are many different strands to the work of a modern literary agency. All authors are different, but in my case, Andrew has done far more than simply negotiate deals for my five books – two of which made the Top 10 hardback non-fiction list. He’s negotiated serialisation deals, translation rights, a film/TV option deal for one of my sci-fi novels, and much more besides. I emigrated to America in 2012 and wondered if this would be an issue. It wasn’t. My latest book was published by a US publisher, and in parallel, I came onboard with the agency’s new imprint, Thistle Publishing, which can handle e-books and print-on-demand.

I should make special mention of the agency website. Andrew uses it to share some of the knowledge and experience that he’s amassed, and also publishes guest articles from other people in the publishing world: authors, ghostwriters, and even commissioning editors explaining what kind of books they’re currently looking for. In parallel with the “How to Submit” section, this is just about the most valuable advice available to authors, be they novices or ‘old hands’.

Linda Porter

I rely on the agency to handle the ‘nitty-gritty’ of contracts and royalties and I’ve also found that Andrew keeps a keen eye on potential competition. His unobtrusive support, over many years, is particularly valued at times of personal or professional uncertainty. Writing is a lonely occupation and it is good to know that the agency will be there for you when you need it. Times are changing in publishing and Andrew is well-abreast of all that is going on.

Katharine Quarmby

Andrew is a benign presence in my life as a working writer and journalist, always encouraging me to work a little harder and be that bit more ambitious. I can hardly say no, as he and his partner on his fiction list, David Haviland, work so hard for their authors - both in the traditional sphere of meeting publishers and visiting book fairs, but also on social media and exploring new genres as agent-entrepreneurs.

Since I first met Andrew, when I was working as a correspondent at the Economist in 2006, I have published two non-fiction books with him, (Scapegoat and No Place to Call Home) and branched out into Kindle Singles - one memoir, Blood and Water about my search for my Iranian birth father - and my first fictional piece, Aftermath, about my experiences as a producer in Rwanda, after the genocide. We are now about to publish another fictional Single, again based loosely on historical fact, about my mother’s family in Yugoslavia, during the First World War, and their links to Gavrilo Princip.

Andrew has also encouraged me to explore new genres - I have spent much of this year writing my first ghost project, under his careful eye. He and David have also sold the rights to my memoir and my Rwanda story to Audible and introduced me to the good folks at Newsweek, where I am now a contributing editor. It is a hugely productive relationship - and it has to be, as publishing and journalism change and have become more competitive and more dependent on the agent and the individual writer marketing themselves. Andrew and David, at Thistle, their publishing arm, are a fantastic team. I feel I couldn’t be in better hands in extremely challenging, but exciting times for British journalism and publishing.

Neil Simpson

If you’re better at words than figures then you need an agent like Andrew Lownie. If you’re a bad negotiator and hate haggling about money then you need an agent like Andrew Lownie. If you want to carry on making a living in an increasingly difficult publishing environment then, well, you probably get the drift.

In my ideal world I’m given a subject, a deadline and a decent contract to sign. Then I go away and get the job done without having to waste a second on any legal or financial questions. Writing can be tough, even when your subject is great fun. So why make it worse by fighting those sorts of battles on your own?

I rely on Andrew getting my ideas, proposals and indeed my name in front of the right people. I rely on him extracting the best deal he can from them. I like him going the extra mile by aiming for TV and film rights on the books we’ve done together. And I know he’s always looking for the next good deal. So what would I change? Nothing at all.

David Stafford.

Why bother with an agent? is a question I’m sometimes asked. It still puzzles me given that it certainly comes from people who’d never hesitate to employ a realtor to buy or sell a house, or a lawyer to negotiate a legal issue. But I bite my tongue and say instead something along the lines that while a writer can produce a text it takes an agent to help transform it into a saleable book that that can make money. And that if you’re in the business of writing- and a business it is- you have to think of it as a team affair. You dream up the idea for a book; but before you’ve even written it, it’s the agent who tells you whether it’s likely to sell or not. In fact, it might even be the agent who comes up with the idea in the first place. Then you write up a proposal, and it’s the agent who gives you the vital critical feedback that leads you to revise and improve it, perhaps several times over. It’s the agent who then sells it to a publisher in what is a highly competitive market; without an agent it’s virtually impossible to catch the eye of a commissioning editor. And of course it’s the agent who negotiates the best possible contract that will earn you both some serious money and protect your interests in what is a complex business that only experts can master. I’ve been with Andrew Lownie’s agency for over twenty years, and through his close personal involvement with me and my books Andrew and his team have delivered superbly well. I write the words. He turns them into the money. What more could one ask?

Nicola Stow

I was relaxing on a beach in Portugal when Mandy Smith’s memoir, Cabin Fever: The Sizzling Secrets of a Virgin Air Hostess, reached number 11 on Amazon. I ghosted this book so, obviously, I was thrilled - and it was the perfect excuse to order a large Del Boy -style cocktail complete with mini umbrellas and sparklers.

But as I downed my drink and worshipped the sun, Andrew, David and Mandy, along with other industry individuals, were working behind the scenes to generate mass publicity for Cabin Fever. The book was first published in Australia and, thanks to the agency’s imprint, Thistle, we were then able to publish Cabin Fever in the UK.

As the book went live, Andrew worked his magic, securing serialisation deals with two national newspapers. A good friend and fellow ghost , Doug Wight (former News of the World Books Editor), then joined the team and was responsible for writing a cracking serial for the Sun newspaper. In fact, it was Doug who introduced me to Andrew - a brilliant move, I must say.

As the publicity mounted, Mandy hit the shops - a few new outfits were required for television interviews. She also found herself dealing with newspaper journalists and radio show hosts. In order to help organise Mandy’s hectic media schedule, Andrew brought another agency ghost and publicist, Emma Donnan, on board, which led to even more publicity.

As I’m discovering, there’s a lot more to this book-writing business than many people imagine. Even when the book is published the hard work continues. Promotion is the key, as we proved with Cabin Fever. A few days after that wonderful Amazon moment, while I was still sunning myself in the Algarve, I received an email from Andrew. He’d just sold North American rights for Cabin Fever to Penguin. I think I’ll have to buy him a large cocktail next time I see him.

Peter Thompson

In an emergency, there’s always the SAS – the Special Andrew Service – to tackle all manner of problems. For ten years between 1998 and 2008 I roamed the globe each year on an around-the-world ticket writing books on World War II. Andrew would receive an urgent phone call or email from New York or Sydney or Singapore or Crete relating to a lost air ticket (in the days before e-tickets), a lapsed visa, depleted funds, missing page proofs and so on. The great machine behind the purple door in Great Smith Street would swing into action and in what seemed like a matter of hours the problem would be solved. No matter what the time difference or how complex the issue he always seemed to be there and a concise reply would wing its way back to my hotel.

Andrew not only suggests subjects for my books, finds a publisher, deals with the contract, edits the ms before submission and manages the money, he also offers an outlet through his own imprint, Thistle, which began life back in the 1980s with a smart box set of John Buchan’s work and is now in the expert hands of David Haviland. Now, Andrew, about the cover for The Private Lives of Mayfair….

Mei Trow

I still dine out on my first meeting with Andrew. He was then with a large London agency and was going solo the following week. Did I want to stay with them or go with him? I chose to go with him – the best writing decision I ever made. Years down the line – he introduces me as his ‘oldest writer’ but I’m not the sort to hold a grudge! – I am still being spurred on by his enthusiasm and publishing savvy.

When preparing a proposal, Andrew always reminds me that bullet points are Good Things, so here are a few –

• Andrew works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (So do I). • Andrew knows everybody! • Andrew is in tune with the market and has a nose for a good story. • Andrew is infinitely patient, not just with me, but with all those who contact him with a book in them, no matter how deeply hidden it might be.

Good agents are like hens’ teeth

Randall Hansen

The basis of any book, and particularly books aimed at both an academic and commercial market, is a long lonely slog in the archive and the library. Different authors have different relationships with their agents, but mine involves much close work with Andrew at the start of a book. I generally send Andrew an email with one or two ideas, and he lets me know if he thinks they have intellectual (and commercial) appeal. I follow up with a ten-twenty proposal which provides a summary of what the book’s content (or what I imagine the content will be, as a proposal precedes some research, and much changes in the writing). Andrew provides comments and criticism, and I revise. Andrew then sends the revised version to one-three anonymous readers who provide their views; I revise the proposal again in the light of their comments. The much-revised proposal then goes off the publishers. After much discussion, and if I’m lucky multiple bids, we move to contract. This is the most exciting part of the work; after it, the hard toil beings and some two years later there is a book in the shops.

For a commercial book to be picked up, there has to be a convergence of multiple interests – the agent, editor, the bean counters in marketing, and of course the author. For those reason, a commercial book is much more challenging than a traditional academic book (though such a book is challenging enough), as the latter, safe in the knowledge that library sales will cover the costs of publication and the pittance that passes for an advance, requires only editorial and peer support. Andrew really is instrumental in seeing this process through. It is in theory possible for authors to capture the interest of editors without an agent, but it’s extremely difficult. Equally importantly, whether they are great commercial successes or not, my books are simply better books because of the attention Andrew gives to them.

Catherine Hewitt

For a new author, an agent - a good agent - is, I believe, essential. In my own case, I came to Andrew’s agency with an idea and boundless enthusiasm. However, my background was academic. Writing biography for general readership was an entirely new domain. I knew I could write and research a thesis, but writing biography is so much more than that: it is a commercial business. This is where Andrew came in.

I feel sure I am not the only new author to enter the profession with much confusion and a plethora of questions. The most immediate of these are practical. Where do I begin? How many pages should a proposal be? How many books should I include in my competing literature section? Which ones? How long should the chapter summaries be? Then there was the invaluable editorial feedback on the proposal itself. Once the proposal was complete, Andrew’s good working relationships with editors was simply indispensable. With the agency on board, I had access to the people who could bridge the gap between me sitting writing at my computer and actually seeing my book on the shelf of a high-street bookshop. And the importance of having someone to turn to who understands and can negotiate the ins and outs of a publishing contract can hardly be overstated.

However, there is also, dare I say it, immense spiritual support to be gained from the agency; if Andrew takes you on, you can be sure that he believes in your work. An author can enjoy the quiet reassurance of knowing that the technicalities (the contract, negotiating, the rights, etc) are being dealt with by someone with experience and competence. Andrew makes this seem so effortless that it is all too easy to take for granted. As a writer, I want to focus on the creative business of writing. Andrew makes this possible.

One day, I receive an e-mail from Andrew with an attachment. He is in Frankfurt and has just spotted a book he thinks might be of relevance to my work. That’s useful, I think to myself. But then I remember - Andrew deals with scores of authors, editors and publishers every day. And yet he remembered what I was working on and took the trouble to keep me up to date of something new on the market. This personal attention is why I am with Andrew’s agency.

Kris Hollington

Andrew is Al to my Dr. Sam “Quantum Leap” Beckett (without the cigars and womanizing) and he makes sure I jump from one life to another with barely a pause for breath. And while I’m working away with the latest agency recruit, Andrew (also Genie to my Aladdin) is securing foreign, audio and film rights (amongst all the usual day-to-day goings-on of agency life) and sending me leads for other work (one such lead has just turned into an article for Newsweek).

Obi-Wan to my Skywalker, Andrew also checks proposals and advises on improvements before he takes them off to publishers for editorial scrutiny. Editors know that when they have a Lownie proposal, they have the book’s complete blueprint.

Every now and again I’ll come across someone who needs an agent – one co-author (a former CID detective) knew an air stewardess who wanted to write a book. It wasn’t one for me to ghost but of course I had no problem recommending the agency. Now after some agency magic, Cabin Fever: The sizzling secrets of a Virgin air hostess, by Mandy Smith (published by agency imprint Thistle) is in the bestseller charts.

It seems to me as though editors, talented and patient, are hard-pushed these days. They increasingly have to divide their time between greater numbers of books in various stages of production, not to mention battle their way through numerous ridiculous legal restrictions (my own bugbear). I’m certain they wish they could spend more time on the actual manuscript but moneysaving publishers have (in some cases) cut resources quite drastically. I do my best not to give them too much trouble.

In essence, the agency does a damn fine job and I never have to worry about contract details and negotiations; I know they’re in safe hands, leaving me to crack on with proposals, books and articles – to write. Like Marty McFly and “Doc” Brown, it’s the perfect partnership (you can’t always predict the future but you know you’re in for a fun ride).

Mary Hollingsworth

Andrew is not a nanny, more the wise pilot who uses his expertise to steer an author’s work into port. Apart from the practical tasks expected of an agent - negotiating with publishers, checking contracts, sorting royalties, and so on - he offers support at all stages of writing a book. Much depends on the proposal and he ensures that these are written in a way calculated to appeal. As an academic historian, I value his advice on what tooic might make a popular book, and on the best way to approach it. He is meticulous in his attention to detail and immensely hard-working, full of ideas and always ready to exploit new opportunities. Best of all, with Andrew you can expect a reply to your email within hours rather than days.

Christian Jennings

Writers do not seek too hard to be understood, often enjoying a vaguely mysterious elitism, and as a consequence, they often feel misunderstood. A famous Polish nineteenth-century novelist is reputed to have said that “my wife doesn’t understand that when I’m looking out of the window, I am actually working terribly hard.”

So any person who makes it their profession to represent, handle, look after, sell, market and deal with not just one, or ten or twenty writers, but two hundred, on a daily basis, must certainly understand them, what they do, what makes them tick and what they want. Andrew Lownie does this with remarkable success. His authors and his agency work well together for four principal reasons.

Firstly, both author and agent can cooperate in establishing just the right subject matter for each book, its commercial chances, and its optimum form of expression and structure.

Secondly, the agency formula for writing submissions proposals, and having them read by an agency reader, makes the author hone the marketing, publicity and editorial potential of a book long before it gets to an editor. When the time comes to submit it to publishers, Andrew’s canny, focused and up-to-the-minute industry knowledge of which editor where likes what kind of books, at which point, why, and for how much, means that the proposals’ chances in the marketplace are maximized.

Thirdly, Andrew is consistently informed of, and always breaking new ground in such areas as e-publishing, audio, TV and film rights.

Lastly, and other authors comment about it frequently, but Andrew’s speed of response to emails is such that his writers never feel too out on a limb. I remember one summer afternoon in Turin when I needed a scanned page from my latest book contract emailed over by Andrew, so I could forward it to the American tax service. The amount of time that elapsed from writing the email of request to Andrew, to receiving the email scan back in my inbox? Eight minutes.

Rachel Kelly

I have long thought the most influential people in life are early adopters. Andrew is an early adopter par excellence. He took a bet on me, a first-time writer, ahead of anyone else. Before I rang Andrew, I had tried approaching a couple of publishers on my own. I got nowhere. My letters weren’t acknowledged, my calls weren’t returned. I now realise that publishers rely on agents to pre-select the manuscripts they are going to read. It is an illusion that your submission will get plucked from a slush pile. It won’t. Don’t believe any publisher who tells you so. Publishers rely on agents to do the choosing for them, and rightly so.

Andrew worked with me ahead of submission to improve my book. He gave me invaluable editorial advice which most publishers neither have the time nor inclination to give. They understandably wish for a manuscript which needs little work. Andrew told me I had too many chapters – I had 32, most non-fiction books have around 18, and that each chapter is between 4,000 and 5,000 words. He told me I needed a new title. He told me how to write my submission and then improved it. And all of this before the book was even sold!

He accompanied me on our ‘publishing tour’, negotiated a deal with Hodder & Stoughton, changed several key elements of the contract, and has been a font of support and advice ever since. All of which I value hugely, but the thing I most value is that he made my book better than it would otherwise have been and thereby got me a publisher as good as Hodder. My dream of being a writer came true and it wouldn’t have happened without Andrew.

Shannon Kyle

If someone asks me if you need an agent to be a writer, I always reply: ‘No you don’t absolutely HAVE to.’ It’s very possible to publish online and I know of ghosts who sort publishing deals directly with publishing houses, independently with no agents involved. It can happen. But if you would like to progress your career further, have someone to bounce ideas off, give honest feedback and deal with all the minutiae of a publishing deal then having an agent is really a very good idea.

As a ghostwriter, sometimes a person will approach me with an book idea, either through word of mouth or my website and if I think it might have legs, I will run it past Andrew with a phone call or email. If we think a story will work the next step is to write a synopsis. The more thorough, gripping and easy to read it is, the harder it will be for a publisher to turn it down easily. On other occasions Andrew will hear of a project and if he thinks as writer I am a suitable fit he will pass on details and away we go again.

The next step is we all meet an interested publisher together to discuss the project and then offers are made. As a writer you have to place trust in your agent that the very best financial deal is being obtained. During the process if any problems arise, your agent speaks on your behalf and when the book is complete they cheer lead at the end.

Frank Ledwidge

I am the author of two books on our recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; I got lucky, quickly, with the responses of readers and reviewers to the books. But as they say you make your own luck, and mine was made when I was referred to Andrew by a friend. Anyone reading this will know, and those who don’t hopefully soon will, how hard it is to start out being published. It’s a bit like the selection courses they do in the military; you get to one checkpoint, exhausted but exhilarated at having achieved something significant only to be told ‘see that peak over there-the one on the other side of the valley, got it? OK, compose yourself; off you go!’ And off you go again. With Andrew, though, or indeed any first-class agent you’ve got someone running next to you helping with the navigation, as well as supplying hints as to how you might save some time and energy and do what you are doing better.

People reading this will have understood that for an author an agent is really essential; all the ‘Starting out as a writer’ books tell you that an agent is necessary. What is not so obvious is that any old agent will not be sufficient. You need someone who is savvy, wise whilst also being able to listen to your ideas and add some more. A good agent will say ‘That’s not going to work’, as well as ‘Good idea, get on it!’

You need to understand that beginning as a writer is also lonely; there’s no getting away from that. I don’t know how Andrew does it, but when you ring him up, you’re the focus; and the writing life looks far more doable after such a discussion than before it. From speaking to many authors who have the ‘necessary’ agent, rather than a ‘sufficient’ one, I know that this is what separates Andrew from the common run.

David Long

A good agent has always been crucial when it comes to dealing with the commercial side of a deal but increasingly these days having an agent is more or less essential for anyone hoping even to start a conversation with a big publisher, many of whom will no longer consider an author working on his or her own. More than this, however, anyone sitting alone in a room all day needs someone knowledgeable to share ideas with and to bounce ideas around before they go any further. Agents are ideally placed to know what might or might not sell, and better able than most writers to identify the right publisher for a particular project or - delicately - to suggest shelving the project entirely if its time has not yet come or has already gone. Like most authors I like to consider my books to be just that - my books - but eventually the truth dawns. A good book is always a collaborative project, and while an author will share many objectives with a publisher (assuming he has the right one) the value of this seems to emerge only once the manuscript is well underway. Personally I’ve always needed an ally onside long before this stage, and for nearly a decade Andrew has provided the support, the encouragement and the detailed industry knowledge which coming to authorship from 25 years of journalism I know I lack.

Sean Longden

As a writer I want to write: I don’t want to worry about when I’m going to be paid or think about what a publisher wants. Of course those are essential questions but it’s nice to have someone there to answer them for you.

When I come up with a new idea (and I’ve had many more ideas than I’ll ever write books) I want it to be fresh, vibrant and full of all manner ground-breaking material. I want it to be what I consider to be a great book. I can’t be constrained by looking along the shelves at Waterstones and thinking ‘How can I write one of these books?’ If I’d started my writing career by doing that I would never have been published. I need to think ‘These are all boring – I’m going to do something much better’.

Now, while that is good in theory, the real world is a very different place. It’s a place where publishers want writers to give them what they know they can sell, yet are also desperate for something new. And that’s where an agent comes in. I need someone to say ‘That’s a very good idea but what about throwing in X,Y or even Z, to make it more attractive to publishers’. The agent shouldn’t burst the bubble of joyous enthusiasm, felt by every writer who has that light bulb moment and announces their new book is going to be the biggest seller since the bible. Instead the agent is there to help mould the book, encourage the author to turn a flight of fancy into something every publisher will be fighting over. Does it always work? No, but when it does work, it’s a magnificent thing.

Perhaps the perfect agent should be somewhere between a sensuous muse, seducing all the best ideas out of a writer, and the world’s most honest accountant, making sure the writer has the time, space and – rather importantly - finance to come up great ideas.

Teena Lyons

In recent months I have interviewed dozens of other ghost writers for my forthcoming book Complete Guide to Ghostwriting. I found a surprisingly broad cross-section of views on everything from the best way to work with authors, to how to structure a working day and to what contributes to the success of a project, or otherwise. However, there is one aspect of the job where there was near unanimity: a feeling of dread over producing book proposals to present to publishers. Perhaps, if we all had our way, we’d pop in half a sheet of A4 saying something along the lines of: it is the best story you’ve never read, you’d be a fool not to buy it. And that is why we need agents.

Andrew has been my first and only agent, so I can’t speak for the industry as a whole, but the quality in him that is most important to me is the demand for perfection at the proposal stage. Having been brought up in a family where both parents had agents, I’ve always ‘got’ the idea that they take a percentage and negotiate a far better deal that you’d ever have secured yourself. That, to me is a given.

What I value is his judgement at the proposal stage. It has not been unusual for a book proposal to go back and forth between us a number of times. Each time, he will make insightful, astute suggestions that improve the final product. It is not easy to re-write, polish and hone a proposal, particularly when there is no guarantee that it will be picked up and I will be rewarded for my time. However, by going through this process, I am far more likely to succeed. Like anything worth having in life, it is tough, painful, occasionally frustrating, but the rewards are worth it.

Neil McKenna

If you want to be a writer then you need an agent. It’s a simple and inescapable truth. For all those stories of overlooked masterpieces picked from slush piles in publisher’s offices which go on to be world bestsellers, the truth is that for ordinary writers like me, having an agent is a massive advantage.

One of the hardest parts of the process of becoming a professional writer for me was finding an agent. I approached lots of agents. Half the time, I didn’t even get the courtesy of a reply. Once, when I spoke to the agent of a good friend of mine, I found the woman’s tone so hostile and terrifying, that I didn’t pursue it any further.

I came into Andrew’s orbit after reading a short article in ‘Writers’ News’, a magazine for amateur and aspiring writers, the gist of which was that Andrew Lownie was looking for writers with interesting non-fiction projects. I thought to myself, ‘I’m a writer – of sorts – and my project is interesting (or at least, I think it’s interesting)’, so I took the plunge and wrote to him.

Andrew wrote back almost immediately. We met and he took me on. It took Andrew the best part of four years or so to sell my book on Oscar Wilde. He was indefatigable in his efforts and carried on, long after I had resigned myself to not selling the book. It’s an illustration of what Andrew does for his authors. Without Andrew’s bulldog determination, my book on Oscar Wilde would not have seen the light of day. As it is, it’s still in print eleven years on.

Apart from dealing with and resolving the day-to-day complexities of contracts, overseas rights, e-book hassles, copyright infringements and byzantine royalty statements that make no sense, Andrew is importantly a key player in the creative side of my writing. He is a distinguished biographer in his own right which makes him almost unique agents because he knows what you’re trying to do creatively from the inside.

Andrew’s instincts are sure. He has a feel for the business of publishing and a feel for books and writing. I value his opinions enormously. Most importantly, I know he is on my side and that is a very comforting feeling when the going gets tough!

Clare Mulley

My first biography, The Woman Who Saved the Children, was a labour of love. When I started writing it I had little idea how publishing worked, or even how to structure the book. Fortunately Andrew did. Andrew, and his team of readers, helped to guide the development of the book, and then he secured my first publishing contract.

Since then he has hugely helped to develop my career. I am now ‘an award-winning biographer’ with my latest book, The Spy Who Loved, translated into three languages, out as an audio-book, and optioned by Universal Films. I review for The Spectator and History Today, write articles, give talks and, occasionally, appear on radio and TV. I could never have achieved this without Andrew.

Sometimes Andrew’s help is very simple; he gives a reliably fast reply to an emailed query about a contract or an interview. Sometimes his help is more profound. Knowing my interests, it was he who suggested the subject for my second book, Krystyna Skarbek, aka Christine Granville, the first woman to work for Britain as a special agent in WWII. At first I baulked at the idea – it felt like a blind date, and I wanted to find my own subject. But Andrew was right and it turned out to be a great honour, as well as a great adventure, to research and write Christine’s story.

Several of my writer-friends have agents who sound very lovely. They have long lunches together and talk about everything under the sun. Andrew is not like that. We do meet occasionally, and have been known to have lunch, but both of us are very busy. I have three children, and I don’t live in London. What I want and need is a very focused agent who is respected by the best editors and publishers in the UK and overseas; has excellent contacts in film and TV; a great team of readers who can comment on my developing book proposals; and the commitment to me that means I know they will respond to my queries promptly and wisely, and come up with new suggestions that I had not considered. Andrew provides all this, and I have learned to trust his judgment and value his advice immensely.

Susan Ottaway

Andrew has been representing me for three years – the best years of my writing career so far. My first book was published 20 years ago with the help of an already established author but, although I managed to find publishers for my subsequent work, it was an uphill struggle. I wanted to be a writer but found myself becoming more of a sales rep, selling my ideas and myself as an author without really knowing how best to present either. As an individual it was hard to get a deal of any kind, much less a good one.

Having an agent, especially an excellent one like Andrew, has changed everything. He not only listens to my enthusiastic ramblings, he makes suggestions for possible books and then discusses ways to present the ideas to their best advantage and even suggests research facilities and people to contact. He’s a hard task master when it comes to writing proposals and often rejects my first attempts but he is right in what he says and I can see that the version which eventually gains his approval is so much better than my original offering. He is always encouraging and constantly reinforces the good parts while seeking to improve those that are not so good so I never feel too disheartened. The number of books he places with publishers is amazing and yet, although he works so hard, I hardly ever have to wait for a reply to an e-mail or to talk to him on the phone and he is always helpful and friendly. I really feel that Andrew, however busy he might be, is more than an agent, he is a friend who is looking out for me and I feel privileged to be one of his authors.

Nick Pope

The first thing an author looks for – or should look for – in a literary agent, is good advice. Andrew Lownie is a published author himself, and having operated on both sides of the industry, has invaluable experience to pass along. At the early stage of the authorial process, in conjunction with a network of ‘readers’ who have expertise in just about every subject and genre you could imagine, Andrew will help with invaluable guidance on crafting a synopsis in such a way as to maximise the chances of getting a deal. More fundamentally, he’ll help with the delicate business of working out which ideas should be aggressively pursued, and which should be quietly dropped.

There are many different strands to the work of a modern literary agency. All authors are different, but in my case, Andrew has done far more than simply negotiate deals for my five books – two of which made the Top 10 hardback non-fiction list. He’s negotiated serialisation deals, translation rights, a film/TV option deal for one of my sci-fi novels, and much more besides. I emigrated to America in 2012 and wondered if this would be an issue. It wasn’t. My latest book was published by a US publisher, and in parallel, I came onboard with the agency’s new imprint, Thistle Publishing, which can handle e-books and print-on-demand.

I should make special mention of the agency website. Andrew uses it to share some of the knowledge and experience that he’s amassed, and also publishes guest articles from other people in the publishing world: authors, ghostwriters, and even commissioning editors explaining what kind of books they’re currently looking for. In parallel with the “How to Submit” section, this is just about the most valuable advice available to authors, be they novices or ‘old hands’.

Linda Porter

I rely on the agency to handle the ‘nitty-gritty’ of contracts and royalties and I’ve also found that Andrew keeps a keen eye on potential competition. His unobtrusive support, over many years, is particularly valued at times of personal or professional uncertainty. Writing is a lonely occupation and it is good to know that the agency will be there for you when you need it. Times are changing in publishing and Andrew is well-abreast of all that is going on.

Katharine Quarmby

Andrew is a benign presence in my life as a working writer and journalist, always encouraging me to work a little harder and be that bit more ambitious. I can hardly say no, as he and his partner on his fiction list, David Haviland, work so hard for their authors - both in the traditional sphere of meeting publishers and visiting book fairs, but also on social media and exploring new genres as agent-entrepreneurs.

Since I first met Andrew, when I was working as a correspondent at the Economist in 2006, I have published two non-fiction books with him, (Scapegoat and No Place to Call Home) and branched out into Kindle Singles - one memoir, Blood and Water about my search for my Iranian birth father - and my first fictional piece, Aftermath, about my experiences as a producer in Rwanda, after the genocide. We are now about to publish another fictional Single, again based loosely on historical fact, about my mother’s family in Yugoslavia, during the First World War, and their links to Gavrilo Princip.

Andrew has also encouraged me to explore new genres - I have spent much of this year writing my first ghost project, under his careful eye. He and David have also sold the rights to my memoir and my Rwanda story to Audible and introduced me to the good folks at Newsweek, where I am now a contributing editor. It is a hugely productive relationship - and it has to be, as publishing and journalism change and have become more competitive and more dependent on the agent and the individual writer marketing themselves. Andrew and David, at Thistle, their publishing arm, are a fantastic team. I feel I couldn’t be in better hands in extremely challenging, but exciting times for British journalism and publishing.

Neil Simpson

If you’re better at words than figures then you need an agent like Andrew Lownie. If you’re a bad negotiator and hate haggling about money then you need an agent like Andrew Lownie. If you want to carry on making a living in an increasingly difficult publishing environment then, well, you probably get the drift.

In my ideal world I’m given a subject, a deadline and a decent contract to sign. Then I go away and get the job done without having to waste a second on any legal or financial questions. Writing can be tough, even when your subject is great fun. So why make it worse by fighting those sorts of battles on your own?

I rely on Andrew getting my ideas, proposals and indeed my name in front of the right people. I rely on him extracting the best deal he can from them. I like him going the extra mile by aiming for TV and film rights on the books we’ve done together. And I know he’s always looking for the next good deal. So what would I change? Nothing at all.

David Stafford

Why bother with an agent? is a question I’m sometimes asked. It still puzzles me given that it certainly comes from people who’d never hesitate to employ a realtor to buy or sell a house, or a lawyer to negotiate a legal issue. But I bite my tongue and say instead something along the lines that while a writer can produce a text it takes an agent to help transform it into a saleable book that that can make money. And that if you’re in the business of writing- and a business it is- you have to think of it as a team affair. You dream up the idea for a book; but before you’ve even written it, it’s the agent who tells you whether it’s likely to sell or not. In fact, it might even be the agent who comes up with the idea in the first place. Then you write up a proposal, and it’s the agent who gives you the vital critical feedback that leads you to revise and improve it, perhaps several times over. It’s the agent who then sells it to a publisher in what is a highly competitive market; without an agent it’s virtually impossible to catch the eye of a commissioning editor. And of course it’s the agent who negotiates the best possible contract that will earn you both some serious money and protect your interests in what is a complex business that only experts can master. I’ve been with Andrew Lownie’s agency for over twenty years, and through his close personal involvement with me and my books Andrew and his team have delivered superbly well. I write the words. He turns them into the money. What more could one ask?

Nicola Stow

I was relaxing on a beach in Portugal when Mandy Smith’s memoir, Cabin Fever: The Sizzling Secrets of a Virgin Air Hostess, reached number 11 on Amazon. I ghosted this book so, obviously, I was thrilled - and it was the perfect excuse to order a large Del Boy -style cocktail complete with mini umbrellas and sparklers.

But as I downed my drink and worshipped the sun, Andrew, David and Mandy, along with other industry individuals, were working behind the scenes to generate mass publicity for Cabin Fever. The book was first published in Australia and, thanks to the agency’s imprint, Thistle, we were then able to publish Cabin Fever in the UK.

As the book went live, Andrew worked his magic, securing serialisation deals with two national newspapers. A good friend and fellow ghost , Doug Wight (former News of the World Books Editor), then joined the team and was responsible for writing a cracking serial for the Sun newspaper. In fact, it was Doug who introduced me to Andrew - a brilliant move, I must say.

As the publicity mounted, Mandy hit the shops - a few new outfits were required for television interviews. She also found herself dealing with newspaper journalists and radio show hosts. In order to help organise Mandy’s hectic media schedule, Andrew brought another agency ghost and publicist, Emma Donnan, on board, which led to even more publicity.

As I’m discovering, there’s a lot more to this book-writing business than many people imagine. Even when the book is published the hard work continues. Promotion is the key, as we proved with Cabin Fever. A few days after that wonderful Amazon moment, while I was still sunning myself in the Algarve, I received an email from Andrew. He’d just sold North American rights for Cabin Fever to Penguin. I think I’ll have to buy him a large cocktail next time I see him.

Peter Thompson

In an emergency, there’s always the SAS – the Special Andrew Service – to tackle all manner of problems. For ten years between 1998 and 2008 I roamed the globe each year on an around-the-world ticket writing books on World War II. Andrew would receive an urgent phone call or email from New York or Sydney or Singapore or Crete relating to a lost air ticket (in the days before e-tickets), a lapsed visa, depleted funds, missing page proofs and so on. The great machine behind the purple door in Great Smith Street would swing into action and in what seemed like a matter of hours the problem would be solved. No matter what the time difference or how complex the issue he always seemed to be there and a concise reply would wing its way back to my hotel.

Andrew not only suggests subjects for my books, finds a publisher, deals with the contract, edits the ms before submission and manages the money, he also offers an outlet through his own imprint, Thistle, which began life back in the 1980s with a smart box set of John Buchan’s work and is now in the expert hands of David Haviland. Now, Andrew, about the cover for The Private Lives of Mayfair….

Mei Trow

I still dine out on my first meeting with Andrew. He was then with a large London agency and was going solo the following week. Did I want to stay with them or go with him? I chose to go with him – the best writing decision I ever made. Years down the line – he introduces me as his ‘oldest writer’ but I’m not the sort to hold a grudge! – I am still being spurred on by his enthusiasm and publishing savvy.

When preparing a proposal, Andrew always reminds me that bullet points are Good Things, so here are a few –

• Andrew works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. (So do I). • Andrew knows everybody! • Andrew is in tune with the market and has a nose for a good story. • Andrew is infinitely patient, not just with me, but with all those who contact him with a book in them, no matter how deeply hidden it might be.

Good agents are like hens’ teeth and Andrew has a full set! Whether I am ghosting under his auspices or writing my own stuff (non-fiction and fiction), his unassuming expertise is there for me. Today’s market may be difficult and publishers seem to want more and more for their money, but Andrew still knows the secret path to what they are looking for and more often than not seals the deal.

When we met, I had a couple of novels to my name and a true crime book brewing. Now I can list over sixty books as diverse as a ‘gift book’ about swearing in World War II, a pictorial history of Jack the Ripper, a Dummies history book, historical biographies, ghosted memoirs and over thirty novels. Without Andrew’s enthusiasm and gentle encouragement I might have done none of the above and might have been driven to doing the gardening and playing bowls to fill my time – for that reason if for no other (and there are many others) I am glad I decided as I did at that lunch so many years ago.

Casey Watson

As a relatively new author to camp Lownie – around three years, I can still recall the mad blur of suddenly realising that I would no longer be a wistful writer, carefully preserving my innermost thoughts and ideas in shoe boxes, desk drawers and later on, computer hard drives, I was actually going to become a fully fledged, agented author. I remember sending Andrew my very first query letter, which in hindsight wasn’t up to much at all, and being thrilled when I got back an almost immediate response. Having been used to what I’m sure every other writer will understand, the isolation of being a writer, the knowledge that your nearest and dearest indulge rather than understand you, I was completely surprised to find that I was now being drawn in as a member of a team. A team who understood exactly what I wanted to do, and who knew exactly what to do in order to make it happen.

It was the start of a journey that has never ended and it started, would you believe, with a bidding war. The agency organised two afternoons of a kind of ‘meet and greet’ with some of the publishing houses that I’d only ever dreamed of being part of, and despite my nerves, I must have done something right, because all but one of the editors we met were interested in what I had to write about.

Since then, all I’ve had to really worry about is doing what I love doing, writing books. Andrew does all the hard work such as negotiating new deals, ensuring payments are made promptly and correctly, sorting out royalties and endlessly looking for new outlets. The agency keep us all informed on how our books are doing in the market and carefully watch for new trends. We get told about who’s who in the publishing world and the kinds of things they are interested in, and of course the website is a mine of information.

In all I would say that the partnership between an agent and an author is vitally important and enables a writer to concentrate on their creativity rather than having to worry about the business of books.

Katy Weitz

‘Andrew, it’s Katy!’ I nearly shout down the phone. It’s 8.30am on a Monday morning and yes, Andrew has answered his own phone.

‘Katy! Hi!’ the response is always warm, delivered with a smile, as if I’m the very person he has been waiting to speak to all morning.

I blather on about an idea I’ve had for a book – the star of a Sunday night reality show. I’m eager, enthusiastic, like a puppy with a new toy.

Fortunately, Andrew is always willing to match my enthusiasm beat for beat, and take things one step further.

‘Brilliant idea Katy! I watch the show too – it’s great isn’t? Yes, he’d be perfect. I’ll call his agent and set up a meeting between us all.’

Now it just so happened that this particular project didn’t go ahead – but it wasn’t for lack of trying on either our parts and frankly, if I’m being honest, I’m secretly quite pleased the project didn’t make it. The ‘star’ in question was a mercurial, inconstant character who had a rocky relationshipwith the truth. Well, nevermind.

The point is – Andrew was ready to take up the baton at the drop of a hat and move us all forward. And this is not an isolated event.

In the 16 months he has been my agent we have worked on several projects, and landed three book deals. Not only does he willingly take up most of my ideas, and help shape and hone them until they are ready to be presented to editors, but he has also delivered some winning collaborations to me. One lady had approached him with an idea that she wanted to write her memoirs and yet, with a very poor educational background, she had been unable to fully voice her thoughts and memories.

Frustrated, she had turned to Andrew who had sent her collection of writings to me. I saw what he saw – a wonderful story that simply had to be told.

There were bumps along the way of course – one night, after a damning reader’s report of my proposal, I called him at 11pm in despair.

‘I don’t want to give up on it!’ I wailed. ‘I know there’s something good here.’

‘Okay,’ he replied thoughtfully. ‘Then sit down and see if you can focus in on what this book is really about. What is the high concept here? Send me a few hundred words and we’ll take it from there.’ I did as I was told – and amazingly, it came to me. The end result was a story auction which ended in a brilliant deal with one of the world’s leading publisher’s.

Which just goes to show that Andrew knows what he’s doing, right?

And this I find amazingly comforting because, for the most part, I’m winging it.

This is always brought home to me in ‘meetings’ – being someone who has an almost allergic reaction to meetings I become nervous, stupid and sweaty whenever I am called to attend official gatherings of any kind.

Yes, I realise they are vital for any business but really, they’re not my thing.

They are, however, Andrew’s! I’ve been in meetings with him where he has charmed us all with his relaxed and chatty manner, quick thinking, clever ideas and ability to draw out everyone’s best bits. So… to sum up:

Thanks to his years of experience, warmth, wit and forensic knowledge of the industry, Andrew is capable of helping a writer to grow and develop, and best of all, land deals.

He fights your corner financially, pushes you towards your goals and is always interested in your work. I don’t know if every agent is like this – I rather suspect not and if yours isn’t then you have to ask yourself if you have the right agent.

I could go on – actually, I’ve already gone way over the suggested word count for this article – because there are so many little ways that make working with Andrew an absolute joy.

Looking back, I can’t believe I resisted getting an agent for so long –our first ever telephone conversation went like this.

‘Hello Andrew – my name is Katy. I’m a writer – the thing is, I’m not really sure I need an agent…’ ‘Oh, I think you do.’ Right again.

David Craig, the author of DON’T BUY IT! Tricks and Traps Salespeople Use and How to Beat Them, gives his non-fiction writing tips. His next book THE GREAT CHARITY SCANDAL will be published as a Kindle Single by Thistle later this month.

Having spent most of my career selling and running management consultancy projects, I had no idea how one should go about writing a book. A further challenge I had was that I’m usually writing on a subject which interests me, but about which I know little to nothing prior to beginning a book. I have found that the most effective way for me to overcome these barriers is to turn each book into a structured business project with well-defined steps each taking a set amount of time.

These are the five steps I always go through with the timing for each:

1. Outline planning– Spend a couple of weeks reading about the subject to get an idea of the logical flow of the book, the main sections and the likely chapters within each section. I take a fairly methodical approach. If I’m writing 70,000 words, I split that into 3 to 4 sections with 3 to 4 chapters in each section. That means each chapter is about 5,000 words. Suddenly the daunting prospect of writing 70,000 words is transformed into the much easier task of producing fourteen or so 5,000-word essays

2. Gathering material– Set up files (computer or paper or both) with one for each chapter. Then spend 3 to 4 weeks reading around the subject and putting any relevant material into the files for each chapter

3. Detailed planning– Take 2 to 3 sheets of A4 paper for each chapter, read through all the material relevant to that chapter and make short one-line notes of all the points, figures, graphs and quotes to be included in that chapter along with a numbered reference to where to find the material you will need to refer back to when you start writing

4. Writing– Use 3 to 4 days for each chapter – about two chapters a week. The first day is spent re-reading all the material for that chapter and then the rest of the time writing the 5,000 or so words and doing any graphs or diagrams

5. Review– Go back through your notes to see if there are any key points or facts that you haven’t included.

That’s it. A 70,000-word non-fiction book written in about 14 weeks in five easily digestible steps.

Trevor Dolby, the Publisher of the Penguin Random House imprint Preface, outlines the commissioning process.

What’s on your bucket list? Seeing the Northern Lights? Swimming with dolphins? Skydiving? Getting a tattoo? Visiting the Great Barrier Reef? Doing a bungee jump? The chances are that in amongst your top five is writing a book.

A click of a button and anyone can publish a book these days. Some become colossal international bestsellers, some are read just by the author’s family. Most remain on the laptop.

Getting into print is not a modern ambition. Time was people would write and their efforts would disappear into a bottom of a draw never to see the light again. Even a generation ago this was the case. You can learn a lot about yourself writing a book, or even attempting to write a book. But like the proverbial tree falling in the forest if no one reads it have you really written it?

Over the last ten years the internet has allowed anyone to get his or her efforts out there. Ebooks and Amazon have democratized people’s ability to disseminate what they write. I was on a panel a few years back blathering to a group of hopefuls about how to get published. It had all gone well. Then someone in the audience addressed a question to me. ‘What right did I have to decide that her book wasn’t good enough to be published?’ ‘None at all,’ I suggested. She went on to say that because of me, and people like me (publishers), there might be another Ulysses out there languishing under someone’s bed. If there is then no longer will it languish.

If anyone can get their book out there why is it that so many writers still see being published by one of the established publishers to be a the holy grail. A badge of quality? I hope so.

How do publishers go about choosing the books they publish? Many, many criteria, from an editor’s personal taste to the perception of commercial viability to what an imprint or publisher have a track record in, and much else. Publishers try to be very proactive these days. Their nets are cast very wide. Today publishers have no feeling of entitlement. We are required to be professional, and like any professional occupation to succeed there’s no room for the dilettante. One good ground stroke at Wimbledon can mean the championship or out in the second round. That goes for publishers and it goes for authors as well. We buy fewer books today than we ever did and each one has to have all the attention we can give it. To create a book that competes for eye-space with millions of others on-line and on shelves needs fierce tenacity and focus.

The traditional high street book trade market has shrunk almost disastrously over the last few years, though this has partly been made up for by on-line sales and ebooks. We now live in a world of spreadsheets and analysis. We live in a world of day-to-day sales figures and floors of people who attempt to predict the future. We live in a world where colossal amounts of sales and marketing information shape our publishing decisions. A world where a book can be deemed a success or failure before it’s even published. But this is the same for all businesses today. It is the world we live in and we must embrace it. As Bishop Jeremy Taylor the great 17th theologian, concluded after listing all the downsides of marriage, ‘…it lies under all these burdens, but is supported by all the strengths of love and charity, and these burdens are delightful’. Well perhaps not all our publishing burdens are exactly ‘delightful’ but because of this modern analysis I think we actually do make much better informed publishing decisions today. Are they better decisions? Some years ago I believe there was a tradition in the city where ten thousand virtual pounds was given to three groups of people to invest and any profit send to charity. The three groups were a group of experienced long-time stockbrokers, a group of new recruits, and a group of primary school children. The story goes that the primary school children always won.

Yes ‘insight’ is king. But insight is often only as valuable as gut instinct in predicting the future. The publishers’ task is to use all the tools we have to our advantage, be more rigorous than we have even been. Yes, we have bookscan, social media – Twitter, Facebook, YouTube - Sysomos, Google and a hundred other lines of data, but publishers, good editors, are still in the business to discover and nurture talent, still in the business to find good writers.

Sometimes there’s a misconception that mansucripts and outlines and synopses have to be as slick and as finished as an AA Gill column. That we don’t have the time to do anything but skim read and discard. If it’s not in tip-top, straight-to-the-copy-editor condition we will not even skim it. Emphatically not so. There’s nothing an editor likes more that seeing past the rough-and-ready to the gem of an idea and helping an author craft it to a state that allows them to take it to a publishing meeting and wow his or her colleagues. The germ of a good idea is often all that’s required. Almost every book I publish is from an idea that’s intriguing, something with a hook that’s different or alluring. There’s nothing better than a unusual turn of phrase, a few lines that make an editor think here’s a different take, here’s an intelligent mind, here’s someone who sees the world a little skew. These things are as important today in our world of statistics and information as they ever were.

Perhaps the most important question we ask ourselves is ‘is this person a writer’? Publishers buy authors as much as books. Is this person serious, tenacious, professional? Publishing companies are businesses. We invest in talent and in the talent of the people who can spot and cultivate talent. We invest in not just the writer part of a person but in the person themselves. Do they collaborate well? Will they put in the extra mile? Will they listen? Will they deliver?

In our fast and furious age we expect everything to be easy. I just Googled ‘writing programs’ and the first web site popped up saying ‘The magic of NewNovelist is that it does not feel like you are writing a book’.

In a sequel to the website article ‘Ghostly Aspirations’, published last November, eight of the agency’s ghosts explain the sort of books they would like to work on.

Mandy Appleyard

Powerful storytelling is so often about struggle and triumph: about ordinary people forced into extraordinary circumstances. As an award-winning newspaper and magazine journalist of 30 years’ standing, I have learned a thing or two about empathy, understanding, and drawing the very best from someone who has decided to share their story – often unearthing surprising details and new angles along the way. I feel privileged to be chosen to tell the stories of so many remarkable people, from the world’s most prolific surrogate mother to a woman jailed for manslaughter after the assisted death of her severely disabled son, from sportswomen to actors, often giving voice to the unheard or overlooked, sometimes to the famous. As a regular contributor to weekly and monthly magazines, I am drawn to record the lives of unusual and inspiring women, capturing their authentic voice and telling their remarkable stories in the most compelling of ways. With a keen eye for the commercial aspects of writing as well as the creative, I am a skilled and experienced ghost writer who takes great pride in finding the very heart of someone’s story, and in crafting it into must-read prose.

Michael Carroll

As a journalist by trade I love to dig up what lies beneath a story or take something momentous and present a totally new angle on events. But the story does not have to be from the point of view of the great and the good. I’m fascinated by the idea of ordinary people thrown into incredible circumstances and doing their best to navigate the situation they are faced with. Whether it be a kidnapping, survival situation, a mysterious secret history or a money-making scheme, a tight, exciting and untold tale is what excites me. So if I think of my perfect person to ghost they would be the Other – an extraordinarily different person who has come forward to shed light on something captivating and previously unknown. Or on the opposite end of the spectrum they would be an Everyman / woman, thrust into a situation we would all be fascinated to hear about. However, if we look at ghost writing as one of the world’s best excuses to spend time with people we admire, I would go for the novelists whose books I love to read and who happen to still be alive: William Gibson, Irving Welsh, Margaret Atwood. Or the spellbinding British comic-book grandmaster, Alan Moore, whose enigma I would love to unravel and slingshot somewhere un-thought of.

Jeremy Dronfield

I do most of my work at the junction where ghost writing meets co-authoring. When the author of a biography has done the research and sketched out the book, but struggles to bring out the qualities that would make it a good read, that’s where I come in. Sometimes doctoring the text is enough; more often I have to immerse myself in the subject’s life, and become a co-author (in ghostly obscurity if necessary). That’s when the job is at its most demanding and its most satisfying.

My recent ghosted and co-authored projects include the story of Robert Trimble, a WW2 pilot who undertook a secret mission to rescue POWs on the Eastern Front; a biography of Moura Budberg, the Russian spy who fell in love with a British agent during the Revolution and was haunted for the rest of her life by the shattering betrayal she suffered; the life of Peter Watson, millionaire art patron and doyen of the gay scene in pre-war Paris, murdered in his bath by his jealous lover; and the incredibly moving life of James Barry, a Victorian military surgeon who was revealed after death to have been a woman, forced to disguise herself in order to pursue a career in medicine.

These extraordinary, little-known lives are rich in drama, adventure and poignancy. There are so many of these stories waiting to be told. I’m constantly on the lookout for them. There are two at the top of my wish-list. I’m charmed by the tale of Joseph Wright, the illiterate Yorkshire mill hand who became a professor at Oxford University. Last biographed by his widow in 1932, this extraordinary man is known mainly for teaching Anglo-Saxon to the young JRR Tolkien, rather than for his amazing rise from illiterate poverty to the dreaming spires. And there’s the exhilarating life of merchant seaman Charles Lightoller – going down with the Titanic (and surviving) wasn’t the only, or even the most remarkable, of his life’s adventures.

Lives like that – obscure, strange and dramatic – are the kind I most like to write.

Caro Handley

It’s a joy to work with someone who will open up, be honest, tell it warts and all and trust that readers warm to, even prefer, a flawed character to glossy perfection. It can be hard work convincing celebrities of this, but sometimes they get it, and it always makes for a deeper, more satisfying read (and write). I like a challenge, whether it’s a celebrity who needs to scratch beneath the surface, or someone who may be scratchy on the surface but who has a tale to tell that is, in places, dark and who needs time, space, encouragement and trust to reach into the depths of their memories. I love working with people who have courage and humour in equal amounts. It takes real courage to overcome a traumatic childhood and go on to help others. And to talk about it with humour and lack of self-pity. Mikey Walsh, who I worked with on Gypsy Boy, was of this mould, as was Sophie Andrews, author of Scarred, now running The Silver Line and Jenny Tomlin, author of Behind Closed Doors, whose flawless memory for detail (always such a bonus) created a brilliant evocation of the East End in the sixties. Who would I like to work with? People who have rich and complex stories to tell, who refused to give up, who fought back. Celebrities? I’d pick Bob Geldof, Barry Gibb – last of the brothers, Christine Lagarde (who knew she was a teenage synchronised swimmer), Sarah Lancashire, Kylie.

Kris Hollington

I look for people who can take the reader into secret worlds and unheard of situations. In recent months book projects on two elite crime squads and a treasure hunter extraordinaire have turned into a major BBC TV crime drama, a series of plays for Radio 4 and a worldwide hunt for lost art, so as far as I’m concerned, secret worlds are what the reading, watching and listening public want us ghosts to delve into.

Becky Howard

After spending most of my magazine career interviewing celebrities, I’ve long been fascinated by the person behind the façade – too often we’re only presented with the two-dimensional version of someone’s story, constrained by limited word counts and linear questioning. We all have a story, we all have quirks, sides to us that aren’t obvious on first appearances. Becoming well-known is something that changes your life and the way you are perceived by the world at large – and I’m endlessly drawn to discovering how this changes people at their core, as well as how they cope with it. Of course, the ‘big’ names that many writers, including myself would love to get behind would be strong female successes with dramatic life arcs – the likes of Nigella Lawson and Lorraine Pascale. But other famous names, such as actress Amanda Redman and feisty, outspoken pop star Lily Allen, really appeal. As a journalist, I would love to write the Rebekah Brooks story, once the phone hacking court case is over, but whatever the verdict, I expect that one day she’ll be penning some memoirs herself…

Tim Tate

“Y’unnerstan’ ?”

A forefinger – the size and shape of a solid Cuban cigar – jabbed uncomfortably into my ribs. “There’s no respect any more. Y’unnerstan’ me, Reporter Boy?”

The Kray Twins’ birthday party – location: a visibly weary nightclub in the equally run-down Kingsland High Road - was unquestionably strange. For a start neither Ronnie and Reggie were present: in 1984 they were half way through their respective 30 year sentences. But the representatives of their old firm who were (currently) at liberty to attend mixed cheerfully with the remnants of their one time sworn-rivals, the Richardson gang. Strange days indeed. But it was the conversation which was most bizarre. This collection of ageing villains, each bearing the physical scars of a lifetime at the coal face of crime, wanted to talk about the state of the world. Or, more exactly, the state of their chosen profession. Modern crime, they repeatedly advised me, was a disgrace. The man with the emphatic forefinger was the product of London’s criminal aristocracy. He had earned his spurs with Billy Hill and Jack Spot – the godfathers of post-war protection rackets and illegal gambling – before graduating to the dominant Kray firm as the austerity years of the Fifties turned into the white heat of the Swinging Sixties. He had, I knew, a tale to tell. And he seemed enthusiastic to the point of insistence that I was just the journalist to help him. There was even the hint of a substantial wad of five pound notes ‘don’t ask no questions, Reporter Boy’) to ensure the process went smoothly. Above all, though, I knew I had encountered the single most vital ingredient in the telling of any story: the voice. His was a vocabulary of its place and of its time in the world: a litany of spielers and dips, of brasses and grasses. I never saw the promised cash and never wrote the story. But our encounter has stayed with me and has shaped the way I approach the rough trade of ghost-writing.

The first question has to be ‘ is there a story here The second is that all-important element, the voice. For me to write with any authenticity I must not just climb inside my subject’s life but hear his (or her) voice more dominantly than I hear my own. In truth, it’s not much of a trick – more a question of simply listening until the cadence and the space between words forms its own unique pattern and defines the personality of the subject. Still, it’s the process by which I’ve been able to ghost life stories as diverse as the young English girl sex-trafficked to the cesspool of 1990s Amsterdam and the recollections of a ladies maid in an aristocratic 1930s country house. Would the older and more experienced me have thought – as his younger, greener version did throughout that remarkable Kray Twins party – that the life of the gnarled and scarred villain, emphatically exploring the soft tissue of my rib cage, was a great book begging to be written ? Actually, I’m not sure. Because the other great ghost-writing hurdle (at least for this ghost-writer) is honesty. Not your common or garden respect for the law – which my new acquaintance plainly held in low regard – but the willingness of the subject to observe, examine and then publish the very personal flaws and foibles which have helped dictate the course of a life. The mark of a good ghost – in the opinion of this one, at least is the ability to establish a relationship of complete honesty between the subject and the reader.

So who would I like to ghost ? The list is as wide and as open as my own undimmed curiosity. At one end of this spectrum there is Ratko Mladic, the unrepentant butcher of Bosnia presently on trial in The Hague. At the other is Nina Hartley, surviving queen of hard-core pornography, feminist campaigner and (oddly) a former nurse. Which leads me to the final thought. I abhor the chosen professions of both Mladic and Hartley, so why would I want to ghost their life stories ? Would my innate prejudice (we all have them) not colour my writing ? Well, no. Because I’ve come to the ultimate ghost-writing conclusion that the distance – emotional, physical and ethical – between a ghost and his (or her) subject ultimately makes for a better, more honest book than one written in a spirit of comfy concurrence. Maybe I should have snatched at the wad of dubious fivers and written the villain’s story after all.

Doug Wight

As a ghost writer you get the chance - for a few months at least - to live vicariously through the exploits of others. So, over the past few years, I have inhabited the mind of a Miami-based Colombian drug gang money launderer, an undercover cop and an eco warrior who doubled as a government spy. Aside from trying to capture the excitement of people who survive on their wits, what is equally challenging is the chance to explore the darker side of relationships and telling stories of courage in the face of extreme adversity. In that regard I’ve been privileged enough to work with a girl who lived with the ticking time bomb of a brain tumour, a Hollywood actress whose wings got burned and a daughter who survived horrendous violence at the hands of a mother from hell. My only aspiration is to tell moving stories of lives less ordinary, in whatever form they take.

Sixteen agency authors describe their writing habits.

Juliet Barker

There comes a point in the cycle of writing a book when you have to draw a line and say: ‘I cannot afford to do any more research because I have a deadline to meet and I need to start writing now’. I know some writers work on a chapter by chapter basis, researching and then writing up before moving on to the next chapter. I’ve never been able to work like that – or to employ others to do my research for me. The best part of a book for me is always the research: exploring, investigating, putting the jigsaw together in ways that usually confound my own preconceptions. I need the overview of the whole subject before I can start writing and to get a coherent overview I have to do my own research: if not, I would miss the nuances, the connections, which create the bigger picture.

Getting the right opening sentence is always difficult and I’ll have been thinking about it for weeks, if not months, before I begin writing: without it I find it impossible to start. A looming deadline does much to focus the mind but I always try to leave a year to write up research which has taken two or three times that length of time to do. I begin by operating normal office hours but, as I work better in the morning and the deadline gets closer, I get up earlier and earlier till I’m working from 4am till the point of collapse in the evening – and that’s seven days a week till it’s done.

The two essential things I need to be able to write are an unspoilt rural view from my window (to contemplate when things are going slowly) and a complete absence of man-made sound: no cars, no machinery, no people, just birdsong and the bleating of sheep in the fields across the dale. It’s not just that such things make me happy but that it’s easier to immerse myself in the past I’m writing about without the intrusions of modern life.

Nessa Carey

When I write, I write fast. This is just a well, because I’ve written both my books while working in very demanding, more than full-time jobs. It’s also a good thing because I don’t get going on writing early enough. Annoyingly, I just seem to focus better when staring down the barrel of a deadline. This is true of most aspects of my working life and it drives me crazy, but my attempts to change it have all withered and died.

I also write fast because of the way I research the content beforehand. Total immersion in the broad topic, followed by targeted reading on specific areas, with copious mind-mapping and structural planning. As a working scientist you often get surprisingly little time to read scientific papers in the day job, so this research stage is really enjoyable. But what I love most about it is that I can indulge my stationery fetish. Moleskine cahiers? Of course. Stupidly lovely matching Pelikan fountain pen and automatic pencil? Check. Stabilo 66 and 88 coloured pens? Naturally. And you should see my selections of Post-It notes.

Back to the writing itself. I have to start with a tidy desk even if I don’t finish that way, and I always write direct onto a laptop. I don’t have any music or other distractions unless there has been a mouse in the house recently. Rather than jumping at every imagined rustle, I will play a compilation CD of classical music. For me, that isn’t really music, it’s just something that isn’t silence, so I can work with it playing in the background. Unless a soprano begins singing, in which case I lunge for the off switch. If I am to be distracted by high-pitched squeaking that hurts my ears, I choose the mice every time.

Deborah Crewe

A long, featureless day stretching out ahead of me is what I want when I am writing. No meetings, no other tasks on the ‘must do today’ list, and definitely no children arriving home at 3.30. Ideally, no human beings at all. This way, a couple of duff hours don’t matter: I know that at some point in my day, better ones will come. And - as important - I know that when they do, I won’t need to stop for an appointment, or lunch, or to kiss my children. I can just keep going as long as the flow does. Word count etc? I start by marshalling all my material, and planning out the chapter, which I have to do by hand. Then I switch to the laptop and aim for 500 words an hour for the rest of the day. The word count game (clicking to see whether I’m behind target or ahead of it) is the only distraction allowed, and a great motivator. By the end of the day I should have a chapter’s worth of first draft. Editing - which I find much more painful - comes later.

Don’t ask me where I like to write unless you have a spare fifteen minutes. I am a little bit obsessed with this question. I can write anywhere. Well, anywhere that has a desk, a chair, a kettle, a toilet, electricity, wifi, a phone signal, decent security and zero requirement to interact with anyone to access any of it. So, working from home is out. (See above: I would have to interact with my children.) Cafés are no good either. I might see someone I know and have to talk to them. Also, no power. Also, I feel compelled to pack up my stuff every time I go to the toilet. The British Library sounds glamorous but makes me feel like I’ve been hermetically sealed all day. At the moment, I am time-sharing my brother’s flat. He lives there from 6 in the evening until 8.30 in the morning, and I am allowed to work there most of the rest of the time. It’s the best solution so far, but I long for a shed of my own

Helen Croydon

Considering that writing is one of my great loves, I procrastinate terribly about it. Once I get drawn into a flow, I enjoy it, but until I reach those rare moments, it’s more of a forced occupation and my mind would much rather be doing something less strenuous, like watching Facebook videos. I’m not one of these earthy writers who rise at dawn, or tap away through the night. On the contrary, I need to feel fresh and have all my chores done. That includes a morning workout, a good breakfast, a scan of at least one newspaper, a clean kitchen and only then can I contemplate concentration. Then, I need a strong soya cappuccino to get started. It focuses my mind – for around an hour or two anyway. By then it’s usually 11 or 12. But, I assure myself, a five or six hour day is what most people in any office do, if you take away all the extraneous meetings and politics!

Being a freelance journalist and author I am home-based but I work best when I’m outside of my home. I have favourite cafes I use in east London, where I live. I cycle down the canal with my laptop in a backpack or I work from my gym, which has a lounge overlooking the river. Although I don’t like being talked to, I like to have noise and people around me. If I do work from home, I need tear-jerking music like Enya or suicidal love songs to write. My playlists are truly embarrassing and I don’t show them to anyone. I don’t write to a plan. With both my published books - and a third I’m now working on - I didn’t know what I was actually writing when I started. I just knew there was an idea with development potential and trusted that the format or angle would become obvious as I progressed. First, I get everything down in note form, in diary form, it doesn’t matter. I’m not aiming for respectable prose, I just need everything in front of me. Only when I have all the bits can I decide on how to structure it. It’s a bit like how I’d tidy a cupboard – haul everything out into a big heap and then sort it all out into piles. Very little of what I first write gets used. Once I have the ingredients to work with, I can keep going through passages, polishing them up a little bit more each time, and experimenting with different sequences. I probably go through each passage about a hundred times by the time I’m done. I wouldn’t call it a strategy, I’d say it is more instinct.

Patrick Dillon

I lead a second life as an architect, so writing happens in gaps: weekends, holidays, early mornings. Routine helps. On holiday I disappear after breakfast and work until lunch. I write straight to screen, and fast. Hemingway said, “If it’s going well, stop.” That isn’t true for me. Get a strong rhythm going as you write and it will still be there on the page for readers. In a couple of hours I can write two thousand words or more, if it’s really flowing.

That doesn’t mean it’s any good, though. The first draft is only the start. Editing, tidying, tightening are just as important, for me: I believe more and more in the craftsmanship of writing. As a rule, ten thousand words seem to boil down to six or seven in final draft. Somewhere along the way I need to print it all out as a way of getting some distance from the screen, and at some point I put it to one side as well. It’s frustrating to add time into an already long process, but four weeks away from a script let me see it afresh. Then comes editorial comment, whether from Andrew or David, or from publishers. Every book I’ve written has been improved by good editing. A second eye sees flaws I never can. All that work is wasted, though, if the initial draft doesn’t flow. We can shape, polish and improve all we like. But no one can bring a script to life if it doesn’t have that spark in the first place.

Jeremy Dronsfield

I’m a deviant, apparently. I don’t do any of the things that proper writers are supposed to do. I don’t have a dedicated room to write in; neither do I own a special chair, soiled with the arse-wear of a thousand difficult drafts; I have no inspirational talismans and no magic rituals. I just sit on the sofa in my living room with a laptop and my dog curled up beside me – and write. If I’m writing well, I’m absolutely zoned-in, immersed, and the words will flow whether I’m in a silent room or a crowded coffee shop. Conversely, if I’m stalled or blocked, moaning and kicking the furniture is an equally effective coping strategy anywhere (though ideally not in crowded coffee shops).

Neither do I write multiple drafts. When I begin a book – especially if it’s a biography – I usually have its shape worked out in my head; I know the heart and soul of the story, and have figured out how it should be told; I’ve worked out the narrative arc, understand the characters and have a feel for the keynote atmosphere. I polish and adjust individual chapters as I go along, but as soon as the last page is written, the script is ready to go off to the publisher.

The only methody thing I do is compiling soundtracks. My approach to writing is cinematic, visual, so atmosphere is important, and for each book I have a playlist of appropriate music to help me get it right. When I wrote Beyond the Call (a true story about a WW2 American bomber pilot on a secret mission to rescue POWs on the Eastern Front) I had a selection of Forties tunes – Glen Miller, Benny Goodman, the Mills Brothers and so on. When working on the biography of Moura Budberg, a Revolution-era Russian spy, I listened to a lot of Borodin, Prokoviev and other dramatic Russians. Recently I’ve been writing a book set partly in 1930s Paris and New York, and Gershwin has seen some heavy rotation. I rarely listen while I’m writing – the music is mostly important during the thinking times, when I’m adjusting to the book’s place and period. It’s astonishing how effective and inspirational the right music can be.

And that’s how I write. If you want to know more, you’d have to ask my dog, although he wisely sleeps through most of it.

Gavin Evans

I usually write late at night at the desk in my bedroom or at the dining room table – in reach of the piles of books and papers I require (I have recently completed a book on racist ‘science’, ‘Black Brain, White Brain). That’s usual, but I often write at other hours – sometimes squeezing in 15 minutes or so for a quick edit. There’s nothing precious about it and I don’t need to be in a particular mood, and I have no problems cutting out background noise (right now, for example, fireworks are going off in the park and Pedro, my terrified Labrador, is panting, whining and pawing me). However, my writing requires a great deal of Internet research, which has its drawbacks because it’s easy to get diverted – to read the latest news or dip into Facebook. The only time I never write is early in the morning, when I am useless, unable to manage anything more than eat breakfast and walk Pedro. I often plan the chapters while cycling to and from work (as a lecturer) and when going for a run, which I do most days, sometimes talking to myself (aloud) as I compose arguments, which attracts worried looks. Running, in particular, is wonderful for thinking, which is one reason why I never run with my iPod. If I come up with what feels like a fine idea, I try to get it down as quickly as possible, sometimes in a notebook I take to work with me.

Mark Felton

My writing schedule has been the same now for many years. I rise daily at 6.45am to tend to breakfasts and the frenetic school run. Then I take a walk of several miles, always with my wife, and often discuss projects and thrash out ideas. Once my body and brain is fully awake I climb the stairs to my study. For the past twelve years I’ve written lodged in a glorified closet, at the dining room table, in the library or on a tiny desk in the corner of our master bedroom.

But having just moved back from China, I finally have the luxury of a room of my own, a special place that is quite separate from the rest of the house. My room is reached up its own little staircase that branches off the main landing, leading to my repeated wisecracks about ‘the West Wing’ and other inanities that cause my wife to either roll her eyes or threaten to have more children, which would of course force the immediate surrender of said ‘study’. It’s snug and the window looks out on to the garden and allotments beyond, a vista of green trees and large East Anglian sky that is indescribably beautiful after years spent looking at Shanghai’s polluted concrete sprawl.

I’m at my desk by 9.30am each day, a single daily cup of black coffee at my elbow. I always write the first draft on paper using an old-fashioned fountain pen. Second, third and subsequent drafts of up to about seven are written on the computer. Depending on the project and its stage of gestation, I’ll write between 1,500 and 2,500 words a day, five days a week. I normally do more research at the weekends in between the usual family routines. Noise distracts me, so I have no music on when I’m writing. I normally work through to about 4pm when my son comes home from school.

Typically, I’m working on multiple projects simultaneously. An average week will find me working on a contracted book, doing research for the next one, and perhaps writing a synopsis, review or a magazine article. I like to cut between different projects during the day’s writing time, helping to keep things fresh. I also tend to work in bursts of concentrated energy, interspersed with many cups of tea and quick strolls around the garden for restorative fresh air or for mulling purposes

Bobby Friedmann

Like most writers, I am quite particular about my surroundings. I always work in a separate office or study and I hate background noise – other people chatting in a nearby room or the washing machine whirring are verboten. But I find that listening to music really helps. I tend to play the same selection of songs over and over again, so that it’s almost like I’m not hearing the words anymore. There’s something about the rhythm that helps me to tap away better.

It’s also very helpful to be a in a familiar room, which for the period in which I’m writing a book becomes the place where I can focus. In my old flat, I had a brick air raid shelter in the back of my garden which I converted into a small office and that was a great place to concentrate. It had no windows and completely removed me from the outside world. Now I have a study and I work there, although for some reason, even though I have two large computer screens, I prefer using my laptop.

I tend to write in burst of four or five hours at a time. It can be at any time, although evenings are usually best. During the day, there are too many distractions or excuses to think about something else for a minute or two. Oddly enough, once it hits 9pm there is something that really kicks in and I move up a gear, so some of my best writing sessions have continued late into the night. I try not to go past 1am, but often in the time period when I should be watching Newsnight or going to bed I can produce a few thousand words without too much effort, when at other times I can spend a day slaving away and barely jot down anything coherent.

I find that I always work really well when I’m abroad, preferably somewhere hot. In the final stages of my last book, I was lucky enough to stay with a friend who lived in a huge house in Yangon and who had a cook who made me my meals during the day. I rotated between the swimming pool and my desk and got more done in a day than I have ever done elsewhere. I’m hoping to be asked back.

Angus Konstam

Writing is a bit like bobsleighing. The hardest part is getting started. Like many authors I can prevaricate with the best of them. Looming deadlines or impending penury are both great motivators. Without them I’d sooner find other things to do. When I am motivated, then I find a project takes on momentum, and it gets easier as you go along. For instance, my latest book Bannockburn (published by Aurum) was written over the space of about three weeks. That works out at around 3,000 words a day. In theory that’s achievable, but it wasn’t as simple as that. Having prevaricated (“researched”) until the 11th hour, I then found the daily word count started off fairly low – say 1,000 or 1,500. I then gathered pace, so a chapter was polished off in a day. Towards the end, like a crazed bobsleigh team I was clocking 5,000 words. I shot past the finish line a day ahead of the deadline. I then spent a few days coming down from what was akin to an adrenaline rush. The strange thing is, this sort of intensive writing means that while you spend 13-14 hours a day at the computer, you’re also completely immersed in the task. For those three weeks I was living, breathing and sleeping my subject. All my sources were fresh in my mind, the synapses were clicking away thinking up quotes and links, and everything flowed onto the page. This also helped during the subsequent editing stage – as all the facts had been at my fingertips while writing, there weren’t too many corrections. Now, I wouldn’t recommend this approach to writing to everyone – but strangely it works for me!

Ian Knight

How do I write? When everything else that I can possibly justify as a legitimate distraction has been attended to first, of course – and even then there are emails to look at, and Facebook, and definitely ebay… When I’m feeling particularly guilty about this – my wife has to go out to a proper job, after all – I rationalise it by claiming that it is all part of the ritual of focussing my mind, and in truth there is something to that. When I was younger I used to just be able to get on with it; now the whole process is much harder, and I’ve come to realise that the long hours – or days, or weeks, or, when it’s particularly bad, even months – spent fidgeting in front of the screen are actually as much a part of writing as putting words on the screen, an almost unconscious sifting and sorting out of ideas and themes.

Even when writing history, as I do, a story still needs to be told in a satisfying way, and for me much of it is about the beginning; by the time I’m ready to start, I generally have some idea of the wider narrative arc, of where those first words (of a book, of a page, or just of a paragraph) are going to ultimately take me. Most of my writing career was spent in a requisitioned family bedroom here at home, and that made me more than ever prone to family distractions, but we’ve recently had a room built over our garage to serve me as a purpose-built study.

Since I mostly write about Africa – and my great passion, Zulu history – one of the long walls is festooned with spears and shields, and my library sits on shelves down the other. My desk is at the end furthest away from the door, and just beyond it is a window – I quite like the idea of the odd reflective pause to watch people coming and going in the street but, as we are at the end of a residential cul-de-sac, there isn’t too much of that, and since I’ve also found the mid-day sun shines straight onto my books I generally have the blinds down so as not to fade the spines. This rather forces my attention back on the matter in hand good! - and on a good day I can self-consciously draw inspiration from the atmosphere around me.

It still depends on that start though; sometimes I do just a few hundred words, blundering about just to get something down, only to delete it and start again the next morning. If I’m lucky after a while it will start to take some jagged shape, and the new-stuff outweigh the time spent polishing the old - and still occasionally there are brief spurts where it all pours out, apparently with a life of its own. When I was younger and hungrier I could sometimes manage the dizzy heights of 4000 words a day – now I consider 2000 words a day particularly well spent, and a thousand passable. After all, while I’ve been doing that, something exciting might have happened which requires me to check my emails again…

Brett Lodge

I once worked for an old-school editor on a rural newspaper in Australia. A large, charismatic man with a big moustache, he was hardly ever seen out of a pinstripe suit or without a cigar in one corner of his mouth. He liked to write. And he was good at it. Throughout the day the keyboard clatter from his office rarely slackened.

The keys belonged to an old Olivetti Lettera 22 portable typewriter dating from the 1950s. Jim’s huge hands pounded the small keyboard at a phenomenal rate, the typewriter sliding erratically across the desk under the onslaught even as he looked up to hand out advice or bark orders to his small staff. Every few minutes, just before the Olivetti tumbled onto the floor, he would mechanically reach out and drag it back from the brink by the carriage return lever and start the process again.

When I asked why he didn’t get a larger IBM electric typewriter or one of those new computers, he frowned at me, then pointed at the battered portable with his fat cigar and said: “Because this is where I bloody write!”

It was my first encounter with the foibles that seem to be inseparable from writing. And over the years I’ve certainly had my share. I’m writing this on a Mac laptop; the desk is an old piece of wood left over from recent house renovations held up by two knocked about carpenter’s trestles; it’s in a large room where everything happens, including the dog trying to sit in my lap.

But thirty years ago that would never have done. Before any word could possibly appear on paper, I needed to find the perfect desk, the best chair to match and a space in which to put them that allowed the ideal juxtaposition to door and window. Once that was fixed there was sure to be another task that just ‘had’ to be done.

Over the years I’ve left ‘perfect desks’ in a succession of countries. Each time they were a little less grand until it finally dawned on me that it was nothing but fearful procrastination. Searching for yet another desk with each move to a new place was just one manifestation of the apprehension I felt whenever I had to start writing, especially in new surroundings.

It took a long time, but I finally understood my old editor’s portable typewriter. As long as I have a keyboard I can write. A dedicated room is a luxury, a window with a view an option but a door to get away from the fear of failure at the end of the day’s 500 words an absolute must, especially if it leads to a fridge.

Teena Lyons

For many years my biggest problem with how I write was it was not how I wanted to write. It was nothing to do with the environment, although I didn’t much care for the freezing cold, dark, study at the far end of our crumbling Medieval farmhouse. Or that the word ‘study’ rather over- sold what was essentially a cut-through for various members of the family, who would then, (infuriatingly) carelessly toss something onto my desk for me to deal with, or settle down at my computer to surf the Net. No, it was to do with timing.

No one, not even my best friend, would accuse me of being a ‘morning person’. I can barely speak before 8am, let alone string an entire sentence together in a coherent order. I’m just not made that way. Get me after midday, or even better after 6pm and I am off. You can’t shut me up. Words flood into my brain and spill out of my mouth at an alarming rate. And, although I do say so myself, I can be quite eloquent too.

So, what is, or rather was, my problem? It is rather boring, but when I first gave up the day job to become a full-time ghost writer, I steadfastly stuck to my usual working hours. I’d sit down at 8.30/9am and work through until 6pm. A good deal of the reason for this regime was down why I gave up the day-job in the first place: kids. I fitted my hours around nannies and then school. It took me rather a long time to realise this was a bit of a waste of time. I could stare at the screen for ages before midday and, even then, my best record ever was a few hundred pretty mediocre words (in no particular order). Invariably, I would press the delete button after lunch and start again. Then, by ‘home time’ I’d be flying, literally running back to my keyboard after snapping off the light for the day.

Eventually, I decided enough was enough and adopted a different routine. I use the morning hours for admin and research and don’t start writing until midday. If I am on a roll, I carry on into the night, long after the family has gone to bed.

My pleasure at recognising, and getting into, my own writing rhythm is now even greater because I have now also left my original study/corridor and moved into my very own office. It is a converted stable in the grounds of our farmhouse. When I moved in this autumn, I had a feeling very similar to one I had when I was 9-years old and was given my own room for the first time. It is my space and I have filled it with all my nick nacks that have long been hidden away, waiting for just this moment. It has a wonderful view across a wide field and watching the wildlife scuttling around is a privilege I am sure I will never tire of. Strangely, my ‘productivity’ has risen too in this new, dedicated environment and I have even begun penning the odd word or two in the morning.

Ros Russell

As a journalist, I have become adept at blanking out the white noise of the newsroom while writing or editing; the loudly conducted phonecalls, TVs blaring and persistent, high decibel chatter. My mind is wired to the short-term deadlines of news agency journalism: I find it hard to start anything before I know precisely when it must be ‘handed in’, allowing me to subconsciously plan a race to the wire, generating that last minute adrenaline rush and – with luck – a burst of creativity.

So when it came to writing my book, sitting alone in the quiet of the kitchen with an empty computer screen and a nebulous deadline months away, I found it hard to concentrate. The mouse seemed to stray to Google for some crucial research - half an hour later I would still be reading something completely irrelevant on the Internet. I would stare blankly out of the window, make lists or find urgent domestic tasks to complete.

My salvation came in two forms: a recommendation of the reading rooms at the British Library and the discovery of the software ‘Freedom’. The hushed, scholarly atmosphere of the library, with its green leather blotters and reading lamps, is both intimidating and inspiring. Next to me could be a musician writing a score, a student researching 19th century Persian theatre, an academic wearing cotton gloves to examine an ancient manuscript. This is a great motivation to look like a serious person, and not just someone taking advantage of the free wi-fi.

I banish all distraction with the use of Freedom – software that cuts you off from the Internet for whatever length of time you specify. Eighty minutes seems to work best for me – at the end a little message pops up to rouse you from an intense period of concentration. Time for a break, if possible avoiding the temptations of the overpriced Peyton and Byrne café. I aim for three of these sessions a day, producing about 900 words. Not much, but not bad without a deadline.

Tim Tate

Two acquisitions are crucial to my writing life. The first is a second computer screen; the other, a commercial espresso machine.

I began writing, as a cub reporter, close to 40 years ago. My technology then was an ancient typewriter: steam-driven, as we then called them to distinguish our battered beasts from the fancy electric machines used by the bosses’ secretaries along the exclusive management corridors known as “carpet kingdom”.

To celebrate my first book commission I bought an early model computer and learned the art of juggling between the 5” floppy discs containing word processing software and the ones holding a couple of precious chapters each.

Now, 12 books later, I can no more write longhand than I can understand quantum theory: I need the feel of a keyboard under my fingers for my brain to produce anything coherent.

Is this a right brain, left brain thing ? Dunno: but right screen, left screen is unquestionably key. My books are research-heavy and the left-hand monitor is crowded jumble of open files and images. The right hand screen, however, is an oasis of calm: the sole preserve of my manuscript.

But I suspect that, if forced, I’d sacrifice all the computer technology for my espresso machine. I eke out my ration of six to eight cups of thick, creamy strong coffee from early morning to the close of writing. They are both fuel and reward: completing a strong or pleasing section earns me a five minute fix of caffeine and tobacco.

I set no daily targets for word or chapter counts: writing, for me, is too organic a process to constrain it with artificial demands. I do, though, treat it as work and put in a solid eight hours. But even this is not a deliberate attempt to mimic the routines of a ‘real job’: it’s simply that there is no greater pleasures than the feeling of words being born, sentences coalescing and shape-shifting, as my clumsy fingers hammer life into (and from) this keyboard.

Except for coffee. Obviously.

Charlotte Zeepvat

I write in an upstairs room looking out across open fields to a farm, faraway houses and a glimpse of the road through the village. Out of sight beyond the hill is the sea. I positioned the computer so that I have only to look away from the monitor to see all this: the changing light and weather and the changing seasons. This shift in focus is important to me, both literally and in other ways. Writing is a solitary business and it’s stimulating to have that contact with the world outside. But the view is my only (intended) distraction; when I’m writing I prefer silence to music. I start in the early morning but actually beginning to write is an effort; it’s all too easy to be drawn into something – anything – else. The internet is a wonderful research tool but it’s also a procrastinator’s playground.

Because I write history everything begins with research. At some point the resulting soup of facts, quotations and questions, will start to form patterns in my mind. Something will emerge as a good starting point: I never know when this will happen but it always does, and when it does I can begin to write. I try to work through the day, constantly re-reading and revising. If things are going well I’ll carry on until late and leave myself notes to pick up the next day. If the words won’t come it helps to stop, go for a walk, do some gardening or jobs round the house: anything that requires movement rather than thought. A lot of my best writing happens when I’m not at the computer at all.

Katy Weitz , who with her colleague at Press My Book Emma Donnan runs one-day training courses on publicity for authors, gives her 5 TOP TIPS ON HOW TO THINK LIKE A JOURNALIST

So you’ve written a book – the next step is getting people to buy it.

But how do you do that? Well, unless you have a whopping great marketing budget, the quickest and cheapest way forward is publicity.

Whether you are self-published, working with a small publisher or are lucky enough to have a deal with a major player, all authors should be concerned with the question of publicity.

And the reason is that you are the main person who is going to sell this book – whether you like it or not! Even if you have a major trade publisher onboard, the press officers will expect you to be available to journalists and, crucially, be interesting to them. If your interview is boring, the article may never see the light of day.

So the more proactive you can be, the more success you will have in securing top press and publicity. And the first step on this road is to turn yourself into a journalist so that you can think of stories that will fly in your local paper, national newspapers, magazines, blogging sites, online and around the world.

Here are 5 Top Tips on How To Think Like a Journalist:

1. KEEP IT SHORT

All journalists are time-poor. They are constantly on the go, on deadline and their inbox is full of PR guff which is regularly swept away with a click of the mouse. So what they need from you is brevity. This is hard because, let’s face it, writers like to write. But if you are pitching to a journalist you have three sentences MAX to get their attention. And ideally, you should hook them in the first ten words.. Look at this way: how do you read a paper? Do you start reading and then hope to hit a story half way down the page? No, you have a headline that tells you what the story is and if, and only if, the headline grabs you, then you start reading. So keep it short, simple and to the point.

2 IS IT A STORY?

This is the million-dollar question and right now, in newsrooms up and down the country, there will be eager news editors desperately trying to ‘sell’ their stories to their editors. Because there isn’t really a definitive answer to this question – for one thing, it depends who you are pitching to, which we will cover in point 3. TARGET TARGET TARGET. In a general sense, what journo’s term ‘news instinct’ is a carefully honed, hard-won sense developed over many years. However, you can develop yours instantly using these two questions:

1. Is it interesting? 2. Have I heard it before?

Some books naturally lend themselves more to publicity than others – if you have written a memoir for example and you cover some very important historical events, this is a good place to explore. Or if something shocking happened to you, then this could be what you use to hook your story on. But fiction is harder. Publicity for fiction is primarily about the author and this is when you will probably need to start bouncing ideas off friends/partners/relatives/Facebook. To give a general idea, here are some useful directions: Can we relate your book to your day job? Your age? Your experiences? What is the inspiration for the book? Is this the first of anything? The biggest of anything or the longest of anything? Are you the new FILL IN LATEST BOOK TREND HERE (e.g. J K Rowling, EL James)?

We are looking for a standout headline – if you can sum up the story in ten words or less you might be onto something (back to Keep It Short). Here are some good examples of what might make a reasonable local newspaper headline:

‘FROM BINMAN TO BOOK WRITER’ ‘I WAS ILLITERATE UNTIL AGED 30 – NOW I’M A NOVELIST’ ‘MENTAL HEALTH NURSE INSPIRED TO WRITE BOOK.’ ‘GRAN OF EIGHT LANDS BOOK DEAL.’ ’16 YEAR OLD PUBLISHES FIRST NOVEL.’ ‘SINGLE DAD OF FOUR PENS MEMOIR’ ‘DAUGHTER’S ASPERGER’S INSPIRES BESTSELLER.’ ‘GRANDAD’S WW1 WAR DIARIES THROW LIGHT ON LOCAL EFFORTS.’ ‘BOOKSELLER TAKES 30 YEARS TO WRITE HIS FIRST NOVEL.’

3.WHAT WHO WHEN WHERE WHY AND HOW?

These are the six fundamental questions a journalist must ask when covering any story: What happened? Who did it happen to? When did it happen? Where did it happen? Why did it happen ? How did it happen?

You too can be a journalist of your own stories as long as you have mastered these questions. So, let’s take an example from above. Here’s the headline: FROM BINMAN TO BOOK WRITER. And here are the first three sentences of the story: Terry Gibbs binned his day job as a rubbish collector after his first novel was published this week. [ANSWERS QUESTIONS: WHAT HAPPENED? AND WHEN?] The 32-year-old dad had worked for the council for five years, writing at night and at the weekends. [ANSWERS QUESTIONS: WHO? AND HOW?] Terry, from Dover in Kent, says he always loved detective stories but a chance encounter with a novelist on his rounds set him on his new path. [ANSWERS QUESTIONS: WHERE? AND WHY?] The trick is to fit in as much information as possible without the piece seeming too crowded. Your advantage is that you are already a writer so with a little practice and some pointers in the right direction, you should be up and running fairly quickly.

1. TARGET TARGET TARGET!

The one thing that bothered me most when I worked as a Feature Editor on a national newspaper was untargeted press releases. It was the lazy, one-email-fits-all approach to publicity and there was certainly no quicker way to my Delete folder than addressing me as ‘Dear Sir/Madam’. Newspapers don’t write puffs for PR’s, they write stories. If you are thinking about trying to get your name and book out there, you have to target the right person. For a news desk, don’t go for the editor – they are too busy – go for a junior reporter who is hungry for a scoop. Find out their name, their contact details and send them a dedicated email followed up by a telephone call. Be brave – it can be very daunting making a call to a magazine or newspaper or blogger but hey, what’s harder than writing a book? The personal touch is always best.

But not all media is news – there are other sections: features, lifestyle, arts etc. If it’s a feature you want to offer to a magazine, speak to a feature writer. If you’re being really smart, look at the furniture of the paper/magazine/blog and ask yourself what you could fit yourself into? For example, in your favourite magazine is there a HOW I DID IT! section on achieving one’s dreams which you might be suitable for? Or perhaps there’s A SLICE OF LOCAL HISTORY section in your local paper. Usually, journalists are pretty grateful for ideas on filling the furniture so look around at the regular features that you see and try squeezing yourself into one of those.

1. ALL YOUR DUCKS IN A ROW

Before you can start your own publicity campaign, you must have all your ducks in a row. What does this mean? It means you have to be ready: ready to provide high resolution (i.e. printable) pictures suitable for the articles, ready with a website address, twitter handle, ready with offers for competitions, ready with background info, ready with an author video. Get all your ducks in a row before you start your publicity blitz. When a journalist is covering a story they will need pictures, they will need information, videos, all the things that you see and read in the paper and online. And if you can give it all to them in one neat little package, you have a greater chance of getting your piece printed.

* For more useful, insider tips on getting great PR for your book, take a look at pressmybook.com.

• Next courses: April 17, May 9.

I’ve been sitting at a desk writing history books for something over ten years . It’s been engrossing, demanding and occasionally exhausting. This is a good moment to take stock. What does it add up to? Four books in various languages (the last still in proof), thousands of pages of handwritten notes:

Despite the impressive number of different language versions it’s been a modest living not a handsome one – I’m still waiting for the film rights. People come by and take out options but I’ve become realistic. I spent three unpaid months writing outlines for a Game of Thrones  style history epic based on one of my books at a publisher’s behest – no luck so far. There’s an element of gambling in all this – the next book could make it, a producer could get serious, but I’ve learned that seasoned punters read the odds – a history of Venice is never going to be Fifty Shades of Grey.  

Writing about the history of the Mediterranean has its pluses and minuses. It’s not an area of heavy publishing traffic such as the Second Word War or the Tudors, but it does translate: there’s a slow burn of foreign rights. I’ve written for personal interest but with an eye to the market: I’ve benefited from a post- 9/11 interest in Islam/Christianity issues. I’ve missed tricks, sometimes using up my material too fast, got titles wrong. I’ve created what post hoc looks like a trilogy of books about Mediterranean history but if I’d been more strategic I’d have done it differently. You live and hope to learn.  I now think that skirting round heavily covered topics can be a mistake. There’s a reason for the squillions of books on Henry VIII and Hitler. People read them. I do study carefully (and sometimes enviously) what sells. It’s also apparent that you’re only as good as your last book: point of sale information, available to all publishers, mercilessly reveals your sales graph. On it can hang the size of your next advance.  You always have to be on the top of your game.

I’ve learned that writing the books is not enough. Staggering from the desk, you then have to promote both the book and yourself: as in life generally, we are continuously reminded that we’re all our own brands. A good website is invaluable. Mine has brought me quite a number of interesting opportunities, but I don’t write enough articles or feed the Twitter beast (slowly working on that). I do literature festivals – stimulating to do and they put your name about – but their pure sales value seems dubious. Ideally all authors need to construct their own marketing plans – publishers only do so much – and we’re all invited to talk directly to our readers these days. Over time you get slightly better at judging opportunity costs after being ignored at bookshop signings or trying to animate tiny audiences.

But it’s not all orthopaedic risk at the desk or promotional boasting. We historians are lucky. They let us out to do research. We get to ramble around libraries and museums and go on trips. In my case, because the Mediterranean world is my main subject, I’ve been to fossick around Istanbul, Venice, Crete, Cyprus, Lisbon and various other places. And from time to time unexpected offers and opportunities pop into the inbox. I’ve been to study days with the US Navy in Washington and to NATO HQ in Belgium. I get to talk to varied audiences ranging from the Old Folks home down the road, to the Hay Festival to the US Army in Stuttgart and BBC radio. I’ve been to bob up and down in a boat at the site of the battle of Lepanto and to the TopkapiPalace outside opening hours for TV documentaries.  I’ve given one day personalised tours of Istanbul and been on quite a few ships. I do one cruise a year with Zegrahm Expeditions, a small US company, and I’ve spent nine days with my wife on a luxury vessel consisting entirely of privately owned apartments.

It’s the unexpected variety that makes these sidelines so engaging. A few weeks ago I was invited to talk to the cast of the Royal Shakespeare Company about the siege of Malta as background for their forthcoming production of Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta, for which I’ve also written programme notes. In a couple of weeks we’re going to see the results at the opening night in Stratford. Then it’s back to the desk, I guess, and what to write next. The house and garden could also do with attention.

Roger Crowley

My latest book, Conquerors: How Portugal seized the Indian Ocean and forged the First Global Empire will be out in the UK on 17 September, in the US on 1 December.

Piu Eatwell, author of the true-life historical mystery thriller The Dead Duke, his Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse (Head of Zeus/WW Norton), explores an under-utilized but potentially exciting social media tool for authors…

Even the most technophobic and recalcitrant dinosaurs of the writing world these days will – at the very least – have an author website. Most writers nowadays will also have a Facebook page, Goodreads and LinkedIn entries, and likely a Twitter handle. Writers of young adult and teen fiction will almost certainly post to Instagram. But what of that final, perhaps least-known member of the Big Five social networking sites, Pinterest?

Founded in 2010, Pinterest is a networking site where users can ‘pin’ a vast assortment of images and videos gleaned from the Web onto their personal selection of ‘boards’, which can then be followed by other users. I had always dismissed the site as a hang-out for unemployed advertising executives and recipe-swapping housewives, until I recently discovered its huge potential to inspire and assist in the creative process of writing.

As a writer of historical non-fiction, my visual inspiration used to come from the photograph plates of history books, photocopied and flagged with an unholy mess of post-it notes on my writing desk. Not so any more. Using Pinterest, my new practice is to create ‘mood boards’ for each of my books in progress – that is, ‘virtual pinboards’ where I collect together useful images for future reference when describing a particular locale at any given time. Thus, if in a particular scene of a book, one of my characters is hanging out at a 1950s soda fountain, wearing a poodle skirt and bobby socks, I can collect together all the visual references I need to describe the scene vividly and authentically.

Mood boards on Pinterest can be public or private: you can keep them for personal reference whilst you research your book, swap them amongst a limited group (for example, ideas for a cover design with your publishing team), or make them publicly available to your ‘followers.’ Once I’ve finished a book, I like to make my boards public, for they then transform from a useful research to a great marketing tool. Mixing images of your book cover (in all its editions) with beautiful and atmospheric images from the web on a Pinterest board can bring to life dramatically the ‘world’ of your book, tantalizing potential readers (especially if your followers re-pin the images). A pinboard can also be a handy tool for marketing to movie companies interested in optioning the film rights of a book, as it brings to life the visual potential of the book’s universe without the film producer having to spend too much time reading (something they are generally loath to do).

The latest figures show that, whilst Facebook users have stabilized, Pinterest is the second-largest growing major social network, with a jump of 7% in the past year (just behind Instagram at 9%). Interestingly, whilst the typical profile of Pinterest users has traditionally been women over the age of 30 with children (therefore a great target for writers of commercial and women’s fiction and non-fiction), the number of younger users has increased dramatically, reflecting a general trend in favour of image-based over textual social media. Pinterest, therefore, is a forum that writers across the board (sorry, no pun intended….) should be taking seriously. And, with its great potential to plumb the massive visual resources of the Worldwide Web, what, in internet parlance, is ‘not to like’?

Piu Eatwell’s mood boards for her various books, in progress and completed, can be found on her Pinterest page at https://fr.pinterest.com/piueatwell/