Literary Agent

The Good Literary Agency is a new social enterprise agency founded by Nikesh Shukla and Julia Kingsford to represent writers from backgrounds under-represented in UK publishing. We have just received three years worth of Arts Council funding through the Ambition for Excellence fund at the end of which we plan to be self-sufficient.

Working as part of the core team we are looking for a dynamic agent to manage our rights and publisher facing side of the business, selling books into UK publishers for all our authors, as well as having the potential to build your own client list (though if you’ve worked as a literary agent before then this can be the case from the start).

Because we’re running our business a little bit differently to a normal literary agency we don’t expect you to be an experienced literary agent (though if you are then that’s great). What we do expect is that you have exceptional taste and plenty of hustle and that you believe that books and reading are important and that representation in them matters.

We imagine you'll have at least 5 years experience in a role developing transferable skills that you'll put to good use in this job. This could be at a literary agency, a publisher, in the broader literature or creative industries or potentially in a completely different sector.

SKILLS & QUALITIES

• Commercial aptitude with a real drive to secure the best possible deal for our clients
• Plenty of hustle and an entrepreneurial spirit
• A critical understanding of books and an awareness of what makes one ‘good’
• Great communications skills, both verbal and written
• A self-starter who is comfortable working on their own and managing their own workload and deadlines, as well as being happy to work as part of a team
• A real belief that books and reading are important and that increasing representation in culture is too
• A willingness to learn and develop with the company

We are also particularly interested in people with interests and expertise in genre fiction as well as in YA and children’s. These are areas that we’re really committed to but aware that we currently lack expertise in.

Closing Date: 9am 12 March

For more details and to download a monitoring form please visit www.thegoodliteraryagency.org

To apply please email your CV, a covering letter and a monitoring form to jobs@thegoodliteraryagency.org