TODAY: literary agent Danielle Bukowski
on selling literary novels, genre-bending, and foreign rights
Good morning!
At 1pm EST, I’ll be interviewing
, an agent at Sterling Lord Literistic and a top dealmaker in the debut and literary fiction categories. I will also be asking her about selling memoir, so definitely tune in if you’re one of my memoirists. Danielle writes the Substack and is actively seeking new clients. You can find her client list and her wishlist on her website.
I’ll ask her:
About her experience working in foreign rights and which categories are the most saleable to foreign markets (in general) and also about trends she heard about from the London Book Fair in March
Whether she recommends that writers attend writing conferences and pitch fests, and when is the best time to pitch a project
How she helps her novelist clients with structuring and pacing their books, to avoid a compelling opening that gets murky in the middle, or to fix a novel that only gets good on page 75
What book editors are looking for in literary novels and how she would describe the X factor in a manuscript she knows she wants to represent
About trends in genre-bending (e.g., literary horror, or speculative romance) and how authors should pitch a book that straddles categories
Why memoir “is so hard to sell” and what writers can do about it
I will interview Danielle for about 30 minutes and then open it up to your questions!
If you can’t attend live, there will be a recording available to watch for 7 days.
As a reminder, this is a private, off-the-record conversation, exclusively available to my diamond medallion members. You may not post quotes from the conversation anywhere on the internet, or create content out of my events. Keeping the Chat Room series private allows both me and my guests to speak candidly.