Heather is looking for Adult Fiction Interns!

I have openings for interns! I’m looking to fill positions for Adult Fiction interns focusing in Women’s Fiction, Female-Centric Thrillers, Horror, and general Upmarket and Literary Fiction.

You do not need to have any kind of publishing experience, but you should love to read and be familiar with all sorts of fiction in these categories, particularly with books on the New York Times bestseller lists. The internship is a great way to learn more about an agent’s work and decision-making process. Past interns have been writers, librarians, teachers and educators, MFA students, and passionate readers. You do not need to live in New York—this is a remote internship. We ask for a ten-hours-a-week commitment. 

While this internship is unpaid, TBA values our interns’ contributions, and holds monthly educational chats for all of our interns, led by a different agent/on a different topic each time. And in between those events, I answer as many questions about the publishing process that I can. I ask for a six-month commitment, but most of my interns have ended up sticking around for a year or more! 

Interested?

To apply for the Adult Intern position, send the information below to: HeathersAdultInterns@gmail.com, with subject line “Adult Intern.”

• Tell me why you want the internship, and a little about yourself, including relevant experience. Feel free to attach a resume if you feel it would help – though it’s not necessary.
• List your top 10 favorite books of all time
• List the last 10 books of fiction you read

If you’ve applied in the past, you’re welcome to apply again. Watch this space and @HeddaFlaherty on Twitter for details! 

CLOSED - Heather is looking for YA/MG interns!

I have openings for YA/MG interns! 

I represent YA/MG fiction across the board, but make sure you have a look at my bio to see if our tastes align!

You do not need to have any kind of publishing experience, but you should love to read and be familiar with all sorts of fiction in these categories, particularly with books on the New York Times bestseller lists. The internship is a great way to learn more about an agent’s work and decision-making process. Past interns have been writers, librarians, teachers and educators, MFA students, and passionate readers. You do not need to live in New York—this is a remote internship. We ask for a ten-hours-a-week commitment. 

While this internship is unpaid, TBA values our interns' contributions, and holds monthly educational chats for all of our interns, led by a different agent/on a different topic each time. And in between those events, I answer as many questions about the publishing process that I can. I ask for a six-month commitment, but most of my interns stick around for a lot longer!

Interested? 

To apply for the YA/MG Intern position, send the information below to: HeathersInterns@gmail.com, with subject line YA/MG Intern.

-       Tell me why you want the internship, and a little about yourself, including relevant experience. Feel free to attach a resume if you feel it would help – though it’s not necessary.

-       List your top 10 favorite books of all time

-       List the last 10 YA/MG books you've read

If you've applied in the past, you're absolutely welcome to apply again. I usually receive quite a few applicants, so the application period could close fairly quickly; watch this space and @HeddaFlaherty on Twitter for details!

UPDATE on Oct 30th: Applications for this internship are now closed. Thank you so much to all who applied, we'll answer you shortly!

All About Book Fairs, from Heather

Hello everyone!  As you might know, this week we wrapped up the Bologna Book Fair!  So, we thought it would be handy to give a little insight as to what happens at these international book fairs, in advance of Gemma’s more detailed report next week. These fairs (the biggies being Bologna, London, and Frankfurt – with others cropping up and growing around the world as well) are used for all aspects of publishing (sales, publicity, exposure, finding representation, etc.), but mainly are a way for the international publishing industry to do some heavy lifting when it comes to foreign sales –sales for translation into other languages.

Big houses, medium houses, and small houses in every country will attend the event, along with loads of agencies (especially from the US and the UK), to meet with contacts they can’t see on a regular basis, due to the rather large bodies of water or land masses in-between. Foreign-rights deals go down throughout the year, but these fairs still remain the pinnacle of selling books overseas.  The buzz and excitement of showing-off your authors bumps sales up during the fair.  Due to the hoopla, there are always a few books that wind up being heatedly fought over for the right to translate – and thus, the hot books of the fair are born!

So, who is attending these meetings when it comes to foreign-rights?  Mainly editors from all over the globe will meet with foreign-rights people(representing both publishing houses and agencies) from different countries, to see what books they’re selling and hopefully buy translation rights, to what they think will do well in their territory, or even be the next big hit internationally.  Schedules are thusly packed to an intense degree, starting at breakfast, and continuing with half-hour meetings throughout the days of the fair, and then pushing on into drink meetings in the early evening, dinner plans later on, and finally desert or disco. (Yes, disco happens. And no, it’s not pretty).  Sleep doesn’t happen for about a week, but who needs sleep when there’s proper espresso around every corner?

Throughout the fair, when you’re not in a meeting, you’ll find cocktail parties, dinner parties, quick coffees, hotel drinks, gelato runs, cheap convention food, and even a shared bottle of water, to bring people together to talk about books.  Each fair has a tone of its own, a feeling – Bologna is one of my faves.  It’s fun, lively, set in an ancient walkable town, and fully packed with beautiful books and gorgeous illustrations that absolutely crush you.

In an age where books are bought and sold globally throughout the year thanks to email, phone, and Skype, I think it’s a solid salute to the book industry that these traditional yearly meet-ups still exist.

Stay tuned for more details about this year’s meeting in Bologna!

A Conversation with Heather Flaherty

As we transition out of last month's topic, Conferences, we're bringing you another new feature that you can expect to see on the blog regularly – an interview with one of the TBA agents.  We're starting with Heather Flaherty, who joined the agency earlier this year.  We had a couple questions we were dying to ask about Heather's previous work as a scout, her favorite movies, her dog, and... well, you'll see.  If you read on, you'll understand how happy we all are that Heather's now part of the TBA team.  She's the bee's knees!  More on what she's looking for here and here.  And now for the questions...

In your bio, you mention that you started working in NYC as a playwright!  I’m fascinated!  What can you tell us about that?  Did you perform as well?  Were some of your plays produced? 

Yes! I did. It’s actually what lead me to writing novels, which led me to publishing! I will always appreciate my playwright beginnings for the solid handle on dialogue they gave me. And yes, I did have a couple produced – one was even off-Broadway (literally, not technically… lol!) And—this is something I have kept to myself for a very long time, but—yes, I did perform. I even had an agent here in NYC. 

You also mention some country-hopping, which sounds very fun.  Where did you go?  I guess you lived the longest in London; anywhere else you stayed for a while?  Any place you can imagine another life in, Sliding Doors style? 

I have so many sliding door fantasies! I’d visited a lot of places when I was in my teens, thanks to my folks. But my first independent move was when I was 21: I moved to the west coast of Ireland and worked as a pony trekking guide in Connemara (I know, right?). I spent some time with the Irish boy I was dating when I was there, then moved back to New England and married him. We then moved to London, because at the time I was like, “What the hell! We need to do that because we CAN!” Then we moved to California, again for the same reason. I feel like in our younger years we were constantly searching for the place to make our lives better, or perfect, instead of looking within ourselves. We moved back to England again, to Bath and the West Country for a bunch of years… it was beautiful. Then after a year or so in North Carolina, which was super fun, we put roots down in NYC so I could ramp up my career.

Some folks might not know what a scout does.  Can you explain?  Can you tell us about some exciting books you read/were involved in as a scout?

Oooo… the mysteries of scouting revealed! Dun dundun! Okay, so scouts are hired by Hollywood and foreign publishers as sort-of consultants to advise them what upcoming books they should be buying for filming and publishing. They ALWAYS want to know scouts’ predictions for the biggest books (which they compete with other similar companies with scouts for), but also they have specific tastes themselves for smaller books that we have to keep an eye out for. Basically, scouts act as a filter, cutting down the mass numbers of books out there, to a smaller amount they should consider for their own particular lists. And… we also try to have inside knowledge of the bigger books, books being positioned as lead titles, books set to go viral, and especially books recently sold and being produced for film – we try to keep our clients ahead of their competition. To do this, we of course read like crazy, read super fast, get everything we possibly can as early as humanly possible, and of course keep an ear in Hollywood to know what’s recently been bought for film adaptation. 

The most exciting books for me were those I was able to directly help my clients acquire, like All The Bright Places, An Ember In The Ashes, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, A Study In Charlotte, Riders, and The Walls Around Us.

People are always curious about trends.  Scouting likely gave you a great sense of that.  What can you tell us about trends in YA and MG? Elsewhere in books? 

Trends are funny and complicated, some are decade-long waves that go in and out of popularity forever… I kid you not, come 2030, we’ll be craving our vampires again! Others come and go quicker than we expected due to UTTER saturation (hello dystopian!). And there are those trends that are forever, they just gain and lose in popularity through the years like Christmas-cookie weight – i.e., YA contemporary.  Right now, the trending I find most interesting isn’t in genre, it’s in audience age-range. Kids are reading above their proposed ranges, and expecting far more mature themes and topics. Middle-graders are expecting more grit in their reading, and even some darkness, something they can relate to, because they’re growing up way quicker each year. That’s not to say that a cute, fun adventure story is no longer valid; it’s to say that those books need a little more oomph in general.

Before becoming an agent, I marketed children’s books, so that’s a lens that I look through as I consider new projects and building a client’s career.  How does being a scout inform your approach to agenting?

Scouting takes into consideration every part of the business: the house and imprint who bought the initial book, how they bought it (auction, pre-empt, etc.), sale price, list-position, marketing backing, foreign territory sales and position, film interest, where it lies inside or outside the current trend, how the acquiring house will treat their next books and that author, what the future trends will be, cultural mirror/impact, and generally how books fair against one another… and so much more I'm leaving out. I feel all these aspects of being a scout mirror being an agent. The difference is, a scout banks on a book for a moment in time, whereas an agent banks on an author for the indeterminable future. (Generally speaking, of course).

What's your dream project to find?  What are you really hungry for, as an agent?

I’m looking for a lot right now. My wishlist basically changes daily with my mood. But right now, the thing I find I’m most yearning for, is excellent YA contemporary with a very specific character voice, dealing with teen issues – these issues don’t have to be extreme, they can be normal high-school BS, because frankly, those are extreme as it is. Especially when you’re there.

You're building your client list, and have taken on your first writers.  What can you tell us about their projects? 

They’re so awesome… and varied. MG and YA contemporary, magical realism, fantasy, gothic horror, period, and uber pop-cult, to name just a few. I am insanely excited and grateful for such talented people to have saddled up with me.  ☺

Finally, can you tell us about some of your favorite books, authors and movies?  Is there a book that made you want to work in publishing? 

Ahhh… Best. Question. Ever.  So… I’d been knee-deep in classics for FOREVER, especially when I was on the grad-school track. I remember looking in a tiny bookstore’s window one day while passing through a crookedy old town and seeing this amazing cover… all black with what looked like Snow-White’s hands offering a red apple. And it hit me: I don’t read enough popular fiction. Hell, I don’t read ANY popular fiction. So I bought it, and fell in love with YA right then and there. Yup, Twilight was in fact the book that introduced me to YA… and for that I will always appreciate it. Other nostalgic faves: 13 Reasons Why, Before I Fall, The Hunger Games, Mortal Instruments, Maximum Ride, The Maze Runner, Divergent, all of Roald Dahl, The Book Thief, The Mists Of Avalon, Jane Eyre, and Watership Down (I have always loved those damn bunnies).

But I have to say… there’s some remarkable stuff coming out next year that have already trumped my faves… sadly, I can’t talk about those!  

Movies!  Oh God, movies shaped me, and I still struggle with the fact that life is not like them. Goonies has to be my #1 all-time favorite. Otherwise, The Secret of NIMH, The Last Unicorn, all animated movies ever, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth, Legend, Star Wars (the oldies), Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow... I also was a big gamer (and still am) – I love how far the industry has come, these games have become interactive movies basically, on an epic scale!

What’s on the bedside reading table?

Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke.

If you weren’t an agent, or involved in books at all, what would you be?  I think there’s a secret opera singer in me somewhere….

Looks like we got a karaoke night in front of us, Susan. I’d be a large animal vet.

Ok, true confessions time…please tell us five silly or unusual things about yourself!

• I wish my love of bluegrass music came from something deeper than seeing the movie O Brother Where Art Thou.
• I secretly dream of being a sheepherder, in like 1430. Then I think of toilets and gender equality.
• I’m a gamer, favoring RPGs because I truly live vicariously through my little person running around on the screen. Escapism much?
• Sometimes I listen to Gregorian chant in the morning, and pretend I’m in a medieval church.
• This is my dog on his birthday…  yes. I did that to him. I’m THAT person.

 

And finally, if you could have lunch with any writer, living or dead, who would it be? Why?

Allie Brosh. Love her. Love her sense of humor, her experiential way of writing/blogging, and her inward struggles.