Five California Literary Agents Unite to Form LitWest

Posted on July 12, 2001

Five seasoned literary agents, all based in the San Francisco area, have decided to unite. The new company they've created is LitWest Group, LLC with its five members: Katherine Boyle, Andrea Brown, Nancy Ellis, Linda T. Mead, and Rob Preskill. The idea of creating a collaborative originally came from regular meetings with Bay Area Agents to discuss publisher politics and publishing trends.

"There is a spirit of collaboration that permeates the entire agent scene here, " says Preskill. "And the five of us wanted to try to take that to another level." The three founding agents, Brown, Ellis and Mead, began working together years earlier but formalized LitWest in the summer of 2000. Shortly after, Boyle and Preskill embraced the LitWest philosophy and joined the agency.

Says Nancy Ellis, "In an era of intense competition, LitWest has formed with an agenda of sharing, collaboration and cooperation. With five strong agents in our group, we believe we have all the bases covered."

Robert Preskill sees the mandate of LitWest as a function of the changed environment in publishing, a way to rethink the needs of authors and publishers.

What exactly are the needs to which LitWest is referring? Says Andrea Brown, "we will be offering more all around. For example, prospective clients will be given the opportunity to have group readings of their manuscripts and the possibility of dealing with a specialist in his or her area."

Another benefit to clients is that five agents can cover a lot more territory than one. For example, it is not unusual to find individual LitWest members doing business in various media-centric cities -- from Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, London, Silicon Valley and elsewhere -- often at the same time, calling each other to follow up on a lead or point out an opportunity. The LitWest agents also actively attend Writers' Conferences in search of new talent.

LitWest members are getting added benefits out of this unique arrangement, both professional and emotional. On the professional side, members agree that LitWest is a boon to visibility, branding and marketing within the publishing industry. It is also a place to share information, contacts, and strengths. When a LitWest member has a project he or she cannot take on, it might be referred to a colleague.

"The important thing is," says Katherine Boyle, "if I pass something on to a LitWest partner, it's because I liked it but may not have had time for it. Or, perhaps there is someone in the group who has more expertise on the subject."

On the emotional side, the partnership is a vital place for feedback, inspiration and support. "We keep each other positive and focused and we have eliminated the typical feelings of isolation that can plague people who work alone," says Linda Mead.

LitWest Group represents every category of publishing and works with a number of publishers. Some of the authors LitWest represents include Suze Orman (You�ve Earned It, Don�t Lose It), Jennifer Openshaw (What's Your Net Worth: Click Your Way to Wealth), Kitta Reeds (Zen and the Art of Persuasion), Malinda Terreri (A Tax-Deductible Death) and Larraine Segil (Fastalliances, Take Me To Your eLeader).