We value transparency in the publishing community, and Nelson Literary Agency (NLA) has an annual tradition we like of revealing statistics on its previous year’s activity.
While NLA is considered a leader in repping indie bestsellers, Kristin Nelson pointed out while at Digital Book World this year that the bulk of her company’s business is in trade authors.
Going over the agency’s stats is helpful on several levels. The stats offer:
- a look at the scale and scope of a successful agency based in Denver
- a glimpse into the sheer volume of material moving through a mid-sized shop of this kind
- a reality check on just how how tall a wall of content awaits every author approaching the market today
Some interesting points in this year’s report:
- Nelson estimates that her shop read and responded to more than 29,000 queries in 2015.
- Of that 29,000 or so queries, 87 triggered requests for “fulls,” meaning full manuscripts to review. In 2014, only 45 fulls were requested.
- The agency’s sample page requests dropped from 856 to 129 in 2015, but the company wasn’t looking at fewer pages. Rather, it made a policy change: NLA in 2015 began asking authors to include their first ten pages with a query. While Nelson says that this slowed down her response time to queries in many cases, it also prompted her to read more novels to the end. (One side point of interest, especially in light of Andrew Rhomberg’s research on how much standard readers of books actually read: Nelson says she can usually tell if a book is right for her within the first sixty pages.)
- NLA took on just three new clients in 2015. Two of them had books sell to publishers at auction in six-figure deals; the third is on submission now.
- In foreign rights, Europe remains the hottest region for NLA authors’ overseas rights sales (fifty-one deals); then Asia (fourteen deals); and Brazil and Latin America/Mexico (each coming in with three deals).
Bottom line: What we get from Nelson’s look-back each year is a sense for both the capacity and limitations of a fairly standard agency offering a high level of service to its author-clients. (NLA is known in particular for close audits of royalty statements, sometimes recouping thousands of dollars lost to clients through misreporting of sales.) If anything, it’s likely more difficult for authors to find representation as the number of published titles increases and self-published authors seek professional representation. Even well-established midlisters may have trouble finding an agency that offers comprehensive services and assistance for both self-publishing and traditional publishing efforts. You can find a partial listing of such agencies, compiled by Jane in 2014, in this Writer’s Digest article. Also, at a recent Digital Book World panel that Jane moderated, two agencies with experience managing hybrid authors were represented: Dystel & Goderich (represented by Jane Dystel) and Writers House (represented by Julie Trelstad).
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
