If you have an active membership at Publishers Marketplace, you can now use AI to help fuel your search for the right agent for your next book. It’s called Matcher.
Ordinarily, writers can search 200,000 deal reports at Publishers Marketplace by category or keyword. Matcher allows you to plug in natural language descriptions of your work to find the right agent based on deals logged in the system. There are two paths you can take: Deal Matcher, which brings up potentially relevant deals (with the agent/editor associated with them) or Agent Matcher, which produces a list of most likely agents for you. Michael Cader notes, “It’s as magical and sometimes off-base as other AI-based query tools, but we hope you find it a useful tool.” The feature remains in beta, with more data to be added soon.
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.
