Hi everyone, and this morning on the blog, I’m delighted to welcome Sophie Lambert. Sophie is a literary agent at Conville & Walsh (C&W), and today, Sophie talks about her background into agenting and what she looks for in submissions.
Details on what Sophie is looking for are below the Q&A.
Over to you, Sophie…
1) Did you always want to be a literary agent when you left school? Did you have any other career plans?
I left school and studied English and German literature at Kings College London. To be honest, I had very little sense of what I wanted to do. Reading had been a huge passion ever since I was small, but I hadn’t properly contemplated how that might translate to a job.
After university I briefly flirted with the idea of being a journalist, before finding a job at Blackwells on Charing Cross Road. Expecting it to be a temporary sort of role, I was somewhat surprised to discover how much I loved it and was quickly promoted to become one of the fiction buyers.
2) How did you find the publishing industry earlier in your career? How has it changed and evolved?
I worked at Blackwells for several years and for Foyles too. I was a buyer for each of the retailers, which offered up a full glimpse of the breadth of the industry in terms of the books published. It enabled me to have good publisher relations, responsible for negotiating terms with the respective publishing representatives, this was the early 2000s and despite the poor salaries came lots of perks.
Debut authors tended to have lavish parties to which I would be invited. I would regularly meet high profile authors, as well as help to host events. Bookselling was an excellent route into the industry and Charing Cross Road was still littered with bookshops. Amazon didn’t exist and bookshops were still king. I feel that the impact of Amazon has been felt not just by retailers, but also by authors – the range of authors selling significant numbers of copies of books has diminished. It’s simply not possible to browse in a traditional way on Amazon and those books which are selling huge numbers stay selling huge numbers. The bestsellers change less frequently.
3) In fiction submissions, what do you look for in a character that leaps off the page? When do you they begin to feel real to you?
Fiction is incredibly subjective. What appeals to me may be very different than what appeals to another agent (or, indeed, a publisher). Where characters are concerned it’s all about feeling as though the author really knows them in the most rounded way.
So, if I was to ask the author something about the characters’ personality/ traits/ preferences, even if it’s not part of the novel itself, the author would instinctively know the answer and that takes time and a lot of sitting with and thinking about an individual character. So often characters feel like cyphers or they simply feel generic, neither of which are good.
4) In non fiction submissions, what do you look for in the proposal and sample you have been sent?
Promise and ambition. And, of course, excellent prose. My role is to help guide and that involves working closely editorially, so it doesn’t throw me or put me off if a lot of further editorial work is required but I have to feel as though the author (and I) know what the nonfiction book is setting out to achieve from the outset.
5) When you have signed an author, what happens next? How do you then work on edits with the author, and what does this process involve?
I work very closely editorially with authors I represent. This may involve multiple drafts of a novel or a nonfiction book proposal. Essentially I work with the author on their manuscript until I feel as though it is as close to ‘perfect’ as possible and it is at the point at which I feel editors will be impressed and hungry to read more (and buy!).
The author/ agent relationship is naturally close and based on trust and a shared vision for the project. It may take months (occasionally years) to get a manuscript to the right place, but if you go through this process it will invariably afford the author greater choices and a better deal.
6) What is it about reading commercial fiction that you enjoy? Do you have any advice for the unpublished author?
Commercial or literary – they each involve vast amounts of work on the part of an author.
A so called ‘commercial’ novel should be tightly plotted, have a very clear proposition in terms of the premise and the pitch, feel suitably and satisfyingly complex and pageturning as well as evocative. And we still have to care about characters. It’s as much of an art to write a clever and original commercial novel as it is a literary one.
7) What are you on the lookout for in a fiction submission currently? What are you on the lookout for in a non fiction submission?
I would love to find an epic love story, something that hits me hard and stays with me. I recently relished reading The Paper Palace, and I would like to find a new crime series, set in a distinct and atmospheric location.
Where nonfiction is concerned, I love books which straddle genre and which embrace multiple threads – books such as Cal Flyn’s Islands of Abandonment, which I’m lucky enough to represent.
8) When it comes to the pitch package, what do you pay close attention to? What do you look at first?
Having read the cover email, I read the sample(s) first, it really is all about the writing in the first instance. If I am intrigued, I will then read the synopsis but I pay secondary attention to that.
Where nonfiction is concerned, the outline is the first thing I would read and it’s key to unlocking the proposal. The structure and purpose needs to be up front. The cover email is important. It should be clear, confident and concise.
9) Do you ever get nervous when pitching to publishers? What is the pitching process like as an agent?
Of course. When I’ve worked incredibly closely with an author, I naturally become deeply invested. At the point of sharing with publishers, I’m just desperate for them to fall for it in the same way that I have. I see my role as helping an author to offer up as brilliant a package that it makes it impossible for an editor and publishing team to say no.
10) Away from the office, what do you enjoy doing? What is a typical weekend for you?
I have three children and a busy life, but I always tend to do some work at the weekend too. This is not a job that stays at the office or which you can be very boundaried about.
Thank you for your time today, Sophie. It has been a pleasure to interview you.
Bio: After several invaluable years as a bookseller and a book buyer on London’s Charing Cross Road I moved to New York and spent three years there as an assistant at Janklow & Nesbit. I moved back to London and started my own list at Tibor Jones & Associates before joining C&W in 2013. I became a Director and later Managing Director, and was shortlisted for Agent of the Year in 2019. Alongside many Sunday Times Bestselling authors, many authors I represent have been nominated for or won numerous prizes including the Booker Prize, the Baillie Gifford, the Costa Book of the Year, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, the Ondaatje Prize, the Wainwright Prize, the British Book of the Year Award, the Goldsmiths Prize and the Dylan Thomas Prize.
What I’m looking for: I love fiction which is voice driven and introduces readers to different perspectives and singular narrators, as well as beautifully written literary fiction which has a strong sense of place, and commercial crime and thrillers which keep the reader on the edge of their seats and continually surprise and excite me.
Where nonfiction is concerned I am drawn to narrative nonfiction which straddles genre and I’m especially interested in nature writing, travel, history, anthropology, art and the environment. I represent lots of memoir, as well as books by experts in their field and specialists. I would love to find a gorgeous, all-consuming love story, or a food writer who matches Bill Burford or Anthony Bourdain. Essentially, I’m looking for an exquisite writer to take me by the hand and show me a different way to see the world, whether that’s through fiction or nonfiction.
Favourite books of mine include Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick, All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt, Do No Harm by Henry Marsh, Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel, Heat by Bill Burford, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and Fingersmith by Sarah Waters, Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny, Far from the Tree by Andrew Solomon and Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson.
I don’t represent children’s, YA or fantasy fiction.
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