What agents are selling picture books? Publishersmarketplace.com does a great job of monitoring the business of selling manuscripts to publishers. If you’re looking for an agent, you’ll want to spend a lot of time there doing research on agents to find the perfect match for you and your stories. Here’s just one way to look at the agents for picture books. This list includes information on the agent, links to his/her agency and the number of picture book deals made in the last twelve months. Please note that the agent/agency may have made many other deals in addition to these; these are limited to those self-reported by the agent/agency in the category of picture books. For more information, go to Publishersmarketplace.com (you must pay to join to see full information).
This is the first of three articles on current agents for children’s books. See also Middle Grade Agents and YA Agents lists.
Interesting, when I did this in 2013, the top 20 picture book agents had reported 171 sales. This time, the top 20 agents are reporting 234 sales. This could be due to a couple reasons: first, Publisher’s Marketplace relies on agents to self-report. This means that the agents are, for the first time, in a sort of competition for rankings. Reporting more sales means they are ranked higher, which gives prestige and possibly brings in more prospective clients. Second, it could mean that sales are up for picture books. We hope the latter is the case, but suspect the first reason has much to do with the increased number of sales.
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- Kirsten Hall (Catbird Productions), 23 deals. Website.
- Kelly Sonnack (Andrea Brown Literary Agency), 18 deals. Website
- Holly McGhee (Pippin Properties), 16 deals. Website
- Ammi-Joan Paquette (Erin Murphy Literary Agency), 16 deals. Website
- Erin Murphy (Erin Murphy Literary Agency), 15 deals. Website
- Karen Grencik (Red Fox Literary), 14 deals. Website
- Teresa Kietlinski (Prospect Agency), 13 deals. Website
- Abigail Samoun (Red Fox Literary), 12 deals. Website
- Alexandra Penfold (Upstart Crow Literary), 12 deals. Website
- Emily van Beek (Folio Literary Management), 11 deals. Website
- Rebecca Sherman (Writers House), 11 deals. Website
- Rubin Pfeffer (Rubin Pfeffer Content), 10 deals. Website
- Lori Kilkelly (Rodeen Literary Management), 9 deals. Website
- Kathleen Rushall (Marsal Lyon Literary Agency), 9 deals. Website
- Rosemary Stimola (Stimola Literary Studio), 8 deals. Website
- Stefanie Von Borstel (Full Circle Literary), 8 deals. Website
- Anna Olswanger (Olswanger Literary), 8 deals. Website
- Steven Malk (Writers House), 7 deals. Website
- Paul Rodeen (Rodeen Literary Management), 7 deals. Website
- Caryn Wiseman (Andrea Brown Literary Agency), 7 deals. Website
Hi! I love your 20 picture book agent recap! Thanks for including me! Any way you can swap my site in like the rest instead of the facebook page etc? http://www.catbirdagency.com
THANKS :) Kirsten
Darcy, what a great resource. You provide wonderful tools for writers.
I wanted to take time to thank you again for the outstanding workshop–Picture Books and All that Jazz workshop with Leslie Helakoski. I count it as the best workshop I’ve ever attended. I spent my return flight time thinking of ways to improve my focusing statement and make my story become more than a slice of life story. I believe I can do it. I’ll keep you posted.
Hi!! Thanks for the eye-opening information. I was just wondering a rather simple question. Can you query more than one literary agent/agency at a time? Most submission guidelines to literary agencies do not include this information.
Thanks for such an informative website.
p.s I am aware that you cannot query multiple agents within the same agency.
Lee:
Yes, you can query several agents at a time. No problem.
But when one requests a partial or full mss, then you must tell the other agents who also do the same.
Sometimes, an agent requests an exclusive and then you must decide if you want to do that or not. And it is your choice!
Darcy