

About

Photo credit Leslie Curtis

Richard Curtis, president of Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., is a leading New York literary agent and a well known author advocate. His agency currently represents close to 150 authors in commercial fiction, romance, westerns, thrillers, science fiction, mystery and fantasy, all areas of non-fiction, as well as young adult and middle grade children’s books.

A longstanding interest in emerging media and technology helped Curtis anticipate the major shifts in publishing and multimedia that have occurred in the twenty-first century. His role as an acknowledged visionary has included lecturing extensively and conducting panels and seminars devoted to raising consciousness in the author and agent community about the future of communications and the role of publishing.

Curtis was the first president of the Independent Literary Agents Association and subsequently president of the Association of Authors’ Representatives. His company served for over a decade as agency for the Science Fiction Writers of America. He has also served on the editorial advisory board of Writers Digest and on the Publishing Master of Science advisory board at Pace University. He is a recipient of the prestigious Romance Writers of America Industry Award for Distinguished Service to Authors.

In the 1980’s, he took his author advocacy to a national level with a regular column for the science fiction writers’ newsletter Locus that addressed significant issues. This was then syndicated to a number of other organization publications, including those for romance and western writers. The articles spawned several books, including How to Be Your Own Literary Agent, Beyond the Bestseller, Mastering the Business of Writing, This Business of Publishing, and The Client From Hell, a collection of book industry satires.

Late in 1998, Richard Curtis announced the formation of E-Reads, a publisher dedicated to reissuing, in e-book and print formats, previously published books in such popular categories as romance, fantasy and science fiction, and thrillers. The company commenced operation in 1999 and is the oldest independent e-book publisher and the first to be founded by a literary agent. It lists over 1200 previously published titles, many classics in their fields. E-Reads has established strategic alliances with all major distributors, including amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Ingram Book Company.
As a byproduct of his e-book activities, Curtis collaborated with a programmer to create the Royalty Tracker, a program designed to quickly convert the copious amount of royalty information generated by numerous e-book vendors into simple royalty statements.

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8 Responses to About

  1. Gary Alexander says:

    Nice piece in the 3/4/13 PW, Richard.

    Gary
    http://www.garyralexander.com

  2. @Gary – many thanks, Gary!

  3. Richard J. Wilson says:

    Can someone please define these terms: “commercial” fiction; “mainstream” fiction; “upscale” fiction; “literary” fiction; “steam punk” fiction. Thank you!

  4. Li Hui says:

    Dear Mr.Richard Curtis:
    I am Lihui, a chinese writer and correspondent of People’s Daily in Beijing, It’s my pleasure to write to you.
    Some years ago ,I had the contact with Carola ,daughter of Emily Hahn.She advised me if I have some business matter involed it’s better to touch with you, May I contact still with you if I translate some books of Emily Hahn ,and get chinanese publish house to print them ?
    I sent the pictures of Carola’s two emails to me .
    It’s my happy to get your reply .
    Best ,Li Hui

    (Carola told me your email address: rcurtis@curtisagency.com , but I couldn’t sent the mail to you)

  5. Karen Peplow says:

    Dear Mr. Curtis,
    Could you please tell me if Dave Duncan will continue adding to his trilogy on the Alchemist, Nostradamus, in Renaissance Venice? I truly appreciate his way of handling historical detail and setting up an intriguing mystery. I hope that he will continue to treat us to his vision of that period in time and be able to continue with the three mysteries he has so far written in that era. Thank you.

    Karen

  6. hark says:

    Hello!

    I’m interested in learning more about your submission guidelines for new authors should you be interested in them, any info you could provide would be greatly appreciated!

    I am a long time fan of the work your organization puts out.

    best,

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