Posted by: Kathy Temean | September 23, 2016

Free Fall Friday – Agent Interview

AndreaCascardi72bwAndrea Cascardi agent with Transatlantic Literary Agency has held senior editorial positions at Random House and Disney Publishing, and was an agent with Transatlantic for ten years before returning to the Publisher role at Egmont USA. As an editor she acquired and edited Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King winner Tar Beach by Faith Ringgold, the Raffi Songs to Read series, and Pura Belpre winner Before We Were Free by Julia Alvarez among many other award-winning books. As an agent she represented many bestselling and award-winning titles including Clare Vanderpool’s Newbery winner MOON OVER MANIFEST and Printz Honor winner NAVIGATING EARLY, e.E. Charlton-Truillo’s Stonewall winner FAT ANGIE, New York Times Bestseller NUBS: A MUTT, A MARINE, AND A MIRACLE, and Texas Bluebonnet winner TEN RULES YOU ABSOLUTELY MUST NOT BREAK IF YOU WANT TO SURVIVE THE SCHOOLBUS by John Grandits.

HERE IS PART THREE OF MY INTERVIEW WITH ANDREA:

How do you like to communicate (email vs. phone)? And how often do you communicate during the submission process?

I usually communicate via email because of time differences and schedules, and during the submission process I always let my clients know when something has gone out and who it’s gone out to.

What happens if you don’t sell this book?

We discuss it—whether or not it needs revamping, or if the author needs time away from it, or if the author wants to pursue a nontraditional method of publishing it.

How many editors do you go to before giving up?

There are no rules for this aspect of the process.

How long is your average client relationship?

I always hope my client relationships are long-term. I don’t represent writers on a book-by-book basis.

Do you handle your own foreign/film rights contracts or does your firm have someone else who handles those contracts?

Transatlantic Agency handles our own foreign rights and works with film rights specialists for those rights. We negotiate our own contracts.

Are you open to authors who write multiple genres? 

Yes, definitely! Many of my clients write multiple genres.

Are you interested in being invited to writer’s conferences?

Yes, I’d love to come to writers conferences. I love connecting directly with authors and illustrators.

WHAT ANDREA IS LOOKING FOR:

Young Adult and Middle Grade Fiction. I have eclectic taste, so my submissions wish-list is broad-ranging, but any fiction submission must, first and foremost, have a compelling voice driving the story. Beyond that, I look for smart writing, and amped-up emotions: for example, if you’re writing a warm, heartfelt story, I want it to leave me emotionally spent at the end. Ditto for romance: I want to feel the heat! I’m hoping to discover funny books that literally make me snort with laughter throughout. And books that take unexpected turns that surprise or shock me in a good way. I look for unique yet relatable characters, and I want those characters to come from a full range of diverse backgrounds and time periods. I’d also love to see boundary-pushing stories (in subject, or in how the story is told), cuspy MG/YA, magical realism, dark humor (emphasis on the humor), literary, and clever commercial fiction.

I am open to nonfiction for young readers of all ages, and I’m keen to find innovative presentations and compelling, creative nonfiction that illuminates a broader topic by viewing it through a smaller lens. I’d like to see some “out there” nonfiction ideas that dazzle with their brilliance yet connect immediately with kids.

Author-illustrators: I’m excited to bring new storytelling talent into the field, as well as to work with artists who have experience in other fields such as animation or editorial work and are ready to send their own projects into the world. Also Illustrators: I am looking to add illustrators to my client list. Please query with a link to your website or online portfolio.

Picture books: As of August 3rd I will be closed to picture book text-only submissions. I will revisit reopening to picture book text writers once I am up to date on current queries. I do represent picture books, but please note that I represent authors, not individual texts. I especially love books that put a fresh new twist on evergreen situations and that have an immediacy for the child. Great hooks with exceptional writing will get my attention, as will truly lyrical writing applied to a seminal moment in a child’s life. I am open to being surprised. Please query me before sending a text or attaching it to an email.

Adult fiction. I’m a voracious reader, and I’m looking to represent what I’d love to read, which for lack of a better term I will call commercial women’s fiction. As with children’s fiction, it must be superlative in one or more ways: smart, fierce, emotionally-hooking, funny, clever, diverse…the bar is high but I’m eager to discover exciting new voices. Please note that I do not represent adult science fiction, crime, erotica, or horror. I do not represent adult nonfiction.

Andrea is reviewing queries only. Please do not send complete manuscripts unless requested. Here is Andrea’s website: www.andreacascardi.com.

Twitter: @aecbks

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES For FIRST PAGE CRITIQUES:

In the subject line, please write “September critique” and paste the text in the email, plus attached it as a Word document to the email. Please make sure you include your name, the title of the piece, and whether it’s a picture book, middle grade, or young adult, etc. at the top on both the email and the Word document (Make sure you include your name with the title of your book, when you save the first page).

Your First Page Word document should be formatted using one inch margins and 12 point New Times Roman font – double space – no more than 23 lines – only one page. Send to: kathy(dot)temean(at)gmail(dot)com.

PLEASE FOLLOW THE GUIDELINES: Your submission will be passed over if you do not follow the directions for both the pasted email and the attached Word doc. This is where most people mess up.

DEADLINE: September 22nd

RESULTS: September 30th

Please only submit one first page a month, but do try again if your first page wasn’t one of the pages randomly picked. Thanks!

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy


Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

w

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Categories

%d bloggers like this:
https://kathytemean.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/free-fall-friday-agent-interview-2/
kathytemean.wordpress.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-26
107723
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:KNE7OAGSJ5FPDXKOBWVHBLZ6QHZ6GSXK
<urn:uuid:7dc9dcf1-af17-40a8-8587-b85ba51457f5>
2018-06-19T16:14:35Z
192.0.78.13
application/xhtml+xml
sha1:KALJ4ZE63K3CS3EOVTMSH7R2GINB4A6O
<urn:uuid:c96ad686-18e3-4244-908b-e642d7659f08>
https://kathytemean.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/free-fall-friday-agent-interview-2/
response
<urn:uuid:ce2fe8ab-71fd-496b-8c15-f90bebd282c7>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-154-202-165.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-26
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for June 2018
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf