Junior Rights Agent Role

The London office of Susanna Lea Associates is looking for a junior rights agent to join their highly successful rights team. Founded in 2000 in Paris, SLA has offices in Paris, London and New York. We represent a diverse list of fiction, non-fiction and children’s authors and handle translation rights across the SLA list, The Robbins Office, Inc., Spiegel & Grau and New River Books. Authors include Alexei Navalny, Gisèle Pelicot, Marc Levy, Alexandra Potter, V.V. Ganeshananthan (winner of the 2024 Women’s Prize), Dandy Smith, Alex Bell and Jessie Inchauspé. The London team consists of agency director Thérèse Coen, agent Cara Lee Simpson, and agency assistant Erin Osman, and our offices are located in Somerset House.

We are looking for someone with at least 3-5 years’ experience selling rights in fiction and/or non-fiction. Knowledge of at least one other language is a must (French in particular a plus, though not a requirement), along with a willingness to travel and attend bookfairs, and the ability to be a team player and work at an international, dynamic agency.

Key components of the job include, but are not limited to:

● Rights selling: Pitching and selling adult fiction and non-fiction, as well as some children’s fiction and non-fiction in your individual territories. We sell across our French, UK and US lists, and co-agent rights for a number of other publishers and agencies, so the ability to multi-task and prioritise is crucial. The right candidate will be able to easily build and maintain relationships, negotiate contracts, liaise with co-agents, and handle auction situations.

● Strategising: Forming and communicating submission plans, drafting submission and pitch letters, working directly with primary agents to ensure clients’ global strategies are in line with their domestic publications, and keeping abreast and following up on publication timelines, materials due, news updates etc.

● Contracts management: drafting and negotiating rights contracts, inputting contracts on Bradbury Phillips, tracking signatures.

● General Admin: Logging submissions, proofreading the rights guide, chasing foreign advances, organising book fair schedules and preparing book fair materials.

● Territories are negotiable, but will include some or all of the following: Czech Republic, Hungary, China, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Romania, Greece, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Turkey, Croatia, and Ukraine.

The salary will be between £28,000 pa and £35,000 pa, depending on experience.

Interested candidates can email their cv and application letter to Thérèse Coen at tcoen@susannalea.com