Ask a literary agent: Katherine Boyle tells you why you don't have to schmooze to get published

March 5, 12:17 PMSF Literary Culture ExaminerLing Ma

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Katherine Boyle, founder of Veritas Literary Agency

Katherine Boyle is the head agent of SF-based Veritas Literary Agency, which she founded in 1995. A voracious reader herself, she has agented a diverse list of titles, from novels to memoirs to guidebooks.

Her successes include Rachel Pine's The Twins of Tribeca and Julie Gregory's critically acclaimed Sickened: A Memoir of a Lost Childhood.

For the SF Literary Culture Examiner, Boyle tells you what she looks for in a manuscript, how an MFA program may help you, and why you don't have to schmooze with the NY-based publishing world to get your work out there.

What do you look for within the first few pages when you open up a new manuscript?

Bright, engaging writing. The voice, pacing, imagery, sentence structure, cadence —  and whether or not the premise is unusual and interesting enough to make me want to read more. 

What kind of books is the publishing market most open to right now?

While I still love adult literary fiction, it's a tough market right now, as is the memoir arena. A NY-based colleague of mine recently stopped shopping fiction ("it's too brutal out there!") but genre fiction (i.e. mysteries, thrillers, and the like) are still relatively easy to place, as long as they're well-written and original. Young Adult fiction is also a healthy area. I'm a generalist and acquire just about everything except romances, sci fi, poetry, and military history.