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Ask the Agent

I'm Jennifer Laughran. I'm a Senior Agent at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, representing great authors and illustrators….

  • By Jennifer Laughran
  • Based in United States of America
  • Roughly three posts per day
  • First post on

Posts per month

Data for this chart is available in the table below
Posts per month
Month starting Posts
Nov 2022 51
Dec 2022 149
Jan 2023 114
Feb 2023 129
Mar 2023 78
Apr 2023 45
May 2023 60
Jun 2023 50
Jul 2023 83
Aug 2023 74
Sep 2023 73
Oct 2023 62
Nov 2023 90
Dec 2023 48
Jan 2024 75
Feb 2024 88
Mar 2024 206
Apr 2024 88
May 2024 108
Jun 2024 101
Jul 2024 88

Any gaps could be due to errors when fetching the blog’s feed.

Most recent posts

I feel like you’ve answered this before and I swear I tried searching a few months back but can’t find it so I’m sorry. Why is it not ok to look for another agent while you have one? Seems like a rule set up to hurt writers but I know this was a recent controversy on Twitter.
There are several reasons: -- 1 -- Generally, your agency agreement will say something to the effect of, any book that is sold or submitted during the period that the agent represents you, they get …
On , 680 words
What are your thoughts on a not-yet-agented artist illustrating others’ self-published books? I’m part of a children’s illustrator group on Facebook and there are a lot of requests from people seeking art for their books. The group seems respectable and they require fair-market prices, but would it be bad to have these projects out in the world when I eventually get an agent and “real” illustration jobs with real publishers? The money would be nice, but not if it hurts my career down the line.
I have mixed feelings, tbh. Some (SOME!) self-published authors have uh... not-standard-practices. Because, of course, they are paying out-of-pocket for the artwork, some want to "profit share", ie, pay a lower rate in exchange for …
On , 502 words
Thanks again for this. Going back to your question about how agents work for an agency - how much do agency heads know what their agents are working on? I’m sure it varies, but I’m wondering if it’s common that agency heads don’t know much about what an agents client is doing, who’s on sub, etc.
I couldn’t say, I’ve only worked at the one agency, but I’m quite sure that it varies wildly.
On , 74 words