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Spieler Agency

arkady

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I couldn't help noticing this discouraging line from their Submissions page:

"But please note that most publishers today are highly selective about what they publish, and often decline to consider works by unknown or uncredentialed writers."
 

Filigree

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Publishers have always been selective, to lesser or greater degrees. That line from Spieler seems like waffle wording to protect them from over-ambitious author expectations. 'We tried to sell it, honestly, but the publishers are not interested.' Well, duh, maybe it's your fault for taking on a writer who wasn't ready?

In truth, new and uncredentialed authors get signed to the big leagues all the time. They're just generally good writers, or they have a story topical and on-trend enough that it may merit the extra editing.

Spieler kind of lost any interest I might have had. I parse that line as basically meaning 'We might take on projects that are not ready or that we do not believe in, and offer excuses when we've wasted our time and the author's.' I'd rather have an agent who tells me, 'This is bollocks and I can't sell it. Go write me something I can sell.'

Reading deeper into the website, I see that Spieler doesn't seem to take on a lot of fiction anyway, so that doubly removes them from my lists.
 
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atwhatcost

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Anyone know anything about Helen Sweetland? I usually can learn something about agents, but this time I pulled up zip, other than she's "Spieler Agency’s principal children’s book agent." Since that's from their site, that doesn't help all that much.
 

bin_b0x

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EDIT: Never mind. Read outdated info.
 
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p2tso

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Anyone know anything about Helen Sweetland? I usually can learn something about agents, but this time I pulled up zip, other than she's "Spieler Agency’s principal children’s book agent." Since that's from their site, that doesn't help all that much.

Helen was the editor of Sierra Club Books until they decided to stop publishing books. She still does their calendars. She was my editor on a picture book until the change (my book was orphaned, but I found a new publisher). She gave me a decent contract for a first-time author/illustrator and is a nice person. When she went to Spieler, she called me up and offered representation, which was flattering, but we couldn't agree on the contract. She is an editorial agent and she does not use social media - which is probably a big reason why you can't find out much about her. She does have a LinkedIn account, though there's not a whole lot on there. If you google her name and "Sierra Club", you can rustle up some info on her past life. I did see a book sale of hers in Publishers Weekly awhile ago. Not sure what she's been doing since then.