[Agency] The Roman Group (Nicholas Roman Lewis)

Nicholas Roman Lewis responded to my e-mail query on May 24th last year requesting my first 3 chapters and synopsis. I sent these within 24 hours and never heard from him again, despite further e-mail nudges.

Cowboy,

This is what I found for Mr. Lewis on Preditors & Editors:

Nicholas Roman Lewis: an agent. $ Further info unavailable.

The dollar sign is a good sign, but looks like some further digging might be needed.

Found more stuff - he's a literary agent/entertainment attorney. So far, I can only find one book he's placed, but that's only a preliminary look-see. He does have another one up on Publisher's Marketplace, offering all rights - although it's from June of last year (no idea if he's placed it). No website as yet (located in Brooklyn, NY)

Couldn't find anything on the other guy. Do you have the name of an agency for him?

~Nancy

Cowboy,

In response to your PM

Could you school me as to how you found that info on Lewis? And not meaning to be dense, I don't quite what it all means. Were you saying that he actually hasn't sold any books to houses?

You're not dense, trust me. Understanding all this stuff takes awhile. I just googled his full name (surrounded by quotes) and came up with quite a few hits. He has sold at least one book to, I believe, HarperCollins (a romance, if I'm not mistaken). As I didn't go through every single hit, it's possible I would've discovered other books he's sold.

Supposedly, he repped Frederick Smith's book, "Down for Whatever," by Kensington last year.

You may want to google "Frederick Smith" (using the quotes) and see what turns up.

Carlos Montrera is an independent. He wanted to represent me, wanting to self publish for me, footing the expenses. That sounded STRANGE, so I backed away.

Self publish? Egad, if you went that route, you could cut out the middleman and go straight to Lulu.com. Good move on your part.


Good luck in finding an agent!

~Nancy

I got a big nothing on Montrera, even when I tried some spelling variations in case the surname was misspelt. It may be that I missed the exact variation.
On the other hand, an 'agent' who offers to oversee someone else's self-pubbing has to be so marginal that perhaps he really doesn't have any web-presence?
-Barbara

Well, I got an email response from Mr. Lewis after finding him through agentquery.com, who I believe are usually pretty good about standards. I see he's done a fair amount of ethnic stuff and he's made legitimate sales to several publishers... He's been around 6 years, which suggests to me that while he's been around for a decent amount of time he's also somewhat newish, and if he's an entertainment attorney rather than just an agent he may have divided his time a little bit.

He responded very quickly and enthusiastically to my query. Within an hour or two of sending it he requested to see the first chapter and then asked me to mail him the full ms. He said he loved the character already and thought that it read well, and he especially likes the breed of story that I wrote (fairy tales with strange, quirky twists). He said he would get back within 4 weeks.

While I'm aware that he has not specified in representing "fantasy," which this could be called, his enthusiasm and a decent track record have tempted me to accept that this may in fact be legit. I trust agentquery fairly well. And even though he's not a pure fantasy agent, well... my book isn't pure fantasy, either.

I don't know. Have you guys heard anything else about him?

There's a little bit here: http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/NicholasLewis/
He lists fantasy/science fiction among his genres and specialties.
-Barbara

Yup, I took a gander at that. I dunno, I suppose he seems okay. His emails didn't have any misspellings, which to be honest was the first of its kind from the ones I've gotten from agents. Which I find hilarious.

Has anyone else heard anything from Nicholas Roman Lewis? I saw on his Publishers Marketplace listing that he wasn't accepting new submissions until after October, 2007. I queried him on Aug. 6 but haven't heard back. Just wondered if anyone else had.

Steph

I queried him on February 10, 2008.

I'm still waiting for a reply.

But not with much hope, frankly, at this point. He's obviously blown me off.

Anyone query him recently?

I emailed him my query last night and he emailed me asking for a partial this morning. Here's hoping.

Ugawa said:

I queried his yesterday and received a partial. He asked me to send the first two chapters 'via email'. That means I send it in the body of the email instead of an attachment, right? lol

Click to expand...

Via email as opposed to via snail mail. I'm thinking partials are normally attached, not in the body of the email, unless you're told otherwise.

Parametric said:

Via email as opposed to via snail mail. I'm thinking partials are normally attached, not in the body of the email, unless you're told otherwise.

Click to expand...

Yeah.

So no recent news as to sales and activity? I didn't find his publisher's marketplace exactly enlightening? I'm contemplating sending him my YA Fantasy query, but it seems like he's only really been effective in moving ethnic contemporary stuff.

Thoughts? Advice?

F.F.

I just sent off a query to Mr. Lewis today... urban fantasy.

djaffe, let us know how it goes

He got back to me the next day requesting the first 3 chapters. Pretty prompt on his part!

Just sent him a query myself

Good luck bclement412!!

Thanks! I'll update when I get news