Canadian Agents

Moving to Roundtable from Bewares, since it's a general writing question.

- Victoria

Ella, all I can say is that I'm not planning on querying Canadian agents, at least not in the beginning. The US is a much bigger market and I figure American agents are going to have better contacts. Besides, if I understand correctly US/Canadian rights are sold as a unit. Having said that, I'll check Canadian agents out if need be. And I am certainly open to being educated by someone more knowledgeable if I'm out to lunch on this.

I worked with a New York agent for about a year before we parted company then sold direct to a small literary publisher in Saskatchewan. I'm quite pleased with the results. My novel came out in 2005, was nominated for the OLA Young Readers Choice Award in 2006 and continues to be part of high school reading programs in Ontario and Nova Scotia. My publisher hopes to add other provinces this year. I'll likely look at finding an agent for my next novel. I think the key to getting a good agent is to do your homework. Research the agents you'd like to target as thoroughly as possible. If they blog, become a contributor, so they get to know who you are. A few of them say they're more apt to request partials from a name they recognize. Hope that helps.
Linnea

Judg said:

Ella, all I can say is that I'm not planning on querying Canadian agents, at least not in the beginning. The US is a much bigger market and I figure American agents are going to have better contacts. Besides, if I understand correctly US/Canadian rights are sold as a unit. Having said that, I'll check Canadian agents out if need be. And I am certainly open to being educated by someone more knowledgeable if I'm out to lunch on this.

Click to expand...

Well, I wouldn't say "out to lunch"...

I think, typically, that if a US agent is selling rights, then yes, US/Canada rights are sometimes sold as a unit. I think this is much more rare if a Canadian agent is selling rights - in that case, I think they tend to break up the markets, which, to my mind and experience, is an advantage (I think it's beneficial to have a separate Canadian contract, rather than having Canada included as a pretty-much no-cost add-on to the US contract). As far as connections go, any Canadian agent worth their salt will be well-connected in the US, and able to work there quite comfortably.

As far as the best agents in the country go, I'd start at the top with (in no particular order):
Denise Bukowski
Westwood & Associates (John Pearce is a good guy)
The McDermid Agency
Don Sedgewick at TLA
Dean Cooke & his compatriots
Carolyn Swayze

Care to elaborate, Willie? What are the advantages of splitting Canadian and U.S. rights?

I am quite open to having all my misconceptions blown out of the water, you know. I haven't started querying yet...

Judg said:

Care to elaborate, Willie? What are the advantages of splitting Canadian and U.S. rights?

Click to expand...

Money, for starters.

I don't have any figures, but my sense is that a combined US/Can deal will include Canada virtually as an afterthought, with little additional compensation for the additional territory, while separate deals will give full worth to both markets.

In my case, my CDN deal was SIGNIFICANTLY larger than my US deal (which was actually for world rights, exc Canada).

Oh my. Yet another wrinkle to consider.

There's another recent discussion about Canadian agents in this forum.