Kate Hordern Literary Agency

Looking over their webpage, this concerns me:

Please consider carefully whether your submission is ready to be perused by an agent. Aspiring authors may obtain information, editorial advice and assessment, before contacting agents, from the following sources:

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It then goes on to list several editorial services. Why should they care if your ms is professionally edited or not?

Edit: apologies, I did not research the recommended services as I should have. Others have chimed in to point out that they are perfectly legit services, and it says nothing bad about this agent that the site links to them.

Probably because they've seen too many manuscripts that were in poor shape.

waylander said:

Probably because they've seen too many manuscripts that were in poor shape.

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Telling authors to have others read their work before submitting and to only send their best work is one thing. Advertising a specific paid service is another. Plus, one of those recommendations is for an author submission service. That doesn't sit right with me.

All three of the Lit services mentioned are completely legit and there are *no* red flags at all regarding their mentioning there as far as I'm concerned. It's the equivalent to going to Random House's website and finding them saying "You probably need an agent. Fine Print Literary and The Andrew Wylie agency are worth looking at". As Caopax says, it's not a weird thing in the UK (unless, naturally, they were promoting a dodgy service, or their own).

I can't tell you anything more other than I've physically seen a couple of Will Randall's books somewhere (probably my local library).

Thanks for the info. I'm sorry if I jumped too quick. I thought manuscript submission services were an unneeded expense regardless of the country. Guess I'm still learning.

I used to work for Kate, she's a good agent with great contacts in the industry. They're a very small agency and she's interested mostly in historical / women's fiction, but every submission gets read, I can promise you that

Provided they know people in publishing and go to London to meet up with them location is not important.

With so much done electronically nowadays I wouldn't worry about location of the office. It's in Bristol simply because that's where Kate lives with her family

CaoPaux said:

Keep in mind that such services are viewed differently in the UK than they are in the US. To whit, there isn't nearly the aversion to them o'er there that we have here.

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This. I was just going to say, it's more common in the UK than in the US, where it's considered a waste of time and money.

PS, my agent is in Colorado, down the street from another big-name agency (and they are friends). There are a few giant agencies in San Fran and San Diego, CA. In the digital age, it really doesn't matter anymore.

Anybody had any interactions with this agency recently? Know what their stance on Fantasy (mix) MSs is?

Guessing they're not interested in Fantasy, since I got my one-line R 29/10/14 on a query sent 9/8/14. Much quicker than the six months they [have said] say on the site, though!