Who are India’s busiest literary agents?

If you are a first-time writer with a completed manuscript, you need a literary agent. Here’s why

The last two Covid-19 pandemic years should’ve been sweet serendipity for writers who want to be authors. I am one of those. My excuse for not having turned serendipity into 50,000 words is a feeble one: The best versions of ourselves, that too, during a pandemic? Author aspiration out of the window, straight into virus-ravaged ether. Something mildly heartening happened for us and the world of publishing though, bang in the middle of 2020. India’s youngest literary agency, A Suitable Agency, named after the favourite book of its founder Hemali Sodhi, was born. In the months that followed, it achieved a respectable amount of virality.

Sodhi is a seasoned publishing mind with a 22-year-long stint with Penguin India. When she finally left that job, many authors in her inner circle asked her if she would consider agenting. A Suitable Agency attracted some of her former colleagues; a cracker of a team formed soon after. They now not only represent authors but also curate for literature festivals and consult with different kinds of publishing-related—or writer-first—properties such as the New India Foundation.

A busy roster

Literary agencies have mushroomed in India in the last decade. A Suitable Agency found a spot that combines the intuitive eyes and hearts of a traditional publisher—without a preconceived mandate, and with passion for standout storytelling voices across genres—and strategies suited to the post-truth, post-pandemic, SEO-driven, Insta-holy world. They already have 35 authors on their list, including the astutely marketed, critically admired debut novel The Illuminated by Anindita Ghose, the autobiography of Remo Fernandes, Operation Haygreeva by Aloka Prabhakar and the fun, quirky, journal-style The Blue Book by Amitava Kumar. A Suitable Agency also began conversations around books and reading through a series of in-person events during winters in Delhi called Suitable Conversations at Sunder Nursery.

Books are undergoing a major shift in terms of readerships and newer platforms. In 2022, most A-list publishers are likely to ask an agent, “What’s your author’s platform?”

The inner workings

So what does a literary agent or a literary consultant do for authors, especially first-time authors? They identify published books and unpublished manuscripts which they think are adaptable. They pitch these books to potential acquirers. They identify entities who would be interested in this intellectual property by gathering market intelligence. If they are able to elicit fair financial terms, a deal fructifies. Most agents follow a standard contract but typically end up working with the same author over multiple projects as long as creatively they continue to be on the same page. Usually there’s an easy termination clause for both parties. The agency charges a commission on the revenue generated from the intellectual property. Once on board, new agencies like A Suitable Agency even help authors with editorial or ghostwriting services. The marketing, promotion and social media strategy are a given. If I were to find an equivalent to the new-age literary agent in another industry, it would be the casting director in movies.

It isn’t a new profession though. At 22, New Delhi-based literary agent Kanishka Gupta was ready with his debut novel without much hope of having it published. He says it wasn’t a thoroughly researched novel. Khushwant Singh read his manuscript and said it was “verbose” and he couldn’t go beyond a few pages. Shobhaa De found a spark in Gupta’s writing and encouraged him to keep writing. The novel never got published. Gupta went through the harrowing experience of signing up with a Scottish agency which turned out to be a hoax. Rupa & Co published his second novel, History of Hate, in 2009, and although he had little by means of book sales, the book made it to the longlist of the Man Asian Literary Prize.

Gupta’s struggles as a writer was fuel to his founding of Writers’ Side, a literary consultancy and agency, started with meagre investment. Now he represents more than 500 authors working across a spectrum of genres. His list of authors includes the Dubai-based Avni Doshi whose novel Burnt Sugar was shortlisted for the 2020 Booker Prize and US-based Daisy Rockwell, a painter and prolific translator of Hindi literary works into English, whose translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Hindi novel Tomb of Sand has been shortlisted for this year’s International Booker Prize. Gupta also represents acclaimed author Anees Salim. One of his best deals has been a three-book deal for journalist-turned-author Hussain Zaidi, a Bollywood favourite for stories about Mumbai’s gangster era and its characters, for just under ₹50 lakh.

Gupta says the agent or consultant is now a key figure in the world of publishing: “Around 60 to 70 per cent of new authors in India are now agented. It makes sense to have an agent to navigate the publishing world because the publisher hasn’t changed much. Editors of most Indian publishing houses are still not communicative enough, and are of an academic bent of mind,” he says.

Wearing many hats

So the literary agent is now a representative, negotiator, creative sounding-board, marketing and social media strategist as well as relationship-builder for authors and publishers—often from the time an author decides to write their first book proposal. Like most creative industries, unless a writer has personal connections to editors and publishing CEOs, the struggle is long. The likelihood of a manuscript languishing under heaps, often to be rejected after months of waiting, is a crushing reality.

Enter, the lit agent. In the words of Amritsar-based Preeti Gill, who has more than 25 years of experience as a commissioning editor and rights director, “There is a great deal of advice, hand-holding and encouragement for the writer and, of course, going over the contract, getting the best deal for the author.” Gill is known to be extremely choosy about who she represents. She has about 25 authors on her roster, many first-timers, and many from the North-East and those writing in regional languages from across the country like Ambai, Easterine Kire, Temsula Ao, Arupa Patangia Kalita and Rita Choudhury. “I am currently very excited by an anthology of poetry by young Muslim poets from Assam who identify themselves as Miyah poets,” Gill shares.

Shifting geographies

Traditionally, publishing has been a Delhi-centric universe of closely networked people with an air of rarefied intellectualism and literary finesse. In the last decade, agencies have been established in Mumbai too. Dipti Patel, founder of WordFamous Literary Agents in Mumbai has more than 80 authors on her list in the eight years she has run her agency. The forthcoming titles she represents include a biography of a Kargil hero, books on wellness, a mytho-fiction, a crime thriller and some Hindi titles. Like Gill, Patel sees regional-language writing and translations as the next frontier for books as well as book-to-film adaptations, which have exponentially risen in the last few years. Gupta says every other day there is a call from a film producer in Mumbai for optioning works of authors he represents.

Another Mumbai-based agent, Sherna Khambatta, who started the Sherna Khambatta Literary Agency in 2007 after a Master in Publishing, says one of the best things about her work is that there is no standard rule or limit to what an agent can do to get an author who she believes in on the publisher-reader map. Khambatta focuses on non-fiction writing and her author roster includes Nidhie Sharma, Tara Deshpande, Michael Benanav and Osman Haneef. Like all agents today, Khambatta works with translations rights, film rights, decides on creative marketing and social media and literary festival appearances plans with her authors.

Between screen and page

Anish Chandy, the founder of New Delhi-based Labyrinth became a literary agent after leaving his life as a IT consultant in Chicago. After meeting a publishing industry professional at a bar in New Delhi, he decided to try working in the publishing industry. “I was drawn to the publishing world because fundamentally it gives one the opportunity to bring ideas into the world.” After stints as commissioning editor at Penguin and heading business development at Juggernaut, he started Labyrinth. “I realised that there was a yawning gap between proposals that were submitted by writers and what publishers were interested in taking to market,” Chandy says. Labyrinth represents all genres except short stories, poetry and children’s books. Some of his authors include Anita Nair, Rukmini S, Arun Maira, Pankaj Mishra and Jane Borges.

Labyrinth is more digital-forward than most agencies and it works with audiobook companies, filmmakers, OTT platforms, actors and financiers besides publishers. “The book-to-screen adaptation business is seeing a lot more activity because of the rise of the OTT industry where the story, and not the star, is king,” Chandy says. His future blueprint looks like a combination of identifying more exciting talent in existing and new storytelling media. He says he is particularly interested in the animation space and is also looking at opportunities in the NFT space for authors. “There’s a lot of noise out there, we are trying to identify if there’s a signal,” he says.

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