Agents, Editors, and Publishers taking pitches:
Other Editors, Publishers, and Agents
- open to only to those with a completed manuscript and registered for the Core Conference (Sat/Sun).
- scheduled throughout the day Friday 17th August and Saturday 18th August.
- 5 minutes long (with timekeepers in place).
- This year, editors/agents will be situated in the one room, but with individual ‘pitch stations’.
- Not all editors and agents will be available on both days.
- Pitch sessions will run concurrently with the Friday Workshop and the Breakout sessions on Saturday.
PITCH REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED
The Pitch Registration Process opens on 15th May 2012 (and closes 30th June).
Please remember that to register for a pitch, you need to have registered and paid for the Core Conference (or if paying for by split system, to have organised this with the treasurer. First installment will be deducted on 15th May).
Nervous? Never pitched before? Wanting to polish your pitch?
We have one workshop still available to you.
- Belinda Byrne from Penguin Books has a Pitch Perfect session on Friday (5.30-6.30pm).
You can see details on the Bonus Conference Sessions Page.
Secrets of a Successful Pitch - click here to see article
Our 2012 Editors, Agents, & Publishers at a glance - Pitch Grid
Click here for a snapshot of submission preferences (by subject matter) from our 2012 editors and agents. To print on A3, click here.
FAQs
Remember to read the FAQ page.
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Agents, Editors, and Publishers taking pitches
RWA is pleased to give members access to acquiring personnel from a range of publishers during conference. Their presence does not constitute endorsement by RWA. As always your own research is the best guide to determine if they are the right publisher for your work.
Monique Patterson, Executive Editor, St Martins Press
Monique Patterson began her publishing career at Avon Books in 1998, which then became a part of HarperCollins. She is currently Executive Editor at St. Martin’s Press where she acquires women’s fiction, which includes contemporary, historical, paranormal and erotic romance, paranormal fiction, African American fiction and a selective amount of commercial non-fiction, which includes pop culture and celebrity bios for all parts of the list and for all formats. Some of her current authors are Sherrilyn Kenyon, Lora Leigh, MaryJanice Davidson, Suzanne Enoch, Christina Brooke, Julianne Maclean, Celeste Bradley, Susan Donovan, Alexandra Hawkins, Christine Warren, Francis Ray and others.
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Helen Breitwieser, Agent, Cornerstone Literary
Helen Breitwieser is a literary agent and owner of Cornerstone Literary Agency in Los Angeles, CA. Her agency represents a wide range of novelists with an emphasis on women's fiction, children's books, romance and suspense/mystery. Clients include Christina Brooke, Katherine Center, Tessa Dare, Beth Fantaskey, C.S. Harris, Rachel Lee, Judi McCoy, Sophia Nash, Ursula Vernon, Tracy Anne Warren and Ahmet Zappa. Before founding Cornerstone Literary in 1998, she was a literary agent at the William Morris Agency in New York.
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Joanne Grant, Senior Editor, Harlequin Mills & Boon, UK
Joanne Grant is Senior Editor of Harlequin Presents and joined Harlequin in 2003 - as an avid reader and a romantic at heart where else would she work?! Reading romance novels in the bath is her guilty pleasure and she never tires of watching Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, or Patrick Swayze utter that line in Dirty Dancing.
She lives in the leafy suburbs with very own hero (her husband’s a detective), an ever growing collection of shoes, and a lovably large (but not fat!) ginger and white cat.
Please note: remember to refer to the Harlequin writing guidelines for category lines.
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Haylee Kerans, Publishing Manager, Harlequin Mills & Boon Australia
Haylee Kerans has long enjoyed reading romance and put her research to good use in her Honours thesis, Constant Craving: a Polemics of Reading and Desire in Mills and Boon. Now, after more than ten years of reading and raving about romance, Haylee is Publishing Manager at Harlequin Enterprises – a fact she still can’t quite believe.
Please Note: Haylee is only taking single title pitches, not category.
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Belinda Byrne, Commissioning Editor, Penguin Group (Australia)
Belinda Byrne has worked in book publishing all her life - she can’t imagine another job as rewarding as helping talented authors to build their writing careers and find the widest possible audience for their work. Belinda has worked at Penguin Australia for ten years, specialising in editing commercial fiction. She now has the privilege and the pleasure of publishing a strong and growing list of terrific Australian authors – including Cathryn Hein, Wendy James, June Loves, Mandy Magro, Anne McCullagh Rennie, Jennifer Scoullar, Kathryn Ledson and Barbara Hannay - for Penguin’s Michael Joseph imprint.
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Sarah Fairhall, Commissioning Editor, Penguin Group (Australia)
Sarah Fairhall is a long time romance reader who joined Penguin in 2007 with a role in business development, then in contracts. Sarah was spirited from there into the Penguin Development Program, working across different divisions, including sales, marketing and finally, publishing. Sarah completed the program last year and is now a Commissioning Editor who spends her time reading – and acquiring – romances.
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OTHER EDITORS, PUBLISHERS AND AGENTS
Alexandra Adsett, Agent, Alex Adsett Publishing Services
Alex Adsett has fifteen years experience working in the publishing and bookselling industry. She has managed Alex Adsett Publishing Services since 2008, offering business, contract and negotiating advice to authors, publishers and booksellers. She has recently made the move to traditional agenting, and has started accepting manuscript submissions from emerging authors who are seeking their first commercial publishing deal. She is looking for genre fiction- science fiction, fantasy, paranormal and crime, including young adult and adult full length works.
Alex does not offer editorial development, and as a new agent, does not yet have a track record of successful placements. However, she is a publishing professional and passionate reader, who will be a valuable advocate for the right stories that come her way. Since 2008, Alex has worked on behalf of or negotiated with (amongst others) Harlequin, Orbit, Voyager, Penguin, Random UQP, Sleepers, HarperCollins, Text, Scribe, Hardie Grant and Allen & Unwin. She has been a judge for the Aurealis Awards since 2007, and has reviewed manuscripts for the Hachette/QWC Manuscript Development Program in 2009 and 2010.
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Anna Valdinger, Commissioning Editor – Commercial Fiction, Harper Collins / Avon
Anna started her publishing career as in-house editor for a literary agency in London, before moving to Pan Macmillan where she worked on books across several genres including women’s fiction, crime, thrillers and literary fiction. She moved to Australia in 2008 and worked at Pan Macmillan in Sydney before joining HarperCollins in October 2009 to take responsibility for developing both the local commercial fiction list and the local Avon romance list.
Anna might be both loud and opinionated but she is very easily distracted by cupcakes and kittens.
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Ann-Marie Smith, Content/Acquisitions Editor, Lyrical Press Inc.
Ann-Marie spent most of her career working in academia and education, before moving across to editing and writing when she retired from full time work. She is now busier than ever and has been acquiring and editing for Lyrical Press since 2011. She acquired three authors from Australia / New Zealand. Ann-Marie loves every minute of reading submissions and editing, and finds it hard to believe it is work and not just for pleasure!
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Bernadette Foley, Publisher, Hachette Australia – fiction and non-fiction
I am a publisher of fiction and non-fiction for one of the country’s largest publishing companies, Hachette Australia. I always enjoy talking about the authors I publish, their books, their readers and current developments in the publishing industry as there is so much happening at the moment. Coming up on my part of our local fiction list are novels by Gabrielle Lord, Bronwyn Parry, Karen Miller, Ian Irvine and William McInnes, and a debut novel by Banafsheh Serov—a Russian love story set in the time of the revolution. It is a diverse list, ranging from crime and fantasy to a slice of contemporary Australian life. Binding these works together is the authors’ love of good stories, their strong, unique voices, and, in some cases, their ability to show readers different or fresh ways to view their lives and the world.
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Beverley Cousins, Fiction Publisher, Random House Australia
Before moving to Australia with her family in 2007, Beverley Cousins had twenty years’ experience of London publishing (first for Pan Macmillan and then Penguin Books UK). Following a year’s secondment with Penguin Australia, she moved to Random House Australia as Fiction Publisher. During her career, she has published a number of brand-name authors, including Minette Walters, Colin Dexter and Janet Evanovich, and currently looks after bestselling authors Judy Nunn, Susan Duncan, Caroline Overington, Deborah Rodriguez, Nicole Alexander and M. L. Stedman, among others.
Clare Forster, Agent, Curtis Brown, Australia
Clare Forster is a successful bookpublisher (Penguin, HarperCollins) turned literary agent, based in the Melbourne office of Curtis Brown, Australia's largest and oldest agency. She specialises in commercial women's fiction and works with a wide range of authors including Bronwyn Parry, Jaye Ford, Loretta Hill, Ali Ahearn and Ros Baxter, Deborah Challinor, Cathryn Hein, Helene Young, Amy Matthews, Maggie Joel, Jenn McLeod and Tiffiny Hall.
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Joel Naoum, Publisher, Momentum (Pan Macmillan Australia)
Joel Naoum is a Sydney-based book publisher, editor, blogger and writer. He is running Pan Macmillan's new digital-only imprint Momentum and recently completed a three-month stint in London for the Unwin Fellowship researching digital publishing experimentation. He is passionate about the possibilities that social media and digital publishing opens up for authors, publishers, booksellers and the whole book industry.
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Larissa Edwards, Head of Publishing, Simon & Schuster Australia
Larissa Edwards is the Head of Publishing at Simon and Schuster Australia, where she is responsible for building a local list focusing on commercial fiction and nonfiction. Prior to this she worked at Random House as a publisher, where she published Caroline Overington, Nicole Alexander, Anita Heiss, and Leah Giarratano amongst others. She has been in the book business for over twenty years in both bookshops and publishing companies and is passionate about bringing great Australian stories to readers.
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PITCH REGISTRATION WILL BEGIN ON 15TH MAY
(and closes on 30th June).
PITCH REGISTRATION CLOSED
Please remember that to register for a pitch, you need to have registered and paid for the Core Conference (or if paying for by split system, to have organised this with the treasurer. First installment will be deducted on 15th May).