Book Broker: an interview with Paul Feldstein

Agent:   Paul Feldstein, The Feldstein Agency

Website:  TheFeldsteinAgency.co.uk

Preferred genres: literary fiction, crime fiction, memoir, narrative nonfiction.

For fiction, please email a cover letter, a 1-2 page synopsis of your novel, and a brief biography. Novels must be completed. For non-fiction, please email a cover letter, a detailed proposal, and a brief biography. We will advise whether we want to see more material and we will respond to all enquiries as quickly as possible, usually within a week.

Please note that we are currently only accepting submissions of adult fiction (excluding romance, historical fiction, and science fiction and fantasy) and adult non-fiction, so no children's or young adult books please. No poetry, short stories, or screenplays, teleplays, stage plays either. And no already published works (including self-published). We only consider writers based in Ireland, the UK, or the US, writing in English.

Send your submission via email to submissions@thefeldsteinagency.co.uk. 

1) What stands out in a good submission?

For me, other than the obvious care and attention required in the process, it’s the writing itself. In both fiction and narrative non-fiction, I listen for the music in the words. If I can’t hear it, it’s not for me. If I can, I read on and see if the story works, keeps me interested all the way through, and moves me in some way.

2)  What's a typical warning sign that a manuscript isn't ready for representation?

Anything littered with basic errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

3)  What's at the top of your manuscript wish list right now?

I’ve honestly never really had a wish list.  I judge each project in its merits. As long as it is in our subject or genre wheelhouse.

4) For writers without prior publications, what can they say in their "about me" query paragraph to catch your attention? Does it help to know if the manuscript has gone through workshopping or developmental editing?  

Sadly, particularly in non-fiction these days, having a “platform” can be vital. Wish this were not the case.  A manuscript having gone through workshopping or developmental editing can be a good thing or a bad thing. Knowing so raises expectations, but at the end of the day if it works for us it doesn’t matter.

5) Some people say that "agents hate prologues." Is that true for you? What is the most common reason that a prologue falls flat?

Don’t hate prologues. A well done one sets the scene for what is to come, draws in the reader. A prologue falls flat if doesn’t grab the reader while not giving the game away.

6) If you could change one thing about the publishing industry, what would it be and why?

How trendy it can be, and then how publishers overpublish the trend and, eventually, kill it.

7) How important is it for an author to have a strong social media presence when querying?

As above, can be very important, especially for non-fiction, but not vital for me.

8) What red flags in a query letter are enough to cause you to pass on a project without looking at the writer's sample pages?

Very poor writing. Extent above 200k words. Subject/genre we don’t represent.

9) What percentage of submissions would you say die with the query letter?

Around 35% due to wrong subject/genre, clearly listed on our submissions guidelines.

10) What's the best (non-client) book you've read recently, and how did it hook you?

Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Read it a year ago. Before the Booker nomination and win. Unique, awe-inspiring, yet very moving too.

11) Can you tell us about an exciting author you're working with at the moment?

Working with Michael J. Tallon—no cover yet, blurb below, just submitted to publishers:

Incompatible with Life:  A Memoir of Grave Illness, Great Love, and Survival

During the last Great Ice Age, a nearly imperceptible change in the genome of a Neanderthal woman initiated a chain of events that led doctors, 40,000 years later, to declare Michael Tallon Incompatible with Life. They were wrong, and having recovered from the devastation of Hereditary Hemochromatosis, he has reclaimed their words as the title of his medical memoir. The story of his connection to that protohuman ancestor, the genetic iron-processing disorder she bequeathed, and how she taught him to be thankful for his mortality, is a small yet fascinating part of this evocative, enlightening, and extraordinarily page-turning story of grave illness, great love, and survival. 

Incompatible With Life sits comfortably on the shelves between Paul Kalanithi’s When Breath Becomes Air and Susannah Cahalan’s Brain on Fire.

Michael Tallon began his professional life in the early 1990s as a schoolteacher in Brooklyn. After thirteen years in the education racket, he took a sabbatical in 2004 to study Spanish in Latin America. Plans changed, and his sabbatical became a series of new careers in bartending, writing, and magazine publishing. In 2015, he fell gravely ill from a previously undetected genetic disorder known as Hereditary Hemochromatosis, the story of which is told in his upcoming memoir, Incompatible with Life. He lives and writes in Antigua, Guatemala.

Visit his website here.