Submissions

We welcome fiction and non-fiction submissions in the following genres:

Fiction: contemporary and historical novels, literary, crime, thrillers, fantasy, science fiction;

Non-fiction: current affairs, history, popular science.

We don’t handle poetry, self-help books, or stories for young children.

We don’t handle scripts for TV and film projects other than those by our existing book clients.

We don’t consider material by unpublished American authors based in the USA: we believe it is in their best interests to seek representation from US-based agents.

Please send us the first three chapters or approximately 50 pages of your book, together with a brief synopsis and some biographical details about yourself. Please don’t include illustrations or sample cover designs.

Read our About page so you can send your material to the most appropriate agent. If you’re unsure who to submit to, please use [email protected].

We prefer submissions in digital form. If emailing your submission to us, you should attach your chapters and synopsis as Word documents (not as pdfs), as opposed to copying and pasting text into an email. If you copy and paste, our server is likely to reject your submission because of length, and we will not receive your message.

Please do not send material to us via WeTransfer, Dropbox or similar. As we have no way of verifying what is being downloaded, file transfer requests will be automatically deleted without being read. Printed material can be sent to our Registered Address, but we won’t respond unless you include an envelope with stamps that can be used in the UK.

We don’t normally offer advice on rejected material.

NB We are aware that people falsely claiming to be agents working at Ampersand have recently asked for submissions to be sent to them at their personal email address. If their names do not appear on our website, and they are not using the agency email, they are not employed by us, and this scam should be reported. Ampersand will never ask authors to pay a reading fee or charge any fee other than commission derived from contracts legitimately negotiated by us on behalf of our clients.

OUR CHARGES

We take a commission of 15% on UK book rights and 20% on translation rights. On all other rights, such as film, tv, radio, theatre, digital, multi-media, and US book sales we take 15%, unless a specialist sub-agent is involved, in which case we share 20% with them. We do not charge a reading fee.