This week on Jane Friedman’s popular book publishing blog she featured a guest post by by Sangeeta Mehta,a former acquiring editor of children’s books at Little, Brown and Simon & Schuster. Mehta interviewed Jessica Fraust, president and literary agent at BookEnds Literary Agency. Fraust also established Beyond the Page Publishing, a digital business where “authors still maintain the control provided by self-publishing, but receive editorial guidance and direction from publishing veterans.”
In the interview they discuss the effect self publishers choosing to bypass literary agents is having on agents and how an agent can assist in a debut or established writer’s self-publishing endeavors. Here is an excerpt:
SANGEETA MEHTA: The constantly shifting digital publishing climate has prompted many literary agents to launch spin-off digital businesses. Is this why you started Beyond the Page Publishing? How does Beyond the Page assist writers with self-publishing? Is it for clients of your literary agency, BookEnds, only?
JESSICA FAUST: Back in 2011 I realized how important self-publishing was becoming and was going to be for authors. I wanted to make sure I had something to offer those clients who might be interested in diving into that world, but didn’t want to do it on their own, so I launched Beyond the Page. We do all editing, and while we say we only offer copyediting, our editorial director Bill Harris is really wonderful and usually works with authors on a much deeper level, providing revision suggestions where needed and doing line edits. We also do formatting, conversion (including adding changed material and reconverting files whenever needed), uploading to all sales sites, marketing help and pitches, copyright filing, and we provide an ISBN and hire a cover designer.
We started working primarily with BookEnds authors, but have expanded well beyond just the BookEnds client list. In fact, I would say that most of the Beyond the Page authors have come from outside BookEnds.
To continue reading the interview click here.