Submission Guidelines

Thank you for your interest in the Brattle Agency. Since the founding of the agency in 2008, the Brattle Agency has prided itself on accepting unsolicited submissions for consideration. The industry is founded on discoveries. There are many great writers out there who have never had an agent or somehow escaped an agent’s radar and that was why we were always interested in hearing from prospective clients. Unfortunately, the industry has changed in that nearly no publisher will accept a manuscript unless it is submitted to them by an agent. This institutional change has meant that nearly every hopeful writer has had to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to secure an agent to start (or in a few cases further) their career. That has led to a tsunami of submissions to the pool of agents who are willing to read and evaluate unsolicited proposals. That tsunami has engulfed the Brattle Agency. On any given day our inbox of submission numbers is in the hundreds. It was untenable. It had to change.

So, as of August 1st, 2019, the Brattle Agency will no longer be accepting open submissions. We will be moving to a semi-annual reading period for open submissions. Each of the periods will be one month and there will be no restrictions on the manuscript type: fiction or non-fiction will be acceptable. (I should add here that I am extremely discriminating about fiction manuscripts. That doesn't mean I don't take them but they have to knock me out just to get in the door.) Please keep an eye out here on the Submission Guidelines page for the next open period. We are sorry that we had to make this change and it isn’t a decision we took lightly. We know how hard it is to secure an agent. The agency is small and we were just spending too much time reading and responding to queries.

During the open submission period please send a cover letter, a CV if appropriate, and however much of the manuscript you feel we should read in order to gain a full impression of the book. Once assembled, please send the materials to <submissions@thebrattleagency.com>.

The submission period is now CLOSED ending on October 31st, 2023. Responses to proposals received in October will be approximately four to six weeks from reception by the agency in the order in which they were received. Thank you.