Books are my business: Literary agent Jade Kavanagh

Jade Kavanagh: 'I make sure that I have an author’s best interests at heart always.'

Jade Kavanagh is a literary agent with the Darley Anderson Agency and Associates, based in London.

How did you become a literary agent?

I loved reading my entire childhood, and then as a teenager, I rebelled and stopped.

When I went to university and studied English literature, it was such a blessing, because I discovered books all over again.

I stayed on for my masters, then I had this insane idea that it would be easy to get into publishing. I did different internships, and then found my way into this agency.

What does your role involve?

I represent authors in the same way actors have agents. I read their work, take it on, represent it, and then sell it to publishers, and that can look like so many different things. 

I handle the US and the UK for my authors, and then we have a rights team who try and sell the rights internationally for foreign translation.

My day to day is always different. So I’ll be reading submissions, taking people on, doing editorial work, trying to sell a book — pitching, networking, negotiating the deal, doing the contract, on to publication, all the way through that, and afterwards, the whole career of a writer. 

I make sure that I have an author’s best interests at heart always.

What do you like most about it?

Falling in love with a book and then being a small part of that journey, facilitating the author to get their book read by people. 

I was on an editorial call once with an author and she was asked: “what does success look like to you?” 

She said “this call where we are talking about my characters as though they’re real people, that’s success”. In that moment, I thought this is why I do the job.

What do you like least about it?

Letting people down or people’s books not selling.

There are so many reasons why a book won’t sell, and it’s often nothing to do with the book. Because if I’ve enjoyed it as a reader, and my team enjoys it as a reader, I think it will sell.

The hardest thing to explain to an author is that their book is brilliant, but it’s just not selling right now. 

So much of the job is strategy and getting the book to be the best it possibly can be. 

You need a talented author, you need an amazing plot, you need all these things, but you also need luck. 

Sometimes it just doesn’t happen, and that can be really heartbreaking.

But the beauty of the agency I work for, and the way we do things, is that we sign authors for their career, so it’s always onwards and upwards.

Three desert island books

My favourite book ever is Dracula by Bram Stoker. I’ve got five different editions and I’ve read it countless times.

The first time I read it, I was on the train home from uni, it was pitch black and raining, and I was reading the bit where Jonathan Harker is on his way to the castle. I had to close the book because I was too scared to read it.

When I was a kid, I had a huge collection of Milly-Molly-Mandy stories by Joyce Lankester Brisley. I read it so much it was worn out.

During lockdown, because it was such a horrible, insane time, I was looking for something comforting to read, and I bought it again. 

It was the comforting idea of this little girl in this perfect little countryside village with her thatched roof cottage, I just love it.

For my third one, I would go with my favourite author ever, Nora Roberts — her romantic suspense books are brilliant. I would find it really hard to pick, but I would take the Cousins O’Dwyer Trilogy.

• Jade Kavanagh will take part in How to Snare an Agent with Simon Trewin at Dun Laoghaire’s DLR Lexicon Library at 3pm on Friday, October 17, as part of the Murder One Crime Writing Festival.
• murderone.ie