AGENT SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW WITH MOLLY O’NEILL AND QUERY CRITIQUE GIVEAWAY

Today I’m thrilled to have agent Molly O’Neill here. She is a literary agent at Root Literary.

Status: Open to submissions.

Hi Molly! Thanks so much for joining us.

About Molly:

1. Tell us how you became an agent, how long you’ve been one, and what you’ve been doing as an agent.

I actually became an agent exactly two years ago this week! This week also marks my 15 year anniversary of working in the kids/YA publishing industry. So while I’m on the newer side as an agent; I have a deep background in the industry and bring a lot of different skill sets to my approach. The first 5 years or so of my career I worked on the Marketing and Publicity side of the business at Clarion Books and later at HarperCollins (it feels like yesterday, but it was such a different time! We were all trying to understand what these new-fangled things called blogs were. And I spent many a phone call telling authors that, yes, it would be a good idea if they set up a website so they could be found on the internet); then I moved to the Editorial side the industry for a number of years (some of which were particularly intense years, since one of the first projects I signed up as a young HarperCollins editor was a dystopian trilogy by a then-unknown author named Veronica Roth! :)

After working as an editor , I briefly side-stepped into a 2-year stint at an Executive at hybrid tech/publishing start-up; when that role ended I knew I wanted to come back into books, but from a different angle than any of those I’d already explored. Agenting seemed the natural way to bring all those seemingly-disparate layers of my career together, and I dearly love the work of building books and bookmakers and careers all at the same time.

About the Agency:

2. Share a bit about your agency and what it offers to its authors.

Root Literary is a new agency founded by veteran agent Holly Root. Currently there are three of us full-time: Holly, Taylor Haggerty, and myself. Our clients benefit from our proven skills in identifying talent, negotiating advantageous deals, and advocating for our books all the way from submission to publication. We offer our clients broad-based industry insights as well as individualized strategic thinking to empower each author to define and pursue their own unique path to success. We love what we do, and we do it best in partnership with authors who combine skillful storytelling with the drive to build a lasting body of work. We’re also a future-focused agency, borrowing tools and systems from the tech, sales, and start-up industries to help maximize the impact, efficiency, and global reach of the work we do on our clients’ behalf.

What She’s Looking For:

3. What age groups do you represent—picture books, MG, and/or YA? What genres do you represent and what are you looking for in submissions for these genres?

I represent middle grade and YA, both fiction and nonfiction. I represent illustrators who do work across the full publishing spectrum (picture book illustrations, jackets/covers, spot art and interiors, etc). I represent a number of illustrators who are also authors. And while some of my author clients write picture books, they typically work in other genres, too; I’m not actively seeking clients who only write picture books. I also selectively represent clients in a handful of adult genres/categories.

4.  Is there anything you would be especially excited to seeing in the genres you are interested in?

I love a book that makes me laugh, in any category. I’d also be thrilled to add a great love story to my list, one that feels sweeping and epic and memorable, with stakes that somehow rise above ordinary high school life. Epic friendships, vibrant settings and/or smart world-building thrill me, as do stories that play with our accepted notions and understandings of things like memory, time, faith/belief, science, or language in unexpected ways. I’m on a perpetual hunt for magical realism (and authors who understand that magical realism isn’t just a synonym for fantasy); for stories that bend and meld genres; and for dance/theatre/arts-themed books, or any story that pulls the curtain back on a microcosm of tween/teen experience. And it’s vastly important to me that the books on my list thoughtfully represent the diversity of the world that and uphold the common dignity and humanity that we all share; if that’s something you’ve likewise aimed for in your writing, you should send it my way!

What She Isn’t Looking For:

5. What types of submissions are you not interested in?

I’m not seeking picture book texts unless you are also an illustrator. Otherwise, I’m pretty open, and it thrills me to no end when I get surprised by/fall in love with books or types of stories that I didn’t even know I was looking for, so I’m hesitant to put too many parameters on my inbox.

Agent Philosophy:

6. What is your philosophy as an agent both in terms of the authors you want to work with and the books you want to represent?

A dedication to the craft of writing always impresses me: I like to say that a common thread between all of my clients is that they are perpetually growing, evolving, and challenging themselves to become better authors and illustrators today (and tomorrow!) than they were yesterday. I also think it’s important that my clients care as much or more about the young readers they’re writing for than they do their own fame or success -- that sense of purpose can help steady the course when a client might otherwise lose heart or get frustrated by the inevitable highs and lows of a creative career.

As an agent, strategy guides me -- the strategy looks different for each of my clients, because the work that each one is doing is different, but if you’re my client we will always spend time thinking and talking about the why behind each of the choices we’re making about your career. I also care about helping my clients to thrive as creatives and successfully balance the complex layers of having a creative/professional/sometimes-public life, so we tend to talk often about navigating the many steps of one’s career as an author/illustrator beyond the first “yes.”

Editorial Agent:

7. Are you an editorial agent? If so, what is your process like when you’re working with your authors before submitting to editors?

Yes & no! Having been an editor for a number of years, editorial muscles are ones that I can flex easily. However, as an agent, the kind of editorial work I’m doing is very different than an editor  will later do, and just because I was once an editor doesn’t mean I’m trying to overstep my role & do their jobs for them. Most of my “editorial” work would better be described as early-stage developmental work -- trying to help the author/illustrator identify the heart of the story they are telling and how that awareness should impact the shape of the narrative. That same understanding of what the creator feels is most important about their story in turn guides me when I think about who would be the right editors to submit to, who would potentially know how to support that author and/or illustrator’s work. I’m also using my knowledge of the industry’s trends, evolution, and history to help a reader think about how to set apart their story in distinctive ways, so that it has the best possible chance at finding a publishing home, and, ultimately, readers.

Query Methods and Submission Guidelines: (Always verify before submitting)

8. How should authors query you and what do you want to see with the query letter?

Follow the submissions guidelines on my website or the Root Literary website.

9.  Do you have any specific dislikes in query letters or the first pages submitted to you?

Not a dislike, but I do have a preference, if you’re a novelist. If you have one readily available, please send a synopsis along with your query and first ten pages (and since someone will surely wonder: the synopsis “counts” separately; you don’t have to reduce the sample pages to less than ten to include the length of your synopsis); it’s not essential, but I do find it a useful tool. And this is definitely a personal taste--my colleagues Holly and Taylor don’t find synopses useful in nearly the same way I do, which just goes to show that there are a million different kinds of readers, even among publishing professionals.

Response Time:

10. What’s your response time to queries and requests for more pages of a manuscript?

I’ve just re-opened to queries this week after moving over to Root Literary, so I don’t have a precise gauge on this yet.

Self-Published and Small Press Authors:

11.  Are you open to representing authors who have self-published or been published by smaller presses? What advice do you have for them if they want to try to find an agent to represent them?

Yes, but with the caveat than an author has to be willing to see self-published work with new eyes. If you’re inviting agents and publishers into the process, it requires a different flexibility than working own your own. Traditional publishing means a collaborative process, which in turn often means re-thinking and re-defining what it means to reach an audience and tell a story that resonates. For authors who have published with smaller presses, their next book likely needs to be one whose themes will connect with a larger audience (rather than being niche or overly regional) in order to successfully make the leap to a larger house.

12. With all the changes in publishing—self-publishing, hybrid authors, more small publishers—do you see the role of agents changing at all? Why?

If anything, I think the role of an agent has become more important, in helping clients navigate the myriad of possibilities and determine how best their goals can be served by the different possibilities available to them. I also think that agents tend to have an granular understanding of the industry and its players and evolutions--historical, present, and future--from being immersed in it day after day, year after year, that’s hard for a writer to gain from the outside looking in, and that expertise is part of what an agent shares with their clients.

Clients:

13. Who are some of the authors you represent?

I represent:

●       Remarkable educator and Nerdy Book Club / Nerd Camp co-founder Colby Sharp. (His debut, THE CREATIVITY PROJECT, comes out in March so you should all go pre-order it right now!);

●       Ambassador to School Libraries and great friend to book creators, publishers, and readers alike, John Schumacher (AKA Mr. Schu);

●       Middle grade author Lynne Kelly whose utterly wonderful SONG FOR A WHALE comes out in March 2019;

●       Debut Iranian-American YA Author Adib Khorram whose DARIUS THE GREAT IS NOT OKAY should be one of your most anticipated reads of Fall 2018;

●       Temre Beltz whose middle grade THE SECRET STORY OF BIRDIE BLOOM is one of the books I most want to travel back in time & give to my own past kid-self (Winter 2019);

●       Author-illustrator and naturalist Emily Dove, who is currently illustrating SPENCER AND VINCENT, a tale of two jellyfish brothers coming in Spring 2019;

●       Debut author K. J. Reilly’s WORDS WE DON’T SAY, a powerful contemporary YA;

●       Insta-famous illustrators like Taryn Knight (AKA Taryn Draws) and Joy Hwang (AKA Mom is Drawing); and other artistic author/illustrator talents like #KidlitChat co-moderator Blythe Russo; writer/maker/educator Emmy Kastner;

●       and many others you’ll hear about soon!

Links and Contact Info:

15. Please share how writers should contact you to submit a query and your links on the Web.

My website

Root Literary’s Website

My Manuscript Wishlist page

My Publishers Marketplace page

My Twitter

My Instagram

Additional Advice:

16. Is there any other advice you’d like to share with aspiring authors that we haven’t covered?

Give yourself permission to take creative risks; they can pay off tremendously! And even if they don’t, you’ll have grown as a writer/illustrator by stretching yourself, and growth can only get you closer to your goals!

Thanks for sharing all your advice, Molly.

Molly is generously offering a query critique to one lucky winner. To enter, all you need to do is be a follower (just click the follower button if you're not a follower) and leave a comment through February 3rd. If your e-mail is not on your Google Profile, you must leave it in the comments to enter either contest. If you do not want to enter the contest, that's okay. Just let me know in the comments.

If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or your blog, mention this in the comments and I'll give you an extra entry. This is an international giveaway.

Profile Details:
Last Updated: 5/19/2020
Agent Contacted for Review? Yes
Last Reviewed by Agent? N/A

Have any experience with this agent? See something that needs updating? Please leave a comment or e-mail me at natalieiaguirre7@gmail.com
Note: These agent profiles and interviews presently focus on agents who accept children's fiction. Please take the time to verify anything you might use here before querying an agent. The information found here is subject to change.