Comics

Graphic novel literary agents sit at a strange intersection: they sell pictures and words as one object, and they know a 32-page picture book is not the same sale as a 200-page memoir in panels. Comics here covers middle grade and young adult graphic novels, adult nonfiction drawn as reportage, and the hybrid novel that carries full-page art between chapters.

Comics submissions split along a line the sibling tags do not have: a script is not a manuscript. Agents here read a full script plus sample art, or a graphic novel dummy, and they judge the page as much as the prose. Adams Literary and Andrea Brown work with author-illustrators who draw their own panels, so a writer who only writes and cannot sketch needs a collaborator named before the pitch. BookEnds Literary, P.S. Literary, The Rights Factory, Transatlantic Agency and United Agents handle both halves of the shelf: prose novels with comics sensibility and full graphic works. United Agents sits in London, which matters if you want a British co-edition. What these seven share is patience with a slow form: a 200-page graphic novel takes years to draw, and the agent stays through the drawing.