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#227 - Olivia Maidment
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Literary agent and Head of Books, Olivia Maidment joins us this week to chat about her career in publishing, her list of authors and the dos and don't of query letters!
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Transcript
Importance of Writing and Reader Preferences
00:00:00
Speaker
Oh, a spicy question. I love Because the writing is sort of everything, right? Like you can fix plot holes, but if the writer... So some readers love that and some readers are like, but I wanted more of this. So it's kind of, it's kind of a gamble.
Introducing Olivia Maidment and Her Career Path
00:00:14
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the Right and Wrong podcast. Joining us today is a literary agent and head of books at Madeline Milburn Agency, Olivia Maidment. Hello. Hello.
00:00:25
Speaker
Hi. Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. Hi. Thanks for being on. I'm excited to to be chatting with you. let's start with Let's start with you. um You've been at Madeleine Milburn since 2020, so five years.
00:00:42
Speaker
But ah i I'm right thinking you've been in publishing longer than that. Yeah, so I started in publishing in August of 2016, straight out of coming from university. I went straight into working in literary agencies. I actually started working with an internship at Madeleine Milburn, where I worked for a month, only a month, and then went off and then kind of came back.
00:01:08
Speaker
Gone full circle? Yes, very much.
Olivia's Transition from Law to Publishing
00:01:12
Speaker
Did you always want to work in in publishing? Was that kind of the the direction that you wanted to take after you'd finished university?
00:01:19
Speaker
No, to me it's not at all really. I didn't really know anything about it. I didn't really consider it as an industry. um i did English and Classics as a kind of joint honours and I thought I wanted to go into law. So I was going to do the law conversion course.
00:01:35
Speaker
um But I did a few kind of internships in that and I realised it wasn't really for me. um But the university that I was going to be doing my law conversion at, they had this programme where you could kind of basically, if you wanted to change what you were doing,
00:01:48
Speaker
you could do something else. So I was going to then go and do the publishing master's because I just looked at their list of programmes. I thought, oh, that sounds really interesting. and But then I got an internship with Madeleine Milburn from there I got a job. So I never ended up doing the master's or kind of any after kind of university postgraduate stuff.
00:02:05
Speaker
um But that kind of led me into this world. And yeah, I love it so, so much. The internship, but that would be like an agency agency assistant kind of role helping out around the agency, I would guess.
00:02:17
Speaker
Yeah, just kind of very entry level interning. So I did a month at Middleton-Milburn back when it was a kind of much more boutique, smaller company back in 2016. And from there, I went on to a six month internship at the Blair Partnership.
00:02:33
Speaker
um And they offered me a full time role there as an assistant for their agents, which was amazing.
Understanding the Role of a Literary Agent
00:02:38
Speaker
um Okay. Did you, i've I've spoken to a few agents and it's funny how many agents um got into publishing and didn't really know either about the existence or what a literary agent did.
00:02:52
Speaker
ah presumably you knew once you'd, you know you'd started the internship, but like ahead of that, when you, when you kind of got accepted to this internship, was it a learning curve to, did you kind of know what an agent was or what they did in the industry?
00:03:04
Speaker
No, absolutely. i I'd never heard of one. but I read an interview and it was someone talking about how agenting was the marriage of kind of business and books. And I could always love reading, um as with like everyone in publishing, because it was a massive passion for my whole life.
00:03:19
Speaker
And i read this interview where an agent was talking about, um because i was reading a lot from people working in publishing at the time when I decided to switch from law into it. um They were talking about how it was the perfect marriage of business and books, how it's kind of like you're using the creative side of like editing, of kind of hunting for new authors, for new talent, but also career planning, kind of legal contracts.
00:03:43
Speaker
And that really excited me because I didn't feel ready to kind of give up those kind of technical hard skills either. um So for me, agenting felt like a really exciting role because it let me do both of those things. It seemed like for me when I was 21, it just seemed like the dream.
00:03:57
Speaker
to go into. um And I think it has really suited me. It's definitely a role that wears many hats. You know, yeah you touched on a couple there, but it's even more than that because like there's so much of a social aspect to it as well.
00:04:09
Speaker
you You know, the the relationship between you and each of your authors and like being a middleman sometimes between an editor and an author and all of that stuff all wrapped into one, I guess. For sure, like it's it's so multifaceted and I think that you have to really embrace
Dynamic Nature of Literary Agent Work
00:04:26
Speaker
that. You have to be someone who's who's willing to kind of be doing a day that is not really cohesive in the things you're doing because you're managing so many different projects and so many different projects are at different stages. that You'll have you' kind of your debut authors who you're just kind of doing some early editing with or you're just getting them out on submission for the first time.
00:04:44
Speaker
You'll have your more established authors who are dealing with with different kind of challenges and obstacles and and things to celebrate. So it's it's a job where you have to be able to kind of dive in and out of different things very quickly.
00:04:57
Speaker
which I think is kind of part of the fun and the buzz of it and and makes you feel really excited about coming to work every day because it's so varied. Exciting. There's always something new on the horizon.
00:05:08
Speaker
um So you are obviously a literary agent, but you also hold the title of head of books at Man in Melbourne. What does that role entail?
00:05:19
Speaker
Sure. so So the role of Hiller Books, again, is quite a multifaceted role. So one thing is kind of providing guidance for the other agents if there's maybe something that they need to deal with, maybe strategically or a contractual issue. and then also it's things like...
00:05:36
Speaker
helping to develop what our agency's response will be to things like for example like ai has been a big big hot topic across the industry so i work with the directors to work out kind of what our agency's stance will be making sure that we've got initiatives in place to help our authors through challenges like that any kind of big things that come on for the industry like i'll be part of those conversations to work out what we as an agency are kind of you know what we're going to do to handle those things and yeah just kind of making sure that our books department is everyone's feeling flourishing and happy. Yeah.
00:06:09
Speaker
Okay. Right. So it's, it's, it's, it's like a, it's a leadership role. Basically you're, you know, just making sure everything's ticking along and everyone's happy. Yeah. Like you say, happy and and doing their thing. Okay. Yeah. it's it's a leadership role in the company ah basically. Yeah.
00:06:23
Speaker
Okay, great. um Let's get into the agenting side of things um and talk about your your list and kind of your work in that space.
Literary Focus and Genre Blending
00:06:35
Speaker
Broadly, you represent literary upmarket and book club fiction. Does that about cover your kind of list? It does. um And I've recognized, I was out in New York last week with my colleague, just going around all the different publishers and pitching our lists and telling them about exciting projects that are coming up for both of us.
00:06:57
Speaker
And I think I realized that there's kind of probably three main areas to my list. So there's kind of the big... And sweeping kind of massive up her literary novels that I love so much, um kind of like really powerful and emotive and full of texture.
00:07:14
Speaker
Things like authors like, I guess, like Andrew O'Hagan, Ben Neveristo, Barbara Kingsolver, the types of people that... to I love to read and the types of books I love to work with um and then there's a kind of more literary accessible literary millennial i readership ah contemporary fiction that I that work on a lot um I love books in that kind of space looking at questions of identity maybe they're bit more zeitgeisty maybe with a really singular voice or hook
00:07:47
Speaker
um And then also I represent books that are in a kind of literate market space that blends with kind shades of genre. maybe that's like ah literary speculative, literary horror. I'm loving kind of like ah literary thrillers at the moment. I'm really looking for an exciting literary thriller.
00:08:05
Speaker
um So I think those are kind of the three main areas that I work in. Okay. When, uh, just for clarity here, cause sometimes I think I have a vague sense of what some of these genres are.
00:08:18
Speaker
Um, but I think sometimes I speak to people and then, and then I think to myself, maybe my view of what this genre is describing is not quite the same as theirs. When you say literary, what's the kind of general idea, like the general kind of, um, definition of, of what you're looking when you you talk about like a literary thriller or a literary horror?
00:08:37
Speaker
I think it really depends on that who you ask. I think that question is so difficult to answer because depending on where someone sits in the market, they'll consider things to be, you know, for some people, something is only literary when it's maybe extremely literary, maybe more experimental.
00:08:54
Speaker
um For some people, it's things that are... just not very openly clearly commercial. um in terms of when I'm talking about genre blending and genre blending with kind of literary fiction, i think I'm just looking for stuff that's more grounded in the human parts of the story.
00:09:14
Speaker
I can example of that. Carla by Colin Walsh was a kind of more upmarket literary thriller that came out this year. And it is about a disappearance. It's about a murder, but it's also about kind of these small town stories lives It's about the characters, it's about the relationships, the kind of the socioeconomic dynamics in that town.
00:09:35
Speaker
And I think for
Marketing and Positioning of Books
00:09:36
Speaker
me, that's it. It's just like stuff that that still has those fields of genre, but is kind of very grounded in the people um and their circumstances. Okay, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the sort of very detail-oriented, but also quite like grounded down to earth, which sounds like what you were kind of describing with that, and then obviously the literary aspect, how it's written.
00:09:58
Speaker
Yeah, beautiful writing yeah smart writing, sharp writing, very kind of thoughtful writing. i think like for me that's something that i always want my list to be is writers who, whether they're in an art market space, a book club space or literary space, who are really kind of dedicated to being the best writers that they can be.
00:10:18
Speaker
Yeah. And i ah the general sense I get as well is that sometimes when something is literary, it can also be slower. It will have it can have less of a pace to it because there's more kind of like build up. There's more taking the time to really develop an idea or a thought.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, and I think it's, I think there can be a misconception that that literary means that there isn't going to be plot because there definitely can be so many amazing literary books that have so much plot in them.
00:10:45
Speaker
um And I think for me, I i love the kind of literary novels that are more slow and atmospheric and somewhat navel-gazy, I also love, um you know, kind of the big sweeping epic ah literary fiction that is really twisty and turny.
00:11:02
Speaker
ah okay So I think it's, it's again, it's just it's quite a wide net and it's hard to define exactly what it is. And I think everyone struggles to define exactly. Yeah, no, I completely agree.
00:11:15
Speaker
And it sounds like also just the way that you kind of preempted that was that To some degree, it's a marketing decision, whether it's what being positioned. You know, something might be on the sort of cusp and that you can't decide either the way, but at marketing might decide that we're going to position this as literary because it makes more sense to the people we're trying to reach.
00:11:33
Speaker
For sure. And I think that's something that happens in a lot of discussions around a book. It's like, you know, sometimes things are, we might say they're published in a more literary way. They're published up. They might be being sometimes as a more kind of literary novel that's given a more commercial wide appeal look to reach out more widely.
00:11:51
Speaker
um It's just about kind of zeroing in on who those readers are. Okay, right. And then this might be harder to define. i don't know. yeah When you say upmarket and book club fiction, what how do you kind of define those in a loose sense, I guess?
00:12:09
Speaker
I think they're really interchangeable phrases. yeah um And I think, again, like upmarket is interchangeable with like accessible literary. i think for me, when I'm talking about book club stuff, I'm probably talking about books that are a bit bit more on the more commercial end of my list.
00:12:24
Speaker
So the writing will still be really strong, but it might not be as precise, maybe not the main point of the book. him And a big thing with book club fiction is, you know, you want it to have questions that you could talk
What Olivia Looks for in Books
00:12:36
Speaker
about at a book club. but You know, you want it to have themes that,
00:12:39
Speaker
you can pull out things that you can engage with kind of meaty topics that the book's dealing with for me just on on my list book club just tends to be stuff that still has is you know those really interesting themes and questions but but maybe the writing isn't the central focus even though it still needs to be quite strong you know it still needs to be really strong and it still needs to be really engaging Okay.
00:12:59
Speaker
Right. So is it, is it almost like a scale ah where there's like, if you have the literary stuff and then there's sort of that, the accessible literary, as you called it, that kind of leans towards upmarket and then that kind of leans towards book club.
00:13:15
Speaker
I'd say so. But again, again, it really does just depend who you ask. I do you think people have different takes on that. But for me, I think I always want a book that feels really well written and has some really important topics that it's discussing or meaty topics that it's discussing.
00:13:31
Speaker
In that space, I can, you know, I'm happy to work with books that are on the more literary end or on the more kind of, or on the more book club end. Okay. Okay, great. Yeah, I think that's a pretty good, a pretty good way of covering it and and explaining those three things.
00:13:45
Speaker
Before we head over to the desert island, ah it is currently the middle of May 2025. Are there any specific settings, genres, characters, or whatever it might be that you are particularly interested in in adding to your list?
00:14:01
Speaker
So i feel like I really am after a kind of literary market thriller. um Okay. Something quite pacey and plotty, set somewhere quite interesting and atmospheric. I know that sounds incredibly vague, and but I feel like I want something very twisty,
00:14:22
Speaker
and kind of felt full of intrigue. It's been interesting because we've been having a lot of conversations. Like I said, I was in New York last week meeting with a, basically, I think we had in four days, we had like 36 meetings across various imprints.
00:14:37
Speaker
at different publishers. And I think a big thing that came out from those meetings is that people are really looking for plots to get lost in right now. And so I think I'd love to find something really exciting and plotty, but also kind of very human and intelligent in that kind of literary thriller space.
00:14:56
Speaker
Okay, cool. I think that's, ah I mean, it's broad enough that people can figure out how to fit into that, but also I think specific enough that to identify what what you're looking for specifically. i also um i also am always looking for really good contemporary fiction. i feel like um It's one of my favorite places to to represent all stairs. So I'm always looking for more really, really good contemporary fiction.
00:15:18
Speaker
and also I watched um Conclave, which I know that everyone is watching now because we yeah had a conclave. um But I think that kind of that peek behind the curtain that you do, that Conclave does so well, where you kind of you're in this very like cloistered world.
00:15:34
Speaker
that you otherwise might not know very much about and kind of learning about the politics and the dynamics of it like anything that does that I'm always really excited by okay right so the sort of well with Conclave it's very much for me at least it was like the humanizing of these sort of mythical people who you just assume ah ah not existing like the rest of us but are also just very human exactly and like maybe just like that kind of forensic dive on sort of like how these systems are built, how they kind of keep, keep going.
00:16:10
Speaker
And yeah, showing you the human sides of the people kind of within them. um So anything like that, I always find so interesting. I love, I love those kinds of books that feel like a peek behind the curtain. Okay, cool. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely a ah more specific ah subscribed thing to to to look for there.
Building Relationships with Publishers
00:16:27
Speaker
um I just wanted to touch on before we get to that line again, ah you the the trip to New York, is that something that you, like the team at Madeleine Milburn, do you do that quite often as in go to like, obviously New York's far away. So you you, I presumably you did a bunch of different publishers whilst you were there.
00:16:45
Speaker
But is is it quite a normal thing for for you and the team to just go to like a publisher and just kind of present your list and say, this is all the things that, you know, I've got going with all my authors? Yeah, so huge part of our job is is meeting with publishers and understanding what they're looking for and pitching our projects to them in person.
00:17:03
Speaker
and So we do that in the UK really, really regularly. Like in my week, every week I'll probably have at least like one coffee with an editor or a lunch or whatever. um We often have editors coming to the office and we'll kind of do either like a roundtable where we'll all meet with them or kind of have one-to-one meetings. where We'll each go in one by one and kind of pitch our list to them.
00:17:24
Speaker
Publishers kind of throw events where they invite agents in. um And then we also do overseas trips, so to New York, ah to Frankfurt. and for the Frankfurt Book Fair. There's London Book Fair where we meet publishers from kind of all around the world.
00:17:36
Speaker
And also for our film and TV team, fly out to l LA, quite a lot. um So yeah, I think it's ah is's such a human business, not just on the side of meeting the authors and and building these really important, long-lasting relationships with them, but also in terms of building really strong relationships with publishers and understanding the types of books that they're looking for. um Because it can be so easy to kind of, we get wish lists in from them. So publishers might send us kind of ah guides as to what their individual editors want to see. But it's it nothing kind of can replace
00:18:10
Speaker
Seeing that person face to face, whether it's on Zoom or or or an actual person meeting and hearing them talk about what they're looking for, hearing them talk about what's exciting them, talking about like book recommendations and movie recommendations and like really getting to know the core of of what they want on their list.
00:18:28
Speaker
Okay, right. and But if you're meeting them ah to pitch something specific or pitch like a broad number of things, that's that would be separate from you being on submission with a specific manuscript or a specific author.
00:18:41
Speaker
Yeah, so the way that it works would be that, you know, when you've got exciting submissions coming up, when you've got books that you're kind of, the edits are done that you do with them in-house at the agency, and you're ready to start sending their books out to the world and to editors um kind of on submission.
00:18:58
Speaker
In the lead up to that, I'll start having meetings with publishers that I'm really excited to send that book to, to kind of ah lay the groundwork and get them excited about this book that's coming so that's kind of like the first one of the very first things we do when we're gearing up to getting a book out on on submission but that will be the kind of the direct pitching with editors um when you go for coffees of them telling about them about this book the ebook coming uh kind of just laying that exciting groundwork work and then each book will go on an individual submission which is kind of an an email submission um where we
00:19:31
Speaker
literally just send the manuscript and our picture materials directly to the editors. But that early stage of of meeting editors for coffee and pitching the books before they're actually sent is a really great way to just kind of garner interest to to see if your submission list is is right. Like, you know, you've got the right people on it based on the reactions from when you pitch the book to them.
00:19:55
Speaker
Sometimes they might give you a really helpful steer and say, actually, that's not for me, but you should send it to my colleague. So it's all part of how we build up towards a submission landing on someone's desk and them already knowing about it and already being excited to see it.
Challenges and Responsibilities in Agenting
00:20:08
Speaker
Okay. Wow. There's so much goes into this. isn' It's not just sending emails off to people. It's yeah, you guys are really what doing a lot of groundwork before the submission even goes out to anywhere. That's, that's great to hear. It's great to, to like, like you say, get a peek behind the curtain because sometimes, especially in publishing, a lot of things are like not,
00:20:28
Speaker
uh so clear to see or like obfuscated if you're on different sides of the of the of the industry but that's great um that's that's really interesting to hear about how that kind of works in ah in a logistical sense for sure i think the reality is is like there's so many books going out on submission all the time and anything that we can do on our end before the book even lands in someone's inbox to make them be aware of it to make them be excited that it's coming to to to know how to kind of make them want to jump on it.
00:20:57
Speaker
Uh, it, it can make such a massive difference. Yeah. Makes it makes, makes perfect sense. Um, and just, uh, makes me wonder as well, how you guys like have time in the day to do all of the different things that agents need to do.
00:21:12
Speaker
Basically we work all the time. Yes. yeah
00:21:16
Speaker
Yes. It's a, it's a, it's a full on career path being an agent.
Book Recommendation: 'Piranesi' for Isolation
00:21:21
Speaker
Um, we are at the point the episode where I, uh, pack up your things and ship you off and ask you, Liv, if you were stranded on a desert island with a single book, which book do you hope that it would be?
00:21:34
Speaker
you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about this question. And I spent a lot of time thinking, okay, am I looking just for like my favourite book? Am I looking for a book that, like I read maybe years ago that I've always kept thinking about?
00:21:48
Speaker
Like, what is the the thing that I would how would I approach this question and I realized actually the way that I would approach it is just kind of like what would help me the most on a desert island know if that's quite a practical response to it but that's kind of that's where my thinking went so was thinking would I want to take like a short story collection so that I could go into multiple different worlds or would I want something like really big and sweeping so that I could something that like 800 pages just so I could read it for ages and ages um Or would I want something to remind me of home, so like set in London, or something like with about kind of human resolution to remind me like I can get through this.
00:22:23
Speaker
um But then I thought I think the one I would choose is Piranesi. Because obviously in Piranesi, he lives in this big house, and he's kind of quite isolated there. And he finds a way to go through each of these these rooms every day and get a routine and like,
00:22:39
Speaker
find a way to build a life in this very kind of isolated and reduced space and I thought well I think I'd read that because then that would help me to work out how I would do that if I was trapped on a desert island and how you can like build these little routines that not kind of make your life have that meaning even when you're somewhere so kind of away from reality um so that's where that's where I ended up That's great. I really liked the, I loved hearing the thought process and the parallels you you you got there. I think that's great because yeah, that book ticks a lot of those boxes for you because I think it sort of reconnects you with the world, know, the world that you, you're familiar with, where you've come from, but also like you said, yeah, helps you kind of, you can mimic in in part setting up those own routines for yourself. Obviously they'd be different routines, but you could be kind of living it whilst you're also experiencing it and reading it.
00:23:34
Speaker
And also think it was pretty easy. It's like he, He's so happy in his routines and he's so, and obviously you've, towards the end, you realize that there's a falsity to that.
00:23:45
Speaker
But I think that kind of, in the early chapters, there's an element of like the simplicity of it is actually really comforting. Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:57
Speaker
I think that's, that's a really cool answer. I was thinking now about that if there was like another book that I would, maybe the Martian is a kind of similar thing where it's like it's just by himself and he's just figuring out each step.
00:24:07
Speaker
He's like, Oh, okay. I need to do this. I need to do this. Yeah. I really like that. That's a great, that's a great answer. And I also just think Piranes has got a very comforting voice. Um, and I think that's what I'd be looking for if I was trapped on a desert Island, just a really comforting voice.
00:24:19
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. You don't want like a harsh abrasive voice when you're by yourself.
Closing Notes and How to Connect with Olivia
00:24:26
Speaker
So next up, we are going to chat about submissions, queries and cover letters that will be in the extended episode available on patreon.com slash right and wrong.
00:24:38
Speaker
um but How incredible that is. um so yeah, not for me, but i very much, I very much love being a part of it um as a third party.
00:24:48
Speaker
Okay, great. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's good to be inspired by that you all all the people you're working with. Yeah. And I think, um, yeah.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah. Amazing. Um, well, thank you so much, uh, Liv for coming on the podcast and telling us all about your, uh, your kind of origins in publishing madeline what's going on at madeline milburn everything that's going on with you and and your list it's been it's been really cool and really interesting chatting with you thank you so much and yeah um much appreciated For anyone wanting to keep up with what Liv is doing, you can follow her on Instagram at LitAgentLiv.
00:25:26
Speaker
ah you can If you're thinking about submitting to Liv or any of the team over at Madeline Milburn, you want to head over to the website madelinemilburn.co.uk, head to the submissions page and you'll have all of the instructions and the form that's fillable online.
00:25:42
Speaker
It's all done very well, so it's very difficult for you to do it wrong. And to support the podcast, like, follow and subscribe. Join the Patreon for ad-free extended episodes and check out my other podcast, The Chosen Ones and Other Tropes.
00:25:53
Speaker
Thanks again to Olivia and thanks to everyone listening. We will catch you on the next episode.