Caren Johnson Literary Agency

Caren Johnson Literary Agency
132 East 43rd Street
No. 216
New York, NY 10017

CJLA is a full-service literary agency based in New York City, founded by Caren Johnson in early 2007. We represent all types of books, but specialize in high quality children’s & young adult fiction, romance & women’s fiction, and non-fiction. We believe in working very closely with our authors during every stage of publication and beyond.

To submit to CJLA, send us a query letter describing your book and yourself. Make sure all query letters are in the body of the email. You may include 3-5 sample pages from your manuscript or your overview/idea pages from your proposal directly in the body of your email following your query letter. Attachments will not be opened unless specifically requested.

Caren Johnson Estesen is looking for romance (all genres so she's now open to paranormal and romantic suspense in addition to contemporary and historical), erotica, up-market women's fiction, thrillers and YA. In nonfiction she's looking for social sciences, narrative science, women's studies, and history (particularly World War II and the Cold War). She is not considering commercial fiction, literary fiction or mysteries at this time.

To submit to Caren, email johnsonlitagency@gmail.com

Elana Roth is focusing her list on children's and young adult books, and is primarily looking for high concept middle grade and YA fiction. She will consider picture books from author/illustrators only. She'll also consider a select number of adult projects in the areas of narrative nonfiction, pop culture and pop science. No vampires.

Elana says:
“I'm a sucker for a big hook. If you look at my clients' books, you'll see that I can't get away from it. (Prime example and shameless plug: Pam Bachorz has her debut novel, Candor coming out this fall, and it's about a planned community where everyone is brainwashed to be perfect, but one boy knows the truth and works the system to his advantage. You can't get much bigger hook than brainwashing, and the book sucked me in from the first page.) I'm always looking for a new, great hook. I love alternate visions of the world we live in, or some strange "what if?" premise. I'm mostly really big on plot. Which doesn't mean I don't think voice is crucial. But on their own, really introspective, quiet books that are all voice and no story don't do it for me. And I have a lot of YA right now, so I'd like more middle grade, but I'm not picky about genre when it comes to falling in love.”

To submit to Elana, email elana@johnsonliterary.com

Submission guidelines: http://www.johnsonliterary.com/submissions/

Home: http://www.johnsonliterary.com/

Note: I have two seminars coming up on How to Get Published. On Sept 12 in Ingersoll (details here) and on Oct 4 in Toronto (details here).

For information about Brian Henry’s upcoming writing workshops and classes see here.