SPOTLIGHT FEATURE – Francesca Riccardi from Kate Nash Literary Agency

Good morning, everyone!

This week, we’re joined by Francesca Riccardi who moved to Kate Nash Literary Agency this year after fifteen years of experience in publishing, including a position as Sales and Marketing Director at Canelo.

Francesca is open to a range of commercial genre fiction for adults but especially loves contemporary and historical crime/thriller and historical adventure stories. Across genres, she loves to see diverse characters and is keen to work collaboratively with her clients to develop the manuscript.

You can follow Francesca on Twitter at @friccar_ or view her agency profile here. She is also participating in our Agent One-to-One service this month, so don’t miss out on a chance to hear from her! Read highlights from our interview with Francesca below…

Hi Francesca, thanks for speaking with us today!

What brought you to agenting?

I worked in publishing for over fifteen years. When I started out, I didn’t realise I was in the publishing industry – I worked for the Royal National Institute of Blind People where I transcribed books into accessible formats. It dawned on me that my experience could make me a good fit for a publishing company, so I went to work for HarperCollins as a digital assistant.

Since then I’ve worked in various roles across various publishers both corporate and independent, and I worked with a great range of authors many of whom I’m still in touch with. My last job was Sales and Marketing Director at Canelo, and I’d reached a point in my career where I was spending a lot of time in meetings, managing the wider team and sharing HR responsibilities with the other senior managers. I didn’t have as much time to do what gets me out of bed in the morning: work with authors.

I left in January and wrote out to a few agents I already knew from my earlier publishing work. I met up with Kate Nash since I’d been a fan of what she does for a while already, and at the beginning of July I decided to sign up to work with her as a literary agent.

Has your experience in sales and marketing influenced your work as an agent?

Definitely. I still feel I’m in a sales role as an agent but I’m looking at things from a slightly different angle. Part of our job is to know what’s happening in the market so I’m always thinking about what’s selling and what editors are looking to commission, especially in commercial fiction which I’m very familiar with from previous roles. Knowing the internal mechanisms of how publishers work is helpful too; for example, I know what happens in acquisitions meetings because I sat in them for years. There’s a lot of crossover and you need a very similar skillset, you’re just using those skills with the best interests of the author at the forefront of your mind.

What’s your favourite thing about being an agent?

It’s working with the authors. Of course I love finding new stories, every agent does, but for me it’s the collaborative relationship with people. It’s things like a client telling me: “I’ve had an idea, can I call you and talk about it?”

Another thing I’m passionate about – as is the agency as a whole – is demystifying the publishing industry. At first glance, the industry can appear to have all these secrets and barriers and intrigue, but it’s actually quite straightforward. Yes, there are questions no one knows the answer to and there are trends that change all the time, but it’s ultimately a business and a business has to work a certain way. I want to see authors approaching publishing in a more informed way, and the best way to achieve that is if the agents and publishers are forthcoming with them.

What’s at the top of your fiction wish-list?

I read very widely but I’m particularly interested in popular fiction, especially commercial crime and thriller. I’m actively looking for diverse characters of all kinds in popular fiction. Since I have a hearing disability myself, I’d love to find protagonists – not just side characters! – with disabilities.

I’m also looking for historical adventure novels with points of difference, which might be a focus on women, queer characters, or again, characters with disabilities – anything that centres characters who wouldn’t normally get the spotlight. One of my authors, Katie Daysh, does this really well; she writes about the Age of Sail with a focus on queer characters. I love the Sharpe novels and I’d love to see something like that where women are at the forefront.

Is there any genre you’d rather not receive?

YA, children’s books and younger voices in general. Sci-fi. I’m willing to look at fantasy but it’s not my speciality. I’ve worked on non-fiction before but that was a while ago so I wouldn’t say it’s something I’m super well-informed about.

I really do read widely and my time working for publishers means I’ve had experience handling a range of genres – my heart isn’t in romance and sagas, for example, but I’m willing to hear a pitch if someone wants my advice. I’ll likely have less specific knowledge of those markets than I would for crime/thriller, but I can certainly offer an overview.

What do you want to see in a query letter? And what do you dislike?

All agents have different opinions on query letters. It’s quite similar to when I worked at publishing companies and would read job applications – everyone has different opinions on what works well and what doesn’t.

I read the manuscript sample first, then the synopsis, then the cover letter, and that’s because I don’t want my own prejudices to influence me when I’m reading the manuscript. For example, I love working-class authors, and I’m aware that if I read the query letter first, I’m probably going to judge the rest of the submission differently depending on my impression of the author’s background. That’s through no fault of their own and it doesn’t mean I don’t represent authors who aren’t working class – but because I know it’s a prejudice I have, I read the query letter last to prevent it from influencing how I perceive the quality of the writing.

I don’t care who the letter is addressed to. If it’s addressed to someone else in the company or “Dear Sirs”, that’s not going to put me off. I love to see a summary of the book in the form “X meets Y” – “Killing Eve meets The Shawshank Redemption,” for example. Those summaries give me an immediate picture of what I can expect. There are some other good ways you can include comp titles and authors, such as: “My writing is similar to the style of X,” or “The themes are similar to Y.”

What I don’t like is when people give me a lot of information about their book and nothing about themselves. I’m a people person and publishing is a people industry; I want to know where you’re from, what you do, how you started writing and which authors you admire.

How do you feel about synopses? Any tips?

Give me spoilers! Keep it to a page, don’t ramble, but make sure the spoilers at the core of the plot are included. That includes key characters; make sure to give their names, what they do and where they end up.

As an author, you have to be really close to the text and that means you can sometimes lose the essential points among all the other details that seem really important to you but aren’t necessary for the synopsis. It can help to give the synopsis to someone who hasn’t seen your manuscript and ask them if they know what the plot is about just from reading the synopsis.

Is there anything that would grab you in the opening pages?

In most of the genres I’m looking for, I want to see action on the first page. I need a feeling of suspense and a reason to care about what’s coming up. I don’t like to see rambling dialogue and while I like to meet the main characters, I don’t want to see lots of exposition about them – I want information about them to be revealed later as I read on.

Crime and thriller especially is a highly saturated marketplace so you need to hook your reader very quickly. Opening with a crime or the discovery of a body or something like that is a good way to achieve that hook. The same goes for historical adventure – I want to see action! If there’s a battle or someone getting their head blown off, great, I’ll probably want to read on.

Any final words of advice for authors in the querying process?

Look at authors you admire and pay attention to what they’re saying because you can learn a lot from them. I know it isn’t financially feasible for everyone to attend events, but if you have the chance or there are any free events nearby, go along and hear from authors and publishers. Make use of social media as well to engage with the community and stay up to date on the conversations happening at the moment, even if that means just lurking like I do!

Check out Francesca’s AgentMatch profile for the full interview.

If you’re struggling with your query letter and synopsis, do check out our free resources on our website. We have lots of info to help you on your way. Or, better still, if you’re a member with us, our lovely Writers Support team will be happy to offer you a free query letter review! Finally, we have plenty of fantastic agents offering Agent One-to-One Sessions in October and November – book your session now to hear their feedback on your submission pack.