SPOTLIGHT FEATURE: Sam Hiyate from The Rights Factory

Hello, everyone!

We are very excited to announce that Canadian literary agents have joined Jericho Writers’ AgentMatch database. Have you been wondering about how the submission process works in Canada? Or what trends and themes are popular in the Canadian market? This is the first Canadian interview in our #JWSpotlightOnInterview series – enjoy!

We are starting this series with Sam Hiyate, the President and CEO of The Rights Factory, a Canadian-based literary agency with clients from around the world.

Since 1990, Sam has worked at literary magazines, small presses and with New York Times bestselling authors, editing and representing everything from debut fiction, memoir and narrative non-fiction to graphic novels. He has taught writing and publishing privately since 2000 and also at various universities.

The Rights Factory was founded in 2004, and the agency has a diverse base of award-winning clients, with many of their titles becoming bestsellers, and being published in multiple languages worldwide.

When I sat down with Sam, we talked about the world of literary agency: the direction the industry is moving in, how it has changed and the all-important author-agent relationship.

If you are interested in gaining some insight into the mind of a literary agent, check out some highlights from our interview with Sam below.

Hello Sam, thank you so much for talking to me today about your career as a literary agent. Could you tell us a bit about the history of The Rights Factory and your own personal experience in the industry?

I founded the company in 2004, after working for a much bigger agency. It was a real Jerry Maguire moment! I started The Rights Factory because I wanted a different relationship with my writers. We’re famous for being an editorial agency—we’re excited about finding and bringing new voices to market. That’s the kind of mandate I had in my career as a publisher, and I was excited to bring it into my career as an agent.

The Rights Factory is an editorial agency. Could you briefly explain what that means?

Everyone who works for me is an editor, has been an editor, or is still freelance editing. We have serious editorial conversations here, and there’s no book that we have taken on and been blasé about. It’s a big investment on our part.

I loved being a publisher, and I’ve taken that love and brought it into my career at The Rights Factory. I often think that we are like a floating imprint. We do all the editorial work, but instead of publishing the book like I used to, with expenses such as printing, design, marketing, distribution costs, and warehousing, we take it to the highest bidder.

What we don’t want is what happens at many literary agencies—an agent gets back to a querying author with one page of brief feedback, the writer rewrites the entire book due to their suggestions, and when they return to the agent they are no longer interested. That’s not helpful for anyone.

Could you give us some insight into what is special about the Canadian market?

Canada is an interesting territory. Like many agencies here, The Rights Factory is country agnostic. We represent a lot of Americans and Brits. The fact that we’re in Canada because of the pandemic is, for the first time, a huge advantage. As long as we like somebody’s work and we think we can sell it, that’s all that matters. We represent writers throughout Canada, making up probably about 40% of our list. 60% is all international!

Could you tell us about any recent exciting deals in the company?

One of our recent deals was for Field Notes on a Constant Condition by Laura Pratt, sold to Random House Canada. The book begins as a memoir on heartbreak but then attempts to answer some wide-reaching questions which are more universal in their appeal. How does the heart respond to emotions? How did the Ancient Greeks, Freud, and even 21st-century television adaptations react to this all-encompassing topic? It’s such a wide-spanning cultural history.

We have recently taken on quite a few new agents who are moving the company in exciting directions. Last year we got our first Film and TV agent, Karmen Wells, who is absolutely terrific.

I know that mentoring is extremely important to you. Can you talk a bit about how mentors have affected your career as a publisher and agent?

I worked for a legendary editor in New York, Gordon Lish. He was the fiction editor at Esquire, and he also started a magazine called The Quarterly. Everything in this magazine blew my mind! There’s an amazing article written by him in The Paris Review on The Art of Editing that I would recommend reading. Gordon was a powerful editor and one of my amazing mentors. What he taught me inspired my approach to one of my first publishing projects, the literary magazine Blood and Aphorisms. Its mantra was to discover new writers, break new ground, and excite the literary community.

50% of my current job is mentorship. I mentor my agents, my agents mentor their writers. For example, a new agent signs a book and can come to me with my decades of experience and networks in the wider industry. When I see something and get excited about it, I can get excited about it with other members of my staff. It’s a great position for us all to be in.

You have read thousands of query letters. What advice do you have for the querying author?

Most established agents will only be on referral, as we trust those who know our taste and what we’re good at. However, the most important thing for any querying author is to know the agent before you send the submission. Do your research. The more you know about the agent, the agency, and the range of writing they represent, the better.

I prefer when authors can take a step back from their identity as writers and look at how their books will fit into the wider industry. For example: ‘Dear Sam, I know you represent Andrew Kaufman. All My Friends Are Superheroes is one of my favourite novels, inspiring a similar kind of magical realism in [MY TITLE].’ A writer should absolutely come to me with comparable titles. Or, if they have met me at a conference or event, start with that.

I want to know why you are emailing me, in particular. The worst thing is when you are CC’d into an email with fifty other agents and it begins, ‘Dear agent…’

What has changed over the course of your career in the industry?

It’s important to know about the history of the industry if you want to consider how publishing will change in the future. Maxwell Perkins is an interesting example. He was a famous journalist in the 1930s, well known because he was hired by Scribner. He found William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe. Perkins would spend one year editing a book! He had that luxury because he was bringing in so much money. But these writers weren’t always wholly successful in their time.

Hemingway, for example, had to self-publish his first book. Likewise, Fitzgerald was devastated because he didn’t sell many copies of The Great Gatsby in his lifetime. He complained to Perkins about his low royalties in his letters. Interestingly, Perkins and Fitzgerald have the same conversations we have now about how to make the book more marketable—they consider calling the book The Sad Daisy and making her the main character, for example. Perkins reassures Fitzgerald, saying that their job is to produce the work and let the market figure it out. Publishing is always a risk, but interestingly agents are having the same conversations with their authors nearly a hundred years on.

The full interview can be found on Sam Hiyate’s AgentMatch profile.

We hope you have enjoyed the first instalment of this series – more to come soon!

If you’re a member, head over to AgentMatch now and get searching. We’ve added Canada to our country search filters. If you’re not yet a member but want to try out AgentMatch, then sign up for the free trial. Or better yet, join us and become a member to get access to AgentMatch as well as everything else we have to offer.