Updated October 20, 2009
| Curtis Brown currently employs 32 people in our New York and San Francisco offices. Since its inception, the agency has handled more than 50,000 contracts. Our clients include many bestselling authors, award winners, and some of the leading minds and voices in the world. Curtis Brown boasts innovative and successful film and foreign rights departments, and is one of the few literary agencies that handle ancillary rights in-house, providing a motivated team working on our clients’ behalf across all platforms. We are well positioned to take advantage of the new opportunities afforded by technological innovations, and we are aggressive in achieving the best possible terms for our clients. With the media industries constantly changing, Curtis Brown continues to evolve and excel while maintaining its commitment to the principles that have made it a key player in the publishing and entertainment world for nearly a century.Brief History Albert Curtis Brown was born in 1866 in upstate New York. He moved to England in 1888 to head the International Publishing Bureau and started his own literary agency in London in 1905. As war clouds gathered in Europe, Brown escorted two members of the London staff to New York City and established the U.S. branch of Curtis Brown Ltd. in July of 1914. The day after Brown’s return to England, World War I began. The New York office was initially established to market US rights in works by Curtis Brown’s British clients, including D.H. Lawrence, C.S. Lewis, Daphne du Maurier, A.A. Milne and Winston Churchill. The agency also had a mandate to cultivate American authors, which it did in short order, adding key figures to its venerable list, including W.H. Auden, Theodore Dreiser, Ayn Rand and Ogden Nash. Separate offices of Curtis Brown exist in New York, London, Toronto and Sydney, each operating as an independent company. The New York branch of Curtis Brown, Ltd. was one of the founders, in 1928, of the Society of Authors’ Representatives (SAR), and was instrumental in negotiating the SAR’s merger with the Independent Literary Agents Association (founded in 1977) to form the Association of Authors’ Representatives (AAR) in 1991. All of our agents are members of the AAR and are bound by the AAR’s Canon of Ethics. We remain committed to the responsible and ethical representation that made us an industry leader. |
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We represent:
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We do not represent:
• We do not handle stage plays or musicals. • We are not accepting screenplay submissions at this time. |
Submission Guidelines |
| Curtis Brown represents adult and children’s authors of all genres, including illustrators. If you would like to submit a manuscript or proposal, please send us a query letter, a synopsis of the work, a sample chapter and a brief resume. Illustrators should send 1-2 samples of published work, along with 6-8 color copies (no original art).Please enclose a stamped, self-addressed envelope for our response and return postage if you wish to have your materials returned to you. We typically respond to queries within 6 to 8 weeks.
Please send all book queries to: Curtis Brown, Ltd. • We do not charge reading fees.
Curtis Brown is one of only a few New York literary agencies that can boast its own full-service Film & Television Department. We’ve had decades of success in selling our clients’ dramatic rights directly to Hollywood producers, having found that doing so streamlines the process and ensures that our clients’ needs are met and that their rights are fully and properly protected. With nearly one hundred of our clients’ titles currently in development, our clients’ books have been made into: |
