“The literary agent’s main job is to place the rights of a manuscript”

Mumbai-based WorldFamous Literary Agents’ list of authors include CEOs, film makers, journalists, start-up founders, political leaders, academicians and even first time & young budding writers.

“The literary agent’s main job is to place the rights of a manuscript/book in terms of translation rights, for a specific territory, for languages and for the audio visual rights. Most literary agents are now able to place not just the publishing rights with the traditional publishers but also are able to place them to the production companies and various OTT platforms converting the book to screen proposals. Hence the scope of literary agents has widened up,” says Dipti Patel, Founder, WordFamous Literary Agents, Mumbai. Dipti has placed manuscripts across genres like literary fiction, thrillers, mythological fiction, business books, biographies, recipe books, children books, poetry, current affairs and self-help among others. She is passionate about promoting the regional writers and gets the classics and other great works in vernacular languages like Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam translated and published in English. She has assisted authors from countries like US, UK, Israel, Germany, UAE and New Zealand. She has also started accepting and converting book to screen proposals.

Trends in rights and licensing…

“Having great connections and network in the publishing as well as with the production houses and OTT platforms, it’s great to know that the recent trend has been mainly focusing on the following: thrillers and small town romance in fiction category and of course non-fiction has taken a centrestage in terms of biographies and real life stories,” she says.

“Regarding licensing, there is a rising trend for publishing in various translations in not just the Indian languages but also foreign language rights,” adds Dipti.

On book fairs…

“I had been too busy in personal and professional front to attend the book fair. But yes, I have to admit, I am now eagerly waiting to attend the physical book fair, hoping we get back to normal life again post covid,” concludes Dipti.