The Science Factory is a highly individual agency specializing in important, influential and innovative nonfiction. Through his experience, energy and passion, its director, Peter Tallack, aims to represent authors more effectively and more nimbly than some of the bigger agencies.
Peter has worked as an editor, publisher and journalist, and is also a published author. So he has a good understanding of the issues and problems facing writers, and knows what publishers are looking for in serious works of nonfiction.
Having worked for nearly a decade as an editor on Nature, he is particularly sympathetic to the needs and concerns of academics who want to write for a general audience. He also has a track record of matching new authors to ideas as well as suggesting new topics and angles to existing clients. On top of this he has a wide range of media contacts and is well known in the scientific and science-journalism communities.
A solid book proposal is, he believes, the foundation of success. He therefore takes a far more active role than most agents in helping authors to focus their project so that it will attract the widest possible readership and in then crafting a submission package that will convey its full potential.
Proposals apart, he also involves himself in every other aspect of the publishing process including selling to publishers both in the UK and abroad (sometimes direct, sometimes through leading subagencies and co-agencies), negotiating and drawing up contracts, advising on editorial, production, marketing and publicity matters, and overseeing all author payments and taxation agreements.
He has always had a policy of representing writers rather than books, and representing good writers whom he likes and admires. His hands-on detailed approach means that authors get his close attention and can reach him by email, text or phone wherever he is working from and even at weekends and in the evening. The agency's blog sets out to add to this sense of fellowship, providing a stimulating forum not only for its own authors but also for the public at large.
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