They Know A Guy: Understanding Book Scouts

How does a book get into the hands of foreign publishers? The answer to this question is often a mystery to authors. While there are several ways that an agent can get a manuscript in front of the right editor, one of the most important ways requires working with specialists who people have never heard of: book scouts. The unsung heroes of the foreign rights world, book scouts play a pivotal role in facilitating the discovery and interest of foreign publishers in US books.

Foreign editors, like their US counterparts, are constantly inundated with manuscripts. Even those who only accept agented submissions have slush piles that take ages to get through, and most of the manuscripts won’t be a good fit for the press. In order to solve this problem, foreign publishers hire book scouts to be their eyes and ears in the US, scouring for exactly what the publisher actually wants to publish.

So what do they actually do? Well, their title says it all. Like athletic scouts going to games to find the next champion, or talent scouts attending shows to find the next star, book scouts read manuscripts to find the next bestseller. Trusted with the desires of their clients, book scouts use their literary agent and editor contacts to get their hands on anything that might fit their clients’ lists and send over their recommendations. Ultimately, the decision to acquire rests with the publishers themselves, but the acquisition process is heavily streamlined.

Book scouts are a great help to foreign publishers, but they’re pretty helpful to literary agents as well. Since each scouting agency has several foreign publishers as clients, an agent can send a manuscript over to a scout, covering far more potential ground than individually sending manuscripts to every publisher they can find. One of the best perks of sending manuscripts through scouts is that they don’t charge agents (or authors) anything, since they are paid by foreign publishers for their services. And since scouts have a working relationship with their foreign publishers, manuscripts sent through them often have a much higher chance of actually being seen in a timely manner.

An agent will employ as many tactics as they can to secure the right deals for their authors, and maintaining good relationships with book scouts is one way they make that happen. ✿