The member diversity in the Women’s National Book Association (WNBA) makes our goal of connecting, educating, advocating, and leading possible. As Bookwomen, we believe Books Have Power.
The Bookwoman Blog welcomes Andrea Brown (WNBA-San Francisco) to our “Power Behind the WNBA” interview series!
Starting in publishing
After graduating from the prestigious Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University in 1976, I went to NYC to find a job.
I was lucky enough to be offered two positions as an editorial assistant. One was at VOGUE, but they only paid $95 a week and wanted me to have manicures weekly. Dell Publishing Company had a job open for $125 a week, and they didn’t care about my nails.
I took the job at Dell in the children’s book department where I got paid to read and attend film screenings.
Life as an Assistant
My job was to tell my publisher boss what books would make good paperbacks. I also wrote cover copy, typed rejection letters, and did assistant work.
My plan was to go to grad school but within a month I fell in love with the children’s book business and decided to forget grad school. I loved living in New York and always found great places to live cheaply.
Becoming a Literary Agent
After Dell, I worked as an assistant at Random House and worked with Dr. Seuss, the Berenstain Bear books, BABAR the elephant, and many other classics. Then I was an editor at Alfred A. Knopf and started taking agents out to lunch.
I decided to become an agent and was the first to represent both children’s book authors and illustrators. I lived in a studio on East 48th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue, down the street from Kurt Vonnegut, so it was a great agency address.
The Andrea Brown Literary Agency
In 1990, my husband and I moved from NY to California’s Bay area. I started to build my agency, and it opened up a whole new part of publishing to me on the west coast.
Now my agency, Andrea Brown Literary Agency, has 11 agents. As the top selling children’s literary agency, we still specialize in children’s books for all ages.
My client, Neal Shusterman, won the National Book Award and the Printz Honor Book and all his titles make the top of the NYT Bestseller lists. One of our clients, Meg Medina, just won the Newbery Medal this past January.
WNBA Membership
I had been an active member of the WNBA in NY and had served as the Pannell Award chair. In San Francisco, I served as chapter president, and I met many people in book publishing. While I was president, we increased our membership and initiated the annual Effie Lee Morris Award with the San Francisco Library.
Being a Literary Agent
Literary agents have to have certain personality traits, especially persistence and patience. We have to juggle many aspects for our clients including editorial revisions, contract negotiations, financial issues, career choices, social media, marketing ideas, foreign and film deals, and the list goes on.
We are never bored as every day presents new problems, surprises, or issues to deal with. Each client is unique. I feel so fortunate to have found my calling early on and plan to continue on as long as possible.
After over four decades in children’s book publishing I still love working with authors and illustrators and mentoring my younger colleagues. There have been many changes in book publishing over these decades, but all of us still work hard to get good books into the hands of children.
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