Albert Einstein, educated at Aarau, SwitzerlandAarau Agency and Literary Services
formerly Sunflower Literary Agency (UK not USA)

This may be the only non-fee literary agency in the world that only accepts new authors!

Or published authors changing their genre (e.g. nonfiction to fiction)

We are an international agency operating on the Internet.

Since you asked, "Aarau" is pronounced "Arrow". It's the Swiss town where Einstein went to school. Like us, it nurtured genius.

NO READING FEES or any fees or charges at any time.

If we accept your work, we back that with our best efforts at all times.

Commission: 15% for all sales and media worldwide.

Exclusive Agreement: but you may terminate the representation on 90 days notice any time before an offer is received. You may also exempt other named works. We have no business relationship with any fee-charging services in the Industry and do not front for or recommend them.

We only consider full length (completed) adult readership fiction.
And individual or compendia of children’s short stories for age 5–12.

Action, Psychological, Techno-Thrillers, Quality Erotic content okay.
Humour: novels, literary, and social satire welcome.
Please no pure romances, spirit-world, simple who-done-its, original screenplays,
Adult short stories, poetry, autobiography, nonfiction.
We can consider representation of screenplays (but only from your completed novel).

Your work will be read (and in every case reviewed in writing) by:
Paul M Muller PhD (Senior Partner and Editor) and other readers appropriate to your genre.

Associate Agents: Ms Tina Amiri, Mr Harry Wylie

We are a fairly new agency, founded in 2001 as a spinoff from Sunflower Productions 1990-2002, screen & TV “packager” as listed in Spotlight Contacts UK 1995-2002.
Sunflower Literary Agency has been listed in and was vetted for inclusion in:
The Macmillan Writer’s Handbook since 2003.
We have SUBMISSION POLICIES, as follows:
First Contact is ALWAYS VIA this website’s first email address below.
BUT
Please do not contact us until you have done all of the following:
Your work has been completed, and edited by you from beginning to end (see download of agency Style Guide provided below that may be helpful) then read by at least 6 people (3 or more of them should be unrelated to you). Writing groups are a good idea.
Your completed work has been read by a professional (writer, teacher, librarian, group-mentor…) who confirms in writing that it is ready for professional submission.
Published authors in entirely different genres (e.g. nonfiction) send CV only.
When you have such a completed work and the background material, send a 150 word maximum e-mail Query Letter containing:
Your name, contact details, a brief CV, the type of work you are Querying for submission, a note of any previous published or unpublished work, e.g. "3 nonfiction books".
A synopsis is optional: if sent it should be in dust-jacket format, maximum 150 words.
A clear statement in the covering e-mail that this MS is not on submission to other agencies or publishers, and that it will retain that status during our reviews and ongoing editing support unless you advise us in writing in your e-mail of such submission(s). This does not disqualify you but it is industry practice to always notify simultaneous submissions (we are bound by the same rule).
Full contact details for your professional referee.
If we proceed, we will request that you ask the referee to e-mail us with a brief comment.
Given the Agency's profile you will see why both of us must follow the "rules".
Thank you for your confidence in the Agency.
IF INVITED as above we require full, completed MS, and ONLY electronic submissions.
If this is a problem you can solve it locally with appropriate IT assistance.
We decide which parts to request or read based on the initial correspondence.
The form and format for your first submission is in Part One of the agency Style Guide (below).
We submit to all agreed relevant media including e-books.

How to submit your 150 word Query Letter

By e-mail - submission@aaraulit.com or backup: aaraulit@hotmail.com

Please do not submit MS until we give permission to do so.
Instead write a short contact email as above, 150 words.
 
How to prepare for possible submission to Publishers:

When a publisher’s editor (or we) read your first 30 pages:
You have 5 pages to hook the readers and another 25 to addict them:

She was surprised how easily the knife slipped between his ribs and that she could feel the throbbing of his pierced heart through the handle. As he slumped to his knees, her husband looked up into her eyes and said, “Forgive me.”
 
You don’t have to reach both of these goals in 42 words, and you don’t have to put the body on page one (and if you send us a mystery it needs to be unusual for these are a dime a carload), but you should manage that—and then some—in as many pages. The most common problem with first novels or early work is that the writer begins by introducing their characters (sometimes all 15 of them at once) and the settings before anything happens. This is understandable; the writer is doing it for themselves, to get going, to know who the players are and how the stage props are organized. Put that in a separate file for reference, and introduce this material over time when you edit the MS (you will edit it a few times before submitting it if you are already thinking ‘professional’). Begin as best you can to get the reader on your side, give them a share in the book by not telling them everything so they can use their imaginations. Above all give them a reason to read more and a clear idea of where your book is going. If you conceal that for ‘mystery’ you have misunderstood the novel form.
Write in third person. Set aside your semi-fictional-sort-of-autobiographical first novel (probably written in first person). Employ what you have learned from doing that to a new work in a well-defined genre (such as those we can consider because of having relevant staff who can help and then market within said genres). If you insist on ‘first person’ narrative, understand that it is at least five-times more difficult than ‘third’ to raise the MS to professional standards that a publisher’s editor will read more than a paragraph of! Yes, it really is that tough out there in the real world.
And on the (yes it’s important) subject of formatting your documents it is a good idea to begin as you mean to go on. Word for Windows is the most compatible choice: make sure you have the fully loaded version with spell checking, dictionary, thesaurus, and the automatic Internet access “Research Support” that is so vital to efficient composition and editing. When you send to us use *.doc format (not *.docx—command save in “Word Format” or “Word 2003” format and check). If you use some other word processor, you will either output in “Word for Windows” *.doc format (as in Word for Apple) or if all else fails, in *.rtf (Rich Text Format). Secretaries, IT personnel including at Internet shops, or a hot 12 year old down the road, can be sought out for help if necessary. Use paragraph marks (CR or Enter key) at the end of each paragraph and let the text processor do the line wrapping. Better to turn off automatic tabs (not use the taskbar at the top of the document) and use the physical TAB key character for basic paragraph indentation (because this is universally compatible). These issues are important to your (and our) efficient review and exchanging of MS. Attach the file to an email and put everything we ask for in the one file (see Guide Part One).
The almost universal industry standard for paper and electronic submissions is: 12pt Times New Roman (do not use Arial or sans-serif fonts for narrative text), double spaced, chapters numbered (and optionally titled) in Boldface on a fresh page and better if spaced down at least 3 blank lines, first paragraph not indented (same for intra-chapter breaks after inserting a blank line). All other paragraphs are indented. Please do not justify the text as that makes it difficult to read and edit on-screen. Use the ellipsis…to indicate a pause in the action or dialogue, the emdash—for parenthetical narrative (and look that up in your WP and give it a fast key: I use CTL ALT -), no spaces bracketing.
If you are not absolutely reliable (and none of us are), buy and use a style guide (see free download below for ours). Proofread the MS, learn how to punctuate quotations, the correct use of colons and semicolons, and here is a trick. The spelling and grammar checkers in Word are very good indeed (red underline for spelling, green for grammar). Turn them on throughout your writing, or if that annoys, definitely edit with them on through the whole MS. Single words that are written as two words, two words combined into one (when not correct), and hyphenation are the bane of every writer’s life. Any two-words you think might be one, such as ‘self centered’, type it as one and see if the red line appears. If it is actually hyphenated, Word will often come back with that correction (turn auto correction on by the way), and if as in this example it is neither, the red underline appears and it is two words. This is a major source of errors in MS, and the professional to be will want to make it technically perfect. www.miriamwebster.com and www.thefreedictionary.com are excellent free online resources for cracking the harder nuts. The modern trend is away from hyphenating compound nouns (absent in ‘professional to be’ above for example), but compound adjectives (avoid them—see our Style Guide) are hyphenated. The Thesaurus in Word is reasonable, the above references definitive. Unfortunately the monumental Oxford English Dictionary is unavailable online because they want to charge big money to look up a single word! In my view they don’t understand marketing; letting us look up 5 words a day will sell more books and CDs.
Finally, when you think you are ready, conduct this experiment. Print out a few pages of your MS in large type on plain paper. If you have a lectern, use it; if not, prop up a box at an angle on a table or desk. Clear your throat, and read the MS out loud (don’t fake it, really do it), and imagine an audience of 5000 is watching and listening to you. Join a writer’s or reading group (or host a dinner party) and conduct the same experiment. The key to great prose is poetry (write some, it’s fun) and above all, flow. You will know it if another pass through the editor is needed (that’s for you not me). One of the best approaches can be to continue reading out loud, really, i.e. not in your mind’s ear as you edit. Cut out all the unnecessary “weasel words” in narrative such as “almost unique” and their cousins in crime. When you can read it, and it runs like oil off your tongue, and has a cracking good plot with a powerhouse first five pages, send us an e-mail Query (not the MS yet). My recommended book on writing is: The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman (still in print but if you can’t buy it new, you know where to go on the web). Perform his writing exercises on selected pages of your work. We also offer a downloadable Style Guide with the basics.
Writing a publishable novel is a massive task, involving the writer, the writer as editor (five or more times through a MS is not overkill), the agent and Agency (we help you master editing of your own MS—the key to professional success), and the publisher (who will probably edit it as well) with all of their support functions from initial reading through typesetting, proofing, print production, quality control, and the vital promotion. They will be investing at least a few years of income for an average worker, in your name and work. Clearly this is not taken lightly particularly in today’s difficult economic climate (though books are holding up well).
From our point of view please consider how long it takes you to read a 120,000 word novel on holiday, and you are not tasked to either make editorial suggestions in writing or prepare a review of value to the author. A man-week of 40 hours is not unreasonable. That is why we work up to the full MS, like most other agencies and publishers, from the first 5 pages (pass that test and we read another 25). Then if all is well, we will gradually read more up to the full MS, but you are the one who gets it into professional form and format. Our mission is to advise and help you do that once you have a great product on offer. A book is indeed a ‘product’ and is sold as such.
The agency has a continuing project to create a Style Guide suitable for new writers with the fundamentals set out in editing checklists. You are invited to download that document here. If any of these editorial items resonate with your MS it will be in your own interest to edit one more time through at least what you may propose to send us. Please do not submit that material until invited to do so after following the above form and format for the first contact Query letter by e-mail.

Keep Writing, and Revising, and Revising - Good Luck

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I accept that this Guide is copyright by Sunflower Literary Agency and is for the noncommercial use of the person receiving it, all commercial rights are reserved
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