Welcome to the home page of ASLA, the Association of Scottish Literary Agents.
ASLA is the national trade body for literary agents in Scotland. It was founded in 2009 and officially launched on 20th August 2009 at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Click here for the press release.
ASLA is a voluntary organization, founded in order to provide literary agents in Scotland with a forum to discuss matters of common professional interest.
Its aims are to raise the profile of literary agencies in Scotland; to provide a vehicle for representing the view of authors' agents in discussion of matters of common interest with other professional bodies, the media industry and to the public; to lobby, seek external funding and to contract specialist expertise as appropriate on behalf of member agencies; and to maintain a code of professional practice to which all members of the Group shall commit themselves.
ASLA will serve as the Scottish point of liaison with the UK-wide Association of Authors’ Agents.
Membership of ASLA is open to any agency or individual independent agent who has been actively engaged in representing authors for a period of at least one year. Applicants for membership must have a permanent place of business within Scotland and must be able to give satisfactory evidence of their ability to offer the full service of an authors' agency, including a verifiable track record of sales to trade publishers on behalf of their clients. The full constitution and code of practice of ASLA is available on request; members pay an annual subscription fee, and payment of this fee indicates a commitment to uphold the ASLA standards of practice.
ASLA's member agents operate separately in terms of submissions procedures and management, representing the commercial interests of a wide range of writers, both Scottish and international.
The officers of ASLA are elected every two years at the Annual General Meeting of ASLA.
The officers for 2009-2011 are:
Chair: Jenny Brown Jenny Brown Associates
Secretary/ Treasurer: Lindsey Fraser Fraser Ross Associates
NOTE TO AUTHORS: Please note that we are a voluntary trade body founded to promote the interests of literary agents. It is not intended that authors should need to have direct contact with the association: authors will automatically receive indirect benefits. ASLA is not itself a body that represents clients, and is not able to advise as to the suitability of particular agents for particular authors; please contact members individually for details of submission procedures. If you
require information about how to go about getting published or
finding representation by an agent, we recommend that you consult a
copy of either the Publishing Scotland Yearbook (Publishing Scotland), The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook (A&C
Black) or The Writer's Handbook (Macmillan), all of which should be obtainable in any major Scottish public library or bookshop, or online.
The members of ASLA are, current as of 1st March 2011:
Makepeace Towle Literary Agency
Copyright 2009 ASLA. All rights
reserved.
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